Reading and Thinking

Fri, 30 Jun 1995, From: Alice Naylor

In response to Perry Nodelman ... Perry, I do think that some people do NOT think when they watch television and movies. I think the images just go right into their brains without much movement. I say this because of what I hear from college students. One came to me and said I want to learn how to think. I've nver been taught to think. Another said I've always wondered why my life wasn't like the movies. After taking my course in critical viewing and reading, she said, Oh, I see, the movies don't show all the in-between stuff -- time, effort, etc. it takes to do something. This was a senior in business!! Another said she had watched tv and movies all her life and never thought anything of it. Then for my class she read FOREVER by Judy Blume and was so embarrassed she said to yourself (her words) "I should take this back to the library. I shouldn't be reading this." Her assessment was that reading was more powerful than the media. I disagreed. She had been watching sex and violence on TV and hadn't THOUGHT about it. The images were still there and she I'm convinced, acted on the images which she unconsciously felt were the desired ones to emulate. Anyhow, what do you make of student responses like that?

This is in response to both Perry's and Alice's comments. As a student, I know that there are times when I want to watch a program on TV or go to a movie that is a "no brainer." Meaning simply that I don't have to use the same cognitive strategies that I do when I'm sitting for three hours in a class, in front of a computer terminal working on a term paper, or reading and studying a text book. If it hits my brain and sticks, great. If not, no great loss. It's not an essential -- it's for fun. When I'm watching "Lion King" with my son for the umpteenth time, I'm not being analytical or critical -- I'm doing something that my little boy wants to do. Metacognition does NOT cross my mind. It's something we do together for fun.

Look at the number of people who are glued to a television set to watch a sporting event -- they aren't a participant, they aren't even real spectators. If they want to get up and walk away or go for a sandwich, it isn't going to matter. They may not even know who the players are -- or even the teams -- they just escape for a period of time. It's something to do.

For all the condemnation of Disney and the amount of license taken and the money that will be made, look at the brutality of sports and the incredible salaries that are commanded. At least Disney has brought classics to children. Given, CONSIDERABLE artistic liberty is taken, especially with the newer works.

However, after I saw "Beauty and the Beast" for the first time, I went to the library to find out the original story. Disney can be used to show students that there ARE multiple tellings of the folk tales. I found over 30 different tellings of "Beauty and the Beast," that covered a wide range of just how brutal the Beast really was. Granted, Pocahontas's story is not a folk tale, but isn't is possible that after seeing the movies, children will want to know more about (in this case) Pocahontas? Let *them* find out the historical errors? Perhaps even spark an interest in American History??

In response to my question about what's entertaining in "just entertainment," Mari Stangland writes:

"It's not an essential -- it's for fun. When I'm watching "Lion King" with my son for the umpteenth time, I'm not being analytical or critical -- I'm doing something that my little boy wants to do. Metacognition does NOT cross my mind. It's something we do together for fun."

But that's just what I don't get, see. I mean, yeah, you're sitting there, and you're not thinking--I'm okay so far, and I've done that myself too. But the next part is what gets me--the fact that it's fun. I mean, I'll take your word for it. But what IS the fun? What makes it fun? What does it feel like to have this fun? That's what I want to know and what I don't understand. Is it possible to describe this state of being--or it just a kind of numbness so profound that it's too empty to be described? and if it is, why is that fun? To me, to be frank, it sounds a little like being dead.

Alice Naylor asked what I say to students when they claim not to be thinking about books and movies but just enjoying them. What I do, actually, is ask them questions like the ones I'm asking above. If you don't want to think about a literary experience, I say, well, fine: your choice. But in the context of a course where our purpose is exactly to consider such issues, then I tell them that at least they have to think about NOT thinking--its virtues as a way of responding, its pleasures, its limitations, etc. etc. I find that in fact the responses students describe as "just for fun" are often quite complex and unconsciously analytical--once they feel the obligation to start describing them and thinking further about their implications. And most of them even enjoy doing THAT, too.

