ruination

[calimac]

At a conversation yesterday the subject came up of people saying that a movie "ruined the book." The story was told of Raymond Chandler (or somebody) pointing triumphantly at his shelf of novels and saying, "They're still there!"

I've heard the story differently, that he looked sadly at them and said, "They're still there; that's what I have to keep telling myself."

But either way, people who say that the movie "ruined the book" are not referring to cases where the publisher removes the original novel from print and replaces it with a novelization of the movie, though that has happened a few times. They're talking about their reading experience of the book, and that makes sense: for I think most creative writers would agree that a book on the shelf might as well be dead unless someone takes it down and reads it and has it in their head.

If your re-reading or memory is tainted or mixed up with thoughts of a film version which you found unfaithful to the novel's spirit, then it's fair to say that, for you, the book has been ruined.

In response to that, someone said that's weak-minded, but I don't think so. A film is a powerful aesthetic experience involving visual art, drama, spectacle, music, and a lot of other things all at once. People are powerfully affected by films; they stick with us; that's why we see them.

I don't think it weak-minded not to be able to put that out of your head; and if it is, most people are. Deal with it. It took me about ten years to eradicate unwanted thoughts of the Bakshi film when re-reading The Lord of the Rings; if that makes me weak-minded, so be it. I was struck a few years ago reading an interview with Angelika Kirchschlager, an opera singer who prepared for the title role in an opera based on William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice by avoiding the film based on the same novel. She said, "I got the video and I started, but then gave up after 20 minutes because I realized Meryl Streep was so strong in that role I'd never get rid of the impression of how she did it." I like that word never - probably a rhetorical exaggeration; still, she said it.

Any odd cultural references can permanently change the way a work of art is viewed. When some 1930s radio producers chose the galop from Rossini's William Tell Overture to represent the Lone Ranger, they struck a cultural chord - and the overture has never been the same since.

The other way a movie can ruin a book is to get into the heads of those who haven't read the book and affect their first reading, in ways they might not even be aware of. My own experience going from a movie to a book I didn't already know is usually a disappointment akin to the one I get when a book I love is made into a movie. In either direction, the experience I first have sets up an expectation that's hard to overcome. As a child of 8 who'd seen Disney's Mary Poppins, I found Travers' books startlingly different to the point of mental whiplash. I might not have liked Travers even if I hadn't seen the film, but I don't know that, and have no way of ever finding out.

People who haven't read Tolkien, but who liked Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, usually especially praise its most Tolkienian aspects - which I think evidence that films more closely resembling the book would have been more successful - but whether they do or not, they tend to conflate the two stories into one. Which is not OK when the subject is explicitly Tolkien. Friends of mine who teach classes on Tolkien have to mark papers down for mentioning themes or scenes that occur only in Jackson, and I've seen it in some Tolkien scholarship too. (We're not talking compare-and-contrast here.)

I'm told that a lot of people going from the films to Tolkien are appreciating the book just fine. I'm delighted to hear it, but that doesn't say anything about the quality of the films. One of the top Tolkien scholars first came across Tolkien as a 12-year-old watching the Rankin-Bass Hobbit and fascinated by the map. A serendipitous encounter, but that doesn't make the Rankin-Bass Hobbit good. Frodo would never have gotten the Ring into the fire had Gollum not bitten his finger, but that doesn't make Gollum's attack praiseworthy. Just fortuitous.

Comments

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Wonderful mini-essay! Could you post a link to your at-length comments or reviews of the Jackson films?

And in the last hour and a half I wrote a somewhat shorter mini-essay of my own, about my experiences as one who came to the novel after the films, but after posting it I, tuckered pup that I am (it's after 2 a.m. now as I write) decided to delete it again in order to properly italicize the book titles in the essay, and forgetting one step in the process ended up losing the entire text. Ouch! Did the brief posting of my reply to your LJ happen to generate an email to you containing its text? If so, could you send it to me?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Can do, but unless I'm to repost it here I need an e-mail address for you, which I don't think I have. Mine should be visible on my profile page.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Thanks, David! Here's my original message:

At age 13, after two pleasurable readings of The Hobbit, I gave up on The Lord of the Rings one-third of the way into The Two Towers and never went back -- until now. About four weeks ago I bought, and I'm presently on page 154 of, the lovely one-volume trade paperback of the 50th Anniversary Edition -- and, yes, I was absolutely thrilled when I came upon your name in the "Note on the 50th Anniversary Edition".

