![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 08:40 pm (UTC)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.