Really? I thought I was writing about video game lit.

Okay, when the hell did the video game become literature?  When did we, as a society, reach the point where we decided we needed complete emersion within everything that was for our entertainment?  Isn’t there something to be said about simply sitting back and enjoying?  Now we have to be interactive with our enjoyment?

Don’t get me wrong.  I love story-based video games.  Absolutely love them.  I was playing Final Fantasy before Final Fantasy had a cult-following.  Only type of games I won’t play are on-line games (they promise more chances to play with others, but at the expense of story.  And, damn it, there is NO character development.  I mean, what the hell?  Why would you become part of a story with no character development?).  Here’s my point, though: we’re talking now about interactive novels, interactive movies.  Why is this considered a good thing?  And why aren’t they just considered video games? 

With Amerika, Jackson, and Kinder all under our belts now, I think we need to start seriously considering what the novel is.  What the movie is.  What we’re doing with both.  We talk about interactive stories, interactive novels on CDs, novels that pretty much are practically “Choose Your Own Adventure Stories,” only without having to flip page to page.  However, they also act as databases to help you keep things together within the story.  Possibly a great thing.  Imagine Dickens without ever having to go to an appendix or to skim back pages to remember which starving orphan he’s talking about at which point.  Yet, at the same time, do you really want to be reading along on a page and suddenly decide, “Hey!  I want to know where this quicklink goes,” only to discover an hour later that you’ve spent the last hour clicking every link, checking every character bio and story insight and that you have not only, somehow, read too far, thus ruining your surprise at the plot, but have also completely forgotten where you are? 

What really insults me, as an actor, mind you, is the statement that Kinder makes, that Muniel doesn’t underestimate the role of actors, but that, “like Hitchcock he valued them as objects.”  That’s not an actor’s job, to be a moving set-piece.  Actors have always been expected to bring emotion and depth to characters.  Yes, there have always been directors to demand that actors do it “exactly as it is on the page” (George Lucas and the Cohen brothers spring to mind), but the best directors always allow their actors freedom to explore a role.  To break an actor’s role down to no more than scenery or prop is to destroy the essence of cinema and theater. 

Now to my original point.  It’s nice to sit and be entertained.  It’s nice to sit and read a book.  It’s nice to sit and watch a staged production.  And you know what’s really nice?  Being able to read or to simply enjoy one’s self without burning holes  in the brain staring at computers.  I mean, I don’t actually think computers burn holes, but it’s been proven that computers do worse eye-damage than simply reading.  The lights in the computer cause headaches.  Books can do these things, but only after long hours of use.  It is estimated that anything over twenty minutes on a computer is damaging.  I was advised just last week by an eye doctor that one should look away for a full minute every twenty minutes.  Otherwise, damage will be done.  So why are we seeking damage just to have more interaction with our books and movies? 

Further, when we have those books and movies, really what we’re doing is playing those books and movies.  We are, in a way, the people moving the action.  Thus, a video game.  Isn’t that what a video game is?  A story where the player moves the story along, often with multiple lines through which the story can move and with great graphics?  Isn’t that all an interactive book or movie is? 
Well, I’ve had my Mickey Rooney rant of the day.  See you all in class.