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Relative value of entertainment???


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Ok so that was a stuffy title, bear with me, I couldn't think of anything simpler that actually told you something about what I want to discuss.

Ok here goes.

Everyone loves when their kid is reading. "Oh that's so wonderful they're so smart" etc.

Many people don't have the same attitude towards TV or movies. "Oh she was binge watching xyz show until late last night" has muchI more of a 'what a waste of time' connotation to "she was up late reading" - that's more like oh, what bad timing to read.

More so with games. I was just reading this interesting article by Alex Scarrow about how horrified he was that his son was wasting all his time on video games, and so wrote a book that stylistically mimics a game to get his son into reading.

So I don't know all that much about games, but in regards to books vs TV, they're just different forms of stories. You can get ones that make you think and ones that are fun and ones that are mindless, I don't think there's inherent value to one over the other, just maybe visual TV/movie/game formats are more new, but to me it's all storytelling.

What say you of the 17th? Are books objectively better? Or is this like the ""real literature"" vs speculative fiction debate?

Edit: this works with information as well. With the notable exception of one of my school teachers, watching a documentary was seen as a cop-out to those who didn't like reading, the lesser option for getting information.

Edited by Delightful
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I don't know much about this topic, but it's always seemed to me that reading is a superior form of ingesting information than television or a video game.

 

Reading requires the reader to participate in the story by applying one's imagination. Character actions can be described, but the mental image ultimately has to be derived from the reader's own mind. Voices are exactly as the reader imagines them. Any one sentence is open a bazillion different interpretations, based solely on who the reader is and what mood they're in when they read it.

 

Contrast this to a movie or a TV program, in which every bit of information is beamed directly into the viewer's eyeballs with very little room for alternative interpretation. A written story is almost like a collaborative work of art between the author and the reader. A movie doesn't allow for the same kind of interactivity.

 

(I don't know enough about video games to make a pronouncement about them, but I suspect they fall under the same category as movies and TV shows.)

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I adore movies, television, and even find a few video games fascinating in their concepts, but personally I've always thought books and stories are slightly better. :)

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I've always been biased toward books and stories as a more deeply interactive form of entertainment, but I think all forms have their merits—and the higher the quality of an entertainment source, the more value it has. 

 

As Kobold pointed out, TV and movies beam images directly into your brain, so your mind isn't doing as much work. However, some movies manage to give the mind as much as a workout as a good book. Take Pixar movies, for example. Toy Story 3 has already created the characters, cast their voices, and added music to give the viewer subtle cues as to when they're supposed to feel what. But it also weaves a complex story about bitterness, fear, growing up, losing loved ones, and whether or not people can change, all bound up with some really sharp Orwellian political commentary. For that movie, and others like it, I would argue that having a pre-made cast and visuals only frees the mind to do even deeper thinking. 

 

Then there are radio shows. When I was a kid, I listened to a radio program called Adventures in Odyssey. I revisited it recently, hoping and praying it would be as good as it was in my childhood—and it was even better than I remembered. There were musical and soundtrack cues to accompany the dialogue, but aside from that, the story was all dialogue. And it worked. Through conversations that move the story along at a nice clip, the Odyssey writers engage the listener and lead them to visualize the scenes, but also to consider the characters' motivations and the outcomes of their actions. Vocal cues add to the story in a way dialogue tags like "He muttered/she whispered/he said/she cried" never can. 

 

Then, of course, there are comic books, graphic novels, and other visual mediums that also utilize text. Take Calvin and Hobbes as a well-known example. Watterson conveyed so much of Calvin's motives and thought process through a single panel where he makes a disgusted face, or grins maliciously as his mother turns her back. These cues engage the reader in different ways than purely textual cues can. 

 

As I said before, I'm biased toward books. I always have been, and I think I always will be. When I read a good book, my mind is crafting its own movie for me. It's casting the perfect actors—some of whom don't exist in Hollywood—designing the perfect set pieces and costumes, scouting the perfect locations, and providing me with the perfect soundtrack. But here's the thing—all of those things are perfect for me. They wouldn't be perfect for anyone else. Books, I think, are the most personal of all mediums, because reading one is an intensely personal experience. That is what I prefer about books. But I believe that other mediums can be just as valuable as books, though in radically different ways. And, just like books, other forms of entertainment vary in quality. The worst book ever written won't compare to the best Pixar movie ever made, and the worst movie ever made is laughable in the face of a good book. I think the important thing is to be well-rounded in entertainment—read good books, watch good movies and TV shows, listen to good radio dramas, read good comics. 

