For class, I had to watch a video in which Ben Tarnoff discusses how television is the new form of American literature. Being that I’m in a literature course, the class discussion centered mostly around “salty” bookworms who bristled at the thought of literature ever being replaced.
My perspective is different. I am a lover of stories, first and foremost. I prefer to read them, yes, but not every story works best as a novel. So while I agree with Mr. Tarnoff that television drama is a new avenue for bold and thought-provoking stories, it is not the latest form of literature.
There are two key components in choosing how to bring a story to life: activity and medium.
Television is a passive experience. You do not interact directly with the television. Partly due to television’s design, but also in that television “attacks” on multiple levels. The visuals, the dialogue, the sound effects, the soundtrack must be absorbed in order for our brains to process the story.
Reading is more active. In addition to the obvious turning of the page and holding the book, the brain must process the words and conjure up the imagery including their voices and actions. Most people do not want to read when “vegging out” because it is active.
There are other popular mediums of telling a story that lies in between the two spectrum bookends of reading and television.
Audiobooks and podcasts count more as reading because, as studies have proven, to our brain there isn’t much difference.
Graphic Novels are perfectly nestled in between the two because they are a mixture of reading and processing the visual information presented. Because of the visual nature, it is not as passive as television, but it is not as active as reading either. If I feel like reading but don’t feel like reading, I tend to grab a graphic novel to read instead because of the ease of reading.
Videogames below graphic novels may seem odd because videogames seem like they should be active. Of the mediums, videogames took me the longest to puzzle out. Physically, yes, videogames require the most out of all the mediums. They are passive in the same sense as television is passive — the visuals and sounds are there, the person is only reacting to what they are presented. In that sense, I believe that videogames are more passive than graphic novels and more active than television because videogames require decisions to be made on a constant basis. In addition, there are many types of videogames, so for the purpose of argument, know that I refer to games that flaunt an engaging narrative rather than something like Mario, Call of Duty, or Street Fighter.
For a creative who desires to bring their story to others, the first decision that will impact the development and the audience will be choosing the correct medium for the story. Take The Wire, mentioned by Mr. Tarnoff, as an example of engaging literature on television. He mentions the dialogue as a sticking point, but the strength of The Wire lay in perfectly recreating the early 2000s in Baltimore — the visual shorthand was just as important to this as the dialogue. Had The Wire been a novel, would it have been as engaging? I don’t believe it would. Thanks to television, switching POV is as easy as presenting a new character to the camera and focusing on them as the center for a brief moment to establish the scene centers around this character’s story arc. It is easier to see the contrast between low-income neighborhoods and high-income neighborhoods through television than descriptive writing. The distinctive Baltimore accent would be an awkward thing to read and using normal diction would not quite capture the uniqueness of the city’s residents.
The Wire’s strength as television literature did not come from being on television itself, but rather, the creator David Simon chose the best medium to tell the story he wanted to tell and it created a lasting creative impact because of it.
In short, when any of you fellow storytellers wish to start a new project, I implore you to think first of the medium and how that medium will best show the story you wish to tell. Pick the best medium for your story and you will find the best audience for it.