Kai, you and I have talked about this before — the serious vs. escapist reading and the assumed superiority of books over television. And though we love being TV junkies and relish a good Laura Zigman read from time to time, we too seem to easily fall into using language that is at times dismissive of our TV viewing (or occassional chic lit reading) ways.

The way I think of it is very much the same way I think of my college education. It is all about approach. If you approach television with a blank, passive mind and are not interested in engaging with it, asking questions or using it as a tool for reflection and though provocation, then you are going to get nothing out of it. If you approach those things with an active mind, ready to ask questions, engage with the assumptions and reflect on what it is that speaks to us about those things, then it is not the waste of time our intellectual snobbery sometimes wants us to believe. These things *can* teach us to think about the structure of a story, to notice clues, process complex relationships, etc.

I know we’ve said (and heard) it a million times, but a lot of things that are entertaining are also educational — even things that we don’t think of as educational. Yet, if we approach every story as if it were informing us about ourselves, the world we navigate and the people in it, then I think everything — even and maybe especially the escapist elements — are “important.”

One of the English PhD programs I am considering has a very strong film component in their department. This is because they recognize that a carefully crafted narrative is a story, whether it is on paper, on screen or read aloud. Story is story. And story has always been the most powerful way to communicate information.