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I'm also of the opinion that books are better, mostly for a point already made by Kobold - Books force a reader to use their imagination, which in turn helps a person's creativity. TV and, to a lesser extent, games, present everything you need to see, hear, feel, and think. I say games to a lesser extent, because there is some part of games that requires a player to use their imagination "How do I solve problem X?"

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To be fair, no form of entertainment is better than the other. To each his own. If you want to think books are better, fine. If you want to watch movies all day, fine. I'm not stopping you. So I'm nuetral.

However, I am sick of the "I'm superior because I read books" attitude because guess what? Its not true.

Some people physically cannot read due to mental disabilities. I know someone on another site who can't focus on books, but she is a brilliant and smart person!

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What say you of the 17th? Are books objectively better? Or is this like the ""real literature"" vs speculative fiction debate?

 

 

No, reading is not necessarily "superior". That seems to be a false equivalency based on the push to "get kids to read more" without actually really defining why this should be so or what benefit (if any) people can derive from reading.

 

If we are talking about mere entertainment value, it's subjective and will depend on person to person, much like ice cream flavor preferences.

 

If it's about stimulating the imagination, once again that depends on the individual person. When I was young, I remember my imagination being fired up by Garfield comics.

 

If it's about art value/educational/instructional value not all books are equal. Ender's Game may have entertainment value, but it does not approach the artistic value of The Divine Comedy (which gets to the "real literature" vs speculative fiction debate. Yes, a lot of "real literature" is much better than most speculative fiction, but that value only comes into play if "mere entertainment" value is not the deciding factor).

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Contrast this to a movie or a TV program, in which every bit of information is beamed directly into the viewer's eyeballs with very little room for alternative interpretation. A written story is almost like a collaborative work of art between the author and the reader. A movie doesn't allow for the same kind of interactivity.

 

(I don't know enough about video games to make a pronouncement about them, but I suspect they fall under the same category as movies and TV shows.)

 

 

I would say that the films, series and games you were referring to are the bad ones. A good video game (in terms of storyline) won't tell you everything, but give you the hints you need to visualize it in your own head.

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Just my two cents...

 

I would say TV and movies are mindless activities. Amusements...not to be confused with entertainment... are things that let you "not think." The prefix "a-" means "not" and "muse" means think, so "amuse" means to "not think." This is not a bad thing as everyone needs down time, but on average I think we get way more down time than we need (at least in first-world countries). I'll compare it to physical activities. Exercise is good but your body needs rest too. Too much exercise actually harms your body and too much rest makes your mussels atrophy. You need both.

 

As has been stated, you use your brain more in books and less when watching TV. So, from the perspective of relaxing and not thinking, TV is superior, and from the perspective of using your mind, books are superior. If all you do is watch TV, you will loose the ability to think for yourself and interact socially. If you never have down time (in some form - not necessarily TV), you will likewise burn out and interact negatively with people.

 

Did you know that if you read about any subject for an hour/day, you will be an international expert on it in 7 years? I doubt the same can be said for any form of TV. For the readers among us, I recommend alternating books between entertainment books and self improvement books. For example, I've read almost as many business/engineering books as I have fiction books this year. This is a flexible rule, of course, as when BS releases a book, it gets read right away.

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A book may engage the mind more when actually reading, but the mark of a good books is when it also educates you and make you think. TV shows and movies that address modern issues, or brings up questions of philosophy, can make a person think and affect their life as much as if those ideas were stated in print - and in still talking about fiction here. For an extreme example, the TV film/series The Day After got America talking about nuclear deterrence and reportedly affected Reagan and his signing of treaties.

And what about documentaries? "I've read many books on the subject" sounds much more respectable than "I've watched all the nature channel and National Geographic on the issue".

Edit: and guys, thanks for the discussion. You're all awesome. :)

Edited by Delightful
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A book may engage the mind more when actually reading, but the mark of a good books is when it also educates you and make you think. TV shows and movies that address modern issues, or brings up questions of philosophy, can make a person think and affect their life as much as if those ideas were stated in print - and in still talking about fiction here. For an extreme example, the TV film/series The Day After got America talking about nuclear deterrence and reportedly affected Reagan and his signing of treaties.

And what about documentaries? "I've read many books on the subject" sounds much more respectable than "I've watched all the nature channel and National Geographic on the issue".

Edit: and guys, thanks for the discussion. You're all awesome. :)

 

WARNING: RAMBLE AHEAD

 

Documentaries are a tricky area, I think. It's easy to point to a documentary and say "That's biased, it's so biased," but nonfiction books tend to get more of a pass from the public. I think part of the reason is that, in a documentary, the narrator's tone and expressions convey his or feelings on the subject, no matter how they try to disguise them; while in print, that bias is easier to conceal.

