Apollonianism versus Dionysianism in
Modern American Culture

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Camille Paglia and Neil Postman engaged in a debate about the proper balance of book learning and academics versus television and mass entertainment in modern American culture. The debate was written up as an article for Harper's Magazine in 1990. (See the end of these notes for links to on-line reprints of the article.)

 

The preface of the article states, "So went the conversation between two cultural critics. Neil Postman and Camille Paglia, taking up an argument that has vexed nearly everyone in this century—the struggle for preeminence between words and pictures, today between books and television." 

 

About halfway through the debate Paglia reframes this as a debate about the proper balance of Apollonianism versus Dionysianism in America. She says, "The history of Western civilization has been a constant struggle between these two impulses, an unending tennis match between cold Apollonian categorization and Dionysian lust and chaos." 

 

Postman doesn't object to characterizing the debate in terms of Apollonianism versus Dionysianism, so I'll use that framework for my notes on the article below.

 

To recap the general ideas of Apollonianism versus Dionysianism as developed by Paglia in her book Sexual Personae:

• The Apollonian is associated with the Masculine influence, that is, order, symmetry, culture, rationality, and sky (Apollo was one of the most "spiritual" of the Greek gods, being the god of oracles, prophecy, healing, archery, music and arts, light, knowledge, etc.)

• The Dionysian is associated with the Feminine influence, that is, disorder, chaos, nature, emotion, and earth (Dionysus was the dress-wearing god of drink, ecstasy, fertility, madness, etc. who presided over the women's Eleusinian rites)

 

For purposes of this debate, using the language of Apollonianism versus Dionysianism to characterize the debate between Paglia and Postman, the Apollonian and Dionysian influences are represented in the following manner:

• Apollonian influence in modern US culture: Print media: Books, formal schooling, scholarship, research, erudition, etc.

• Dionysian influence in modern US culture: Mass entertainment and mass media: Movies, television, pop culture, advertising, dumbed-down presentation of news and politics for the masses, etc.

 

Paglia starts the discussion with a history lesson on the opposing trends of Apollonianism versus Dionysianism throughout human development:

 

Paglia suggests that Judaism represents the closest example of a purely Apollonian culture. It goes back to the Ten Commandments, and specifically to the Second Commandment forbidding graven images and likenesses. Paglia says, "The prohibition against graven images didn’t forbid just pagan idols. It banned all visual imagery, of anything on earth or in the heavens. Moses knew that once a people begin to make images of any kind, they fall in love with them and worship them. Historically, the Second Commandment diverted Jewish creative energy away from the visual arts and into literature, philosophy, and law."

 

Postman agrees and says, "Moses was the first person who ever said, more or less, 'Don’t watch TV; go do your homework.'”

 

In other words, Dionysianism is broadly presented here as the visual arts, and the Second Commandment prohibition against the Dionysian visual arts compels Jews to develop a more Apollonian culture with an emphasis on literature, philosophy, and law. 

 

As a side note: I have heard this argument made as part of a larger explanation of why Jews have been persecuted across the centuries. With a tradition of academic excellence and outperformance relative to other cultures around them, Jews were historically sought as immigrants and workers by countries needing to boost a lagging economy or bring vigor to a backward culture. But after residing in their new home for a few generations Jews excelled relative to the surrounding culture, and the Jewish community, small but well-to-do by local standards, became a target of envy and greed: The government then rounded them up, appropriated their property and wealth to fill the government's coffers, and expelled them or killed them.

 

In this manner, over the centuries Jews came to have a reputation as convenient targets of economic exploitation. Hence the example of the Holocaust: The Nazis, constrained by worldwide depression and an empty treasury while trying to rebuild their military between the two world wars, targeted their local Jewish community and appropriated their property, personal belongings, and even extracted the gold from their teeth. They utilized the Jews for slave labor and even sought ways to exploit their body parts after death, such as using their skin to make lampshades and book bindings. 

 

According to this view, the Holocaust was at least in part about economic exploitation of a vulnerable minority, and it was a pattern that had previously been repeated worldwide with Jews and other various prosperous minorities over many centuries. The Nazis simply brought modern science and efficiency to the process.

 

Back to the debate:

 

Paglia goes on to say that Greco-Roman philosophy was similarly Apollonian in nature, and early Christianity was also Apollonian and hostile to art and secular culture due to its Old Testament roots. She says that this is why Western culture is so intellectually developed in general.

