On The Aesthetic Dimension Of Neil Postman’s Media Theory

Neil Postman(1931-2003)was a famous media culture theorist in the United States,and one of the most influential critics of media theory after Mc Luhan.This paper takes Postman’s media trilogy(The Disappearance of Childhood,Entertainment to Death,and Technology Monopoly)as the research object,and combines media viewpoints such as "the birth and disappearance of childhood","media as metaphor",and "technology monopoly" to reconstruct the internal aesthetic dimension of his media culture theory from the perspective of aesthetic modernity.This paper consists of introduction,four chapters and conclusion.The introduction briefly combs Postman’s media theory,summarizes and integrates related research topics,and points out Postman’s media aesthetic significance and innovation points by means of close text reading,literature research and comparative research,so as to lay the foundation for the discussion of the full text.Chapter One mainly defines the aesthetic dimension of Postman’s media theory.This paper attempts to clarify Postman’s media views from three aspects: the aesthetic background of his media theory,the establishment of dialectical rationality,and the crisis of his media thoughts and western humanism,and to analyze the internal relationship between these views and the changes of social aesthetic thoughts.Chapter Two is the rational construction of Postman’s media culture theory.This chapter aims to explain the aesthetic construction of rationality in Postman’s media theory.This paper divides the media trilogy into print and television ages,and discusses Postman’s contradiction between rationality and irrationality in life and media context by focusing on the disappearance of childhood,media as metaphor and technology monopoly.With the background of media environment,he holds a balanced view of media ecology,which has inherent rationality in common with the infinite freedom of subjective existence pursued by Kant’s aesthetics and the realization of freedom promoted by man through aesthetic judgment.That is to say,these views that the value of technology is irrelevant are essentially discussing the root cause of the disaster of modernity.Media as context is an environmental analysis of the composition of media context,while technology monopoly is an exploration of media technology’s influence on "one-dimensional people" in totalitarian society.Chapter Three is the reconstruction of aesthetic experience in the consumption era is mainly analyzed from the reconstruction of aesthetic experience in the consumption era.The media in the mass consumption era exerts a subtle influence on people’s visual perception function and aesthetic perception.This paper discusses the media enlightenment of Postman’s media theory,Kant’s and Schiller’s theory of "game utilitarian",the paradox of visual centralism and the subversion of consumer to aesthetic subject.Entertainment stimulates people’s consumption potential,and consumerism influences people’s aesthetic experience.Both of them have undergone qualitative changes in the aesthetic process,resulting in the absence of the subject’s imagination and the elimination of the subject’s rebellion,that is,the media’s construction of human has changed from the aesthetic subject to the consumer subject.Chapter Four discusses Postman’s media thoughts and the crisis of western humanism.This chapter mainly discusses the profound humanism anxiety that Postman’s media theory faces.Postman shares the theories of Kant,Frankfurt school and other scholars,which are reflected in the contradiction between aesthetic taste and capitalist culture,the alienation of aesthetic reason of cultural industry,the modernity reflection of media-metaphor,and the politics of life starting from enlightenment reason.Postman of rational an attention,will be the starting point of aesthetic salvation in the eighteenth century,because he sees the media and the environment of the 18 th century equilibrium state and to alert the disadvantages of science and technology development,aesthetic point of view,this "backward" medium theories with its own identity and more connected with a deep humanistic crisis consciousness.From the exploration of the relationship between "humanistic rationality" and "value rationality",we can see Postman’s questioning of technical rationality since Max Weber,and also the shadow of criticism of Frankfurt School.Based on this,Postman gradually stepped into the camp of deconstruction.He appealed to the new media and the dialectical reason of human beings for salvation.He believed that only by relying on the negative dialectical reason could the electronic age of entertainment to death be saved.The uniqueness of Postman’s media theory lies in that he not only ponderates on the rational issues in media culture studies,but also distinguishes and analyzes the aesthetic rationality and utopia in media aesthetics in a more forward-looking way.Although today already from the center of TV era transformation into the 5G era of media convergence,postman medium theory may no longer cutting edge,but the changes involved in the aesthetic connotation of subjectivity,the aesthetic experience of technology,the diversification of aesthetic subject and aesthetic activities of entertainment,is still a classic aesthetics is also the core issue of the eternal.Can deny that postman trilogy on lack of medium theory to the capital logic analysis and criticism of the digital age,but his dialectical and rational utilization of aesthetic duality,anti-tradition,richness,and to heal the negative and critical functions of rational power and praise highly of humanism and the political significance of individual life torture,is worthy of the reference and reflection.Based on the interdisciplinary perspective,this paper explores the aesthetic concern of Postman’s media culture theory from the above dimensions.