Meet a fan of a show like Buffy, Firefly, or Star Trek and a great many people are willing to sneer: “It’s just a television show.”
Regular folk look at people who go to TV Land Conventions (ahem) and wonder about their priorities.
Yet Plato thinks about education in Republic Book VII and challenges us: most people look at images made by puppet masters and are amused. We are manipulated and do not care, because what manipulates us is so trivial. We see a comedy show and it mocks our values. Why get upset? It is just a show.
The fans know differently. They study every script, they look for every error, they argue every plot. They look at the art of video and take it seriously. If you watch a screen, then only the fans understand. They take the art seriously and so are saved from being like the people on Wall-E. They do not merely consume entertainment, they engage with the content.
The fans may be a bit absurd when they buy a Star Fleet uniform, but at least they are never in danger of moving from show to show without any of the art impacting their lives. They take what they are doing seriously, while the non-fans just consume. One group grows lean working hard to correct errors while the other grows fat consuming show after show.
Republic VII starts with a story about education that has a cave-like structure with people chained inside of it looking at images on the wall. We look at a lot of images. . . may spend too much time looking at screens, images of images projected in HD for our entertainment. We are chained for twelves hours looking at screens every day and our only complaint is that we would sit in our chains longer if we could.
There is something wrong when a kindergarten student stands outside with a ball and does not know what to do. He is hot. He might get dirty. Nobody is giving him a mission, a goal, or telling him what to do. He is told to play, but play is beyond his ability. He only knows how to consume.
And this challenges the fan . . . and such am I. I have loved Star Trek since a little boy and thought Captain James T. Kirk a role model (in some ways!) as long as I can remember. And yet . . . Plato suggests that my focus on the images on the wall, the flickering screen, may make me expert on images, but teach me nothing about truth.
What must we do to be saved?
Someone could escape the images and the hype and return to tell us what the world is really like, but that is rare and unlikely. Men who escape are hard to drag back to deal with us in the City. There is one possibility that escaped Plato’s imagination: the good God could come down and offer a chance at liberation. He could take on the form of a human and give us hope for something different.
I fear the fans of the images would mock Him as clueless. We might even grow angry with His refusal to study our insider knowledge. He would tell us about the Good and we would want to show Him the goods we have seen in our favorite show. He would wish us to go outside and see the sun and then realize that the sun is just an image of the uncreated Light. Our screens are an image of that image, but like a copy made too many times, the screen is a confused image. The screens make us restless, because they are the wrong sort of light.
We need the Sun and the of the screen is too blue, so our passions are stirred up, and sleep flees. Even if God came, it would be hard to hear, because my life now has a sound track that Alexa can provide by a voice command.
I know God did come down and tell us the Truth. I know He is there and through living in peace, restfulness, and quiet, God is not silent. I can hear God if I am still. I can hear God if I will close my eyes to the flickering images of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He alone can free me from the chains cultural puppet masters put on me to control.
Yet the puppet masters feed, entertain, and award me if I call what they approve wise, virtuous, and take joy in my knowledge of the shadows. I am afraid that it can be comfortable in our man caves and frightening to follow the argument where it leads. We hope there is virtue, wisdom, and joy up there, but we are unsure. Better another Netflix show than to take a risk on reality . . . even on going outside.
Sometimes I am a bit brave by God’s grace and venture forth and see. What is there is better than I could have dreamed and just that vision makes me discontent with returning to comfortable fandom.
But then I recall that to do justice I must live in the City and talk to those who have not yet experienced the partial liberation I have known. As a result, I must return, stay a bit current, even if I will never again be quite as good at knowing my shows . . . too much time being wasted gardening, praying, and discussing great books! And then I discover that even the images of images contain His glory.
Once I see that the fantastic elements of fandom, the ones that are implausible or wrong and have gotten a bit of reality in my soul, then there is learning even in my old shows. They no longer seem real or final to me but become paths to the real. I learn to see beyond fantasy to High Fantasy where nothing is lost . . . not even Buffy and Star Trek. They are only shows, but if I take them seriously enough to see them as they are, then they can take me beyond themselves.
Boldly go indeed.
I am very thankful for the college students at The Saint Constantine School for helping me see new things in Book VII of the Republic.
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