TV helps me read books
TV gets a lot of crap. I know someone who likes saying "Theater is art, movies are craft, and TV is furniture." Funny thing, but this person and I are not close. It's a bs statement. TV is a medium, like theater or film, and what's on it can be art or it can be crap.
I will always defend TV, particularly in this here golden age of awesomeness. Here's one reason: TV helps me read books. Example: Stephen King's The Stand. In my youth, I loved me some Stephen King. I read every book of his I could find as a kid. (I still read him, but I remember discovering and then devouring his books back then.) With one exception: The Stand.
It's a huge book, firstly. It chronicles a plague apocalypse, and then the survivors battle it out, representing the forces of good versus evil. Now, plague apocalypse: SO up my alley, especially when I was a kid and was obsessed with the end of the world. So I read the first section, no problem.
Then we get into the survivors battling it out. Ok, there are too freakin' many of them. There's like, fifty characters, easy, and we're expected to care about all of them. I had issues. Also, I believe the post-plague part deals with my least fave character - the one who's starving in jail before the devil shows up to barter for his soul. And the devil barts with him for a while, and I'd get bored, and stop reading.
Then, some time in the 90's, the powers that be decided to make The Stand into a four-part TV series. And it was effin' AWEsome. The opening credits pan over the military super-flu creators, who are all in various poses of ACK-BLAH-dead, while Don't Fear the Reaper plays. Kick-effin'-ASS!
And then the fifty or so important characters are played by actors, who all look different, so I know who they are. I don't have to work my tiny brain to visualize. And then, mirabile, I went back to read the book, and was like, Oh yeah, that's the character played by that chick from Just Shoot Me, and that's the one played by that Gary Sinise, ok, ok, I got it. And I read it all and loved it.
Maybe I'm dumb. But if so, it doesn't change the fact that TV helped me read that book. So there. Suck it, haters!
Next up: Lord of the Rings. I got never read past the endless elf-poetry. Elf-poetry that was notably ABSENT from the kick-ass movies... Maybe I can finally get through it, nay, enjoy it, now. So let us all bask in TV's warming glowing warming glow.
I will always defend TV, particularly in this here golden age of awesomeness. Here's one reason: TV helps me read books. Example: Stephen King's The Stand. In my youth, I loved me some Stephen King. I read every book of his I could find as a kid. (I still read him, but I remember discovering and then devouring his books back then.) With one exception: The Stand.
It's a huge book, firstly. It chronicles a plague apocalypse, and then the survivors battle it out, representing the forces of good versus evil. Now, plague apocalypse: SO up my alley, especially when I was a kid and was obsessed with the end of the world. So I read the first section, no problem.
Then we get into the survivors battling it out. Ok, there are too freakin' many of them. There's like, fifty characters, easy, and we're expected to care about all of them. I had issues. Also, I believe the post-plague part deals with my least fave character - the one who's starving in jail before the devil shows up to barter for his soul. And the devil barts with him for a while, and I'd get bored, and stop reading.
Then, some time in the 90's, the powers that be decided to make The Stand into a four-part TV series. And it was effin' AWEsome. The opening credits pan over the military super-flu creators, who are all in various poses of ACK-BLAH-dead, while Don't Fear the Reaper plays. Kick-effin'-ASS!
And then the fifty or so important characters are played by actors, who all look different, so I know who they are. I don't have to work my tiny brain to visualize. And then, mirabile, I went back to read the book, and was like, Oh yeah, that's the character played by that chick from Just Shoot Me, and that's the one played by that Gary Sinise, ok, ok, I got it. And I read it all and loved it.
Maybe I'm dumb. But if so, it doesn't change the fact that TV helped me read that book. So there. Suck it, haters!
Next up: Lord of the Rings. I got never read past the endless elf-poetry. Elf-poetry that was notably ABSENT from the kick-ass movies... Maybe I can finally get through it, nay, enjoy it, now. So let us all bask in TV's warming glowing warming glow.
posted by walkinhomefromthethriftstore at 12:52 PM
3 Comments:
i love and hate tv. i love some things on it; i love that it is so... enjoyable and still passable -- no one has snootily stopped having a conversation with me yet because they found out i didn't watch that simply amazing show -- it can be simply entertaining and a good-natured friend or a serious presentation; i love that it is always there, warmly glowing.
i hate that so much on it is so painful. i hate that it provides people with shows that take glee in presenting conflict and pain with no real story or moral. i hate what part of tv has become; maybe it's just a reflection on american society in general, or maybe it is a self-sustaining cycle sending us into a self-indulgent abyss.
i really really really love the robot porn (aka "how it's made"), though.
Yeah, I guess there's a Dark Age of TV happening right now, alongside the Golden Age. HOW CAN IT BE???? My mind just got BLOWN.
the dichotomy of television is greater than we mere mortals can fathom.
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