Buddhists in the heartland

Suekyoung Kim

I watched “Buddhists in the heartland” from NBC nightly news. The video was about the growing population of Buddhists in America especially in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The video included some exotic sounds (a song sung by monks). The orange robe that monks wear contrasts well with green lawn. The video also included several interviews and well showed the atmosphere of temple. I’ll say the video was well done. Enough amount of context that helps viewers to understand what’s going on in there was given at the right time with right visual images.

If the video were a “text only” story, readers may go through hard time to imagine what the story is telling about and how the scenes are like since the subject of the story is not very familiar to many Americans. When a video camera captures a golden statue of Buddha, the process of meditation, the spatial settings of the story, the American Buddhists in the temple, and the monks in orange and burgundy robes, viewers may understand better than just read a written form of the story. The effect of visual medium is great when it comes to a matter of telling a story. A well-made video can be excellent at sending a message since it truly reflects things it captures while written words can distort the reality or fail at fully explaining things due to some linguistic properties.