31st January 2005, 5:50 PM
Quote:Let me simplify that response: "You are right that books require more imagination in some regards but I think that that is irrelevant." Of course you do, since if you can't be right then the thing you are wrong about has to not matter...
Anyway, I disagree. What the car looks like DOES matter. Those elements are the core of the argument that books require more imagination! No matter how many times you deny it you simply cannot describe something in words the same way you can in an image. And more of what you say I just don't understand. So imagination is only more required in books if the book has a detailed enough descriptive style to give the person a mental image to start with? Absolutely not! The opposite is almost true, actually -- the more detail it provides the less individual imagination is required. That requires more interpretation and deduction (to figure out what the verbal image would look like), but less pure imagination... now, you definitely need some amount of detail to have a place for your imagination to start, the works that require the most imagination are probably ones where there is a 'grey area' where your imagination can work on top of what is described. With movies this just doesn't really happen.
Sure, in movies you can have plots just as deep and complex as you can in books. Not with as much length of course (and how much that matters depends on the writer in the cases of both movies and books) But imagination... it's just not the same. And I don't think it really can be. The very use of images precludes that.
Or rather, to restate my point, while what the car means is also an important question, the imagining of what the car is and what the car looks like is also a very important and very relevant question which you should not degrade as you do.
If you truly believe that then you have to be the most shallow and uncreative person I have ever known. You're saying that you have to use great imagination to picture something that is decribed to you in great detail. That does not require any significant amount of imagination! Trying to deduce metaphors, figuring out greater meanings of plot points and really understanding what an author is trying to convey takes a significant amount of imagination. What you're talking about is superficial, on the surface. Any unimaginative person can mentally picture something described to them.
And if that's your argument--that books require more imagination--then books are therefor inferior to both music and fine art. Nothing stirs the imagination more than Bach or Van Gogh. And then to go even further than that, playing with legos is superior to all of those things.
Seriously this is a very idiotic debate, and no intelligent person would for a second actually try to argue that one medium is inherently superior to another in any objective way. This shows utmost ignorance on your part.