(no subject)
There is a question and that is: Do you prefer the (original) novel, or the stage/screen adaptation?
Further: In what order, why?
Stage or Screen adaptations of Novels are a common occurance. [In some cases a movie might 'inspire' the writing of it down into a book - I don't tend to hold much stock in these personally. I've never read one that was any good. So I'm totally excluding any consideration of THAT order of events from my consideration.]
Generally my preference has been to watch the movie before reading the book.
Whenever I've read the book first then watched the movie, I've typically been disappointed by the failure of the movie to, in my eyes, be true to the essential spirit of the book. The most notable examples I can think of have been Anne Rice adaptations - Interview with the Vampire the movie made absolutely no impact on me whatsoever, and Queen of the Damned was dreadful. A cartoon adaptation of The Rats of Nimh bore little resemblence to the events of the book and failed to capture its charm.
There are two key barriers that affect this to me:
(1) Accuracy. Once you know and are a fan of the book, there are characters and elements and events that you consider to be its essential elements. Any movie or tv show or play or musical that omits or alters something that you consider to be essential immediately evokes a negative reaction. This is a genuine challenge to the adapter of the text, since it is virtually impossible to be accurate in all respects of the adaptation. And some things that work on text do not work on stage/screen, so a too-literal translation can really fail to have a life of its own.
-> did anyone catch the recent adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice' with Keira Knightley? I don't remember it too much now, but at the time I remember thinking that it failed in accuracy, but was genuinely enjoyable as its own work.
(2) Conflict of imagination. I love reading, and I love the freedom you have as a reader to centure at your own pace, to have events and images and colours and textures and sounds and tones imagined as you choose. Then watching the movie/show means being visually presented with interpretations that are guaranteed to be different to your own imaginings, and that too usually evokes a negative reaction.
On the other hand, I don't generally find as much conflict when I watch the movie, THEN read the book. I can enjoy the movie with fresh mind, then read the book, digest its differences but generally appreciate it as a separate being. I don't expect accuracy this way around. Of course the beauty of fresh, personal imagining is lost - I have the visual memories of someone else's idea of what things should look like that forever influence the way I also imagine things.
And then there are occasions where I really don't mind too much, e.g. the Harry Potter movies. Having read the books before watching the movies, the movies lack that ability to really surprise me, or sweep me away, but they're still enjoyable. [Except for the overly emotional tackiness of some of 'Chamber of Secrets' - ugh!]
I'm currently about 1/4 through reading Les Miserables. At present I'm loving it, despite the drudgery of getting through 60 pages of writing on the Battle of Waterloo! I am measuring it up against the musical, and finding this to be really enjoyable. I enjoy reading scenes that I recognise from the musical, and grasping how the text has informed/influenced the musical. The backstory of little motifs - the character of the Bishop of Digne, the way that Fantine came to leave Cosette with the Thenardiers, the significance of the Candlesticks to Valjean, the magnitude of the decision facing Valjean in deciding whether or not to reveal himself as the true Prisoner 24601, the terror that a young 8 year old girl felt in walking in the dark, into the forrest, to fetch water - these are all things that the musical can only convey in one or two lines of lyric that are given loving attention in the book, and for me enhance the story.
There are plenty of differences - events from the book either altered or left out of the musical. I digest these with interest - there are always things lost in translating a 1200+page book into a 2 hour stage musical, and I can appreciate the reasons for the changes, appreciate the challenge faced by the adapters and the wisdom of some of their choices. [Hopefully I'll still feel like this when I get to the end!]
I also watched Wicked a couple of weeks ago when in Melbourne, and a few days ago read the book. [It was my way of taking a break from the Battle Of Waterloo.]
Lol had warned me and been utterly right - the book is starkly and startlingly different from the musical, enough so that you couldn't even really call the musical a true adaptation of the book, but an entirely separate work that has simply taken some ideas from the text as inspiration. [Btw Lol, thanks for the warning - I would have been in for quite a shock otherwise.]
And that's fine. As long as the musical is not calling itself a straight translation from text to musical stage but rather a separate work inspired by the book, I don't see anything wrong with that.
Next problem - I really like the musical. Some of the events and staging and characterisation feel really contrived, presenting a black and white sort of framing for the central premise which is not at all black and white [is a person ever really born/created evil?]. The musical certainly doesn't have the nuances and emotional depth of a Les Mis to me. But it's entertaining and fun and interesting and engaging with some catchy and occasionally great tunes, and I really enjoyed it and would listen to and see it again.
I didn't much like the book. There was some charm in the writing, and I really enjoyed the first half of it, but most of the second half to me was pointless gibberish. I wanted to know what was happening but didn't feel engaged by the character or the plot, I was instead wondering what the heck went wrong, and what was the point of any of what was happening. The exception to this was the very end, the interplay between The Witch and Dorothy. There was genuine tragedy and poignancy to that - but up till then I had wondered why Elphaba, who was so smart and such an independent thinker - allowed herself to fall to behaving like a directionless raving lunatic, spurning all opportunities to shape all of that internal frustration into a useful direction, she who had tried to be such a crusader.
