adaptive colouration
Friday, 13 October 2006 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtI know that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
first_fallen believes that one should watch a film adaptation as though it were a completely different text to the book, and she probably saves herself a lot of irritation thereby. On the other hand, she also denies herself the experience of adaptation as a pleasure: the intertextual commentary of film on book or, in fact, book on film, a layering and deepening of significance and texture.
More than this, a good film adaptation gives you the impossible: a re-experiencing of the original text through entirely different eyes. It is my Secret Sorrow that I can never again read, for example, Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings for the first time: I can't even remember the thunderbolt pleasure of that first immersion, let alone experience it again. However, leaving aside the pretentious arena of lit crit which argues that every reading of a book is a new interaction between text and reader*, a good film adaptation at least gives you the chance to read the book again in a different way. The pleasures of film adaptation as an act of interpretation are legion, a rediscovery of the pleasures of the text in slightly different terms, and in fact quite make up for the number of times the adaptation is clearly being made by an insensitive illiterate. (Don't mention The Time Machine, or anything by Philip K. Dick).
Which brings me, again, to Pride and Prejudice. In a lot of ways it's a good sign if a film version immediately makes me want to re-read the book: I think I'm rushing to prolong the pleasure, as much as to confirm that the interpretations made by the film are actually supported by the book. But even with adaptations of which I wholeheartedly approve, I find it fascinating to consider which aspects of the film production actually stick around to colour my subsequent re-reading of the text. The Pride and Prejudice example is fresh, because I've just re-read it after re-watching the BBC miniseries: I now always see Darcy as Colin Firth when reading, and Susannah Harker as Jane, but I don't mentally replace Elizabeth with Jennifer Ehle, despite the fact that I really enjoyed her performance and thought it was spot-on in terms of the book. I keep Collins, Longbourn and Mrs. Bennet; I lose Pemberly, although the film version was beautiful, and I definitely lose Wickham. (I think my mental Wickham is played by something a lot closer to Jude Law). Same goes with Lord of the Rings: re-reading it, my mental image is of Gandalf, Aragorn and Arwen from the film, but not Galadriel or any of the hobbits. I keep the Shire and Minas Tirith, but not Moria, Lorien or Faramir**. Harry Potter films: I keep Hermione and Ron, but not Harry; Hogwarts, but not Dumbledore. Looking at the list like this, it's a bizarrely patchwork process of mental visualisation.
The interesting thing is that the overall fidelity of the film to the book, and my enjoyment of it as an adaptation, is actually quite separate to the degree to which any one character or set happens to coincide with the mental images I've generated over years of reading. Johnny Mnemonic was a really bad adaptation, but actually I still see Johnny as Keanu. (And it's not really linked to my wayward fancies with regards to actors, either: Alan Rickman adoration notwithstanding, that's not how I imagine Snape when I read.)
Above all, though, this proves that Tolkien Was Wrong. He has himself a lovely rant, in his essay "On Fairy Stories", about the impossibility of even illustrating fantasy properly, because any concrete visualisation will tie the imagination too firmly to someone else's interpretation, and The Imagination Should Be Free. I think he very badly underestimates the extent to which, to a good, solid imagination, all is grist to its mill: the bits that don't work, that conflict with the personal, internal vision, are discarded like so much imaginative chaff.
Right, enough musing. Off to be fed Thai food by jo&stv, to which I can only say, about bloody time, the withdrawal after three weeks without it has been something 'orrible. And they can't have their Pride and Prejudice back, I want to re-watch all the good bits.***
* and you can never spit in the same river twice.
** Faramir was shafted.
*** i.e. most of it.
first_fallen believes that one should watch a film adaptation as though it were a completely different text to the book, and she probably saves herself a lot of irritation thereby. On the other hand, she also denies herself the experience of adaptation as a pleasure: the intertextual commentary of film on book or, in fact, book on film, a layering and deepening of significance and texture. More than this, a good film adaptation gives you the impossible: a re-experiencing of the original text through entirely different eyes. It is my Secret Sorrow that I can never again read, for example, Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings for the first time: I can't even remember the thunderbolt pleasure of that first immersion, let alone experience it again. However, leaving aside the pretentious arena of lit crit which argues that every reading of a book is a new interaction between text and reader*, a good film adaptation at least gives you the chance to read the book again in a different way. The pleasures of film adaptation as an act of interpretation are legion, a rediscovery of the pleasures of the text in slightly different terms, and in fact quite make up for the number of times the adaptation is clearly being made by an insensitive illiterate. (Don't mention The Time Machine, or anything by Philip K. Dick).
Which brings me, again, to Pride and Prejudice. In a lot of ways it's a good sign if a film version immediately makes me want to re-read the book: I think I'm rushing to prolong the pleasure, as much as to confirm that the interpretations made by the film are actually supported by the book. But even with adaptations of which I wholeheartedly approve, I find it fascinating to consider which aspects of the film production actually stick around to colour my subsequent re-reading of the text. The Pride and Prejudice example is fresh, because I've just re-read it after re-watching the BBC miniseries: I now always see Darcy as Colin Firth when reading, and Susannah Harker as Jane, but I don't mentally replace Elizabeth with Jennifer Ehle, despite the fact that I really enjoyed her performance and thought it was spot-on in terms of the book. I keep Collins, Longbourn and Mrs. Bennet; I lose Pemberly, although the film version was beautiful, and I definitely lose Wickham. (I think my mental Wickham is played by something a lot closer to Jude Law). Same goes with Lord of the Rings: re-reading it, my mental image is of Gandalf, Aragorn and Arwen from the film, but not Galadriel or any of the hobbits. I keep the Shire and Minas Tirith, but not Moria, Lorien or Faramir**. Harry Potter films: I keep Hermione and Ron, but not Harry; Hogwarts, but not Dumbledore. Looking at the list like this, it's a bizarrely patchwork process of mental visualisation.
