By Paul Weiser
Which would you rather do - read a story, or watch it on video or cinema? What difference does it make? They're just different media, aren't they?
Briefly, they're media so different as to transcend McLuhan's distinction between "hot" (video) and "cold" (print). Print codes and must be decoded; cinema streams directly through the senses of sight and hearing, hence cannot be instantaneously doubted. But this is the least of the differences.
When you read a descriptive phrase ("Two black dachshund puppies playing with a red rubber ball") you may form an image. Compare this with watching a video: there is no decoding (light and sound impinge upon your sensory organs directly, just as they would if you saw actual dogs and toy) but there is consequently no interpretation. Everyone who sees the video perceives the same image. Everyone who forms an image from the printed phrase forms a different one (though the words have an underlying Platonic consistency even video lacks).
Reading is work - you have to create your particular interpretation, not have it poured in through your auditory and optic nerves. Reading is voluntary: you must will the formation of each word from characters, each idea from words, each image from ideas. With video, your senses are enslaved until you hit "Stop" or run from the theater.
Thus video cannot express ideas (except by verbal embellishments such as voice-over, actor sermonizing or subtitles), for cinematic eye-to-image bypasses them. It is a case of imagination (the work of making images in your mind) versus illusion (the passive process of letting acting, special effects and other cinematic mechanisms fool you into accepting images concocted by others as if they were real). In the end, it's a trick question (which would you rather do?) - for in watching video, unlike reading, you do... nothing.
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