Books have been around for the longest time. First as religious or factual texts that were required to note down what was learnt or discovered so that they don’t with the death of their founders and are passed onto the proceeding generations.
Single discoveries like gravity, electricity, are owed to the knowledge that’d been passed on through generations. When we think any of these given discoveries we think of that one individual and their intellectual excellence. Before information was filed away on computers they had to be written down, detailed and concise into books.
In my own opinion, writing has to be one of the earliest and most powerful art forms. The expression of the human self simplified to the swift movement of a pen against thin paper. Thought by thought, idea by idea poured out on a page.
I know what you’re probably thinking, surely talking is the same thing you can literally voice the same things. Research suggests otherwise, there’s a tool used by psychiatrists, they let their patients free write, where they write continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. This allows their innermost thoughts, things in their subconscious trails to finally seep out. Most of these darker thoughts probably wouldn’t have come out talking. You see human interaction is complicated you’re constantly anticipating the next person’s reactions to what you’re saying and you respond depending on which. This is the case even if the other person is just questioning you in a bland, vacant tone with no opinionated responses. You always give of signals and reactions, that’s human nature.
So we owe it all to writing and books. Nearly every single nation has it’s own historical literature. Literature is so much more than history it gives a snapshot insight to that time and the societal structures, relationships, fears, norms, dynamics that had held the people of the era. Capturing that moment so much better than a picture or video or movie could ever do, as books are just layered with the author's ploys. The best writers entertain the reader while also alluding to their deeper concerns and interests, a critique, positive or negative is left up to the reader to decide.
And that is another thing, no matter how specific a writer describes the characters and settings, two readers can read the same book and feel like they read completely different books. As we have to use our imagination to visualise the stories in a movie everything is laid out for you, it’s not ambiguous and the thrill of a movie doesn’t come from our imagination but by having to amplify different devices like suspense and playing around with the structure. What you take away from a book, is a representation of your perception, your perception is closely tied with your personality, which goes hand in hand with experience. Books and how they affect you could just be seen as an extension of your own human condition. Movies are just entertainment.
Of course some more deeper movies do evoke contrasted interpretations but these are few, most of the biggest movie franchises e.g Avengers, don’t really do anything crucially important. That's what I don’t like there’s these movies that everyone watches, but no one gains anything from them. People have conversations about what a movie consists of not how it related to real life.
Although I have to credit movies for many of their positives. As they’re easier and so more convenient to watch, they’re more accessible and so reach a much larger audience. More poignant movies go onto send messages globally. It could be argued whether books ever held that much weight. A whole multi-million dollar industry is centred around movies, Hollywood itself despite being criticised for many of its problems in recent times, is a gift overall. It can turn those who are deserving of success, talented actors, into super talents.
But remember capitalism still carries on in the form of Hollywood, here is a recent blog I made on it.
So I ask you? Read or watch?
LV
