The Power[ful] Paper

How do I even begin to criticize a paper written by the professor? That would be like walking on thin ice....I truly want to do well in this class and not fall through into the freezing water of a "C" on my transcript. Yikes! But as I read the essay, typically looking for things I could disagree with, I found that my points of rebuttal were assuaged as I read more and more. Powers, you covered it all! But I suppose I'd just like to muse on the topic of reading, as prompted by this essay.

So, Powers obviously thinks that reading is important, particularly in a time when the act of reading is declining in the US, and when multi-ethnic culture must be understood through its literature, though this not being the only way. But I still want to go back to that question of reading and its value...why is it important? I guess when I ask the question, Im not implying that we should perpetuate illiteracy, but I am questioning why Powers wrote a whole essay on why understanding other cultures through reading is so important. I would like to ask why we truly cant understand them through other means. Why through their literature and not through their music or visual art....or even knowing them and interacting with them personally. Do we think reading other cultures is so important because we are English professors and students? Would the art major or international business major or music major agree that we reach other cultures through literature primarily? I think maybe not. And I also wonder about reading being a construct of the upper class, the educated class, the intellectual class. Once again, when I read my words, I feel like Im advocating for illiteracy, but really I just want to understand what reading is, what is its essence, why does it exist...(I might be spacing out a bit seeing that its past my bedtime) but can an individual understand and become enlightened by multi-ethnic culture without reading it? I understand that in today's society, it is only obvious that literacy means power; we can go places and be who we want to be when we can read and write, yes, I know this, but can we have this mobility through other means as well, like I stated previously with other disiplines?

Oooo, I wanted to comment on something else mentioned in the essay. Powers writes, "Readers of Toni Morrison in Beijing, Schenectady, Caracas, San Antonio, Fresno, and the Bronx belong to one another in a particular and important way, a cultural communion they share with one another that they don’t share with the neighbor in the next apartment or across the back fence, however much they may share a life in other respects." I was intrigued by this quote because I dont often experience this connection with anyone, though I am an English major and read at least five or six novels a year. At least. And I believe they are good ones. I dont believe I have the kind of experience Powers is referring to because I seriously do not have book discussions with anyone outside of class. Maybe I will tell a friend about the plot of the current book Im reading or even ask a foreigner I know if he or she has read a book Ive read, possibly making that connection Powers talks about, but it never goes beyond these surface literary interactions. I think Im to blame but so are my other literary-minded friends. Why dont we want to talk about literature? Is it just for the classroom? Frankly, I think this is true for me sometimes. Sometimes Im afraid Ill seem too scholarly if I talk about what Im reading, even if its with a friend who read the same book. I wonder why this is? Youd think Id be proud of my education, but Im even more self-conscious of looking condescending and pretensious to the people I encounter daily, some of them students. I wonder if this is just my problem, or others can relate...

African is to Africa as Native American is to United States

I think Ngugi wa Thiong'o's essay presents little to be argued. I completely agree with him that African universities should dismantle the dominant emphasis there is on their English departments and instead focus on their own indigenous national literature and languages. I do agree with Ngugi when he writes that literature is not natural, nor does it impart truth and beauty, instead the content of our literature syllabus, its presentation, the machinery for determining the choices of texts and their interpretation were all an integral part of imperialism and domination in the colonial phase and now in the neo colonial phase. I believe this, especially for African countries. He is even more agreeable when he says that Africans should not discredit European or English lit and language, but that they should not be the dominant emphasis in that continent. Where things get interesting is when we bring this issue back to our country, the United States.

We are quick to present the issue of expanding our English departments to include (with significant emphasis) Post-colonial and World lit, but I think the issue really deals with Native American lit if we are going to talk about recognizing the literature and the languages of an oppressed minority in a country where white Europeans had invaded and colonized. Hello, what about the Native Americans? Did we forget them? They are our Africans, so to speak, if not in much smaller numbers. Yet even then, this shows the extent of how much weve oppressed them and then forgotten them; I dont even know how many Native Americans are still living in the US. It is easy to say that there probably isnt a lot of them because thats imperialistic thinking-- we have wanted to be rid of them and forget it-- but our own indigenous groups need to be recognized too, possibly before the Africans and Asians and Indians. I would be all for expanding our English departments to include Native American literature, and not just as this cute little side note of a week in appreciation for our indigenous groups, but rather a comprehensive panorama of how our ancestors shaped our country today. Truly, I feel like they have more than they are given credit for. We seem so sympathetic to the Africans and their literature-- there are whole schools devoted to it--but why dont we talk more about the Native Americans? That's what I want to know.

