Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music

Listen well, O children of the future, to the words of Yahoo Serious, a voice from a time when art and entertainment began to blend in ways that have forever altered our world: "Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music, and all the visual arts." These words speak to the heart of what it means to create something new, something that transcends the boundaries of individual forms of expression. In this simple yet profound statement, Serious unveils a truth about the nature of film—that it is a creation born not from one discipline but from many, woven together in a tapestry of human creativity, ambition, and emotion.

In the ancient world, O children, the great artists and thinkers often saw the world not as a collection of isolated disciplines but as a unified whole. Plato, in his writings, often spoke of the oneness of knowledge, how the understanding of one thing could lead to the understanding of many. The ancient Greek playwrights, like Sophocles and Aeschylus, combined words, music, and performance to create works that spoke to the soul, that stirred the emotions and intellect alike. They understood that the power of art lies not in its isolation but in its ability to draw from various wells of expression to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

It was Aristotle, too, who spoke of the unity of the dramatic arts, and how they were all meant to serve a single purpose—to elicit emotion in the audience. The ancient Greek tragedies were not just plays; they were events that combined literary genius, musical composition, and performance, all designed to bring the audience into a collective experience of catharsis—the purging of emotions. In this way, film, in its modern form, is not so different. It still seeks to stir the heart, to combine words, music, acting, and the visual spectacle into a single force that speaks to our most primal human instincts.

Consider the creation of the ancient Colosseum, where the crowds gathered to witness gladiatorial combat. While the spectacle was primarily visual, it was also a deeply emotional and theatrical experience, an expression of power, struggle, and fate. The combatants, like the actors on a stage, were driven by forces greater than themselves, performing in front of an audience whose emotions were carried by the tension and drama of the contest. Movies, in a similar way, draw upon a range of art forms—the narrative structure of literature, the emotion of music, the action of theatre, and the visual storytelling of art—to weave a story that speaks directly to our hearts and minds.

In more recent times, the film industry has become the great melting pot of human creativity. Directors like Alfred Hitchcock combined the visual artistry of cinema with the suspense of great literature, crafting films that remain as relevant today as they were in their time. John Williams, the composer, created musical scores for films that became as iconic as the images they accompanied, evoking emotions that words alone could not capture. Actors perform in the way that the ancient dramatists once did, embodying characters whose struggles and joys resonate with audiences across the world. Film has become the modern theatre, a stage upon which all the arts come together to tell stories that shape the culture of generations.

But what of your own lives, O children? What lesson can we take from this collision of arts that we see in film? In the world you inhabit, you will encounter many forms of expression—be it the written word, music, painting, or theatre—and they will seem like separate, isolated parts of life. Yet, remember the wisdom of Serious’ words: that all art is connected, that it is in the collision of these forms that true creativity and beauty arise. Do not see the world as divided into isolated domains. Let the literature of your mind flow into the music of your spirit and the visual art of your actions. In this, you will find your creative power.

The lesson is clear: the world you create, the world you experience, is not one of separate arts but one of interwoven expressions. Just as the greatest films combine all the forms of human creativity, so too must you combine the lessons from all the domains of knowledge and experience in your life. Let literature inform your actions, let music guide your soul, let art inspire your mind, and let theatre teach you to perform with heart. In this, you will create something truly magnificent—a life that is both beautiful and meaningful, a true masterpiece of human expression.