"Television is a young person's medium"
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“Television is a young person’s medium” lands like an offhand aside, but it’s really a quiet act of positioning. Cornwell isn’t just making a demographic claim; he’s drawing a boundary between forms of attention. As a novelist whose work depends on sustained immersion, he’s implicitly contrasting the long inhale of reading with the quick cuts and communal immediacy of TV. The line flatters neither side. It frames television as energetic, trend-sensitive, and appetite-driven, while hinting that the medium’s rewards skew toward those with time, flexibility, and a tolerance for constant novelty.
The subtext has as much to do with power as with age. “Young” here reads as shorthand for industries chasing the most lucrative attention: advertisers, networks, streamers, all calibrated to audiences they can shape and resell. Cornwell’s phrasing turns “medium” into a kind of habitat, suggesting TV thrives when it can colonize daily life, set the rhythm of conversation, and define what’s current. Youth isn’t merely the audience; it’s the logic: faster cycles, fewer rereads, more shared moments.
Context matters because Cornwell writes in an older lineage where cultural prestige sat with print, not screens. His remark echoes a familiar literary defensiveness, but it’s not just snobbery. It’s a diagnosis: television’s strength is reach and momentum, while the novel’s strength is depth and interiority. The sting is that “young” also implies expendable - shows burn hot, then vanish - whereas books, at least in the novelist’s faith, are built to outlast the season.
The subtext has as much to do with power as with age. “Young” here reads as shorthand for industries chasing the most lucrative attention: advertisers, networks, streamers, all calibrated to audiences they can shape and resell. Cornwell’s phrasing turns “medium” into a kind of habitat, suggesting TV thrives when it can colonize daily life, set the rhythm of conversation, and define what’s current. Youth isn’t merely the audience; it’s the logic: faster cycles, fewer rereads, more shared moments.
Context matters because Cornwell writes in an older lineage where cultural prestige sat with print, not screens. His remark echoes a familiar literary defensiveness, but it’s not just snobbery. It’s a diagnosis: television’s strength is reach and momentum, while the novel’s strength is depth and interiority. The sting is that “young” also implies expendable - shows burn hot, then vanish - whereas books, at least in the novelist’s faith, are built to outlast the season.
Quote Details
| Topic | Youth |
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