Are All Black People the Same?

Whenever I talk about racial issues, particularly between black people and white people, I feel uncomfortable. Even now, I feel uncomfortable writing the title to this blog and using the word "black" to refer to African Americans. Why do I feel so uncomfortable saying "black people"? Im sure most black people dont feel uncomfortable saying "white people." They dont trip over long titles like "African American" by saying "Caucasian" or "Western / Eastern European" or "Anglo saxon" when referring to my race. Why is this? Is it because we realize the immense impact slavery in the US has had on generations of blacks? Is this our way of perpetually apologizing to them, being so careful not to offend them when in their presence? Surely, I am not the only white girl who feels this way and is baffled by it!

I am particularly interested in the way we generalize races when we talk about them, even our own race. In reading Langston Hughes essay, I was interested to see that he had this need to unite the black population as one, to have them all band together to fight white supremacy and appreciate their own Negro Artist. I wondered if this is inherent in Post-colonial and ethnic literature, where a group that has been oppressed feels a need to unite, because I think I can say that no white writer ever wrote to unite all whites in some display of art. Does this only come from a minority group that has had to fight oppression? If this is so, I dont think Hughes does such an adequate job of uniting all blacks. He lets his own assumptions and prejudices get in the way.

Near the end of the essay, he seems to imply that the best art will please neither the black or white audience. He seems to believe such problems as pleasing the white majority in art production are best solved by developing an indifference to both audiences, cultivating an art that is true to itself. But throughout the whole essay, I dont think he does this. His writing is inextricably linked to his race, clearly. He is proud of his race, saying that Negro is beautiful, but then he seems to not want to be defined by his race at the same time, especially not by white people. I think it is particularly presumptous of him to say that the young Negro poet, in saying that he only wanted to be a poet apart from being a Negro poet, was really saying that he wanted to be a white poet. I think that black artists can achieve without being defined by their race. It is possible, though I do realize that racism is still strongly present in our country and blacks are still defined by their race in many instances. But I do think black people dont need to be defined by their race, and then also that doesnt mean that they are then running into the arms of the whites. Cant that black poet be defined by other factors before his race, like his sex or maybe his religion or maybe his education?

I also think Hughes works against uniting blacks by suddenly siding with the "common folk" though he himself is certainly not one of them. He seems to think that the black middle and upper class are sell-outs, so this theoretical Artist must come from the common folk depths if Negros will be appreciated. I think Hughes has a romanticized view of the sell-out Negros and the common Negros. He severely stereotypes them into these nice little portraits, playing with imagery and phonetic language like a poet would do. I dont think Hughes is a very good literary critic. He does not account for the fact that all blacks are not alike; they do not all love jazz music. His solution of appreciation in Negro art is limited and more poetic, than cleverly argumentative and all-encompassing. He writes that he wants to unlease this "dark-skinned individuality" in the common folk, but he is not one of them. He is that separate, educated artist that those very people, those common folk, might label a sell-out to the whites. Ok, maybe Im being a bit harsh here. I dont know much about Hughes and what he was like while he was alive, but currently, he is admired by the whites just as much as the blacks. How would he feel about that, I wonder?

Expandable Canon?

Annette Kolodny writes in her essay that “literary history…is a fiction” or rather a social construction that must be challenged. She writes this because she believes feminist criticism must discover how aesthetic value of literature is assigned in the first place and then evaluate the imputed norms and normative reading patterns that, in part, led to those pronouncements. All that is to say is that specific assumptions about "major" and "minor" works should be contested. Who has the authority to say that one work is better than another, or that one work shall be part of an American Literature before 1900 class, while another is not so imperative to be taught to eager, young minds?

I had really not encountered this idea before I took this class this semester. Of course, in one way or another, I had been taught to speak my mind in regards to my education, MY education. In a society where individualism has come to mean a type of personal isolationism, I have been taught to question things for MY own sake, MY fulfillment and well-being. So this type of thinking manifested itself through petty things like the clothes I wore to school or the "rebellious" poetry I would write for a particular assignment, yet I never questioned those assignments. Like a true potential Messiah student, I readily accepted my school's curriculum without question, got my good grades, was accepted into Messiah on my good grades, and then started the process all over again, now in college.