 

On the other hand, Greco-Roman tradition also included pagan idolatry, representing a degree of Dionysianism. Also, pagan art and Dionysianism crept into the Catholic church via worship of the saints. Paglia says, "Early Christianity, which first proselytized among the poor, outcast, and unlearned, needed to use visual imagery..." According to Paglia, the Roman Catholic Church became steeped in "eroticism and sadomasochism, the pagan ritualism and idolatry." The Renaissance accelerated the adoption of Dionysianism when medieval scholasticism was tossed out and replaced with Renaissance humanism. 

 

However, these Dionysian innovations led to a backlash in Europe: Martin Luther pointed out the corruption of Catholic church with respect to the sale of indulgences, and the ensuing development of Protestantism incorporated a rejection of the art, luxury, and Dionysianism of the Catholics. The Protestant faiths that came over to early America were highly Apollonian, resulting in a lack of culture and art in early America. The early Protestant churches in the US were bare clapboard affairs, and church hymns were the only entertainment. The Apollonianism of early America (often referred to as the "Puritan work ethic") likely helped turn the US into a powerhouse of intellectuality, discovery, and productivity. 

 

In another of her books (Provocations), Paglia talks about the effect of Puritanism in early America at length in a 2007 essay entitled "Religion and the Arts in America." She says, "The Puritans who arrived in New England in the early seventeenth century brought with them the Calvinist hostility or indifference to the visual arts. A motivating principle of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was its correction of Roman Catholicism's heavy use of images in medieval churches--in statues, painting, and stained-glass windows. The Protestant reformers reasserted the Ten Commandments' ban on graven images, idolatrous objects that seduce the soul away from the immaterial divine. [...] Through direct study of the Bible, made possible by Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, believers opened a personal dialogue with God. This focus on text and close reading helped inspire the American literary tradition. Both poetry and prose, in the form of diaries, were stimulated by the Puritan practice of introspection: a Puritan had to constantly scrutinize his or her conscience and look for God's hand in the common and uncommon events of life. Oratory, embodied in Sunday sermons, was very strong. [...] The visual arts, on the other hand, were neglected and neglected and suppressed under the Puritans. [...A]rt had no inherent purpose except as entertainment, a distraction from duty and ethical action." (Provocations, pp. 551-552 in the paperback version)

 

However Catholic immigrants arrived in ever-larger waves in the nineteenth century, and they brought appreciation for the visual arts. This led to lavish Catholic cathedrals such as those in New York City, and eventually to the appreciation of the arts such as those coming out of Hollywood in the early 20th century. (Provocations, pp. 557-559)

 

But appreciation for the visual arts and mass entertainment in the 20th century has reintroduced Dionysianism to America with a vengeance, sapping it of some of its Apollonian vigor. This becomes Postman's starting point: Dionysian mass entertainment and media are shouldering out and replacing America's earlier Apollonian excellence.

 

Postman takes the Apollonian side: He is in favor of book learning, scholarship, and academics; in the modern age, he fears that mass media and mass entertainment are dumbing down American culture. He has written books on the subject; Grokipedia's article on Neil Postman says that Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) "critiqued television's transformation of news, politics, and religion into entertainment, eroding rational discourse by prioritizing emotional appeal over substantive content."

 

Postman would happily outlaw television and movies and force kids to stick to reading. Postman says that intellectual pursuits require lots of work and self-discipline, but such Apollonian pursuits are necessary for the health of society. He says that the Dionysian influence of television undermines that ethic of work and self-discipline. He says, "Humans are not biologically programmed to be literate. In John Locke’s essay on education, he insists that the body must become a slave to the mind. [...] That is the challenge of literacy: to get children accustomed to sitting still, to abiding in a realm that is unnaturally silent. That is the world of the word. How can silence compete with television?"

 

Paglia points out that Postman is advocating for a purely Apollonian vision of culture. She responds by saying that balance is needed. She says that a purely Apollonian life is too sedentary and that people with a purely Apollonian outlook risk becoming divorced from life, given that life itself is Dionysian in nature--changeable, chaotic, and unpredictable.

 

Postman concedes the point that extremes of Apollonianism might be unhealthy. However he says that the Dionysianism of television and public image is seductive. Political demagogues can use television to climb to power; meantime age-old religious symbolism is drained of power when used to sell frankfurters on TV. He complains of the "secularization of religious symbols and icons."