I undertook the present reading in response to Jackson's films, which I like very much though like most people I consider them flawed. And in the first two chapters of the book I was repeatedly struck by how much more economical the storytelling was in the movies, even -- yes yes, heretic that I am, no doubt -- finding the layering on of character and incident and background in the book to be cumbersome, needlessly retarding the tale's momentum -- while simultaneously (don't lynch me quite yet!) grokking quite clearly that the film was a huge diminishment of the book and taking considerable delight in the book's prose and those same layerings of detail and incident and character, and marvelling at the profound depth of Tolkien's enterprise. And mostly I haven't had a problem with either set of reactions, even enjoyed their by-play as it were -- even as the former set has largely faded away to be gloriously displaced by the latter.

These days, of course, the lion's share of my reading is of necessity and choice committed to a certain other masterwork of 20th century literature, and I only allow myself 15 to 60 minutes of Tolkien a day. But it's fun, and enlightening, and of course I'm getting more out of it now than I was at 13, even with Jackson's imagery adrift in my brain.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Now this brings up yet another way in which books and movies can relate. If you found a novel somewhat tedious in the eye-glazing manner, or overly difficult or complex, a movie version may sometimes offer a way into that novel, by putting the plot and characters in your head so that you can see where you are. A full reading of the book, then, becomes more like a re-reading of a familiar book, and such re-readings are always easier.

I'm only somewhat ashamed of the fact that movies of 19th century novels have thus helped me read some actual 19th century novels, a branch of literature I've always found rather difficult.

Literary Imprinting: A ramble

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Back in college, I wound up in a discussion with three people about the movie Sleuth. Each of them had encountered multiple versions. One person thought the book was the definitive version, one person thought the play was better than the book or movie and one person swore the movie was the better. (I'd only seen the movie, so could follow along with no spoilers but no opinion). As it turned out, The person who liked the book best had read the book first; the person who favored the play had encountered the play earliest and the guy who preferred the movie had seen it before the others.

Less pure examples have convinced me of Literary Imprinting. Your image is set by what you encounter first. In my experience, if this is not the case than your initial art form wasn't all that good... or the second one encountered was a terrific adaption/original.

Love it or loathe it, Disney has the Literary Imprint for most of its stories. Fortunately, they do a pretty good job. Not a good job in adapting the original, but a good job using a story as a starting place to tell a related but different story. Mary Poppins remains one of my favorite movies but is completely different than the PL Travers books. I didn't imagine Julie Andrews when I read the book. Aside from Emil and the Detectives, which was an okay book and a mediocre movie, the only Disney movie I can think of where I read the book first was The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Disney version is (are you ready) the closest in spirit to the book of any movie adaption. That's not saying much, alas, but I give them props for trying.

I haven't read the Tolkien books since seeing the movies. I suppose I should read the books then get the extended versions and immerse myself in LotR. Might be fun. I predict that I won't see the movie characters in the book.

Of course, I tend to watch movies a bit differently than most other people to begin with. But I've already wandered far off your main point, I think. Let me wander back.

A subsequent version places a film/book/play/fairy tale in a context, but doesn't really change the original, for me. With few exceptions I don't hear actor's voices in books. If a film character is discordant with my imagination's eye from the book, that's a negative but doesn't ruin the movie. I can listen to music without the overlay of the tv show that used it as a theme (usually).

I think Jackson did a terrific job on the LotR movies. They're not the books, but most (alas not all) of the changes work for me. I still want him to do the appendices.

When the first movie came out, a great number of people were disappointed where the story stopped. "It ended where the book ended," I said exasperatedly. They hadn't read the books. And another large swath of sf fans had read the books and didn't like them. These people are alien. I am not concerned about their Literary Imprinting. If they like the movies, great. If students use scenes from the movies in class, I would mark them down, but not too far. (I'd probably not mark the comment as wrong, but would indicate that the student should have compared and contrasted rather than using the scene to make a point about Tolkien.)