But maybe I should question what I am being taught. Why study Thoreau and Beowulf and Chaucer and Plato and Donne? Because everyone else has and does? Because they are in the national, if not universal, canon that has already been established? I could say, Cmon! Let's study more obscure artists and poets and authors just for the hell of it, just because maybe they matter too. Why not some more 19th century female writers or maybe some more African American writers and even Native American writers. We want to get back to our roots, dont we? We want to pat ourselves on the back at night and say, we care about ALL artists who have produced art! But do we need to do it when the established canon is the one that is marketable for young college graduates with BAs in English? The working world knows this established canon and functions on it (I guess in the worlds of publishing, editing, writing and the like) so what are they going to say when my education has been filled with obscure Asian literature? Im somewhat at a loss on this issue, but I want the canon to be expanded and I feel deeply for the marginalized, but if we advocate for them, what will come of it? Maybe you and I can appreciate the need for a revised canon, but can every English department in the US?

Kolodny writes that we bring our biases and preconceptions and assumptions to the interpretation of a text, but she wishes that we combat this. A significant criticism to this thinking is that she doesn’t account for the difficulty it would take for readers to recognize their biases and assumptions when reading. That difficulty also lies in getting authors and critics and English professors to expand the canon taught to students. Will change truly come? As a stubborn pessimist, I tend to think, no.

Creativity and Sexuality

In her essay, "The Laugh of the Medusa," Helene Cixous explores binary oppositions and how man and woman are grouped into those oppositions and what implications those oppositions have for female expression or repression through writing and creativity. When we listed different binary oppositions in class and then had to place "man" and "woman" at the top of those lists, our group had placed "woman" at the top of the list which contained words like secular, as opposed to sacred, dark, as opposed to light, passive, as opposed to agressive or penetrating. I think our group jumped at putting woman with the more "negative" terms because of the discourse we have used in our lives to talk about women in history, literature, or everyday life. We see that woman has received the short end of the stick. If they are portrayed as good, then they are domesticated, maternal, an encouragor to the male leading figure. If they are portrayed as bad, they are the temptress, the loose women, the demented monster. The woman never wins. She is always in relation to man.

Cixous tries to combat this by encouraging women to unleash their creativity in writing through physical exploration in Eros love. This doesnt necessarily completely mean sex, though exploration of sexuality is a large part of Cixous' argument. She makes reference to Sigmund Freud’s geometrical concept of castration, refined but not substantially changed by Lacan, which defines woman not in terms of what she has but in terms of what she lacks, this is, a penis. Cixous calls on the assumption that the pen is seen as a phallic symbol which impregnates the page and gives birth to the writing, but women cannot do this. They cannot impregnate but only be impregnated. Therefore, they are only readers, not writers. But Cixous challenges this by encouraging women to explore themselves sexually and not be passive or embarrassed about it. We talked a little bit about this suppression in class, and Dr. Powers wondered if it still existed, if women were still ashamed to talk of their bodies.

I know that Chelsea brought up the fact that Cixous seems to just focus on the sexual aspect of the physicality of women, and she suggested that women can unleash their creativity physically through other means like athleticism, but I think there is something to say about the focus on sexuality. I do believe that sexuality has been a suppressed area of female being, and Cixous realizes it needs to be addressed. I recently read The Vagina Monologues. This series of monologues about female sexuality and empowerment deals with this very suppression. It deals with the words for female sex organs and how society still hesitates to use them in everyday speech, or at least in positive terms. One piece talks extensively about the word "cunt." Even now, I inwardly cringe when I hear the word. You do too, I think. And why is that? Why cant we say the word "cunt" or "vagina" without blushing, but we always talk about penises and what they represent and how they are talked about and interpreted? I wonder why female sexuality is muffled and downplayed in relation to male sexuality. I do not believe, and I dont think Cixous does either, that women lack what men have, that is, a penis. True, we do not have penises, but we do have a whole, complex world of sex organs going on inside us. We have a uterus and fallopian tubes and vulva and clitoris and ovaries which all work for pleasure and life. If anything, the women gives life, not the man. Without the women, "life" on the page would not exist. I think this is what Cixous is saying women must tap into to get back their creativity. Sexuality does matter for Cixous and it should for all women, because I do think it is still repressed. It is still not talked about. Women are still seen as the pure virgin or the slut, both not so well-rounded images. And it is 2008. Why is that opposition still in place? With the women's rights movement and feminism, why can we still not talk about female sexuality? Why do we still think it isnt important?

