Hi Billy, On Jan 11, 2014, at 12:16 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> Entertainment ? Yes, Dostoevsky sought to engage readers at the level > of good action-filled story telling. But, for him, action that is not rooted > in the deepest imaginable meaning is worthless. I completely do not understand this debate. I mean, I understand why people are having it. But I can’t wrap my head around what people are arguing about. To me, the essence of story is “meaning”. * A great story is entertaining because it *means* something, because it grabs us at a visceral level about things that *matter* to us. * A great message tell us something important about something that *means* something to us. What it sounds like is happening is that a lot of Christian storytellers are fixated on the “conclusion” of the story, rather than the process. That’s just stupid. The story has to be true to itself and the message has to emerge organically from the narrative (or vice versa). You can’t force it. And it isn’t fair to conflate Dostoevsky with television. Novels, TV, movies, sermon videos, email, blog posts, campfire tales — every medium has its own constraints, advantages, and disadvantages (and that’s before you start talking about audiences). A better question is what kind of stories should we be telling with the media available to us, the way Dostoevsky did with the media available to him… — Ernie P. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
