Television’s influence on writing
Tammi, a fellow member of Write Stuff posted tonight a question regarding Television’s influence on our writing. She’s doing a kind of log of what shows she watches and how it effects her writing, but before hand she was looking for reader’s feedback.
I began to leave a comment on the blog post but decided to answer it over at my own blog because I’m quite intrigued by the question as well as I think my answer will be too long for a simple comment.
To tell you the truth, I don’t watch much TV. When I say that I mean I don’t watch programmes that are, I guess you’d call it, fictional. I have occasionally been hooked by sitcoms, comedies and dramas in the past and still watch a few (e.g. Family Guy) as box sets but I prefer to procrastinate on the computer than in front of the TV.
Stephen King once said something about being lucky because he wrote when television wasn’t as big as it is now, and yet he found movies quite a strong influence on his writings. Not comparing me to King or anything but I feel very much the same. I find that movies, especially horror movies have a lasting effect on me. It isn’t the plot or the actions per se, but much more the images and atmosphere.
I really liked to be consumed by the atmosphere and imagery of some of the great horror movies such as Session 9 and The Machinist. Perhaps it could explain my latest episode of heaps of images with no story to back me up.
But the type of television I do watch and does influence my writing is the news and current affairs programmes. It should be no surprise to previous readers that I’m quite political and it has a strong influence on my writing.
The news seems to full of horrors that seem perfect for my brand of Marxist horror fiction. Movies and such can provide me with the imagery but even through the process of writing this blog post I can see that the key to turning images into something tangible is to harness this source of story ideas and use it.
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There is certainly enough “horror” happening on the news to fuel any amount of stories. Copy cat crimes worry me a little. I have what I believe is a truly unique “crime” that I’d like to write. I haven’t so far because of my fear that someone might actually do it. Intellectually I know I am not responsible for what the other guy does, but I would feel enormous guilt if someone did.
Benjamin,
Like yourself I don’t watch much television, though I did at various points in my life. I have greatly enjoyed a wide range of broadcast media, some of it fundamentally inane, crass or ridiculous. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
However, nowadays, much like yourself I get my media recreation, if at all, from either box sets or from the internet.
Part of this is that I am maddened by the splintering of a program by advertising. I might well wish to create a break in the narrative because of personal commitments, an emotional response or a bodily need, but I do not wish to be forced to do so in order to be assaulted by images, ideas and agenda of no relevance to what I am watching. Box sets, of course get around this.
Another critical factor, for me, is the way that traditional broadcast television or satellite television demands I am available to experience a program at a time decided upon by the programming interests of the broadcaster, and to structure my experience of life according to the demographic interests of advertisers.
The critical factor for me, is that I already feel bound and constricted by having to go to work every weekday when the business I work in tell me I have to. It is a major imposition on my freedoms as an individual let alone my capacity to contribute to the community.
While I stand critical of much of modern media, and equally wish to be free to take and enjoy and read according to my own dictates many facets of it, I do not wish to conform to its desire to structure my own personal time. Enough is enough.
Being forced to be in front of the television when an executive decides rather than when I decide is, a little beyond my pride and simply no longer who I am. Thus the box sets and the refusal to watch broadcast media. An interesting question though is how would access and patronage of video on demand affect this attitude?
Perhaps that is why Rupert Murdoch hates video on demand, not just because it eats into his Sky network revenue, but because it puts some degree of freedom of choice in how we experience the crap we are served, back into our hands.
As regards growing up when television was not as great an influence, well, I can attest to that. I was a boy in the seventies and a teenager in the eighties. TV was not yet the moulder of consciousness then that it is now.
I suspect that the major difference between myself an a younger model, is that I had a much more direct engagement with being able to interact and mold matter.
When I was a kid I did things like go to the local paper mill with my friends and beg for paper and card off cuts and make models out of them. We went and created elaborate dam networks on streams in the woods, rode bikes around aimlessly for hours because there was nothing else to distract us, and drew pictures with crayons and felt tip pens. We also had no such thing as chat and forums and mobiles to communicate, it was all done face to face with people who you met and played with and shared literal space with without any sense of connecting in an abstract way.
Of course kids do these things now too, but many have the world of games and media and the internet to absorb them. They deal with
a reality of ideas and concepts, and splinters of emotion framed by predigested ideas and narratives that are laced with the interests of their producers and their financial backers.
Of course there are a lot of idea and narratives around in the media now, but they do tend to follow certain repeating or known patterns. Many of these patterns relate to ideology and commercial intention.
I suspect that having a strong affinity early in life with the unpredictability of material objects, materials and the visceral nature of dealing with people as beings that occupy space has an effect on your imagination and possibility, as a writer on the way your use language and story telling.
It is a bit of subtle or ambiguous point in a way, but I have come to feel a definite sense of enjoyment in knowing or having experienced a stronger engagement with the world as a material place where things happen through play and through experimentation, though touch and though physical interaction, that have no relation to the intentions of manufactured media.