 

Of course, bias is always noted by one who does not share the narrator or writer's feelings on a subject. Here in the States, we have a few major news networks, but the two most people know best are CNN and Fox. Fox gets a bad reputation for being biased. "Fair and Balanced," is their motto, but many Americans on the internet like to add "But only if you're Republican." And really, Fox is biased toward the Republican/conservative side. Most of their anchors and all of their analysts are conservative. Anchors and analysts alike invite liberal commentators on, but almost invariably wind up arguing with them on air for everyone to see. The news stories they select are those that benefit the Republican party—the Benghazi scandal, the current scandal with Hilary Clinton's emails, the IRS scandal, etc. 

 

CNN, on the other hand, is widely considered unbiased. I'm really not sure why. All of their anchors and analysts are liberal. I can count on one hand the number of times I remember seeing a conservative even invited on, and they were always hammered by those who invited them. One guest commentator, when talking about parents who choose not to vaccinate their children, smiled smugly and said "But it's like religion—you really can't reason with them." When Fox was running story after story on Benghazi and the IRS, CNN ran the same story about the Malaysian Flight 370 disappearance. I watched it—they ran the exact same footage with the exact same commentary four times in the same day. 

 

So why is CNN considered unbiased? For the same reason people who watch Fox consider it fair and balanced: Those who consider it fair share the network's bias. Facts and opinions are easy to confuse, and when your favorite news network happens to share your opinions, all of their opinions begin to look like facts. It happens on both sides of the ideological divide—liberals side with CNN, conservatives side with Fox, and neither side is going to admit their favorite network is just as biased as the network they loathe. 

 

Documentaries are subject to the same sort of logical fallacies on the part of the audience. If the audience agrees with the documentary makers opinions, the documentary is more likely to be considered factually accurate by said audience. Even if the narrator's opinion is unconcealed—if you can hear the disgust in his voice as he speaks to someone with whom he disagrees—this audience is likely to accept it as justified. Again, this happens on both sides of the ideological spectrum. 

 

So where do books come in? I think reading all the books on a subject is considered more respectable than watching documentaries because it can be easier to filter out the bias. Plus, good books cite their sources, so a reader can go to those sources and see what is written there, and determine whether the facts were stretched in any way. This is far more difficult—if not impossible—with documentaries and TV news. While both of those mediums "cite" their sources by showing them onscreen, what is to stop an unscrupulous narrator from asking someone to impersonate a profession he dislikes and say things that will make the audience less sympathetic to the opposing viewpoint? If the only sources an author cites are articles they wrote, it's easy to tell that they have no primary sources and may be fabricating much of the evidence. Documentaries make this more difficult. 

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To be fair, no form of entertainment is better than the other. To each his own. If you want to think books are better, fine. If you want to watch movies all day, fine. I'm not stopping you. So I'm nuetral.

 

As a method of entertainment, I agree that they can all be equally entertaining and that individual preferences and tastes are the "ultimate" judge. However, I think that on the whole, books can be physically better for your brain. The amount of processing and the things that Kobold/most everyone, said make a big difference in strengthening brains. You can still learn a lot from movies like the person above says, and some of the most thought provoking works are from movies/tv, I just don't think that they give you the same benefits.

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As a method of entertainment, I agree that they can all be equally entertaining and that individual preferences and tastes are the "ultimate" judge. However, I think that on the whole, books can be physically better for your brain. The amount of processing and the things that Kobold/most everyone, said make a big difference in strengthening brains. You can still learn a lot from movies like the person above says, and some of the most thought provoking works are from movies/tv, I just don't think that they give you the same benefits.

Here's the thing though, IQ/intelligence is a human made concept. I agree thay reading does strengthen you.. in the way that society wants. You can be intelligent and bright without reading books. There are different types of intelligence.

You can learn from anything. Not just media.

In all honesty, I'd rather learn from a movie or a documentary, especially if its a how to do something. I learn visually. If you just tell me something, I might not understand.

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WARNING: off topic...

 

I think it's important to differentiate commentary from news though. There are many stories that are commentary and are packaged as commentary. It's opinion. When someone bashes their least favorite news organization because of their commentary, that's not being honest.

 

News is news and should be facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts. What some news organizations do is only report some of the news or outright edit it to fit their agenda. When commentary is packaged as news - that's bias. Don't even get me started on MSLSDNBC... More people think the moon landing was faked than trust that sham of a news organization. They don't even try to be unbiased or conceal their bias.

 

EDIT: I know I might be stepping on some toes here, so this is all I'm going to say about it.

Edited by navybrandt
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WARNING: off topic...