Is the androgynous mind possible?

Woolf warns in her essay "Androgyny" that consciousness of sex destroys. She quotes Coleridge as saying that the great mind is androgynous, and this is how gender in writing should look. This interpretation of literature can be seen as both feminist and antifeminist. It is feminist in that it is claiming that the male writer needs to be in touch with his "feminine side" or feminine part of his brain to writer well. He cannot do without it. He must be man-womanly. In this sense, women are on par with men; they are not their subordinates. It implies that the women entering literature do more than fill up an absence. They bring their preception of the world to literature, expanding what it is and opening up a whole new reality of it. However, this idea of the androgynous mind can be seen as antifeminist as well because it places a dependence on men for good writing as well. The woman seeks to be woman-manly thus needing the man. Many feminists want to separate completely from men, developing their own reality and identity apart from them. Woolf's androgynous mind does not let this happen. She seems to set a trap for herself in that she relies on men. She urges women to rise to the level men are already at in literature, so as to be equal, yet that is still setting masculinity as the standard. Why cant men rise to meet the feminine standard? Why is it that, with the implication of attainment of the androgynous mind, women need to tap into their masculine side to fully experience themselves? Can they not fully experience themselves without realizing their masculinity? True, Woolf may say that men need to tap into their feminine side to fully experience their reality, but I think the implication is directed at women. In her essay, "A Room of One's Own," Woolf focuses on what could have been for Shakespeare's hypothetical sister, yet she models the sister's potential literary greatness after that of a male, Shakespeare. Judith reads and writes just like Shakespeare but is not socially accepted because of it. She excels in the masculine standard of writing of that time, but why does she not write in her own preception and reality apart from Shakespeare? She is simply trying to mimic the dominant masculine structure already set in place. That is no good, though I think Woolf's argument would be that recognition of sex in writing is no good, though that agrument is weak. Woolf doesnt want Judith to realize her femininity as she writes, though wouldnt she not want Judith to recognize her masculinity as she writes either. Yet this is precisely what Judith is doing when she thinks of the success of her brother and how it is not acceptable to be like him.

My point is that I do not believe the androgynous mind can be attained. I think Woolf is vague in her push for it because how can one be unconscious of one's own sex when she is writing? What on earth does that look like? Who am I in terms of masculinity? What is masculinity? How is its definition, along with that of femininity, a concrete, socially accepted definition? I think gender is so subjective and elusive, unlike sex. Am I writing as masculine when I write about my agression towards others? Am I writing as feminine when I say I want to care for my sick sister or hurting friend? Who defines these things? Also, I think we need to go back to the consciousness of sex thing when writing. Ok, maybe Im not thinking about my sex when Im writing but Im certainly thinking about my gender, right? I write in a circular structure: feminine. I write about my apprehension to have sexual thoughts: feminine. I write about my fear of speaking my mind: feminine. Yet, I feel like Im going in a circle because I just said that gender cannot be defined. So why do I have to label my writing as gender specific? Can we do this? Is it possible? Is the whole school of feminist theory so vague and subjective? How can we really pinpoint gender if we are only going on the social constructs of gender? Should we place value in a social construct? Where else can we look to be informed of gender?

Taste of Bourdieu

I found that Bourdieu is very much like Ohmann in that they, of course, both represent Marxist views of class distinction and reflection of the dominant culture in society. They both believe this. According to Bourdieu's essay, tastes in food, culture and presentation, are indicators of class, because trends in their consumption seemingly correlate with an individual’s fit in society. He isnt suggesting so much that everyone tries to fit into the same dominant culture, but that each fraction of the dominant class develops its own aesthetic criteria. Truly, they all are linked to the dominant class, but they break off into tributaries. A multitude of consumer interests based on differing social positions necessitates that each fraction “has its own artists and philosophers, newspapers and critics, just as it has its hairdresser, interior decorator or tailor.” There is still some standard people must live up to.