So if someone says a movie "ruined the book", I think they're taking things too seriously. The book isn't magic, it's a story. Did Shakespeare's adaptations ruin the original tales? There are chunks of 19th century poetry that you only know about because the Lewis Carroll parodies are classic.

In a different mood I might argue from the other direction, but for now I say: Deal with it.

Re: Literary Imprinting: A ramble

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Your image is set by what you encounter first.

Generally, I agree with you. I've had many conversations where people shared opinions about a book that was made into a movie, and inevitably people like whichever version they encountered first.

re: ruination
Me, I prefer to see the movie first, if I can. For some reason, a book is far more likely to hold up better as the second experience of a story than a film is. Perhaps it's because books have more to them, last longer, or allow more room for imaginings -- or all of the above.

And then there are filmmakers like Peter Greenaway, who sees films as something to create for that medium as opposed to "illustrated texts." The Pillow Book does a pretty good job of that, I think: it's best viewed on a large screen, not a television, and overlaps visual elements that would be tough to do in a linear text.

Re: Literary Imprinting: Another ramble

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point about the order of the encounter. I read The Wizard of Oz long after I had come to love the movie, and I didn't think much of the book (although I was fascinated by Baum's book about Santa Claus). On the other hand, I read Dorothy Hughes' In a Lonely Place after having watched Nicholas Ray's great film adaptation several times, and the book was so different in tone and event that I had no problem enjoying it for its own strengths.

Going in the other direction, I reread Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas after watching the movie a couple of times, and it had no noticeably impact on my reading of the book. (I.e., I didn't read it with Johnny Depp's voice in my ear.) Likewise for A Scanner Darkly this summer, although maybe I noticed Dick's clumsy diction more -- but that could be just a change in how I read in general. I remember thinking that Dick did a better job than the movie (which I thought was quite good) of showing Fred/Bob chasing himself down the rabbit hole. As for Lord of the Rings, I read the whole of it after watching the first movie several times, and the book was still its own thing. (Hey, Bombadil, and yo, Glorfindel!) The second two movies seemed so inferior to the books to me that I was unable to enjoy them.

I guess that in general I'm not convinced that movie adaptations inevitably change how we read the books, but it's certainly an interesting question.

Re: Literary Imprinting: A ramble

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I found Jackson's films pretty good as films, ignoring the alterations to the source, but they still had major problems for me. One was all the battle scenes, which I quickly found tedious. Tolkien tends to avoid describing battles in any detail. (He conveys hardship and suffering in other ways.) The other problem was that many of Jackson's additions made no sense to me even in the context of the movie, let alone in the context of the book. I think Jackson did not sufficiently appreciate that Tolkien weaves a very interdependent thread. Pick at one skien, the whole thing falls apart.

I would go along with the "they're taking things too seriously" argument if 1) it weren't too often (not by you here, obviously) phrased as a sneering "It's just a movie"; 2) if it were applied by its advocates with equal frequency and force towards those who praise those films as masterworks of narrative.

Did Shakespeare's adaptations ruin the original tales?

Actually, yes. Teachers of 15th-century English history have to overcome a tremendous amount of Shakespearean literary imprinting. There are whole societies of people who've been spending the last 400 years trying to rescue Richard III from Shakespeare's extraordinarily vivid calumny.

There are chunks of 19th century poetry that you only know about because the Lewis Carroll parodies are classic.

Which means they'd be forgotten without Carroll, so there's no misreading to rescue them from.

Re: Literary Imprinting: A ramble

[barondave.livejournal.com]

One was all the battle scenes, which I quickly found tedious. Tolkien tends to avoid describing battles in any detail.

About the fourth time through the books, I tended to skim over the high fantasy and dig down into the action sequences. You're right about the battles per se, but he does go into absorbing detail about individual efforts. The battles seem real because we're following characters.

