On the Topic of “Vegging Out”: Does the Medium Matter?

Many people of a certain social class or educational background loudly proclaim that one must read Shakespeare and see it preformed on stage. I sincerely doubt that that anyone would try to argue that Shakespeare necessarily loses its artistic or intellectual value when produced for the small screen. If a television production of a Shakespeare play can have value, why can’t other productions designed for the small screen?

Television is a medium for the masses and bashing television is an easy way for an individual to declare that he or she is better than the masses. Staring at a painting on a wall or listening to Beethoven can be a way of “vegging out” or a way of stimulating one’s mind.

MOMA is designed to make you buy postcards and memberships. Operas are preformed to induce you to buy tickets. Saying that television is a commercialized medium of expression designed to make you buy things does nothing more than force us to ask what medium of expression has not been commercialized.

Every medium for expression is what the artist and the consumer make of it.

-- StephenClarke - 19 Jan 2008