 

I think it's important to differentiate commentary from news though. There are many stories that are commentary and are packaged as commentary. It's opinion. When someone bashes their least favorite news organization because of their commentary, that's not being honest.

 

News is news and should be facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts. What some news organizations do is only report some of the news or outright edit it to fit their agenda. When commentary is packaged as news - that's bias. Don't even get me started on MSLSDNBC... More people think the moon landing was faked than trust that sham of a news organization. They don't even try to be unbiased or conceal their bias.

 

I definitely agree. Bill O'Reilly and Stephen Colbert provide commentary. It's not supposed to be news; it's analysis of the news. Their programs are the television equivalent of a regular opinion column in the newspaper. It's opinion, it's packaged as opinion, and it's presented as opinion. 

 

What happens with the major news networks, though, is that they allow opinion to shape the news. No one presents the news as-is anymore, if they ever did in the first place; I can't think of a single reporter who doesn't allow their personal opinions to leak through into their presentation of facts somehow. TV news isn't the only guilty party here; a few years back, my local newspaper ran a front-page story with the headline "Meddling Republicans Get a Dose of Their Own." That isn't a news headline. That is an opinion dressed up as a headline.  I think opinion programs actually do contribute to the national discussion at large; the problem comes when reporters confuse opinions for facts and present them as such. 

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I definitely agree. Bill O'Reilly and Stephen Colbert provide commentary. It's not supposed to be news; it's analysis of the news. Their programs are the television equivalent of a regular opinion column in the newspaper. It's opinion, it's packaged as opinion, and it's presented as opinion. 

 

What happens with the major news networks, though, is that they allow opinion to shape the news. No one presents the news as-is anymore, if they ever did in the first place; I can't think of a single reporter who doesn't allow their personal opinions to leak through into their presentation of facts somehow. TV news isn't the only guilty party here; a few years back, my local newspaper ran a front-page story with the headline "Meddling Republicans Get a Dose of Their Own." That isn't a news headline. That is an opinion dressed up as a headline.  I think opinion programs actually do contribute to the national discussion at large; the problem comes when reporters confuse opinions for facts and present them as such. 

I believe that's what news organizations do, though. They either have a political agenda or just are vendors of mindless yellow journalism (probably simplifying, but it's a casual discussion, so sue me and see if it holds in court! :P ) Essentially, they provide the "news" to help paint their worldview and where they think it should go.

 

Really, the trick is to distinguish between the news organizations "catching you up on the plot of history" and when they start pontificating on "what it all means". With modern news and blogs and so forth, however, all the above tends to be blended.

 

Reading can help one distinguish the difference, but only if you are widely read (meaning, you read different "view-points"). You can actually see Brandon Sanderson do this: if he wants to write an atheist character, he seeks out atheist people and their views. He does not rely on religious commentary to tell him how atheist are (and in fact demonstrated in the book the folly of doing so). 

 

So wide reading (not necessarily read a lot) is beneficial. But I stand by my original assertion that the mere act of reading a book is "soooo good!" I like it... I really can't function if I don't read, but like in the case of Lark's friend, one's utility and value can be manifested outside of book lernin'

 

And if it's just about entertainment/avoiding thoughts/passing time until our inevitable demise, then one form of entertainment is just as good as another... and you should choose forums :D

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Respectability really comes down to time more than anything.  Books and music?  Well-respected, well-understood.

 

News magazines used to be considered way less respectable than newspapers.  Now the newspapers have mostly been gutted of in-depth, researched content, and the magazines with their full-page ads are no different than the papers.

 

There's some stuff that's just generational, as well.  TV? The "mindless garbage" of the 50s-70s. And now the frontier is games.  "I just played the most beautiful game," can be as legit as a beautiful painting, depending on the work.  But to people who don't even know how to play games, it sounds as silly as the unfortunate phrase "playing games" does.

 

I don't generally watch cable news, but I thought the general consensus was Fox = Republicans, MSNBC = Democrats, and CNN sits somewhere in the middle.  Keep aware of your own POV and the fact that if somebody seems crazily left/right, it's a measure of their distance from you.

 

And if you want objectivity, heh.  Good luck.  Pretending to be fully objective is itself an ideological stance, and is also pandering to audiences and advertisers.

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I don't generally watch cable news, but I thought the general consensus was Fox = Republicans, MSNBC = Democrats, and CNN sits somewhere in the middle. Keep aware of your own POV and the fact that if somebody seems crazily left/right, it's a measure of their distance from you.

That's the common consensus, yes, but having watched all three with some regularity, I'd say CNN is no more centrist than Fox. They're just a little less up-front with their biases than MSNBC. And I know I'm not completely objective--no one is. I find all three networks more exhausting than offensive, and part of what I find exhausting about CNN and Fox is the way they pretend to be balanced.

