I was trying to explain to a friend why I wasn't too interested in watching
Ender's Game.
I've read the book three or four times over the years and didn't really care for it, not to mention that the shock value of the ending, like all surprise endings, only works the once. I thought
Ender's Shadow was a better book, but I probably wouldn't watch it in movie form either.
"Its a really good movie", he assured me "You shouldn't miss a movie this good."
I made some rebuttal along the lines of 'lacking time', but he wasn't going to accept that.
He felt that since I would make the time to watch really bad movies, that I should place really good movies at an even higher priority. But I'm not too interested in a 'good' movie. There is lots of those, and I haven't even taken the time to watch
Citizen Kane yet.
I watch bad movies the same reason I read bad books; to learn from them. So I was somewhat amused to discover the footsteps of an explorer ahead of me:
"In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature
than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man;
but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells
us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about
its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its
readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more
cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more dishonest
a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document. A
sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an
insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic
decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and
statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and
everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny
novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our day, might
learn from good literature nothing except the power to appreciate good
literature. But from bad literature he might learn to govern empires and
look over the map of mankind.”
-- G.K.Chesterton
There is more than that, of course: reading the bad sharpens the mind; it trains by the example of failure; it exposes the reader to a thousand tricks and cons.
Because the Reader is tested by the experience, his mental immune systems improve*. Show me someone impressed by Mein Kampf, and I'll show you someone that has never read more than a dozen books in their life**.
This too, is the danger of censorship. Weak paradigms fear books because they immunize. If you've waded though, say The Book of Mormon, The Silmarillian, The Prophet, and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, you're going to have a hard time to take seriously anything said by Paul of Tarsus or John the Divine. This,I suppose, is the lasting value of actually reading the articles in Playboy.***
So this is why I will not take the time to watch Ender's Shadow or Schindler's List or The Shawshank Redemption , but I will watch The Terrornauts or The Hooded Mummy Versus the Other Alien, or anything that promises Godzilla.
Because I have more to learn from the quirk of his scaly lips than from a thousand serious films.
*For instance, I could have phrased this as 'hers' or even as 'their'. I learned about gender phrasing problems by reading. I also learned the meaning of 'cissexual', which someday I will work into a complex 'Narcissisexual' joke.
** I'd like to make a similar remark about The Wealth of Nations, but that book's failure is too subtle for a fair comparison.
***Although it was Penthouse that infected me with the phrase "...contrasting with her hearty English labia." Which to this day I cannot decide if it was the product of a porn movie reviewer slowly losing his mind, or a massively overqualified journalist.
