out to me is how America is obsessed with being entertained. American Culture is so intertwined with the idea of being entertained that it is almost defined by it.
We iconicize and idolize our entertainment, both the content and those personalities or actors that deliver it to us. Nearly every week you can ready about what movies opened, how well they are doing in the box office, how well they are doing worldwide. Americans love to know how much our forms of entertainment are enjoyed, much like the Diva that can’t get enough of hearing how awesome and talented she is.
In today’s age of immediate gratification, flash news-trends, over the top personalities, and the ‘raw and real’ entertainment of so many reality television shows, I think …show more content…
We are now so used to seeing one thing after the next that not only do we not truly absorb what we are seeing, we are not affected, at least not for long, by the information we do see.
To quote the book “The effect of all this is that "Americans are the best-entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world" ” (pg 106)
So many of the news topics we see, whether on more traditional media or on the internet provide only enough information to elicit an emotional reaction; wars, famine, illnesses. We hear about the plight of those affected, we see images chosen for impact. Very rarely do we get the facts. What caused them to be at war? What were the catalysts behind the famine, why is this illness spreading? Without actual facts, and the reasoning behind events, all we can do is feel, and then we move onto the next thing.
In chapter 11 Postman talks on how you can not make America turn off the TV. I see that this still holds true today, though I would replace the TV model with either computers, smartphones or the Internet as a
We iconicize and idolize our entertainment, both the content and those personalities or actors that deliver it to us. Nearly every week you can ready about what movies opened, how well they are doing in the box office, how well they are doing worldwide. Americans love to know how much our forms of entertainment are enjoyed, much like the Diva that can’t get enough of hearing how awesome and talented she is.
In today’s age of immediate gratification, flash news-trends, over the top personalities, and the ‘raw and real’ entertainment of so many reality television shows, I think …show more content…
We are now so used to seeing one thing after the next that not only do we not truly absorb what we are seeing, we are not affected, at least not for long, by the information we do see.
To quote the book “The effect of all this is that "Americans are the best-entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world" ” (pg 106)
So many of the news topics we see, whether on more traditional media or on the internet provide only enough information to elicit an emotional reaction; wars, famine, illnesses. We hear about the plight of those affected, we see images chosen for impact. Very rarely do we get the facts. What caused them to be at war? What were the catalysts behind the famine, why is this illness spreading? Without actual facts, and the reasoning behind events, all we can do is feel, and then we move onto the next thing.
In chapter 11 Postman talks on how you can not make America turn off the TV. I see that this still holds true today, though I would replace the TV model with either computers, smartphones or the Internet as a