In fact, that's why I asked this question in the first place. On the basis of what students tell me, I don't believe there is such a thing as an unthinking response to a book or a movie, unless it puts us all the way into sleep--but since people claim such responses, I'd like to find out if there actually are, and what they're like. My suspicion is like Alice's, incidentally: if we don't think for ourselves about books and movies, then they happily do our thinking for us--and then a movie like Pocahontas fills our head with shallow values and cheap ideas about human relationships without our even being aware of it. In fact, I'm sure that's the whole purpose of such a movie: to confirm mainstream values that are good for the economy. Pochahontas not only will sell Pocahontas dolls, it will conmfirm the widespread idea that girls ought to look something like Barbies--and the girls who accept that idea unquestioningly and unthinkingly as part of the "fun" are going to spend a lot of money on exercise and diet plans and the right clothing and makeup in the course of their future lives as adults. Not thinking about Disney is good for business--but not necessarily good for children.

This is in response to Alice and Perry and Mari. I, too find that my students often tell me that they had never before THOUGHT about children's books, or thought there was "anything to them." But, they seem very excited about approaching books with newly discovered abilities to think about them in various ways. I'm afraid most people, at least in this culture, tend to go through life bombarded by stimuli and never stop to think, to talk, or reflect on anything. I see television as a major factor here. No interaction is needed, just absorption of sensations.

I wonder if left brain/right brain psychology has anything to offer us here. There are times when I am tired of thinking, and want to escape into something else: this could be physical activity, or something involving work with hands or images: hiking or cooking, or painting or sewing, or playing or listening to music, or swimming or maybe even reading a thoroughly predictable book -- Nancy Drew or a Phyllis Whitney or Mary Stewart gothic novel.

It seems that two different kinds of thinking -- right brain and left brain -- intuitive, holistic, versus analytical and logical enter in here. When we are totally involved in a story, I don't think we are consciously thinking in a left brain kind of way. We are totally lost in the experience. As experienced readers we may be able to pull back a bit and read with two minds at times, and monitor our reactions and what is going on. But, I suspect, in the most gripping moments of any story we probably do not do this. We have to return later to examine what made the story so gripping -- how did the author manipulate us in this way?

The same thing happens when we are totally engrossed in a movie -- although flickers of conscious thought may enter into our brains now and then -- I think basically we have lost ourselves in the story or the events unfolding before us. We are there, and our self has vanished. (Comment: in rereading this it seems that the movies in which there is gripping action are the ones in which we are most easily lost. Much as I dislike violent action films, perhaps that is part of their appeal -- when we (or at least I) am watching Bruce Willis creep through some building with the possibility of being shot or blown up any minute -- I am sitting there numb with fear and unable to think about anything else. Of course my kids, sesning my terror, are saying, "Oh, Mom -- it's only special effects!" THEY are the sophisticated, more left-brained viewers of this kind of film that I am, it would appear.)

It seems this is what has to happen in reading for anyone to get hooked on books. The drug analogy is probably also appropriate for all these experiences of oneness.

Thinking about these vicarious experiences probably has to be taught and encouraged, and if there is no space for reflection in between one experience and another, no left brain, reflective thinking takes place. So, there are people who devour one romance novel after another, or spend hours totally absorbed in whatever flashes on the television screen for hours and hours, and there is no empty time in between to reflect or discuss with others, or question.

I try to encourage my students to read books in which they can lose themselves, but then to pull back, to read again, this time asking why. What made them cry, or laugh, or turn the page? Why did this work, and something else not?

So, Perry, maybe when people say they just want to be entertained and not think, this pure absorption, a right brain kind of thinking is what they mean. It also seems that the more experience we have, and the more practice in critical or analytical kind of thinking, it takes a higher quality of make believe to take us in. We also become sensitized to certain things that repel us or strike us as false or cheap or sentimental or opportunistic, and we are no longer taken in, which I think is partly what happens to some of us when responding to still another Disney film. I remember taking my daughter and a friend to the Lion King last summer, and being suitably impressed with all the things I was supposed to be impressed with. Then, six months later, being stuck in a multi-plex theatre and faced with seeing it again, and I simply couldn't abide it -- the words and music grated and the sentiments seemd so blatant and mawkish that I walked out feeling I could not bear to waste two hours of my life experiencing all this again.