I am very intrigued by Bourdieu's interaction with this idea of speaking in "codes." He says that a work of art will have meaning and interest to someone who has the knowledge and "cultural competence," that is, the code, to decipher the meaning in which it is encoded. I wonder to what extent he places meaning and importance in this code. If someone possesses the code in which to talk about art, does that make the art good? What if someone who is educated talks about something that is clearly not art, but he talks about it in this culturally competent code? Does that put value on the bad art? Let's say an intellectual sees a plain chair in an art museum displayed as part of a collection. That same chair, or one similarly like it, is placed right outside the bathroom, providing a place for wary patrons to rest. If the intellectual talks about the chair in a code, saying that the chair is part of the minimalistic art movement and that its form speaks to that movement blah blah blah, does that mean the chair is worth appreciating as art? If he doesnt speak in the same code about the chair by the bathroom, then isnt the code really just a product of discourse developed by the ruling class? He is only talking about the chair in elevated terms because he has been taught to appreciate things in a museum and he probably took an art class in college where they discussed minimalist art. He is simply taking what he learned in institutions that reflect the dominant class and then regurgitating it. Does his code have value then or is he just blowing hot air?

We talked in class about high modernism and how it creates this abstraction of art for the upper class that is completely distinct from the preception of the working class. The upperclass is educated and knows the "codes" of interpreting art and they have "pure vision" while the working class must not know the "codes" and therefore see art as only practical and continuous. I want to know how the upperclass knows they have this pure vision. It sounds a bit Romantic to me and completely unproveable. After all, it is an abstraction. I tend to think that you cannot place a value on being able to speak the "code." What does it matter? One can say a painting is great, another can say the same painting is typical of the Renaissance period in its glorification of man through use of light and positive space in the painting. Who cares? How can you say the one person enjoys the painting more than the other. Maybe one is more informed, but Im sure the one who said it was great has his reasons to. If they both appreciate the painting, why not leave it at that. The work has done something for both of them. To say that the informed one is better, is to say the dominant, upperclass is better. Maybe it isnt.

I am a product of the Dominant Culture.

After reading Ohmann's essay on aesthetic value stemming from class conflict, I wondered if there could be any break away from the dominant culture of our nation. I see that it might not be possible as I think about it now. To say that we could try to break away from the dominant culture would be to say that we would then embrace the minority culture, the most underrepresented culture, but then the minority would become the majority and the dominant culture would surface again, just with a new set of values to ascribe to. It is always a circular process, because we have to value something, we have to value, let's say, some kind of literature or music or art, then more and more people value it and it becomes the acceptable value. Majority and minority are binary oppositions, we have to think of them together, or at least one or the other, but we always have both in mind. They constantly circle one another, threatening to take the lead. I dont believe it is realistic to set yourself apart from the majority or minority. I do not believe one can be completely isolated from their culture and its influence. If I were to go to the library and purposely check out a book I had never heard of, and then continually do that for my object of value, would I really be creating my own sense of value apart from the dominant culture? Would I be able to resist telling friends about my new literary values, urging them to read the obscure literature too? Would I be able to resist the book reviews and criticisms Ohmann writes about, trying not to be swayed to find value in what is widely acknowledged as valuable? I think not. I would be like a hermit, shutting myself off from the world, and that is not possible. Culture always affects us and that culture is the dominant one.

It is in my nature to want to rebel against this dominant culture. We talked in class about how classic literature is taught in our English classes in our institutions because the instructor is simply reproducing the values of the ruling class. That ruling class says that the Classics are worth studying, so we study them. The scientific method is worth studying, so we study it. Classical music is worth studying, so we study it. But why? Why cant I rebel? Maybe I want to be succesful by the dominant society's standards. I want to get that A. But then if I rebel and choose the individualistic, self-taught-type way of life, then I am still reproducing that dominant culture, because like Ohmann explains, my rebellion has roots in dominant ideology; individualism is a dominant value in our society. There is no escape.

Caitlin commented on the value of rap music in her blog, I think, and I found her line of thinking interesting. She questioned why classical music was valued over rap music and who decides it. It seems that nowadays, rap music is more widely listened to than classical music. As we talked in our discussion group in class about this, we grumbled over the importance of Verdi and explained to each other that rap music has its roots in confronting importance issues of race and economic inequality and social justice. We grasped desperately for some importance in rap music, so that it was on par with classical music. I see that this thinking is an example of what Ohmann said when he said that a subordinate but influential class will shape culture in ways that express their own interests and experiences, but then inevitably they will find that their values have roots in dominant thought. We were so quick to find the "intellectual" and "elevated" importance in rap music to put it on level with classical music, music of the dominant class. The dominant class always seems to win, and I wonder if this can ever be broken.