One fan we probably both know dismissed the third movie because the pikes were the wrong length for the battle. He had other criticisms, but that's what he went on about. I'm by no means an expert, but they looked fine by me. I thought (to myself) a) If Jackson gets it so right that you have to get down to the "bad pikes" level, he's done extraordinarily well; and b) In combat situations where magic plays an important role, traditional weapons tactic analysis is suspect.

Re taking things too seriously: Remember, I'm arguing in all directions, that one medium is different than another. The off-Broadaway musical Little Shop of Horrors was viewed (by some) as a degradation of the Corman movie. Personally, I thought it was great, though the movie made from the play made from the movie wasn't as good as the original movie. (Did you follow that? *whew*) Recently, a remake of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory came out, going back to the book title Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I might suggest both movies are better than the book, and the book is very good. Perhaps more to the point, I think the second movie informs the first. To me, they're different takes on the same story, and should be seen together in the same way that you can watch a movie with a commentary track.

Thanks for not lumping me in with other critics. Film can be a masterwork of narrative, but sometimes it's just a Popcorn Delivery Vehicle. Of course, sometimes a book is just a product tie-in. The medium is the massage (not just the message) and individual works don't always need a context for interpretation.

There are whole societies of people who've been spending the last 400 years trying to rescue Richard III from Shakespeare's extraordinarily vivid calumny

Heh. Still, this is a distinction between fact and fiction, not one of reinterpreting fiction.

Which means they'd be forgotten without Carroll, so there's no misreading to rescue them from.

We're not pontificating over misreading but ruination. The fact remains that Carroll's reinterpretation is much, much better than the originals. Just because something came first doesn't mean it's the best.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

It gets even more complex than this, because sometimes there is a dialogue back and forth.

I can never remember whether or not Sam Spade's speech about the man who narrowly escaped death, walked out on his life and set up an almost identical life elsewhere is in the film or not, because I hear it in Bogart's voice when I read the book, and remember it as in the film though I suspect it isn't. And never remember the results of checking.

I would say that it isn't so much weak-mindedness as resistance to living in a culture where this kind of dialogue happens all the time, which is your right. Though I don't share that resistance.

Is there a reason why film changes the text on which it is based in a way that, say, opera does not? Or song?

I ask this in a general sense of enquiry, not polemically.

My view about Jackson's LOTR, which I like enough that I shall be writing on them at length this year, is Bentley's response to Pope's Illiad ''A very pretty poem, but you must not call it Homer'.

[redbird]

I'll answer for myself, not calimac, and based partly on a recent dinner conversation: I think it matters that film brings in more senses than song (and I don't know whether anything of this sort happened in the silent movie era).

What I told zorinth a few days ago was that, among other factors, I'll have a not-at-conscious-level idea of what some characters in a book that matters to me look/move/sound like, which is not going to match the casting of the film. It would be possible that a filmmaker's idea of a specific character in a novel would fit mine (and that the filmmaker would be able to hire that actor); I don't think it's possible to match all the major characters. (And if you did it for me, they'd still be wrong for lots of other people.) That does lead to a thought I didn't have at the time, which is that it would be easier, if only statitistically, for a film to feel right if it was based on a book that focused on one or two characters, rather than something with as many important characters as Lord of the Rings.

When I explained this, Zorinth pointed out that I'd liked the movie The Princess Bride. I did: I saw the movie first. (rysmiel added that Goldman had an appreciation of screenplays that most novelists don't.)

Back to your question: a song based on a novel isn't likely to try to cover as much of the story as a movie would. I've no opinion about opera here, nor even about stage plays as distinct from film; I can't think of examples relevant to my personal experience of the genres in question.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The Princess Bride for me is one of the big exceptions. I knew and loved the book first, and liked the movie too. (With one major caveat: the film left out the explanation of why Buttercup agrees to marry Humperdinck.)

But then, The Princess Bride is my number one proof that it is possible for a film to adapt a book both imaginatively and faithfully. The frame story of the grandfather reading, and the boy's interruptions, are the perfect cinematic equivalent of the book's introduction and editorial notes: totally different in text, but having exactly the same spirit.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

The Princess Bride is my number one proof that it is possible for a film to adapt a book both imaginatively and faithfully.

