Re: The importance of watching soap operas (Was "A DISTURBING ...")

>But something just struck me. If a storyteller, a troupe of actors, or
>a musician is able to keep a large audience totally silent, we take it
>as a sign of great skill or art, and expect people to be improved by
>such shared experiences.
>
>How and why is TV different? Is it? Discuss.
>
When watching theatre or similar, any sort of social activity like a
discussion would be considered very rude to the actors. When it's TV, the
actors will never know what we're doing during the show. Now, this was
hardly the "answer" you were looking for, but it does remind one that TV
watching and theatre watching aren't completely analogues as the
actor-audience relationship is markedly more direct in the second case.

                                                     Andreas
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