The interesting thing is that the overall fidelity of the film to the book, and my enjoyment of it as an adaptation, is actually quite separate to the degree to which any one character or set happens to coincide with the mental images I've generated over years of reading. Johnny Mnemonic was a really bad adaptation, but actually I still see Johnny as Keanu. (And it's not really linked to my wayward fancies with regards to actors, either: Alan Rickman adoration notwithstanding, that's not how I imagine Snape when I read.)
Above all, though, this proves that Tolkien Was Wrong. He has himself a lovely rant, in his essay "On Fairy Stories", about the impossibility of even illustrating fantasy properly, because any concrete visualisation will tie the imagination too firmly to someone else's interpretation, and The Imagination Should Be Free. I think he very badly underestimates the extent to which, to a good, solid imagination, all is grist to its mill: the bits that don't work, that conflict with the personal, internal vision, are discarded like so much imaginative chaff.
Right, enough musing. Off to be fed Thai food by jo&stv, to which I can only say, about bloody time, the withdrawal after three weeks without it has been something 'orrible. And they can't have their Pride and Prejudice back, I want to re-watch all the good bits.***
* and you can never spit in the same river twice.
** Faramir was shafted.
*** i.e. most of it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Saturday, 14 October 2006 08:54 am (UTC)That is all I wanted to say.
no subject
Date: Saturday, 14 October 2006 12:39 pm (UTC)p.s. cute icon! In a deeply disturbing way.
no subject
Date: Monday, 16 October 2006 08:17 am (UTC)Hmm, I keep Gandalf, Aragorn, Denethor, Wormtongue (forget all the rest, the chraracterisation was good). A number of the others are shaped partly by the Bakshi (I like it, OK).
I keep Ron, Snape, Lucius and McGonagal but not Hermione.
no subject
Date: Monday, 16 October 2006 10:15 am (UTC)Alas for our flourishing friendship, however. Anyone who actually liked the Bakshi is off my Christmas card list for ever. (Not that I send Christmas cards.) I must look up the Wodehouseism about the walking tour being off.
no subject
Date: Monday, 16 October 2006 11:29 am (UTC)Let it be said in my defence that the book of the Bakshi film was one of those I learned to read on. Also, while certainly flawed in certain respects it had no elves at Helms Deep.
no subject
Date: Monday, 16 October 2006 02:39 pm (UTC)< disagrees >
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2006 06:15 am (UTC)Without elves, Helm's Deep becomes a mirror of Frodo's progress and the type of the Souring of the Shire.
Just as the Hobbits "grow up" in taking the ring themselves and in expelling their enemies themselves so do humans define the Fourth Age by "growing up" and defeating the enemy themselves while the elves are ending the Third Age by leaving. I read this as a theodicy of a sort celebrating the human capacity to face and overcome hardship .
Next you'll be telling me you ike the Osgiliath side trip
And they were crypto-Moors/Ottomans/Carthaginians rather than crypto-Zulus anyway.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2006 07:01 am (UTC)You can't say that the Elves didn't fight in the Fourth Age. LotR doesn't actually show the details, but the Mirkwood lot and Lorien are fighting orc incursions at the same time that Gondor is facing off against the army on the Pelennor. The Elves may be leaving but they're also necessarily, by their very nature, standing against everything that Sauron is. They are also re-infusing the blood of Numenor with Elven strength through Arwen: in a weird sort of way, the Helm's Deep presence actually shadows that.
I spit utterly on the Osgiliath side-trip, as do all right-thinking Tolkien fiends. Maybe you'll get a Christmas card after all :>.
Sorry. Crypto-Zulus. They really were.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2006 09:05 am (UTC)I run the risk of being accused of allegorical thinking here, but LotR is a deeply Catholic text. Tolkien is concerned to produce a mythology yes, but a mythology fundamentally infused with Truth. One of which truths is the relative paucity of twinkly lights and thunderous voices in divine aid. The relative divinity of elvish aid is is for dispute but their relationship with the undying lands points in that direction.
Hmm, covered faces, riding elephants. Nothing there says sub-Saharan to me.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2006 01:16 pm (UTC)I'm thinking more of the silhouette Orcs in the Bakshi, coming over the rise with the spears and the general air of Blood River...
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 18 October 2006 06:38 am (UTC)Yes the elves are clearly still around at the end of the Third Age, but I maintain that the spirit of the Fourth Age is being shaped by these actions at the end of the Third. I'm also not saying that the beginning of the Fourth Age marks a clean end to elven influence in Middle Earth. The departure of the elvish influence begins in the Third age and continues into the Fourth.
While the archers may not be significan tactically, they certainly hearten the defenders and affect how they perceive their relationship as humans with the elves.
I don't think Arwen is a problem for my argument. She doesn't leave, but she abandons elvish life (and her partial divinity) and adopt humanity.
Sorry, was thinking of the Southrons in the new version. Have had a few discussions about racial issues attached to them recently.