My proof is Slaughterhouse Five. I still recall how moved I was when I later read that Vonnegut wept with joy when he first saw the film; afterward he declared it a perfect adaptation of his novel.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

And I didn't like either of them, which probably still proves the point.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Adapting a book faithfully can be done, but you have to realize it's a movie and not a book. My example of a good adaption: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Next examples are the Harry Potter movies. I thought the first one was too much like the book, and that hurt the movie. The second and third movies were better movies than the books were books... and the books are great.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Is there a reason why film changes the text on which it is based in a way that, say, opera does not? Or song?

Sure. While reading, almost everyone develops mental images of the characters, the settings, etc. I'd guess that very, very few people* imagine tunes -- melodies for poems (e.g., Tom Bombadil), much less a full soundtrack -- at the same time.

Of course, the fact that film and television remain such common media for storytelling. Someone who is immersed in the world of opera might be more likely to develop a mental stage spectacle as they read, not just sketches of people and places.

*Composers (would-be or working) and only a fraction of musicians

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

'A very pretty poem, but you must not call it Homer'.

Exactly my take on Jackson also.

Is there a reason why film changes the text on which it is based in a way that, say, opera does not? Or song?

Doesn't it? To read lyrics for which you know well the melody, and not think of that melody, takes even more iron-mindedness than not to think of the film when reading the book.

For me the most thrilling moment in the film Topsy-Turvy comes when Jim Broadbent as WS Gilbert reads aloud the lyrics he has just written for "If you want to know who we are," and does so in an entirely different rhythm from that of the tune which Sullivan, at this point in the sequence of events, had not yet composed.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

For me it's the close-up on Broadbent's face, after the sword has fallen off of the wall -- it's the "AHA!" moment, a sort of intellectual orgasm of creation, that is bestowed upon the greatest minds only rarely.

The remainder of the movie is, in my opinion, Wonderful Beyond Belief. Watch it carefully; there are moments of high comedy, low comedy, family strife, mental sickness, drug addiction, confrontation (subtly different -- D'Oyly Carte confronting Sullivan over their contract, the tenor confronting the costume designer, and the cast confronting Gilbert on the steps), of joy, of pain, of love chaste and of love lewd. And there are even moments worthy of a science fiction film, as we see people using and being introduced to new technology. The scene where D'Oyly Carte demonstrates the reservoir pen to Sullivan is perfect in this regard.

I humbly suggest that "Topsy-Turvy" is one of the greatest films of our time, if not of all time.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

One or two points in clarification:

redbird I should have been clearer - I meant songs which set particular poems that have an existence away from the song. And while clearly the song is hard to get away from when you read the poem, there are poems that have been set so often that it is in fact an interesting test of the settings which of them you remember when you read the poem. Which is probably personal taste...I suspect that the Tchaikovsky setting is the one we think of when we read the poem 'Nur wenn die sehnsuch kennt' even though what he sets is a Russian translation - this is 'None but the lonely heart' for non-German readers. It might though be the Beethoven or Schubert, just as with 'Knowst thou the land where the oranges bloom' it could be Schubert or Liszt but is probably Hugo Wolf. People who don't listen to lieder don't have this problem at all.

Just as bibliofile suggests, people involved in the creation of opera as composer, librettist or designer read texts differently to what we may as well call civilians, as do film and television creators. Those of us who write fiction, on the other hand, read with an eye to what we can learn, or even in order to echo texts and pick fights with them, or slavishly emulate them. (I talked about this in my essay on the Tolkien imitators in the Bob Eaglestone collection.)

There is a long-standing argument about translation - there is the old Italian 'traduttore/traditore' pun - translator/traitor. Certainly some of the translations which matter most are quite free ones, are 'imitations' rather than 'translations'.

In its nature, I don't think this is something that can be settled, but I suspect that the argument is one which ends up illuminating all the works of art involved. Verdi and Boito's 'Otello' is a reaction to the Shakespeare as much as a transfer of it to another medium; it makes some very important and significant changes in the process of that transfer. It both is and is not an autonomous work of art - and Shakespeare's play was, in part, a reaction to the Bandello novella on which it is very loosely based.