Alice: Could you expand on what you think your student meant when she said she was embarrassed to be reading Judy Blume's Forever? My students too often talk about whether reading or film is more powerful -- and in some ways, because the book requires much more interaction and supplying of imagination to make into something whole, they feel the written word is more powerful -- they seldom cry, say, in a movie, the way they do when they read.

Another postscript. It has occurred to me that we may respond differently to different kinds of books, as we do to different kinds of films. In some the suspense is much more mental or emotional than physical. Some books require much more knowledge than others to appreciate. I, personally, have found that the more I read, the wide the range of books that appeal to me because I have a wider knowledge of the entire context of literature and I am reading with my knowledge of that context. Going back to my students -- they a disappointed when they read a book expecting it to be an adventure story and it turns out to be a very different kind of book. They don't "get it" because they were looking for something that wasn't there and not seeing what was there.

In response to Linnea: My student read FOREVER and was shocked by the explicit descriptions of sex. She said she thought she should take the book back to the library eeven before she had finished. She contrasted that experience to having a lifetime of watching sex on tv and in the movies and never thinking about it at all. Books are more powrful, she said. I think books make you think about yourself, it is more personal. I also think tv and movies imprint on the brain -- particularly tv and does not require thinking about what is being imprinted. As Perry said you may be thinking something, but not about everything your brain is taking in. This girl did all the "rgiht" things -- in regard to clothes, behaviors, etc. to look like she knew what was expeected of an American woman. If you asked her where she got her values she would say her family.

I find this whole concept an interesting depiction of our society as a whole. When we see things that are much more explicit or just as on tv or in the movies as they are in books we are inured to them. Could this be that people are not reading enough books? Yet, the books that sell the most--anyway papers backs--are the gooey romances that look like they are filled with sex. As I recall _Forever_ was not that explicit nor is it very well written. However, I like to use it in YA lit and when I give book talks as an example of young people taking responsibility for their actions particularly concerning sex. The books is also dated in that there is no discussion of aids or stds.

An update version of _Forever_ is _What you don't know can hurt you_by Fran Arrick. A high school senior and her college freshman boyfriend become responsibly sexually active. She is sure that they are monogamous until she goes to give blood to help some accident victims. Her doctor calls the house and she is requsted to come to his office where he tells her that she is HIV positive.

All I can say is the Alice's student should come out from the clouds, read the newspapers, Glamour magazine (or Redbook) and get a taste of reality!!

cIn regard to the Linnea/Alice discussion about "Forever:"

When I was a senior in high school, (1966), our advanced literature teacher had us read several contemporary novels. A friend and I elected to read McCarthy's *The Group*, which, of course, contains an explicit scene of a young woman's first sexual experience. As a dedicated reader (behind everyone's back, of course) of racy literature, the sex scene had very little effect on me one way or another. For my friend, however, reading this was a traumatic event in her life. She literally cried for days, and refused to date for quite a while. Her first marriage lasted one month, and was annulled. It took several years more for her to finally marry an older man with whom she was secure. My point is that the reading experience is very different for different people, and is linked to their own unique experiences and values. For her, that book had great power; for me, it had very little. On the other hand, I cannot bear sex scenes in movies; I am totally embarassed despite having very little reaction to the same thing in the printed word.

Michele: Unfortunately thre are no "shoulds" My students are who they are and we need to learn from them how messages, values, ideas, and the thinking process develop. I wish I had time to truly study them.

Well, let me have a go at these issues. Perry Nodelman asks "Can someone explain to me how you can be "entertained" by a movie (or a book) when you're not thinking about it?" Linnea Hendrickson suggests there is an immersion in the media - book or film - (possibly corresponding to experience on one side of the brain) and there is separation and critical scrutiny from a distance (possibly occurring on the other side of the brain).

While I am sceptical of too-simple applications of the separability of brain functions into right and left hemispheres, and doubt that we can ever fell our thinking "clicking" from one side to the next, I think there's something in Linnea's concept of immersion, involvement, absorption and engrossment, in contrast to alert observant critical questioning. And in time, brain hemisphere research may show she is absolutely right. (We need some volunteers who know "Love Story" or "An Affair to Remember" who haven't seen "Sleepless in Seattle" to put on these elctrode helmets, sit back and watch ...) Moreover I think both are natural kinds of human behaviour, at different times, and for different purposes, despite Perry's puzzlement over the latter, his important warnings about not thinking when we ought to be, and his suggestion that it can be just as much "fun" to think as not to think.