I am not sure what kind of writer is makes me, but I do know that I am glad, as a creative being, I some strength from that dimension of experience.
I was about to mention how I feel TV is basically set up to ‘educate’ us to think the way certain people want us to think, but it looks like Kev beat me to it.
I only watch a couple of shows on TV (love House), but I catch bits here and there and if anything I think the things I do catch (so called news and current affairs programs on commercial channels) make me a little more cynical and I’m quite sure that must show up in my writing.
Like you I’m far more likely to be influenced by a good movie.
Hey Benjamin!
I read the Stephen King book on writing and some of his quotes. I must confess I do try hard to translate to the page some of those vivid images which are often so expressive on the big screen. I do like my horror writing as well
Kev, that’d have to take the record for the longest comment I’ve seen, not only on my blog, but on blogs overall. I’m quite flattered that you’ve found my post compelling enough to comment in depth.
I agree that the commercial media is controlled by a bunch of fat cats and their interest is making profit (i.e. advertising) but also maintaining some kind of ideological power by portraying the world how they’d like it to be portrayed. In that sense, me getting a lot of my concrete ideas from the mainstream media has to be looked at with a critical eye as well as other sources that put these events in a realistic perspective.
What I guess you’d call fictional programs seem to be a bit harder to analyse as they’re shaped fundamentally by the ideas that exist around as and from this comes many of the ideas that I oppose: racism, sexism, nationalism etc. There seems to be little benefit to watching most of these programs although there are exceptions.
Lee: I think the media can make you a cynic if you don’t look beyond the main, big business controlled sources of media. Film on the other hard seems to benefit from being created without corporate influence before it looks to get backed by a big name production company.
In that sense, mainstream and corporate media companies in both facets are open to programs/films with quasi-progressive ideas and themes because there’s a market for it, but there’s a limit to what kind of progressive message they permit.
Janete: Stephen King’s book is excellent. I’ve read it more than a few times and I mention it every once and a while on this blog.
I’d love to translate film-like images into prose but I’ve begun to find that the two mediums aren’t the same and therefore you can’t reflect the same kinds of stories in the same mediums. Hence why a lot of movie versions of popular books don’t live up to the original. For more on this, there’s post under ‘related posts.’
Yea, I have “On Writing” by my bed and read chapters from it every few weeks. Great book.
I too stay away from TV. These days when I watch some sitcom or drama type show I can’t help thinking, oh…the writers did this because of that and they want us to think that and surprised by this. It just all seems so calculated.
Yeah, I think television comes across as very calculated and planned; and I think that these shows being tied to contracts with their corporate networks has a lot to do this.
It’s not about cultural purity but doing what’s in the interest of ‘ratings’ and profit.
The images are what get me the most as well. My current horror image is one of a very sickly insane person strangling and beating someone to a bloody pulp and crying while he does it. I think it captures the horror of the crime as well as creates sympathy for the character.
Movies do influence my writing. Mostly indie films though.
I’m a writer also. I do know occasionally TV influences my writing. For instance, I reworked a line from a TV show for a scene in my novel. In essence, the villain asks, “who’s in charge here?” One person answers, he shoots the man who answered and asks the same question. Then the next person responds, “you are.” Sometimes I also get ideas from watching television. For instance, I was watching an old TV show called The Greatest American Hero (on DVD — does that count?) and got an idea for a story about a teacher. Totally different from the story line in the show (it features a teacher who gets a special suit handed to him by aliens, presumably with the intention that he “fight evil.”), but the show inspired my concept, because I was thinking, well, if I was writing this show, how would I write it? From that, my mind spiraled until it got me to thinking of a brand new idea. . .
Eric
Isn’t it funny, I read blogs and books all the time, get a few art films out on video and occasionally go to the movies. But last night I taped Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters and watched them after 10.30, whizzing through the ads.
DH is becoming a victim of its own clipped, epigrammatic kookiness (we’ve missed a season and had no idea what was going on, but I had to see what Kyle McLachlan was making of his cardboard cutout role at some point.)
Brothers and Sisters, on the other hand, was based around a party for the mother (60th) and was a chaotic, stimulating whirl, mainly because the ads were cut out.
But I would go nuts committing to them every week. I would really resent spending the time. As a ‘time out’ vegging thing, it’s fine – I’ve been reading literary theory for a couple of weeks, so I needed to do something simple for a change.
[...] 1. Benjamin Solah’s blog. He calls himself a ‘Marxist Horror Writer’. Apart from the fact that the word ‘Marxist’ conjures up images of Joseph Stalin in my mind’s eye (you don’t say?) I love the things he talks about. Take, for instance, this post, where he talks about writing backstories for characters. Or this one, which expounds on television’s influence on writing. [...]