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I find all three to be different establishment parrots happy to present the greater lie of where the official left and right stances should be.  In Political Compass terms, the "center" is the center of the top right square.

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Something I read recently that might be of value here. There's apparently a campaign, spearheaded by a student, petitioning for the removal of certain texts from an English course curriculum.

The books in question?

Sandman and Persepolis.

The student said that she opened the comics expecting "Batman and Robin", but was offending by the sex, violence and inappropriate material on display.

Its certainly something which gets called on, for a lot of " new" media. And I won't deny that many games and comics that invoke those themes do so to *seem* mature without actually being so.

Still, I find it insulting that some people campaign for comics to be removed, while books and cinema depicting the same themes are praised as classics.

Particularly when you're talking about freaking Sandman.

EDIT For context, this was a university course. I could understand perhaps pulling Watchmen or something from an earlier age group library...but surely by the time you're in college, the same rhetoric can't apply.

(Also, not slighting Persepolis; I've heard good things about it. But I've never read it, whereas essaying about Sandman was responsible for a decent chunk of my grade.)

Edited by Quiver
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It's 3 am here and I'm on my phone so I'll keep my thoughts brief (at least for now :) ).

I'm going to refer to video games and other games just as "games" because really they are all part of a single medium in my opinion.

I think that each medium has it's own strengths and weaknesses. I also think it is very important not to judge a medium's value by the average example of that medium. Cos frankly there is a ton of stuff in every medium that doesn't reflect the medium's potential.

Now personally I like books much more than TV/ movies and I care about games more than either. I also believe that games have more potential than any other form of media. But I will readily admit that the majority of games do not represent this potential. As an example, call of duty is no more representative of the potential of games as a medium than twilight is of books (disclaimer: I'm not saying that those examples have 0 merit just that neither even begins to approach the potential of their respective medium.)

A common thought so far in this thread is that books involve the consumer more, they make you use your imagination more and that gives them an edge over TV. And I agree. Of course some TV shows & movies can make you think and imagine far more than some books, but on the whole books definitely have the advantage over TV/movies in that regard. I would argue that they do not have this advantage over games though. Games are inherently more interactive than books which gives them a distinct edge. It doesn't necessarily follow that they are more mentally stimulating than books and J would say that the majority of games are less stimulating and less thought provoking than a good book. But at the same time I think their interactivity allows them to do more than books ever could. If you think that having visual stimulus can be a disadvantage in that it decreases the amount of imagination required J would say that, A: if done well the interactivity can more than make up for that. (Creativity in Minecraft being the most obvious example) or B: well fine, play a game that is entirely text based. There is no reason that you cannot have a game that is, in essence a book, except that the player is an active participant in the story. Is it easy to do well? Certainly not. Is it possible? Absolutely. And on a related note if you've ever been part of a really good roleplaying group you know there's a magic there that you can't really get anywhere else.

It is also worth keeping in mind that video games in particular are a relatively young medium that is evolving and growing at an amazingly rapid rate. We've barely scratched the surface of what games are capable of.

Does that mean that I think that games will eventually make other mediums obsolete? Heck no. There will always be a place for laying back and letting yourself become engrossed in someone else's story. Whether through reading, listening, watching or other methods.

Edit:Heh. Not quite as brief as I intended. Games and their potential is something. I am quite passionate about (I am in fact going into independent game development as my primary focus, well, pretty much right now actually) and I could easily talk about this stuff for hours :P

Edited by lord Claincy Ffnord
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As a parent, I feel compel to reply to this thread.

 

I believe reading is a superior hobby than television and/or video games and I do take pride in seeing my young children casually pick up a book only to quietly shuffle through it even though neither can read yet. I also take pride when my 2 years old happily point his book on cars asking me to read him: "another story" before bedtime. I take pride when my nearly 5 years old is proud to show her huge book on dinosaurs at the day care and calmly explain to her friends the difference between the carnivorous and herbivorous ones.

 

I take pride not only because I like reading myself, but also because I know reading is among the greatest gift I could potentially give my children.

 

Why?

 

Because reading is the key to learning. I once recall a study asking people which elementary school year did they think was the most significant. Logically, most people answered 1st or 2nd grade because these are the grades where children learn how to read. Many also answered 5th or 6th grade, because these were the last grades before secondary (or junior high) school. However, the answer was most surprising: 3rd grade it appears is the most significant grade. The reason for it is, before, children are asked to be capable of reading while, starting on 3rd grade, children are asked to understand what they are reading. Worst, they are asked to gather information through their reading, which explains why many kids go easily through 1st and 2nd grade only to plundered down in the 3rd grade. Learning how to read, especially in Quebec, can easily be done by children with good memorizing skills, but these skills do not equate understanding. Understanding only comes after reading and reading and reading and it starts years before a child is able to decipher the words by himself.

