My Relation to Media

This post came about in part because of this this post by Rosemary.

I was thinking about my life and how I spend my time. At the moment I am unemployed and searching for a job while I write. I have a lot of free time. Which I should spend doing more writing–one of the reasons I started posting here is that I am trying to make reasons to spend more time writing. The free time that I have is taken up almost exclusively by various different story media. I read a lot of books, I watch a lot of TV and movies, I play video games, and I read comics (both web-comics and graphic novels). Looking at that list one would generally think that these are all ways to pass the time and entertain myself. But they have another thing in common as well. They are all ways that story can be experienced. They each have different limitations and strengths, and each have stories that can be best told through them, but many of them come under attack for being less worthy or not artistic (as opposed to older forms such as novels). I can see an argument for not liking some of the media based on preference, but dismissing an entire medium as not worthy or inherently not artistic is a very arrogant thing to do. I would know, I used to do it all the time.

I started out as a book kid, always reading, devouring anything that I could get my hands on, stories of all kinds. I read the standard books intended for my age, plus classics, fantasy, mystery and science fiction intended for adults, and even books intended for girls (including but not limited to selections from the American Girl series.) I didn’t think about why I took to these stories so quickly, or what inspired me to devour such a broad selection. But looking back on it I know that I did it to experience the wonder and joys of things outside myself, it was part escapism, part exploration, and part education. I wanted to learn, to experience, to discover new places and ideas. Books provided a great way to do that. And story is a natural framework for that exploration. From this initial immersion in books I gained a love of all things bookish, of stories in general, and a desire to be able to produce that same kind of experience for others.

As I was growing up with books my mom would often watch Mystery TV shows based on books, and BBC productions of Jane Austen novels and such. Also I was of an age that I experienced the adaptation of the Lord of the Rings novels (which were quite foundational to my youth) into movies. I was initially quite distrusting of this media: it was interesting to experience your favorite stories as moving pictures with all the details of image and setting fleshed out, but it was often unsatisfying. The pictures weren’t MY pictures and the adaptations always left out stuff that was important. It seemed to me that these were just not as good as books. As I matured and experienced more stories that were originally created for that medium I realized that it wasn’t that the medium was inferior, but that the medium required more attention to pacing and generally a shorter, more immediate plot. But it was very strong as a story communication tool because it was detailed, visual and created a more comprehensive sensory experience. You could react emotionally not just to the situation and how you imagined it, but also to the emotions the actors were displaying, the visual setting and the music. I came to accept the Lord of the Rings movies as adaptation and realized that it was very good for what it was (which was not the books.) And when I got to college and my free time and attention span were curtailed I dove headlong into the world of cinema and television series (often neglecting my old print world) and while I desired a level of quality that Hollywood does not often meet, I enjoyed a different perspective on story and again experienced many new ideas, characters and places.

At this point I think it would be worthwhile to mention my experience with cartoons. In my last year of high school I had friends online who talked a lot about different anime (Japanese animated TV serieses) initially I just thought the art style looked stupid and it was odd and foreign and therefor couldn’t be very good. After all I was seeing bits and pieces of the Pokemon and Naruto, which looked very juvenile and were generally poorly voice acted and translated. However the debate got so heated between some of my friends online that I decided it would be best if I experienced what this branch of media had to offer. I got some suggestions from my friends who were into that kind of stuff and I went out and watched Ghost in the Shell (which was excellent and deep), Bleach (which was pretty good at first but fell into poor execution particularly in filler story-lines), Fullmetal Alchemist (which was brilliant), and Neon Genesis Evangelion (which is either really deep and artistic or just very confused). They were very different from anything I had experienced before. But there was good story in there, there were things worth watching. And the foreign viewpoint was very refreshing. I was shocked to discover that there was art here. Even cheaply (when compared to Disney studios, us Americans are spoiled when it comes to animation) animated cartoons in different languages could tell worthwhile stories. If that was the case then anything could be worthwhile. I have had far less edifying experience with American cartoons, Disney animated movies tend to be almost worthwhile and Avatar: The Last Airbender was very surprisingly excellent. But given the state of American television animation it is no surprise that all television animation is seen as not worthwhile as art.

At college I also had the pleasure of experiencing and participating in theater (on a college level, but still not bad). As a bookish person I always had a high respect for plays, I had read Shakespeare and others. They were older and therefore definitely a respectable medium. But I didn’t fully understand what went in to it as a medium until I practiced my lines and character and then got up on stage and felt the audience reacting. Theater is beautiful because the experience isn’t the same twice and the audience contributes to the performance. The limitations are quite obvious, staging and effects somewhat limit what can and cannot be done and there can be difficulty in getting enough people together as both actors and audience to make it worthwhile. But the strengths are also very pronounced: it is an active and current moment of story living and breathing before you, which can create an astoundingly powerful experience if handled correctly.

I had always been dismissive of comic books and graphic novels when I was a kid and through high-school. What I saw of them were very juvenile and didn’t try to be anything other than mindless entertainment. To say nothing of the stupid costumes every comic-book hero seemed required to wear. Based on those interactions I rejected the graphic novel medium as nothing more than comic books dressed up for adults, made to look more mature. Picture books were for kids who didn’t have the mental capacity and attention span to read real stories. I read webcomics, but I never thought of them as particularly artistic (even if Megatokyo is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between reality and imagination and Girl Genius is just a very good story) mostly they were just a way to pass the time and get to a quick punchline. Then I saw a movie trailer for the Watchmen movie and thought it looked interesting. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the graphic novel it was based on it had apparently won and award for best novel. . . and it was in comic form. So I picked up a copy and read it. And was blown away. This was a real novel, I could not deny the form. It WAS a novel. It just happened to be graphic. It was mature, artistic and deeply evocative of human condition and a particular era. After that I dove into Niel Gaiman’s Sandman Graphic novels which are just as good if not better than Watchmen.

I will admit that video games for me started as a fun way to pass the time. To play at being a cyborg space marine, to solve puzzles, and lead Briton armies against those dastardly Franks. I passed Age of Empires (an RTS) off as expanding my historical knowledge (which it really did), Myst as expanding my critical thinking and puzzle solving skills (which it did) and Halo as just being about the challenge of surviving (balancing ammunition and shields while using available cover to remove threats which would deplete my health) but I really was just playing them for fun. But as I experienced a wider range of video games: Bioshock, Portal, Mass Effect. I began to realize that even video games were a viable medium for story (and art) in an interactive way. Some of these games crossed the boundary between waste of time and worth-while story. Largely this isn’t the case, and many game developers aren’t reaching for the heights that they could. But there is definitely potential there, I just hope more people take advantage of it.

Anyway, this has turning into a quite long post, and each of the sections could easily be expanded at a later time into whole posts if not essays of their own. Basically, I would urge everyone to not reject something because of the way it looks. Explore it and see if there is actually any value in it before you reject it. Story is a very flexible thing, it can show up in many forms.