Postman and Paglia create very enticing arguments in “Two Cultures”, Postman obviously an advocate for print and its importance to logic while Paglia argues for television and its aesthetic appeal in today’s culture. Both scholars definitely deserve credit for their breadth of knowledge into their subject, but when all was said and done Paglia won me over, not necessarily for her argument in supporting television, but rather in her argument for supporting the image, and how it is important not to forget the print in understanding the image
First off, Postman made several good points, many of which I agree with, and many of which, I feel, have a grander importance over some of the television arguments made by Paglia. Literacy from print is vital in areas of knowledge Postman described as “logic, rhetoric, and literary criticism”, all of which are important to gain a well-rounded intellectual standpoint of anything. Similarly, Postman justifies that literate education can help control what we feel about what we see. In the greater context, he feels it is essential to have these foundations of logic and reason, built from literacy (i.e. print), in order to clearly understand the meanings behind the images we see in everyday life, including what we see on the television. To this point, I agree whole-heartedly. Education is key to understanding the outside world around us. Without any substantial base of knowledge, we would be forced to indiscriminately believe everything we see, hear, feel. What literacy does for us is that it creates our sense of logic, our sense of problem solving, our sense of thinking outside the box to create ideas that are entirely our own, not subjective to what is thrown at us. Perhaps a bit extreme, but we’d be walking aimlessly with no sense of self if we have no logic to create our own thoughts and feelings, and our own thoughts about our feelings. Not to say that all images on television or in everyday life are dangerous, but logic is necessary in order to allow us to structure our own ideas about the world we envision today. Postman also goes into how since symbols and images are repeated so often in today’s society that they begin to lose their primary significance, their original meaning. He states that we are in an age where the image is commercialized, and because of that, images have become secularized from their meaning. In some regards, I agree. But everything depends on how the image is used. And, of course, everything is also up for personal interpretation. Again, this is where education is key. We need to have the knowledge and sense to separate the true meaning of a symbol from it’s commercial uses. We cannot deter away from symbols just because they have found a profound prevalence in today’s society unlike seen before. We must embrace every façade of images in our lives and understand their many uses, and discriminate the positive uses from the negative ones.
Where Paglia won me over was more in her advocacy for images in society rather than in her support of television over print. To me, print is justifiably much more important, not just to logic, but to building imagination and creativity. The television subjects the watcher to what the programmers want them to see, and so thus there is no uniqueness from television, except when it comes to how one interprets a show or broadcast. What literature does for us is remarkably beautiful, for it forces us to create our own worlds and ideas to better understand what we are reading. And usually there is a greater context, for great literature reflects on society and the world. So by sparking this creative wildfire, literature is a great teacher, in moralistic beliefs and in global understanding. But Paglia argues for images because our society has shifted from a society once all divulged in print to one that has now been accustomed to pictures and images, whether in television or through other media and mediums. This new age makes it possible for an imagistic world. To her, advertisements reinforce images rather than what Postman argued was secularization. Paglia instead sees that Western culture is going through a repaganization, where beauty and aesthetics are beginning to take prominence over the lessons instilled by text. And she argues that this is especially important when developing a good sensorium. To this extent, I agree, although not from the television standpoint. Images and symbols, whether seen in art galleries or advertisements on a murky subway wall, are essential in creating a concrete sense of creativity. Where the text is king is in supporting creative thinking, but images go further than that, giving a practical and tangible way to show this creative spirit sparked by print. When we have images, we create a visual reality of what goes on in our heads, so with that concrete evidence we can better understand not only our inner thoughts and feelings, but how those apply to the greater scheme of things in our lives in and in society. Paglia also won me over in her understanding of education as being logocentric (very much like how Postman argued how text was essential in creating a base of knowledge). She talks about how we as individuals should have a control over what we see and how we interpret what we see, which is something I agree entirely with. To her, television should reside somewhere in education, that is, our understanding of the television should be based on a firm education so that we control what we see and not take everything we see as truth. For it would be a sad, sad day to substitute our own reality for those realities seen in a box perched beneath the fireplace.