All throughout high school, I was a reader. Especially with the help of audiobooks, I devoured a minimum of 50 or 60 books a year, racing from “The Hunger Games” to “And Then There Were None” to “Rebecca” to “War and Peace.” If it had any appeal at all, or if it had ever been noteworthy in history, I was determined to read it. But then something changed. Something I wasn’t expecting.
I became a movie and TV show person.
The change snuck up on me. When I first arrived on Asbury’s campus, I was able to keep up my reading quota for a while, but as school itself grew more and more stressful, I started craving a different medium.
It is the story of our time – literally.
It does not take a genius to realize that rates of readership are going down. According to a study conducted by the National Education Association in 2022, all demographics in the US showed a slow but steady decrease in reading for pleasure, reaching the lowest point in 30 years.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the biggest is undoubtedly the growing battle for people’s attention. Throughout a huge part of human history, books had very little direct competition. Though plays or oral storytelling certainly played a huge role, neither had the same tangible and personal role as novels. There was never anything else that could so easily wrap someone up in a story that they could engage with on their own terms and in their own time.
Enter the world of film.
As a Screenwriting and Creative Writing double major, I have spent a lot of time pondering the differences between the two arts. They work very differently, and both are beautiful, but the cultural difference in value that they often receive has continued to perplex me. Without a doubt, ‘literature’ is more often seen as superior from a cultural standpoint. It has been around longer and, according to many critics, has deeper themes and messages. When someone says they prefer reading to watching, there is always a sense of accomplishment, as though that is the ‘better’ choice. But if ‘literature’ is really as superior as we say it is, why does the general population spend so much more time watching movies and shows?
One answer may be that watching something is easier – the experience takes less mental energy – but I believe it goes deeper than that. There is something about watching stories play out on a screen that is mesmerizing to my generation, so mesmerizing that it even pulled a bookworm homeschooler like me into its clutches. For a while, I could not put my finger on what it was. Then, in my first week in Film Aesthetics with Professor of Media Communication Sarah Hogencamp, the answer came.
Movies and TV shows are visceral, relating to our feelings first and foremost. Not just with their swelling music and their quick edits, but in the way they present the audience with human beings. When we watch movies, we are not just looking at a word on a page; we are looking at a human – a human with all the same signs of emotion and reality we know so well. That experience affects our brains as we watch, just as much as it would change us to see someone sitting across from us. We do not just see their joy — we feel their joy. We do not just see their fear — we feel their fear. We do not just see their yearning — we yearn with them.
The world today is a lonely one. Phones have isolated us. Pandemics have isolated us. Now more than ever, people of all ages are desperate for the feelings that come with honest, human connection. Those experiences have become harder to find in daily life, but there is one place where they are easy to find, and that is the place we are drawn to.
I would be lying if I said I was not conflicted by that reality. I am, after all, studying to become a part of that cycle. If I am successful in my field, I will be writing media that lonely people turn to when they are too afraid to go somewhere else. It is a conflicting thought, but then, ultimately, there comes another thought.
Nearly everything in life is bad in excess. Yes, it is easy to turn to movies and TV shows as an escape, but they can also serve another purpose. I believe that, when done right, movies and shows can shine a beacon of light to a lonely generation, presenting them with such a beautiful show of humanity that it drives them to search for it even more in their own lives. And if, from time to time, a person needs a quick hour to escape, maybe that does not have to be a bad thing. Maybe, in moderation, a little escapism can comfort the soul.
After all, it comforted me.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
