On Neil Postman's Thought Of TV Culture

Neil Postman is an American media and cultural critic. In his media criticism thought, the television culture accounted for an important position.He studied the television culture mainly from the media bias.Postman thought all medias have bias feature, television culture and print culture have different traits. Television culture had corroded the print culture. He used the print culture for reference, criticised the changes of the television had brought to. He thought, television culture let audience addicted to the visual pleasure, visual pleasure is the sensory attributes of television culture, television culture is a visual and perceptual culture,which had hollowed out the cultural values. In television news, politics, education and so on are all packed by television-entertainment, entertainment has infiltrated into all aspects on television. Television use image symbols recognise the real world, images use concealed way influence the public communication,and affect the social culture. Postman thought in the television monopoly era, television had become to the prime-medium, on influence public awareness and monopoly product and travel of knowledge, had gained mythical status. Television let childhood suffered injuring, let adults cultural suffered erosion. Postman thought education was the last defense line on resisted the television destruction, and when reflect television culture, He hoped to reshape education to save the people of television age, to protect the traditional culture.Postman's television culture thought had succeeded Innis and Mcluhan's Media Determinism, in some extent,and especially emphasized the human and moral values of print culture,emphasized the power of television on defining reality,but ignored the production of television text and the subject attributes and creativity of audience,this is to some extent reflected his conservative attitude on the television culture.