 

Paglia says that the Dionysian side of life is also healthy when indulged in moderation. Dionysianism has its own benefits: It has creativity, art, religious symbols, and cultural ideas of its own, etc. It has its own language and its own ways of sorting the good from the bad. Paglia says, "[I]t’s not that the sacred has been lost or is being trivialized. We are steeped in idolatry. The sacred is everywhere. I don’t see any secularism. We’ve returned to the age of polytheism. It’s a rebirth of the pagan gods." 

 

Paglia suggests that American society isn't collapsing into Dionysian ruin but rather reverting from a state of heightened Apollonianism to a state of balance between Apollonianism and Dionysianism that is the norm for most countries. She says to Postman, "The framers of the American Constitution were true intellectuals. But I think your book puts undue stress on that period, which was, as I see it, a kind of privileged moment. Comparing our period with that one—makes us think we’re slipping into a decline. But maybe we’re just returning to the norm. I think the world as it is now is the way it always was."

 

Paglia goes on to say that balance is healthy. She herself is a fan of the Dionysian, but she also recognizes that extremes of Dionysianism are as bad as extremes of Apollonianism. She agrees that Apollonianism needs to be taught in the schools in order to keep America from turning excessively Dionysian. If America becomes too Dionysian, then people won't know how to engage in Apollonian critique or analysis; they won't even understand their own Dionysian culture and the art. 

 

So Paglia agrees with Postman that there still needs to be a certain degree of Apollonian study and academics in order to be well-educated and fully appreciate the Dionysian arts. Paglia says: "Our dialogue has reached one major point of agreement. I want schools to stress the highest intellectual values and ideals of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. [...] Neil, we agree on this: We need to reinforce the logocentric and Apollonian side of our culture in the schools. It is time for enlightened repression of the children."

 

And that is pretty much where the debate ends. 

 

As a side note, Paglia makes this same argument about the need for balance in Dionysianism and Apollonianism in a 2004 essay entitled "The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age." She says that Dionysianism has prevailed in the US in 2004: Modern US entertainment is about popular culture, TV, and internet. But a problem arises in that modern media only provide staccato images with quick jumps between subjects. There is no continuity or context, no history, no larger understanding of art. It's all just passive observation of material to shock or titillate. 

 

So Paglia calls for Apollonian art history to be taught in the form of "iconography"--images (art, icons) that are taught in the context of history. She says, "The new generation, raised on TV and the personal computer but deprived of a solid primary education, has become unmoored from the mother ship of culture. [...] I have gotten good pedagogical results over the past two decades with canonical works of art that can be approached from the point of view of iconography. [...] The point is not just to show pictures but to seek a commentary that honors both aesthetics and history." Paglia's 2004 essay can be found in her book Provocations, pp. 348-351 of the paperback version.

 

Another side note on the subject of Apollonianism versus Dionysianism in general: 

 

Ayn Rand gave a lecture on the subject of Dionysianism versus Apollonianism in US culture in 1969, that is, 20 years before the debate between Paglia and Postman. She noted that the Woodstock music festival and the first moon landing by Apollo 11 both occurred in the summer of 1969, and she used Woodstock to represent American Dionysianism and the moon landing to represent American Apollonianism.

 

It won't be any surprise to anyone who knows Rand's philosophy that she preferred the Apollonian technological prowess demonstrated by the moon landing over the Dionysian drugged-out hedonism of the hippies at Woodstock. Nonetheless, Ayn Rand's lecture--titled "Apollo (11) and Dionysus (at Woodstock)"--shows that the debate over Apollonianism versus Dionysianism in US culture has been around for a long time and remains a vital one in terms of determining what kind of country the US aspires to be. Ayn Rand's lecture can be found here: https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=fhf-av

 

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* The debate between Paglia and Postman was first published as an article in Harper's Magazine in 1990. It was later reprinted in the book Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society by David Crowley and Paul Heyer, pub 2007. It comprised Chapter 35 of that book and was titled “Two Cultures – Television versus Print.”

 

There is a pdf file of the article on-line at https://studylib.net/doc/28337717/-for-essay2--two-cultures—television-versus-print-2

 

The text of the article was also provided at the r/camillepaglia subreddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/camillepaglia/comments/1x6a0ne/neil_postman_and_camille_paglia_debate_books/

 

For my notes on the individual chapters of Camille Paglia's book Sexual Personae, see the following page of my blog: Notes on Sexual Personae

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~Posted October 20, 2026​