Sunday, March 24, 2013

The One Time the Book Wasn't Better

      You have to believe me when I say that it was physically painful for me to write the above title. As I said in my previous post, books are always better than movie adaptions. Always. Always, always always.

     But, my friends, there is an exception to every rule. And this exception is the TV show Pretty Little Liars.

     This melodramatic, poorly acted teen-drama is based off of the Pretty Little Liars book series written by Sara Shepard. There are fourteen Pretty Little Liar books, plus two companion books. I've only read the first four books.

     I read the books because my friend lent them to me. These four books make a complete story-arc, however at the conclusion of the fourth book there are still unanswered questions.

     I like the Pretty Little Liars books. They are certainly no works of literature, but they are entertaining. They are fast-paced and suspenseful; the kind of books that you start reading after breakfast and finish the same night, curled up in bed. The type of book that you for fun and because, for whatever reason, you just have to know what happens to those silly but strangely lovable characters.

     So as much as I wanted to know who killed Alison DiLaurentis, I stopped at book four. Why? Because I started watching the TV show and, for whatever reason, could not stop.

     I became addicted to the show; the cliffhanger endings to each episode kept me coming back every Tuesday night. But why didn't I keep  reading the books?

     The first reason that comes to mind is sheer laziness. My friend only has the first four books, so I'd have to make the effort to get off my butt and get the other books. And why do that when it would be much easier to watch the plot unfold on TV?

     But as I think about it, I realize that laziness cannot possibly be the answer. If I had really wanted to finish the series, I would have happily gone to the library or coughed up the money for the next few PLL novels. Rather, the reason I did not finish the books is that I was not missing anything.

     As I mentioned in my previous post, the book To Kill a Mockingbird is superior to the movie adaptation because the beauty of the prose is missing. There is no play of syntax in the TKAM movie, but there are also no great syntactic moments in the Pretty Little Liars novels. Not to say Sara Shepard is a bad writer, but she is certainly no Harper Lee. Her books are entertainment, not literary revolutions. And for whatever reason, I find the TV show more entertaining than the books.

     Why the TV show is more entertaining than the books, I'm still not sure. Maybe it's because I am able to find humor in bad acting and bad screenwriting, while mediocre prose just makes me cringe. Maybe its just because Wren's British accent sounds better on TV than in my head. Whatever the reason, Pretty Little Liars is the first (and most likely only) time I was drawn more to the movie/TV adaptation than the book.

     But other than Pretty Little Liars, books always win.

     Always.

Monday, March 11, 2013

A Few Thoughts on Turning Books into Scripts

     A couple months ago, I was sitting in physics when I noticed a nearly-dictionary-sized book resting on the binder of the girl sitting across from me.

     "Watcha reading?" I asked the book's owner.

     "Les Mis," she said, "I want to read it before the movie comes out."

     Sound the sirens, everyone, books have invaded Hollywood. Or, rather, screenwriters have invaded libraries and bookstores, stealing ideas from paper instead of using that thing called "originality" to come up with interesting movie plots.

     In truth, though, it's been happening for as long as movies have been made. Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, Schindler's List, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Google "Best Movies of All Time" and you'll find that quite a few of them were based on books. Even the recent zombie-apocolypse-romance movie, Warm Bodies, is based off of a book by the same title.

     For as long as I can remember, I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of making books into movies. I have always felt that doing so shows a lack of originality on the part of the screenwriter and laziness on the part of those who would rather watch the movie than read the book.

     I think the only reason the laziness aspect annoys me is because the movie is never as good as the book. Never. Ever. Never ever ever. (Well, never except for one book series, but I'll get to that later.)

     Why is it that the book is always better?

     I used to blame the defects on the obvious things. This character wasn't included, they took out my favorite part, or so-and-so is supposed to be blonde but they made her a brunette (yes, I am directly referring to how Annabeth in the movie version of The Lightening Thief was not blonde, a detail honestly ruined the movie for me, even though there were a lot of other serious faults. But I digress.)

     Yet I have come to realize that it is not always the parts that the screenwriters leave out, or the characters they tweak that makes the movies inferior. Some of those changes can even be forgiven, if one considers time and casting limitations. (But only some changes; Annabeth's hair can never be forgiven.)

     Rather, the reason (at least for me) that books are always better, is that the beauty of the language is lost. There are just things that can be done with the written word that cannot be done on the big screen.

     I think the best way for me to explain myself is to give you an example. Here is an excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird:

  

      Just look at that. That lovely syntactic jump from one paragraph to another, where Mrs. Merriweather unknowingly completes Scout's unfinished thought while simultaneously displaying her hypocrisy. The irony and genius of it all makes me embarrassingly happy. I could go on for awhile about this passage, but I'll save that for another post.

     For now, back to my point. And the point is that you cannot have ingenious syntactic paragraph  jumps in a movie.

