Television vs Reading

By Vanessa Dante (Mar 2018)

We have a problem in this world and one of them is that morning people think they are superior to night people and they look down their noses at them, but yet night people have perfectly legitimate reasons for being night people.  None is more special than the other. Well we have another problem too and that is that people who read books think they are far superior to those who watch a lot of TV.

Now, I don’t have time for a lot of TV. I’m a busy woman, but I also don’t have much time for reading either. On the occasional morning, I may get to read in bed for an hour before getting up, but not often. I also like to watch my favourite TV programs. Yet how often do we have people saying you shouldn’t be watching TV, you should be reading a book instead?

REGULARLY! 

Yes, it really does seem that people who like to read a lot believe that they are superior to those who prefer to watch TV. They believe that it’s far better for us as humans to read than to watch TV. But why? What is the reasoning behind that? There is only one legitimate thing I can think of and that’s to improve your reading skills, but why the need to improve your reading skills further? Just so you can read more books faster?

I consider myself well educated. I consider myself a very good reader. I see no reason why I need to improve those reading skills further, when I can pick up an adult novel or even a text book and read it without difficulty. So what does a good reader have to gain by reading more books? Nothing.

Some say that books are better than the movies that are made from them. I’m not arguing that. That is often a fact, but it’s not the point. The point is, there is no real good reason to elevate reading above TV watching. That, as far as I can see is simply a prejudice… book readers can be terrible snobs and hypocrites. They will look down at people who watch TV for hours each day, they will call them lazy, a couch potato and all sorts of names, but yet will happily sit down and read a book for hours each day as if that somehow makes them less lazy and less of a couch potato! HELLOOOOO! Seriously?  Do you book readers really think you’re anything so special?

I hear other silly arguments too. Like TV desensitizes you to sex and violence.  Hello again? Who is that true for? Is it true for anyone that hasn’t got some kind of mental imbalance? I can watch a violent movie or TV show with blood and guts and perhaps only just flinch, but I can tell you right now, if someone were to be beheaded by a Samurai Sword in front of me and blood splatted everywhere I would be deeply disturbed. It would take me a long time to get over that if I ever did at all. Another thing I can tell you for certain is that although I can watch a sex scene on TV and can even handle seeing a naked man, if ever I saw the likes of Tucker Pyles naked I would be traumatized for life.

Seriously people, if TV desensitizes you to violence or Tucker Pyles having sex (OMG, even the thought of it repulses me), then the problem isn’t TV, it’s you! Or the crappy parenting you have undergone.

Books aren’t all that innocent, though are they? Some books contain material that TV and movie studios wouldn’t dare portray on screen. Take Stephen King’s “The Stand” and “It” for instance and see what was left out of the Television versions. You’ll soon see that television is way tamer. Oh and how about Game of Thrones? You think that TV show is too full of graphic sex scenes and extreme violence? You clearly haven’t read the books. 

So stop blaming TV for all the world’s problems and stop making out reading is any more virtuous than watching television. Get your head out of the sand… I mean pages and take a real look at the world. You clearly need to.