 

It starts with my young children who like to pick up "mommy's big book" and pretend they are reading. It starts with them turning pages and simply looking into the book. It starts there, so yeah, I am proud I succeeded in that much with my own offspring.

 

Nowadays, with the Iphones and the Ipad, children are more often put in front of electronic tools. By the time they are two, most children have used a tablet or a numeric telephone. It comes naturally to them: no need to teach them anything, they just know how it works. Many children are thus engaging into game playing at a younger age, educational games all parents will claim. Games where they draw letters, make puzzles, make drawings and even read an electronic book. How bad can it be?

 

It isn't bad so to speak, but it is not equivalent. Every single study I have stumbled on in my young years as a parent have told the same: browsing through an electronic book does not offer the same simulation as browsing through a paper book. Not for children. Because children physically interacts with their environment. It goes farther, they have put children into a language class. Half the class was learning the new language via an educational TV show and the other half with a teacher. Guess which half learned better? The one with the teacher. Why? Because humans need contact to learn and television, gaming, remove the physical contact which touches an important sphere of the development in children.

 

Is television the devil then? Of course not. My own kids watch plenty of television, but it is not the same. In front of the television, they are laying down on the floor, their little eyes riveted on the screen and whereas they can laugh or later play at being "Princess Sofia", they are not as engaged in the hobby of watching television as they are in making magic potions with my spices shell. There is also the fact one can watch television for hours, but one will rarely read for hours at a time... Television is more addictive and creates more laziness. Again, it is not a bad thing: I adore television, but it is not the same as enjoying a book. It is not as intellectually stimulating as reading a book and as a parent, I'd rather limit the time my own children spend in front of it, because each hour they spend watching it is an hour they are not doing something else, often something more active.

 

Active? Aren't we putting too much thought into it? Yes. And no. Again, teachers have notice children now arrive in kindergarten with mobility issues. Whereas it was nearly impossible to see a 5 years old unable to jump on one feet, to bicycle on his own, to make somersault: it has become common place now. For having watch a nearly 5 years old not knowing how to place herself to make a somersault and struggling to effectively jump on one feet: I have no trouble believing it. Is it so bad? Yes because there are four spheres of development in a child and "global movement" happens to be one of them. Who's fault is this? Television, tablet, video games are often blamed.

 

As for video games, I tend to view them negatively. Why? I am from the Nintendo generation, meaning I was a child and a teenager when the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo were launched. I recall spending whole week-end days sitting down and playing games with my friends. Luckily, my parents never purchased me one of these machines, so my time spend on them ended up being rather limited, but the same cannot be said about my husband. Talk to him today to see how he feels about video games and he will say it: a waste of time. Why does he feel this way? Because he truly believes all these hours spend on his Nintendo/Super Nintendo prevented him from developing his other more worthy hobbies (not reading in his case) and later one badly influenced his choice of careers. It made him disinterest himself into anything else than his games and he truly feels it was a bad thing.

 

Are video games the devil then? No. But I do not own a console nor do I wish to buy one. In the advent I may someday do so, I do intend to limit the time my own children spend in front of it. 

 

Do I need to limit the time my children spend reading? Never. But I currently need to do it for the television, surely I will need to do it for the computer and probably the video games because whereas these mediums can offer lots, they are taking too much place, often to the detriment of other activities, such as reading and sports.

 

I, myself, love the Internet. Internet has helped me improve my English writing skills which were rather poor just a few years ago, but I also do plenty of other things. Children often do not have the sense to close it down and go play. Some will, naturally, but not all.

 

All this is why, as a parent, I do take pride in seeing my kids trying to read, but I take no pride in saying my daughter has watched 3 Princess Sofia this morning.

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It all comes down to balance. Personally, I let my kids have 1 hour/day of "electronic entertainment" on week days or as much as they want on weekends (as long as their chores are done). We tend to plan things for weekends though, so they're usually "jipped" out of their video game time on the weekend.

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All entertainment has important value in it. There is no such thing as "mindless" entertainment, only "mindless" absorption of whatever it is you are attempting to engage yourself in. everything has something that can be learned from it, whether it was intelligently embedded, or if it was drawn out by self-reflection. Everything is important, everything is crucial, but most important of all everything has the power to inspire and influence. 