     They made a movie out of To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a fantastic movie and it won many awards and it changed many lives. But there is one thing missing in that movie, and that one thing is Harper Lee's writing.

     I guess, in the grand scheme of things, Harper Lee's writing is not the most important part of the book. The most important part of the book is the story itself and that story's themes. But, when you read the book and then watch the movie (like I did), it just seems like something is missing in the movie.

     And that something is the prose.

     Is it unfair for me to judge movies like this? Perhaps. If I had seen To Kill a Mockingbird the movie before reading the book, then I no doubt would have found it more impressive. As I watched the movie, I acknowledged that it was a great representation of the book, was well-written and well-acted, but I still found myself preferring the book.

      Maybe this is just The Curse of the Lit Nerd. Maybe I'm just crazy and word-obsessed. But the prose will always beat out the cinematography.

     After seeing Les Miserables with my parents, I was talking to my mom about how much I enjoyed the movie.

     "That was one of the best movies I've ever seen," I said, wiping my eyes (for the rest of the day, I could barely even think about that movie without tearing up), "I can't imagine how good the book is. I really want to read it now."

     Maybe, just maybe, it isn't so bad that Hollywood is making books into movies. I used to always hate when people would say, "Why should I read Harry Potter? I've seen all the movies." 

      BECAUSE THE BOOKS ARE BETTER!

     Ahem. Excuse me.

     I still hate it when people say that sort of thing. But let's be honest, with that attitude, would they have ever really read the book? Movie or no?

      The cynical (and therefore more likely) answer is no. But at least that person was still exposed to the story of Harry Potter and the themes of friendship and courage.

     The people who often get overlooked are those like myself and my friend in physics. The people who heard about or seen the movie, and want to read the book because of it. Would I or my classmate have wanted to read Les Mis if it had never been made into a movie?

     Maybe, maybe not. The point is, the movie encouraged us to read the book.

     For whatever reason (perhaps out of sheer stubbornness) I'm still not quite one-hundred percent okay with books being made into movies. But I'm getting there. In fact, as mentioned before, there is one exception to the rule; one book series that I prefer to see on screen rather than on paper (but just slightly, I do like the books).

     But, I've wasted enough of your time with my rambling, so The Exception will have to wait until tomorrow. Stay tuned for my next post!

     

  
 

Sunday, March 3, 2013

The Great Shakespearean Challenge: Day 41

     58 out of 1194 pages read

     Before I start talking Shakespeare, I would like to thank +Marian Allen for mentioning Diary of a Lit Nerd in her blog! I truly appreciated your kind words, Marian.

     As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been simultaneously reading King Lear and Part Two of King Henry VI. King Lear has proven a much more engaging play than Henry VI, Part Two. Though, I will say, now that I am nearing the end of King Henry VI, the plot has become increasingly more interesting.

     The entrance of the character Jack Cade has livened up the play. Cade is a "labouring man" who is leading a revolt against Henry VI and hopes to take the crown for himself (just about every character in this play wants to take down King Henry). He is portrayed as a fairly terrible person, but his strong personality has brought a degree of excitement to the play.

     So far, my favorite Jack Cade line is "Away with him, away with him! he speaks Latin!"

     Okay, I admit, the line doesn't sound that special, especially out of context. But, for whatever reason, it made me laugh; probably only because when I read it, I imagined a frustrated classmate yelling those words at my Latin teacher.

     And, of course, sitting in my second hour Latin class the next day, that line kept popping in my head. For a fleeting moment, I was tempted to jump from my seat and yell, "Away with him, away with him! he speaks Latin!" but I had a feeling that doing so would be frowned upon, despite the literary origins of the outburst.

     Still, I prefer reading King Lear over King Henry VI. Not only is the story more interesting, but the copy of King Lear that I'm reading for book club is illustrated! How do you illustrate Shakespeare, you ask?

     You don't.

    That's why the illustrations are so entertaining. Take a look:




     Obviously, someone thought it would be clever to try to pictorially represent Shakespeare's metaphors. Take, for instance, the top left image, which is a visual representation of the line "the cart draws the horse."

     Umm...I don't think Shakespeare meant that literally, but okay.

     So, as you can well imagine, it is always a pleasant surprise to turn the page and see an awkward snail, what looks to be a sketch of Oz's City of Emeralds, or a guy barbequing his friend.

     But seriously.

    What King Lear has that Henry VI does not have is Shakespeare's wit. Not to say there is no wit or clever wordplay in Henry VI, because there definitely is, but the wit in King Lear is much more searing. It's clear that Henry VI is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays; the genius is there, he just hasn't embraced it yet. Furthermore, as far as personal preference goes, my favorite literary device (yes, I have a favorite literary device; don't hate) is irony, and King Lear is practically oozing irony.

     I look forward to seeing how both plays conclude. I have plenty of reading to catch up on, so I will live you with this parting image, courtesy of my King Lear book: