For many people, binge-watching is a guilty pleasure. In the Golden Age of Television, we might feel guilty because great tv shows deserve to be watched slowly and thoughtfully, not rushed through. If we’re just watching for what happens next in the story, we’ll probably miss out on subtler kinds of artistry. But Michaela Bronstein wants to defend bingeing, and points out that people had similar worries a hundred years ago about the novel: concerns about binge-reading then and binge-watching today reflect a shift from viewing each medium as just entertainment to viewing it as high art.
Tag: Binge-reading
There’s a negative stereotype of teenage readers as naively absorbed in their favourite books – think of young readers obsessed with Harry Potter. But Jill Richards believes that the best books and films aimed at teenagers actually create space to think for yourself. These works invite us to relate to them as fans, but in contrast to the stereotype of fans loving everything about their favourite fictional universe, Jill argues that fandom is about mixed feelings – loving some aspects of a work and rejecting others – and thus making it your own.