Entertainment Media and Education

Entertainment media is often criticized for being overly addictive and time-consumer that drains valuable mental energy, leaving the viewers psychologically barren when it comes to real life activity. Sadly, there are indeed more than a few validity to such arguments. Despite of such censures, this media had often come up with ways to include knowledgeable materials for it's purposes as well. Here we will be looking at a few of the examples across various forms of media.

For simplicity, this article shall mainly observe the contents that engage audiences by putting priority in their adaptive narratives. That means documentaries, biographies and reality shows that are made for the explicit purposes exploring a particular subject, shall not be included.

Movies:

For a long time, history was a major inspiration for movie-makers. Though their accuracies had often been unavoidably questionable, there are some that did deliver their stories within a more meticulous narrative. Tora Tora Tora (1970),  Schindler's List (1993) and Lincoln (2012) are some of those films that managed to be faithful to their individuals, time and events, even while taking liberties.

Some of the examples of other format subjects, include Jurassic Park (Paleontology), Lorenzo's Oil (1992, Biology), The Matrix (1998, Philosophy), The Martian (2015, Astronomy and Agriculture) and The Disaster Artist (2017, Filmmaking).

TV Series:

The lengthy durations and multiple episodic narrative which allows a series to delve even further into the specifics, shows have the capability to deliver tutelage better than their bigger screen counterpart.

 From historical lines of series we have ones such as Vikings (2013 - 2020) depicting the era of Viking raids, Chernobyl (2019) encapsulating the disastrous incident of the namesake nuclear power plant and John Adams (2008) recalling the titular POTUS. From others, we have Breaking Bad (2008-2013) centered around drug dealers but also with intricate display of chemistry and notable enough, The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019), where the central characters peek into different aspects of science as part of their geeky gimmick.

Music and Musicals:

While it's not unknown for musicals to take cues from scientific elements to amp up their juicy lyrics or music, there are some bands that have gone up a notch. One of such ensemble is Sabaton, who had made their career by making songs out of historical battles.

Among musicals, one could look no further then the recent and popular Hamilton (2015), centered around the titular founding father Alexander Hamilton which burst into popularity shortly after it's release.

Animations and Animated Movies:

Animation, often inaccurately labelled the medium for underage audiences. Although it does have it's it's share of "teaching while having fun" shows for much younger viewers.

Among the science fiction shows, there are Adventure of Jimmy Neutron the boy Genius (2001) and it's subsequent series (also 2001), Dexter's Laboratory, Osmosis Jones (2001) and also it's series adaptation, Ozzy and Drix (2002-2004) or the more adult oriented Rick and Morty (2014-ongoing) have had several instances of real life scientific nods, whether in theory or in practice, for their plot purposes.

Video Games:

Video games, being the interactive media they are, have had wide prospects to insert tutoring aspects inside themselves. Whether it's a game of puzzles, answering a quiz or finding a hidden items amongst a pile of others, video games revel in creating challenges that test the players. There are also games that had went and faithfully created historical settings, or even used those eras for their scenarios, like Age of Empires and Crusader Kings. Simulation games had both worked as a good time and teach people about the respective elements (flight, business, city-building, farming etc).

Anime and Manga:

Anime, and the Manga they are often adapted from, gradually came to rival the western media in terms of popularity and influence. This is no short reason due to the influx of creative ways each of the individual series depict their stories. Yes, that also includes educative materials.

One of the biggest recent examples come from Doctor Stone, which is set in an Earth several millennia after a planet wide petrification of humanity, centers around the main characters using science to retake the world. It features a surprising abundance of practical science that isn't hard to apply at home using the depicted processes and materials.

Another, Golden Kamuy, is set on the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war. It focuses on the rich and diverse lifestyle of the indigenous Ainu culture, as well accurate details regarding contemporary elements, from weapons, technologies to political, economic and cultural scenarios.

Youtube:

 Among Youtube contents, this aspect had benefited the most in terms of creativity. Channels such as Oversimplified or Overly Sarcastic Production display historical instances using humorous but mostly accurate narrative. Zefrank's humor and Tierzoo's allegory to real life as a massive multiplayer game server, can be aiding while focusing on biology and zoology. Creator of Game Theory and Film Theory, Matpat uses real life science to speculate about several of the elements of many of pop-cultures. Similarly, Extra Credits, which started out by teaching the arts of game-making, have gradually expanded into the other aspects, namingly history, literature, myths and politics. 

Others:

Radio programs, literature, and other media have often had notable instances of education, even if the intention of the format was to entertain first. With the introduction of the internet, even ones such as memes had been used simplify something as complex as a math integration.