More Class Rants, er, Discussion!
After I posted my general response to the readings, I could not help also replying to a couple of classmates, including one person that was driving me crazy.
(for those of you that missed the previous locked post, this particular class discussion is regarding two very dated readings about television and children. the previous post was me ranting about how television =/= video.)
Classmate says (with regards to tv - but in this larger discussion tv has been conflated with all video):
"There doesn't seem to be any benefit for the watcher besides escapism. When it comes to too much reading, you may end up flabby as well but the mind hasn't been dulled."
I responded with:
"That makes no sense to me. Even just looking at the reading side of your argument. For a medium to allow for stories to be meaningful, the final forms it takes must have an impact on those interacting with it. That impact has to vary - or where is the art? the meaning?
If the words and illustrations in a picture book have value, why do they suddenly lose it when the pictures move and the words are spoken? (Shall we renounce performances of Shakespeare now, and insist it must always be read?) How in the world is my mind not dulled if all I read are badly written, self-published novels from netgalley? How is my mind not elevated if I spend my time watching Brazelton's* television series? (Which I did as an elementary age child, actually - and that's part of why I am here, oh irony of ironies.)
Discussions like this remind me a lot of the times when I've debated math scores and gender. So much of the focus is on what is different that we lose sight of the fact that the gap is insignificant compared to the extent to which the scores overlap. I'm certainly willing to listen to arguments that video is not as useful of a medium as I think it is, but this attitude that asserts by implication that the most awkward and badly illustrated picture book is vastly superior to Mo Willem's video version of Knuffle Bunny, merely by virtue of the latter being a video, that I whole-heartedly reject."
*Brazelton - a pediatrician (and neurologist?) - was not one of the authors whose work we were discussing, but he was mentioned in the reading I was ranting about earlier.