I don't think CSI is literature, but...

If you look at the definition of literature, it seems that it's only a piece of written work with a specific purpose for the audience reading it. But that could be anything, really. Does that mean that my shopping list is a piece of literature? It's written down and its purpose is to inform me of what I need. Are those stupid commercials of TV literature? What about the silly satire movies that people seem to love? Can that classify as literature? To me, that's a big negative, though my only reasoning might be that I'm such a bibliophile that it pains me to consider otherwise. I mean, have you seen the crap on TV nowadays? I think it's an insult to great literary figures to even put things like The Real World or South Park or shows like that in the same category that we hold Jane Eyre and Gone With The Wind. It cheapens what is great to view them in the same light.

Now, don't get me wrong-I love some trashy shows and movies as much as the next person. I'm helplessly addicted to the unhealthy self-obsession I see on The Hills. I love Grey's Anatomy, and CSI, and House almost to the point of weird. Movies don't have to be huge, inspirational films to hook me...from V for Vendetta to The Toy to the South Park Movie, I am easily pleased in that way. But would I look at my very favorite episode of CSI (which is actually extremely well-written) with the same set of standards I have for a novel I read? Of course not! That episode was literature at one point, when it was written down, but when it is aired, it is expressed through the art form of acting, and that dilutes what was. It's the same with plays...you can read Romeo and Juliet, and that is literature, but when you're sitting in the audience watching it being acted out, you are receiving another's interpretation of it rather than your own.

So even though things like TV shows and movies start out as literature, if you are not the one directly interpreting what the author wrote, it stops being literature in my opinion, and takes on a new form of art.