Is Challenging Entertainment Still Entertainment?

I have tried to read Anna Karenina for six years. Since I think you and I can be honest with each other, I admit: the effort has been inconsistent. I picked it up twice in high school and again a year after graduation. A friend I admire insisted that I would love it: “As soon as you get into it, you will not be able to stop.”

I got into it. I stopped.

I’ve bought copies of it in two states and two airports. I have checked it out of four libraries. One time, I stayed in bed and read the first two hundred pages. Later, I packed it in my precious carry on cargo, skimmed the first few paragraphs, and lost it somewhere in London. I own it on my Kindle. A month ago, I brought it to Mexico. Through it all, the book has looked very nice on my bedside table.

This month, I swear I am finally going to do it. Graduation is imminent, my mother once told me that Kahn women do not quit, and I like what I’ve read so far. I like the plot — the frustrations and the anguish and the complexity. I like how the book makes my mental muscles ache.

But such intellectual gymnastics can be intricate and demanding and exhausting. And so as I do on my way to the gym, I procrastinate. Chances are, you do, too.

New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum took to Twitter earlier this week to ask over 72,000 people, “Is there such a thing as difficult TV?” That is, is there such a thing as entertainment that poses a challenge?

According to her followers, mhmm, there is: The Leftovers and Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Girls and Louie, which “both undermine narrative momentum.” The Affair. Ulysses. Bleak House. Jazz music.

So many of the cultural commodities constructed to amuse us do not “satisfy [and] clarify every step” they take. They force us to do some of that work ourselves. And it hurts so good.

You can blame the appeal of difficult television and severe literature and hard sounds on social machismo. Like dumb boys with dumbbells and devotees of watery elixirs, humans want to compare what they can endure. It’s Darwinian. We stare into ruptured eardrums on Girls and the bleak landscapes of New Orleans on Treme in order to say: We can survive that. But when I am in the mood to be generous, I know the attraction is more complicated.

There is a reason we watch and read and listen to that which challenges us. We seek out the narrative torture on purpose. Not only because we like to flex our aesthetic muscles for friends and enemies, but also because these sights and sounds are practice. Real life does not have a plot. Sexual tension is seldom so neat and tidy. Lena Dunham knows that. And she makes it almost impossible to watch.

But do you stare anyway? Do you watch difficult television or read books that make you sweat? Which ones? And when do they become chores? Do we need to finish what we start? Is worthwhile entertainment the new boiled vegetables? Should I bother with Anna Karenina? Will I win a Fitbit when I do? Let’s talk about it.

Original images via Netflix and Concrete Playground.