There are revolutions stemming from political, social, and economic issues all the time. They evoke change, but then that change becomes accepted and the new dominant value. Is this a bad thing? Is it bad that I read literature that has been on bestseller lists simply because they have been on bestseller lists? Is it bad that I do my homework and write my papers with the thought in the back of my mind that I have to write to please the teacher so I can get an A? Is it bad that I dress a certain way because I have seen the clothes on other people and have liked how they look? I dont believe anyone can be truly individualistic, and then if he is, he is because society says it is good. We are all individualistic! It unites us. And I think we want to be united. We want to be told what to think and how to act. Who really questions it? Nobody at Messiah College, I know that. We simply take what we are taught because we believe the professors know better, the book review critics know better, the TV knows better. How could we truly separate "ourselves" from the rest of the world? We are products of the world. I dont even know what I would look like apart from what the dominant culture has fed me. Should I question that?

Thoughts on "The Storyteller"

It is my nature to want to question and criticize a text to find its faults and holes, to play devil's advocate to the author. I have to say that I do agree with Benjamin's theory on the whole, but I have questions, always questions.

I agree with Benjamin that the storyteller is rare in present society, that is to say, present society in the US and other developed, capitalistic societies, but now that I think about it, I wonder what the status of the storyteller is in other nations with economies different from ours. Surely there are countries whose printing press has not become so advanced and distributable (sp) as ours. Surely there are societies that have not benefitted or been harmed by the mass distribution of information as opposed to oral tradition-type storytelling. True, I think that more primitive societies must still use storytelling as a means of communication, but I wonder why I suddenly think "primitive." Benjamin is right in that storytelling is archaic; we do not value it anymore, so that leads me to ask why. Why is it not valued and does that matter? Benjamin puts "narrative" and "living speech" in opposition of one another, so I also wonder about the presence of narrative in our current times. I think that narrative still exists, but maybe in a different form than what Benjamin was writing about. I think he was literally talking about oral narrative, the art of vocally narrating an experience, but I question why narratives today have to be so different. We hear in class, Dr. Powers talking about narratives and titles of English Symposium presentations declaring "narratives of African women writers" or "narratives of Holocaust survivors," which is interesting because Benjamin believes that storytelling began its decline when men came back from wars like WWI without anything to say, silenced by the horrors of war. But narratives do exist in writing. I believe this.

Benjamin said that the true storyteller takes his own experience with the experience of others and then tells his story and the listen benefits from this, find counsel in it, finds wisdom. The author, on the other hand, isolates himself and tells a story completely fabricated in his own mind. It is not a narrative and the reader does not gain wisdom from the story. I disagree with this. Novels can be plural, interwoven narratives of perspectives just as oral stories are. Maybe the first novels, along with many present ones, are completely fiction, but doesnt the author has to draw from some personal experience to write his tale? And doesnt he interweave the stories and perspectives and happenings of his friends and acquaintances into his tale as well? I think so. There is no divine outpouring from the author, like the Romantics may have you believe. The author can be that travelling seaman or the local color writer, writing about the traditions and happenings in his town in which he lives. The novel may not be so much an immediate connection between teller and listen as the story which is told orally, but doesnt it have the same function sometimes? Benjamin said that wisdom is not so much gained from a novel anymore and that explained information is more important nowadays than a story open to interpretation, and that may be true in mass media-type settings, but literature is still produced that must be interpreted by the reader and thus lends some wisdom to the reader. Just as Barthes had written in "Death of an Author," the words of the novel have their own meaning in and of themselves and it is up to the reader to extract meaning from them, not the author. The author has done his job in expelling the words and then the reader must do the rest. Isnt the storyteller somewhat like this? We say that they operate in different economies, particularly in different mediums, but arent they telling the same story?

I do not believe that society has a lack of interest in hearing a good story, and I do not believe that there are no storytellers to tell it. I have heard that people like to read less and less when they can just watch TV or a movie instead, but a story is still being told, whatever the medium. We do not just want the cold, hard facts. We want the characters and the setting and the minute details and the dialogue and the conflict. It is still enjoyable, at least to me.