Tête-à-tête: ‘Is TV an art form?’

Tom Lawton

The American comedian and actress Lily Tomlin once said ‘If you read a lot of books, you’re considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well-viewed’. TV is a form of consumable media just like literature, so why the condescension? This inevitably leads to the question ‘Is TV an art form?’ It is a debate that has raged for as long as we have had access to televisions. Can it capture and inspire the emotions and feelings that great works of painting or sculpture can? Can a TV show ever match the detail and symbolism present in literary masterpiece? Could a TV show ever come to define a people or a time period as so many existing works of art can? Without a shadow of a doubt.

We are currently living in a golden age of television. The Wire, The Sopranos, Spooks, Sherlock, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, The West Wing; the list of shows willing to deal with interesting and complex themes and engage their audiences with believable and compelling characters is endless. The actions of morally questionable characters like Frank Underwood or Tony Soprano inspire hours of debate. The cinematography of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad is just as visually stunning as any painting or architecture. The themes explored by characters in The Wire explore the very nature of the society we live in today. And you only need to go onto any forum for the discussion of a show to see the emotions that an episode of TV can bring out in its audience. And it isn’t just with drama either; comedies like Community, 30 Rock or Arrested Development are universally lauded as prime examples of how to properly make comedy (Arrested Development to such an extent that the fans successfully petitioned the network to commission another series). The condescending attitude given to TV is simply due to its relative youth; the television only really came to prominence in the 1950s, books and paintings and been around for far longer and therefore have a much larger catalogue of classics to draw from and the prestige that naturally comes with age.

We are currently living in a golden age of television.

But TV is not made up entirely of ground-breaking dramas and comedies. As many of TV’s detractors note, TV is flooded with game shows, celebrity obsession and reality shows. Only a cursory glance through a TV guide reveals the swathes of lowest common denominator shows such as Jersey Shore or Jeremy Kyle. But this is hardly a phenomenon exclusive to TV as a form of media. For every Deal or No Deal, there is Twilight, for every Peter Andre: My Life, there is a replica of the Venus de Milo made out of faeces (that sold for over $45,000). Yes, there are a lot of TV shows that have no artistic or cultural merit, but no one can claim that this is exclusive to television as a medium.

So perhaps not every TV show is a work of art. But there are plenty of TV shows out there that merit the classification as works of art, either through their visual beauty or their examination of emotion or themes and that should be enough to classify the medium  as an art form.

Lucy Skoulding

The average household in Britain spends 1,460 hours a year watching TV, making our daily time spent in front of the box four hours. Many would deny watching so much but it is a reality that a huge chunk of our time is consumed by TV, a great deal of which is not beneficial to us in any way. It is undoubtedly true that some programs are educational but any such knowledge gained can always be obtained elsewhere in a much more valuable fashion: reading or simply getting out into the world and experiencing it. So what is it about TV that draws us in and why is it becoming such a problem in today’s society?

Some TV shows are deliciously enticing, horribly addictive and are often referred to as ‘trashy’. They are usually completely pointless and in no way beneficial educationally or otherwise but we just can’t get enough of them. These are the likes of TOWIE, Big Brother and Keeping Up With the Kardashians; the shows that millions of people tune into but also hate admitting to watching. So if we feel so guilty about watching these programs, why do it? Well, people are fascinated by seeing how differently some people live their lives. Many cannot imagine having the riches that the Made in Chelsea stars harbour but find it interesting to watch regardless. Being unscripted also adds to the appeal of these shows (although it is debatable whether any reality TV show is entirely unscripted) but none of this removes from the fact that reality TV does not benefit us in any way, rather many would say it is pointless and dull. Indeed what is the appeal of Big Brother? It is just watching a group of people living normally in a house with a few added arguments and a potential romances thrown in for entertainment’s sake. When put like this it is clear that a great deal of today’s television is a waste of time. Non-stop complaints fill the media of how people are too busy nowadays and don’t have enough time for family and friends, but if people stopped planting themselves in front of useless television shows for hours on end maybe socialising would become more doable.

Of course I’m not saying that all TV is bad, in fact some is beneficial and an important part of the world we live in today. I watch my fair share and it isn’t all highly educational and knowledge-ridden but I try not to over-watch it and a second very important point about television in today’s society is that people spend too much time in front of it and unfortunately spending hours with your eyes glued to the screen has its consequences. TV is directly linked to health problems, being a main cause of obesity. Instead of partaking in exercise people choose to occupy their time with television because it is easy and requires minimal effort but the obesity rate in the UK is soaring with 1 in 7 children and a quarter of adults classed as obese. This is a serious problem but it’s not just our physical wellbeing that is affected by TV. According to many scientific studies prolonged periods of time in front of the screen has negative effects on our intellectual development and can cause a deterioration in mental capacity, leading to problems with memory and attention span in the long term.

if people stopped planting themselves in front of useless television shows for hours on end maybe socialising would become more doable.

It starts to get really serious when you consider the detrimental effects that TV can have on people. All too often children are exposed to violence and drugs on television what with soaps like Hollyoaks being on before the watershed but addressing these issues anyway. Clear links have been drawn to children who watch violence on television early on in their lives and then grow up to be naturally aggressive. After all children have to learn violence from somewhere and with the amount that appears on TV in today’s society it is unsurprising that they are affected by it. Unfortunately television can also brainwash and create false hope. Children see celebrities and successful people portrayed to have perfect lives and they want that too and so television leads to many being unsatisfied with their lives. A key example of this is when young girls see beautiful, airbrushed models and think that they should look like them. This is the cause of a great deal of problems from body confidence issues to eating disorders.

A depressing reality is that television has overtaken books as a form of entertainment. Sitting in front of a screen is so much easier than reading for many people after a long day at work but as I already said it is not as beneficial to us. Books are often educational and huge imparters of knowledge. Of course there are a fair amount of trashy novels out there but even reading Fifty Shades of Grey is useful in the sense that the act of reading itself (whatever the content) stimulates the mind, increases our range of vocabulary and improves our writing skills. A worrying 16% of adults in the UK are functionally illiterate meaning they have a reading age of 11 years or below and this could be partly down to watching TV rather than reading as a child.

With the amount of reality shows and cheesy Saturday night TV we cannot deny the fact that television is one of the more trashy forms of entertainment today. It’s not to say that some programs are not educational and completely harmless but what we must focus on are the ones which create or heighten issues in society. Perhaps then we should follow Groucho Marx’s line of thinking: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”