By Ketaki Tavan (V)
We’re told as children that sitting in front of the TV is a waste of time. It hampers creativity, creates couch potatoes, fosters laziness, and leads to a meaningless existence. We’re told that our time would be better spent reading a book instead.
Reading books is an exercise for our brains that teaches us how to analyze and interpret what comes our way, feeds us valuable life lessons that we can implement at our liberty, and makes us thoughtful contributors to society armed newfound knowledge regarding the human experience. But why do we see watching movies and TV as incapable of doing the same?
In recent years especially, I’ve become more acutely aware of the value of English class. The chances that I will encounter the precise themes of Pride and Prejudice or Holden Caulfield’s “coming of age” in The Catcher in the Rye at some point during my future career are likely slim, but the act of reading these books, I’ve realized, doesn’t hold its value in the way we might initially assume.
In English class, we’re taught how to read, or rather, how to consume media. And I’d argue that this exercise in the thoughtful consumption of media can be beneficial when applied to quality movies and TV as well.
We spend years training our minds to read a certain way: to engage in critical analysis, to become more attuned to detail, and to look beneath the surfaces of these works to draw connections to the larger world in which we live. To my surprise, I began to notice myself watching movies and TV through a similar lens.
At face value, movies and TV provide entertainment, and I’ll be the first to admit that some media is good for nothing more. However, there is a host of digital material out there that is thoughtfully crafted and can prompt its audience to engage with the cultural moment in which we live and the facets of our contemporary world.
Take Black Mirror, for example, a controversial and thought-provoking series that explores the uneasiness of our modern world. Each episode considers a different injustice, tapping into the psychological damage of war, the disturbances of our technology-obsessed society, and the troubling themes we have come to label as entertainment.
Watching Black Mirror prompted me to consider our world in its current state in a way that, as I read more and at higher levels, great literature does as well. Despite its satirical and amplified portrayal of our current problems, Black Mirror acts as a stimulus that prompts viewers to unearth the glimmers of these issues that can be seen in our modern world. In a subtle way, the show shapes its audience into active, engaged contributors to our society.
Showtime’s Shameless, a TV series about a dysfunctional family struggling to make ends meet in South Side Chicago, is another show that has stimulated my mind in a way similar to that of literature.
Shameless is my favorite TV show for a host of reasons, the biggest reason being that it’s what first allowed me to recognize the value of quality television. The show’s directors artfully underscore the nuances and depth of the human experience, and the fact that their vehicle to convey this narrative is digital allows for the engagement of the audience’s senses in a way that is unique from that of literature.
Watching Shameless becomes more than following an admittedly entertaining plot; it begs you as the viewer to give credit to its subtleties. Prior to my watching Shameless, never before had a TV show commanded me to pay attention to its soundtrack, staging, camera angles, and script. It effortlessly conveys the rawness of human relationships and the very real and relevant stories shared by many American people today. This detail and these messages are familiar—they’re the heart of the academic literature we’re told to read and taught how to read.
Movies and TV shows aren’t a replacement for the enrichment that reading provides, but they can sharpen our intellect in similar ways that reading can.
I encourage people to discard the belief that TV and movies are a mindless way to squander time, to recognize the genuine and powerful properties of digital media, and to consume them in an intentional manner that, in many ways, parallels the treasure that is reading literature.