 

i am getting really tired of games and television being demonized, especially when it is done by a fellow entertainer, no matter what kind. Just because something has been around longer doesn't make it superior. I am a writer and am working as we speak to be a professional novelist. I don't have a degree in literature but i have the same knowledge of it and carry the same serious treatment to the subject. But instead of cutting out other forms of entertainment, I use this critical mindset for everything. and because of this (and this was recently told to me by several friends in the last few months) I tend to like way more things than most people.

 

I believe it is wrong to treat one form of entertainment as lesser than another, and I feel it is wrong to also claim that there are superior things in a particular entertainment compared to others in the same category. Twilight is not lesser than Ulysses, even though I like Ulysses and not Twilight, and movies, shows, video games and music are not lesser than books. 

 

The only reason that anyone thinks that is because they are afraid of what someone else might say. It's funny that the only people who care are the very same ones who are pretending to care. So stop caring, everyone else will stop caring, just do the things that genuinely sound enjoyable to you, you will find you have a much more enjoyable life when you're taking breaks in between levels of Demon's Souls to read the next chapter in City of Glass, anticipating the ending of your night with a few episodes of MASH to awake in the morning and do your daily viewing of Clerks, but boy you can't wait to hear what your favorite radio station 1200 miles away from you has to say on one of the Supreme Court' greatest moves of the century, and anyone who does truly care that you like all of those things can kiss your butt, but that won't need to happen because they don't care, they are just like you pretending to. How silly is that, when you really think about it?

 

And the genre war is just simply a result of tensions between people who are all afraid to step outside their comfort zone, because they think that they read the genre that they do because they like the genre. It isn't true, and I actually proved it in a paper I wrote once. I will try and type it up as soon as possible since it is written, but the basic idea is that people think they have a preferred genre because what really happen s is the first book they read with characters, lines and concepts that linger in their mind for the long term was in whatever genre they believe they prefer. it isn't the genre, its the things that were in that particular book, and they sought out more things in that genre, believing that that is what it was, and they would get more of it from that genre. However, you can actually find all of those great things in literally any book ever written.

 

Think critically of everything, never disclude(new word) anything, and above all else find the value in everything, because I promise it is there, otherwise no one would have bothered making it in the first place, even if they did it for profit, the idea came about for a reason. If there are characters, there is something important in the work, no matter what it is.

 

Alright, I have a novel whose genre doesn't matter to go write. I hope this didn't come off as negative, I really didn't have that intention. I promise, the motive was positive and I hope something good comes of this, because the stigma between certain books, between certain genres, and between certain entertainments is ludicrous, and is locking people off from possibly life-altering experiences. Have an amazing day and go do your thing.

Edited by Nait Sabes
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All entertainment has important value in it. There is no such thing as "mindless" entertainment, only "mindless" absorption of whatever it is you are attempting to engage yourself in. everything has something that can be learned from it, whether it was intelligently embedded, or if it was drawn out by self-reflection. Everything is important, everything is crucial, but most important of all everything has the power to inspire and influence. 

 

i am getting really tired of games and television being demonized, especially when it is done by a fellow entertainer, no matter what kind. Just because something has been around longer doesn't make it superior. I am a writer and am working as we speak to be a professional novelist. I don't have a degree in literature but i have the same knowledge of it and carry the same serious treatment to the subject. But instead of cutting out other forms of entertainment, I use this critical mindset for everything. and because of this (and this was recently told to me by several friends in the last few months) I tend to like way more things than most people.

 

I believe it is wrong to treat one form of entertainment as lesser than another, and I feel it is wrong to also claim that there are superior things in a particular entertainment compared to others in the same category. Twilight is not lesser than Ulysses, even though I like Ulysses and not Twilight, and movies, shows, video games and music are not lesser than books. 

 

The only reason that anyone thinks that is because they are afraid of what someone else might say. It's funny that the only people who care are the very same ones who are pretending to care. So stop caring, everyone else will stop caring, just do the things that genuinely sound enjoyable to you, you will find you have a much more enjoyable life when you're taking breaks in between levels of Demon's Souls to read the next chapter in City of Glass, anticipating the ending of your night with a few episodes of MASH to awake in the morning and do your daily viewing of Clerks, but boy you can't wait to hear what your favorite radio station 1200 miles away from you has to say on one of the Supreme Court' greatest moves of the century, and anyone who does truly care that you like all of those things can kiss your butt, but that won't need to happen because they don't care, they are just like you pretending to. How silly is that, when you really think about it?

 

And the genre war is just simply a result of tensions between people who are all afraid to step outside their comfort zone, because they think that they read the genre that they do because they like the genre. It isn't true, and I actually proved it in a paper I wrote once. I will try and type it up as soon as possible since it is written, but the basic idea is that people think they have a preferred genre because what really happen s is the first book they read with characters, lines and concepts that linger in their mind for the long term was in whatever genre they believe they prefer. it isn't the genre, its the things that were in that particular book, and they sought out more things in that genre, believing that that is what it was, and they would get more of it from that genre. However, you can actually find all of those great things in literally any book ever written.

