Book Review: The Image by Daniel Boorstin

I have just finished reading Daniel Boorstin’s formerly famous and hopefully not forgotten 1962 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America which despite the passage of time seems just as relevant today (if not more so) than when it was first published; I would go so far as to say that this is a prophetic work. Boorstin the social critic and historian provides an unforgiving critique of our superficial and image obsessed modern society which he sums up as merely “an age of contrivance” defined by a widespread “social narcissism”.

In the book he explores the impact of the images that flood the American consciousness on an hourly basis using every day examples – Boorstin’s central thesis based on empirical observation suggests that because of this flood of images we are unable to distinguish between reality and the image. These images are reshaping American culture from one based on ideals to one dominated by “the menace of unreality”. To make his point the book examines many seemingly unconnected strands including news-making, politics, celebrity, even the travel industry and the world of literature. They are cleverly brought together in a single yet succinct unifying theory; that they are all examples of what he terms pseudo-events in short a type of fabricated reality designed solely for dissemination to audiences and the mass media.

As an example of a pseudo-event Boorstin offers us a hotel which throws a party to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary to call attention to its lengthy community service. The event is reported in the media and thus its value is in that it is reported; it was staged for this precise purpose and that it appears a fabrication means little. In reality if the hotel had been rendering such a service to the community it would not have been necessary to stage the event. In politics too these events are staged by PR professionals. He says “our national politics has become a competition for images or between images, rather than between ideals” which he writes unsurprisingly shortly after the election of JFK. The television debates are yet another example of a pseudo-event designed for the purposes of mass consumption and for creating yet more pseudo-events such as post debate discussion and analysis.

There is then the human pseudo-event which is a pseudo-event as above but in human form. The example offered is that of talentless modern celebrities who are a media fabrication “well known for their well-knowness” and exploited to make money. Their fame and celebrity is a false creation of a for-profit media industry. This analysis could not be more accurate. Any contemporary reader of Boorstin could be forgiven for thinking they were reading something written in the present rather than 50 years ago. His description and analysis of society and especially political life is powerful and has enduring relevance. He seemingly predicts the new centrality of political marketing to politics and perhaps his talk of images replacing ideals also predicts the emergence of the New Democrats and New Labour. Boorstin even alludes to the expectations gap thesis, an established element of political thought, in which public expectations are growing in response to elaborate images. Yet at the same time the capacity of politicians to meet those expectations are diminishing. Some literature in recent years on the Presidency, such as that of Prof. Richard Waterman, believes the expectations gap resultant of unrealistic images of Presidential power is a considerable problem in modern politics. The work of Boorstin therefore continues to be debated, discussed and analysed among his modern day counterparts.

Perhaps a weakness in this work is his concept of the “graphic revolution” the point in time in which Boorstin believes a change occurred and before which everything was fine. This concept refers to the rise in imagery from television, magazines, billboards, movies, etc. As a result of the perpetual flood of images he perceives the decline of culture and that with modernity everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Boorstin is clearly a conservative iconoclast of the traditional sort, very skeptical of technological advancement, and bemoaning the commodification of our lives which comes hand-in hand with industrialization and free market capitalism. While writing from the political right there is much in this work that those on the left can agree with. There are many parallels with  Boorstin’s work and that of the Critical Theorists and the Frankfurt School notably with that of Jürgen Habermas who like Boorstin perceives a correlation between the growth of the commercial mass media and the erosion of a public sphere. Similar to the work of Antonio Gramsci we can see Boorstin arguing a kind of media hegemony over our daily lives deluding the mass public with intricate illusions and images.

Though we should not make the mistake of thinking Boorstin too radical. His criticism is rooted in a sense of conservative nostalgia harking back to some golden age before the graphic revolution. This golden age never existed. He is correct in thinking that television and the rise of a commercial mass media has transformed our society and our relationship with it. Especially our politics. But to think that politics only become flawed and superficial with the emergence of television is a mistake. We need only remind ourselves of the Sophists of Ancient Greece and their tendency to use rhetorical devices and performance to mislead. Despite this obvious flaw I can’t recommend this book strongly enough. As I read I felt a sense of shared frustration with Boorstin with how our society so vehemently centers around the superficial and a consumer culture. If only he had updated his work before his death in 2004; for a man who wrote with such passionate opposition to changes occurring in the early 1960′s I can only wonder what he would think about the state of politics in the present.

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