Seriousness of Story

Stories are a very serious thing. One shouldn't underestimate their ability to communicate ideas and shape thought, even those that aren't marketed as serious (especially those, actually).

Stories are the playground of ideas. They thrive off of the question "What if?". And even if they aren't specifically written to "teach", they are saturated in the worldview of their author. Beliefs about how the world works, people's relationships with each other, what is truth, morality, etc. is present in every character, scene, beginning, ending, and middle.

Stories also have the ability to cut through people's natural defenses, none better than those stories that are a delight to read.

Stories can give people, in a way, experiences that they wouldn't normally have. Lead them to ask questions they wouldn't normally ask. Force them to experience emotions that might not otherwise experience. Take them to places they can't go.

C.S. Lewis puts it this way when speaking of fantasy and science fiction: "The Fantastic or Mythical is a Mode available at all ages for some readers; for others, at none. At all ages, if it is well used by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevances. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life', can add to it."

Of course, I think, delight in the story, in and of itself without any of these considerations, is what gives the form its power in the first place. You must be able to engage with a story in order to get anything out of it. And that is something, I think, that not everyone can or wants to do. Stories shouldn't be read first and foremost as a way to learn ideas. That seems, to me, a more secondary thing, though inseparable.

So yes, I take even the light fiction seriously. I think over it. I consider it. I analyze it. That is, I give it more than a passing thought. And I love to discuss it :)