Entertainment

The media is one of the most influential aspects of our society. We are bombarded by information from every direction, urging us to believe that their story tells the truth. Media is presented countless ways: advertisements, television series, newspapers, radio talk shows, songs, magazines, novels, and so many more. Developing morals, ideals and even identity according to what we see and hear in the media is unavoidable. It is so deeply integrated into our lives that it arguably becomes a part of who we are.  It is also often a controversial subject. People believe that the media is ruining America’s youth, encouraging them to violence, anti-social behavior, immorality, and more. However, others argue that it is important to daily life, offering sources of vital information regarding the world around us, as well as supplying an inexpensive form of entertainment.
I love to read, and it is by far the most influential medium of media in my day to day life. Ideally, I like to read series of novels, a long line of stories that follow the same group of characters across a variety of landscapes and through unimaginable circumstances. One particular series of novels that I was especially fond of several years ago was a series called “The Mark of the Lion” by Francine Rivers. It is a story about a young Jewish girl who lived during the height of the Roman Empire. She was enslaved and lived under a constant threat of persecution for her religious beliefs, but through her trials her faith in God was greatly strengthened and her true love was found. I have read this series and many other like it throughout my life and have come to realize this significant lesson regarding media: while the media, especially media used as entertainment, copies the events and situations of real life it does not accurately portray the outcomes that occur in reality. In the novels that I so frequently read, more often than not the hero or heroine spend the last several pages contemplating the blissful existence that will be theirs following their successful triumph over the tribulations that were experienced throughout the story. For example, at the end of the “Mark of the Lion” stories the heroine is freed from slavery, loved by the man she wants to be with, and has fulfilled her mission: to save the lives of the family she has been enslaved by for the last several years. It is a beautiful and joyful ending, one that I enjoyed very much. However, it occurred to me that real life never seems to work out quite the way it does in books.

          There is a certain concept, discussed by Roland Barthes, called readerly and writerly text. In short, readerly text requires nothing of the reader. They may passively read the text and are not required to add their own interpretation. Writerly text however, requires a certain level of interpretation from the reader. The multiple layers presented in the story make it necessary for the reader to decide what is most important and what specifically the events of the story mean. It has occurred to me that the stories I so enjoy consist of readerly text. The reader does not have to guess at the story’s ending; the ending is given to us. Real life more closely resembles writerly text. It is up to us, observing and reflecting on the past, to distinguish what is most important and to determine our own happy endings.