Film has a literary form – the screenplay or the teleplay in the medium of television.  The screenplay is as valid a literary form as the play which is presented in a theater, a similar venue.  It is not coincidental that the words “play”, “teleplay”, and “screenplay” have one word in common.

     For teachers and lovers of literature, one should be familiar with the concept of literary elements: setting, structure, irony, characterization, symbolism, metaphor, and theme.  Theme is the unifying element; you cannot define something as a symbol without first defining the theme.  Metaphor is the most difficult to identify because it requires a leap of faith assuming that metaphor is not thought in conventional terms (i.e. a comparison not using the words “like” or “as”) but as a comparison between two seemingly unrelated things which is again thematically related.