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“
You teach the reader that he’s way smarter than he thought he was. I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy. When in fact there are parts of us, in a way, that are a lot more ambitious than that. And what we need… is seriously engaged art that can teach again that we’re smart. And that’s the stuff that TV and movies — although they’re great at certain things — cannot give us. But that have to create the motivations for us to want to do the extra work, to get those other kinds of art… Which is tricky, because you want to seduce the reader, but you don’t want to pander or manipulate them. I mean, a good book teaches the reader how to read it.

David Foster Wallace on Art vs. TV and the Motivation to be Smart

This is a tough one for me to process. What he says makes perfect sense within the context of pre-World Wide Web 1996 when all significant “media” was mass (TV, radio, books, newspapers) and the culture of American television was to engage as many people as possible in support of commerce (still true, of course, but it’s become more nuanced.)

But these are all functions of the culture, not the medium.

There have always been bad books and unstimulating art. 50 Shades of Grey isn’t the first of it’s kind.

You can facilitate intellectual pursuit and creativity within any medium.  It all depends on whether it’s important to you as the storyteller.

(via kenyatta)

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Posted at 8:26pm
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