Let me try to give some examples. To get a fresh slant on this I'll go beyond books and films to other related experiences, such as listening to music or eating a meal.

When I am reading a book for the first time, or seeing a film for the first time, or listening to a piece of music for the first time, or eating a dish I have never tasted before, I am constantly "tasting", checking, comparing, dredging old memories (what does this remind me of? what do I know about this author? actor? composer? cuisine?), mulling over bits of extraneous information (the kind of thing you get on the cover of a book, or in the posters outside a cinema, or on the sleeve of the videa, or the case-notes of the CD, or the introductory words of the radio announcer, or the name on the menu), ... do you see what I mean? I am alert, questioning, thinking - as perry wants us to. And this is a good time to be alert. This is a new experience. We might learn something. Learning is fun. I am curious.

Now, compare this with a very different situation - a real one. It's nearly Christmas. The family says, NOW is the time to watch "Miracle on 34th Street" or to watch the video of the wonderful children's Christmas opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" by Giancarlo Menotti, or to listen to Benjamin Britten's "A Ceremony of Carols". We do this almost every year. We know these things. We like them. So we get ready, pull the curtains, settle down, and press PLAY.

Ah! here there are again, our old friends - that note, that chord progression, that word - there's Kris Kringle, "No, no, you've got Prancer where Dasher should go,..." - we can recite parts of the dialogue - we know what Amahl will say and do, we know how his mother's heart will break - shivers go up our spine - the little Dutch orphan immigrant sings with Kris Kringle in Macey's apartment store the old Dutch carol "Danke Sinter Clase", and I hope the children don't see the tears in my eyes again.

Or suppose I jump in the car, switch on the radio, and suddenly there's - Beethoven's Ninth, "Sergeant Peppers", Glen Miller's "In the Mood", Fats Waller tinkling the ivories - things I know like the back of my hand. Or suppose the family says, let's have fish and chips for dinner tonight (a favourite Australian dish - fried shark steaks in batter with thick French fries - none of your McTuckey's spindly French fried shoestrings, thank you) - we open the paper wrapping, sprinkle salt (live dangerously, occasionally), and crunch away - you don't even have to worry about bones when you eat shark!

Very different situations.

With one we need to be alert, because we don't know, although we can't avoid having unsubstantiated theories even before we begin, what is going to happen to us. Some people are allergic to this sort of food - will I be? I've never heard Glazunov before, will he be "Russian" like good old Tchaikovsky? I know "Charlotte's Web" pretty well, but will "Trumpet of the Swan" disappoint me? ....

With the other we know what we're going to get. Indeed, that's part of the pleasure. And the pleasure comes from renewing an old acquaintance, from reliving familiar emotions, from being immersed, engrossed and comfortable. Well, maybe not necessarily "comfortable". We might have decided to watch "King Lear" again, or "Lawrence of Arabia", or listen to Mozart's "Requiem" again, and these have much in them which is far from "comfortable". Yet being well known, if they are well known, the pleasure comes from reliving not from discovering.

Somewhere between these two are the many times when we are still exploring as we hear, see, read, eat (etc) for the second, third, fourth, ... times. We are still thinking, questioning, investigating, testing, comparing, but less and less as increasingly we feel we have "mastered" this once-new experience.

Then along comes some remark from a friend, a surprising comment from a professor, an article in a newspaper, a TV documentary, a chapter in a textbook, or some other fresh information that alters and questions what we were beginning to think we knew well, and suddenly we have to re-establish our bearings, maybe alter our mental map, re-think.

Now at all of these stages, it should be "fun". If it isn't we're watching, reading, listening to, eating the wrong kinds of things. Change it. Try something different. Ask a librarian, a friend, a waiter, change channels, ... But these are different kinds of fun.

Does any of this sound like the way you work in the world with books, films, music, and food? I don't think there are many people who don't have things with which they feel so familiar that it is a pleasure just to hear that song again, no questions asked (not now, not this time, but you never know, something might come up, and we'll rethink it all).

How's it seem to you, over there, Perry, or Linnea? Am I making sense to you?