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Chapter 9: Adaptation Across Media
"Adapters, in other words, if they are at all good, are raiders; they don't copy, they steal what they want and leave the rest." The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative
, p. 112."For a critic, then, to judge a work on the basis of its faithfulness to the original, it is important to determine whether faithfulness was in fact the goal. Otherwise, one should judge on other grounds." Id., p. 113.
When it comes to books, I love adaptations! I love new tellings of fairy tales or classics. I love when the authors get all creative on favorite literary characters. (Well, usually I do.) Even if it's not done particularly well I tend to give the author a little credit for the courage to try. Then, when it comes to movies, I find I tend to not like it when it doesn't stick to the book. I hold them to different standards. And, now that it has been brought to my attention, I have decided that it is stupid for me to do that. It's time for me to watch movies with the same open mind with which I read books. And I think sometime in the future I need to write about some of my favorite book adaptations. I'm putting that on my "ideas" list!!
4 comments:
I just love adaptations too! Re-tellings of classics, movie or TV shows based on books, etc. I especially like the books to movies. :) So much so that I opened a Yahoo group called Books Into Movies but unfortunately I just stopped messing with all my online book groups because I was becoming overwhelmed with those and the blogs too.
Ladytink ~ I thought of you when I wrote about this! It is easy to get overwhelmed with all the social activities we can get involved in online. I try to just stick to the blogs.
Lezlie
I think that if I know the adaptation is going to be very different from what I'm used to, I'll like it better than if I'm expecting the two to be the same. I can't think of an example where a movie was adapted in a totally different manner than the book, but otherwise I tend to compare the two and find fault.
Trish ~ That's a good point. If I know it's going to be different, I let let it stand on its own.
Lezlie
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