 

Think critically of everything, never disclude(new word) anything, and above all else find the value in everything, because I promise it is there, otherwise no one would have bothered making it in the first place, even if they did it for profit, the idea came about for a reason. If there are characters, there is something important in the work, no matter what it is.

 

Alright, I have a novel whose genre doesn't matter to go write. I hope this didn't come off as negative, I really didn't have that intention. I promise, the motive was positive and I hope something good comes of this, because the stigma between certain books, between certain genres, and between certain entertainments is ludicrous, and is locking people off from possibly life-altering experiences. Have an amazing day and go do your thing.

 

I do agree that all forms of entertainment have value, and that mindlessness is often what you make of it. You can watch a show like Doctor Who because it's something to entertain you for forty minutes while you eat dinner, or you can watch Doctor Who while thinking deep thoughts about a godlike being who chooses to help people versus another godlike being who chooses to rule them, considering the nature of time and whether paradoxes are common in our world without our knowledge, wondering exactly what's out there and what will happen when we find it. 

 

However, I think that quality does make a difference. Take the Harry Potter series versus Twilight, for instance. Rowling created a magical world with familiar supernatural beings, and while she primarily used these beings to tell a good story, she also used them to hopefully get the reader thinking about issues in their world. I believe she's said before that Remus Lupin represents a person with AIDS, and even if she hadn't, the fans have drawn some pretty clear parallels. He has this horrible disease that causes him pain, that was forced on him against his will. Rather than treating him kindly and seeing how they can help him, the wizarding world does its best to bar him from gainful employment because they fear him. It's not an unfounded fear, but they discount the fact that Lupin does everything within his power to ensure he's not a danger to others. Rowling paints him as a tragic hero of sorts, but the wizarding world only sees a monster. It definitely has the power to make the reader rethink how they see people with AIDS and other incurable and contagious diseases. 

 

In Twilight, on the other hand, Jacob Black is a sexy werewolf. That's it. He's a sexy werewolf who likes to take his shirt off. I believe Meyer didn't intend to send any negative messages with this character; I think she just saw him as a sexy werewolf and thought it would be fun to make an entire Native American tribe a tribe of sexy werewolves. Yet readers picked up all sorts of negative messages in this choice. I won't go into all of them here, but it's possible to see the ultra-white and wealthy vampires vs. the Native American werewolves dichotomy as Meyer saying that white is good and civilized while Native Americans are animalistic and in constant poverty. Again, I don't think she intended this message at all, but it's an easy message to get when you read between the lines—as high school students are taught to do. 

 

The key difference between Remus Lupin and Jacob Black is, I believe, intentionality on the part of their authors. Rowling wanted to make her readers think about how we treat people like Remus, who suffer from a horrible condition that they had no say in. She wanted to make them think about this, and so she chose to accentuate certain traits—his kindness and encouraging attitude toward his students, the way he drinks a foul-tasting potion to ensure he's harmless at the full moon, the way he's viewed with suspicion and scorn by people who have never spent any time with him. Meyer, on the other hand, didn't think about how those traits she gave Jacob would come across to the reader. As a result, he's seen by some as an unflattering representation of how Meyer sees Native Americans—shirtless, poor, close to the earth in the worst ways. Whether or not it was intentional doesn't matter at this point. The message is out there and the picture she has painted is not a pretty one. 

Edited by TwiLyghtSansSparkles
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Think of entertainment in terms of food: pretty much all foods have nutritional value, but to say that chicken nuggets and ice cream has the same nutritional value as a balanced meal with vegetables and, say, fish is to ignore nutritional basics to your detriment. 

 

Just like eating nothing but fast food will wreck havoc on your body, reading nothing but a specific genre or just watching x will mess/skew your mind. The benefits of an open mind only come from a varied and thoughtful consideration of entertainment. You don't want to limit yourself to a few frames of references (unless you're part of a cult, then by definition that's all you want ;) )

 

It also depends on how developed you are. Spider-man is going to appeal to younger audiences more than Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, and they learn about being responsible and not seeking to the villains' level and fighting the good fight!

 

Of course, as you get more sophisticated, you'll start asking questions like: "Is Spider-man actually being responsible? He has the great power, but will constantly spare villains like Carnage that he has to know will escape and will kill LOTS of innocent people. By not stepping up and killing such people, Spider-man is the cause of lots of innocent deaths". At this point, you move on to something more complex like "The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe" or Joseph Conrad.

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