Americans have all the drama, comedy, horror, and adventure programs and films anyone might want (and more each day, as desire and creativity are both dynamic).
There are so many ways in which so much art is enjoyable and useful. That’s true of what appears on the screen, and true of what one thinks of and about the productions themselves. (Scene awareness isn’t always a bad thing. There are real actors in all those fictional works, and their craft is admirable, if somewhat inscrutable.)
Oh what risk, though, in using fiction as a line-by-line instruction manual for everyday life. Imagine someone who watched board meetings from a soap opera, with all the melodrama they depict, and conducted his or her own meeting that way. General Hospital is many things, but a plan for management(or medicine!) would not be among them.
One learns from art, of all kinds, but not truly in a literal, single-minded way. The feelings, the insights, are what matter. Turns of phrase, mannerisms, etc. aren’t as important as broader thinking about the acting (and the actors, actresses as artists).
It’s hard to watch politics and not think that politicians have learned too literally, to narrowly, as though every meeting were a dinner theater revue. There really are people who probably learn how speak to others, in public meetings, from television.
There’s an irony in this: a national and international art — television, film — of the highest cosmopolitan standards winds up serving pinched, narrow standards that reject a cosmopolitan perspective for a provincial one.
There’s sadness in this, too, as America’s national accomplishments in art, film, television should inspire and motivate in ways consistent with her broad and open culture.