From Epics to Episodes

The triumph of television over film may have something to do with our attention spans. Yet the claim that we’re increasingly preferring the short-term to the long doesn’t do justice to the trend. “I couldn’t possibly commit to a film right now” is a phrase I often hear, probably right before its speaker goes home and watches six straight episodes of House of Cards.

People’s attention spans aren’t shortening so much as becoming more rhythmic. What the ascent of TV suggests is that audiences don’t want a one-off experience but something they can periodically return to. Rather than give ourselves over to a self-contained work of art, we prefer to subscribe to a multitude of series, letting conversation and other media fill the spaces between installments to make the experience a highly punctuated, fragmented, and social one.

But the commitment issues are real. Although we enjoy the long-term relationships that TV shows provide, we have a wandering eye for other media: perhaps what counts most of all against film is that people can’t check their phones for 100 minutes straight. That’s just too much.