The story may be one of the most interesting human inventions in that it is strictly human. No one ever sees a duck standing in front of other ducks telling them the hilarious story about how he stole bread from an old man earlier that morning. People tell other people stories all of the time. When I tell my friend about my summer, I'm telling him a story. When I read a novel, someone is telling me a story. When I go to the theater and watch Super 8, I am being told a story. But each story is different. There are the obvious differences in medium, but what is important is not the existence of these differences but rather how these differences affect the interpretation, appreciation, and overall experience of the story.
Different media naturally lead to different sensory experiences. When someone tells me a story, I am clearly experiencing the story aurally. But there are times in the story where I might be visually involved by the storyteller's body language. But that visual experience is very difference than the visual experience I get when I am reading. When I read, I experience the story visually through reading the words. This visual experience is also different from a movie or television show. The story that I receive from these media are visual. But the visual experiences are different. When I hear a story from a friend, I am at the mercy of my friend's interpretation. I am allowed to interpret his story as funny or serious, happy or sad. But my opinions of the characters and my vision of the story is controlled by the storyteller. This is the limit of oral story telling. There is a huge handicap when considering interpretation. Even the appreciation of the story is affected by the storyteller. This is why storytelling is a skill. The storyteller not only determines how the listener interprets the story, but also affects whether or not the listener likes the story. A good story with a bad storyteller is thus a bad story.
But this does not occur when you read a book. When you read the book, you are given the details that encompass the story, but as the reader, you are free to interpret as you wish. You are not confined by the abilities of the author either. A reader can add what he wants to the story and often times, the book acts merely as a guide. Your appreciation goes only as far as your imagination can take you, and though that seems like a halfhearted endorsement for reading, it is true. Just consider why children read picture books. It captures their attention through many means, but I'm sure on of them is this assisted imagination that the pictures create. So when we grow older, we mature out of picture books and then use our own imagination to create our world of the book.
The movie is the most interesting because it immerses you in this childlike way, but still calls on you to interpret the movie. The movie does not require you to create your own world. The director does that for you. He not only gives you the image of the main characters, but also the setting. All of those worlds that you create as the reader are no longer necessary because the movie does that for you. It is an interesting phenomenon, but it has led movies to be criticized in that they hinder the imagination process. But they really do not. In fact, in some cases, the movie is improved because of audience's imagination. The most obvious and recent case would be the film Inception. This movie used one of the classic methods to force the audience to think: the cliffhanger. For those of you who have not seen Inception, here's a spoiler alert. The top never topples. This sent people into a spiral as to what happened, and this led to fan theories galore. But this shows that just because a movie gives you so much, it does not mean that it takes away from the experience. Though there are many movies that fall into the category of stellar or horrific, most movies do not have a consensus of whether it was good or not. This relationship between the movie and the audience is one of appreciation or criticism, depending on the movie. Unlike oral stories, films are not always hindered by a bad cast nor are the always aided by a great one. A movie with a bad cast can be as good (or as bad) as a movie with a good cast in the eyes of a viewer.
Movies, books, and oral stories all have their place in society, but that does not mean that they all convey a story in the same method. Each have certain detriments and unique traits that come with the media. Therefore, each has their place. Stories belong in everyday life. I don't need to write a book to tell you about this hilarious thing that happened in class. But books give you the ability to stop the story. You can stop a movie, but there seems to be more discontinuity than when you stop a book. Movies give you the collective experience. I don't usually read books along with other people, but it would be weird to watch a movie on your own. These methods each tell a story differently and in doing so they each fill a niche in society that the other methods could not do.
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