Matt Winslow of Infuze Magazine writes,
Some days I feel like I was born in the wrong century ... actually, most days I feel that way, but some days more than others. I'm a book nut. I love books: not just for what they contain, but also the feel, the smell, just being around books both excites me and comforts me.
But many of the social critics are pointing out that we are living in a post-literature age. Yes, we may communicate a lot via words because of Internet technologies and text messaging, but that's not really the point: the point is that our great ideas are not communicated via literature much these days. Think on it: when was the last time we had a great novel that captured the nation and made it think deeply? No, "The Da Vinci Code" doesn't count, because the discussion that it created was more about how poorly it was as literature than because of anything inherent in it.
No, literature is definitely waning and it is film and television that are becoming the new literature. Again, think on it: think how many catch phrases do you know from "Monty Python" sketches or how much of "The Princess Bride" can you recite? Most people know who Jack Bauer is, but how many can name King Lear's three daughters?
Yes, this is a bit of a lament, a jeremiad, but only a bit, for you see, I like movies. I'm lamenting the literacy of our culture, not the advent of movies. But as movies become the literature of our age, they are also becoming the sermons of our age. It would be easy to pretend that "it's just entertainment" but only the truly naive would believe that. Behind everything there is a worldview and that worldview cannot help but come out in movies. There are two main ways to respond: we can hide and pretend that by isolating ourselves we are somehow immune to another worldview, or we can recognize that all men have within their hearts some inkling of God and His nature and that that comes out – for positive or for negative – in the literature of our age, in movies.
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