On Tuesday, I did a review of my limited experiences at the Montclair Film Festival.  One thing that I noticed, especially in Michael Moore’s discussion, was that film makers tend to consider TV negatively.  “Small wonder!” you might say.  But books certainly are transformed to TV as much or more than they are to the big screen.  If literature is an art form, are things derived from it also art forms?  Most people associated with the film industry would say films are an art form.  So, is TV an art form?

Michael Moore focused on the active-passive difference, claiming that TV is much more passive than cinema.  The latter has an audience that moves to some building, maybe miles away, buys their tickets, and sits down to enjoy a film (that’s a bit myopic, of course, in these days of Netflix).  TV takes away everything except maybe enjoying the film, but many of us watch anything to just be watching something.  I don’t buy the argument.  Both are passive and demand less mental interaction with their viewers than a good book demands of its reader.

There are exceptions.  Take the film Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan, who also wrote the screenplay based on the short story “Memento Mori,” by Jonathan Nolan.  If you survived this film—in other words, you were able to figure it out—you certainly deserve an A+ in movie viewing.  Screenwriters can write wildly complex stuff—I know people (myself included) who are still trying to figure out the last episodes of Lost.  Here we have the example of a movie and a TV show that, at the very least, caused many viewers to interact mentally, although they might have thrown up their hands and admit defeat.

A good book, however, bends the mind better than any film.  I argued in that previous post that a good author will leave enough room for the reader’s imagination to go to work—in other words, involve the reader in the creative process.  Films and TV shows, while entertaining, can’t hope to do this—the reader is spoon fed, visually and aurally, and cannot create.  He can react—laughter, tears, feelings—but the film or TV show is creating that in him.  I suppose you could say that everyone reacts differently, but it’s still true we don’t create with TV or film.  I imagined how James Bond appeared and what he was like as a person when I started reading Ian Fleming in junior high.  I accepted Sean Connery in the role because he came close to what my imagination had wrought.  Roger Moore (no relation) and other cinematic Bonds that followed never did.

That begs the question of the title.  They say film is an art form, so is TV?  For art works—sculptures, paintings, defecated matter (whatever serves for art these days)—the viewer is still passive, i.e. not creating.  So maybe not involving the viewer defines art and books aren’t an art form?  I will leave these weighty issues, forget about the comparisons between art, film, TV, and books, and just stick to the question of the title.  I’m sure I’m going to get into trouble, but here goes.

TV is not art.  Neither is film.  Not anywhere near it.  The best of TV derives from the best of film and literature, and so does film if I count screenplays as literature.  Ever ask yourself why the original Star Trek was so much better than its successors, even though they had all the glitzy special effects?  The answer is easy.  The majority of the original Star Trek’s episodes were derived either from stories written by honest-to-gosh sci-fi authors or screenplays written by them.  They knew sci-fi.  The same holds for almost all the Twilight Zone episodes.  The present generation of Hollywood writers doesn’t know sci-fi in the way those old masters did.  In fact, they’re pretty pathetic if you consider series like Lost, Babylon Five, or Battlestar Galactica—if the series was at all saved, it was due to good acting (on the other hand, the acting on the original Star Trek was pathetic).

These ideas work in film too.  I mentioned Blade Runner in that MFF post.  You can count many other Hollywood movies made from Phillip K. Dick stories.  Modern sci-fi films, including Cameron’s Avatar, just can’t compete because the story sucks—all the gee-whiz special effects with blue aliens with tails couldn’t save this film, nor the 3D.  There just isn’t much of a story.  I was more impressed by a documentary on the International Space Station and the 3D effect of an astronaut flipping a pea toward me—now there’s a story.

You know I’m not talking about fiction v. non-fiction either.  I write fiction and I mostly read fiction.  The stories I write and read are far superior than anything I can see on a movie screen or view on TV.  The art is in the literature or even the screenplay.  I don’t know why.  Maybe I’m obsessed with story, but if it isn’t in the screenplay, it’s not going to be present on any size screen.  That’s a fact of nature, something like Newton’s laws.

Outside of sci-fi, the only TV series that captured the literary nuances was Murder She Wrote.  You might say, “What about all those PBS murder mystery series borrowed from the BBC?”  I’m talking original TV here, not a bunch of British actors bringing famous stories to life (sure they do it well, but that just adds to the argument that TV is not the art, it’s literature).  It engaged the mind.  Unlike Columbo or some other series touted as classic TV crime drama, Murder She Wrote offered the viewer a mystery he had to solve every week.  Sure, you could wait until the denouement (just like you can read the end of an Agatha Christie novel)—you have to want to engage your mind.

No, TV is not an art form.  The art comes from the written word.  Same for cinema.  They’re entertainment.  In the rash of “reality shows” that have nothing to do with any kind of reality, even Dancing with the Stars, or in the “summer blockbuster” special effects movies Hollywood will badger you with during the next months, you will find nothing that makes your mind create.  In fact, if you watch enough, you just might turn your mind to mush.  Caveat emptor!

In libris libertas….

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