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calimacAt 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.
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.
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Date: 2007-01-03 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 06:12 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2007-01-03 06:20 pm (UTC)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.