So I definitely understand why the musical changed so much. And admittedly the musical feels a little more two-dimentional, a little more convenient (but significantly more cohesive) than the book.
Hmm - I may not have liked the book but I certainly provoked me! In conjunction with the musical anyway! ;)
Ok, end Katherine thought-streaming/babbling. Let me know what you think if you got this far (hurrah for you!) and could be bothered. :)
P.S. Re-engage Katherine babbling - perhaps it depends on the breadth of the text. For something as immense as Les Mis, or Lord of The Rings say, there is so much contained in that world, that it can be quite advantageous to first digest it in its entirety in a smaller, more palatable package (so a musical, or a 3-part trilogy). One can then return to the text and unpack it in all its glory and detail.
On the other hand when the text is not so grand, more easily imagined, then one can't help being disappointed if we feel that the adapter has failed to capture something considered key.
So maybe all this means is that my imagination is not so immense...
P.P.S. I have not proof-read so I apologise in advance for grammatical and spelling errors, and awkward phrasing.
Further: In what order, why?
Stage or Screen adaptations of Novels are a common occurance. [In some cases a movie might 'inspire' the writing of it down into a book - I don't tend to hold much stock in these personally. I've never read one that was any good. So I'm totally excluding any consideration of THAT order of events from my consideration.]
Generally my preference has been to watch the movie before reading the book.
Whenever I've read the book first then watched the movie, I've typically been disappointed by the failure of the movie to, in my eyes, be true to the essential spirit of the book. The most notable examples I can think of have been Anne Rice adaptations - Interview with the Vampire the movie made absolutely no impact on me whatsoever, and Queen of the Damned was dreadful. A cartoon adaptation of The Rats of Nimh bore little resemblence to the events of the book and failed to capture its charm.
There are two key barriers that affect this to me:
(1) Accuracy. Once you know and are a fan of the book, there are characters and elements and events that you consider to be its essential elements. Any movie or tv show or play or musical that omits or alters something that you consider to be essential immediately evokes a negative reaction. This is a genuine challenge to the adapter of the text, since it is virtually impossible to be accurate in all respects of the adaptation. And some things that work on text do not work on stage/screen, so a too-literal translation can really fail to have a life of its own.
-> did anyone catch the recent adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice' with Keira Knightley? I don't remember it too much now, but at the time I remember thinking that it failed in accuracy, but was genuinely enjoyable as its own work.
(2) Conflict of imagination. I love reading, and I love the freedom you have as a reader to centure at your own pace, to have events and images and colours and textures and sounds and tones imagined as you choose. Then watching the movie/show means being visually presented with interpretations that are guaranteed to be different to your own imaginings, and that too usually evokes a negative reaction.
On the other hand, I don't generally find as much conflict when I watch the movie, THEN read the book. I can enjoy the movie with fresh mind, then read the book, digest its differences but generally appreciate it as a separate being. I don't expect accuracy this way around. Of course the beauty of fresh, personal imagining is lost - I have the visual memories of someone else's idea of what things should look like that forever influence the way I also imagine things.
And then there are occasions where I really don't mind too much, e.g. the Harry Potter movies. Having read the books before watching the movies, the movies lack that ability to really surprise me, or sweep me away, but they're still enjoyable. [Except for the overly emotional tackiness of some of 'Chamber of Secrets' - ugh!]
I'm currently about 1/4 through reading Les Miserables. At present I'm loving it, despite the drudgery of getting through 60 pages of writing on the Battle of Waterloo! I am measuring it up against the musical, and finding this to be really enjoyable. I enjoy reading scenes that I recognise from the musical, and grasping how the text has informed/influenced the musical. The backstory of little motifs - the character of the Bishop of Digne, the way that Fantine came to leave Cosette with the Thenardiers, the significance of the Candlesticks to Valjean, the magnitude of the decision facing Valjean in deciding whether or not to reveal himself as the true Prisoner 24601, the terror that a young 8 year old girl felt in walking in the dark, into the forrest, to fetch water - these are all things that the musical can only convey in one or two lines of lyric that are given loving attention in the book, and for me enhance the story.
There are plenty of differences - events from the book either altered or left out of the musical. I digest these with interest - there are always things lost in translating a 1200+page book into a 2 hour stage musical, and I can appreciate the reasons for the changes, appreciate the challenge faced by the adapters and the wisdom of some of their choices. [Hopefully I'll still feel like this when I get to the end!]
I also watched Wicked a couple of weeks ago when in Melbourne, and a few days ago read the book. [It was my way of taking a break from the Battle Of Waterloo.]
Lol had warned me and been utterly right - the book is starkly and startlingly different from the musical, enough so that you couldn't even really call the musical a true adaptation of the book, but an entirely separate work that has simply taken some ideas from the text as inspiration. [Btw Lol, thanks for the warning - I would have been in for quite a shock otherwise.]
And that's fine. As long as the musical is not calling itself a straight translation from text to musical stage but rather a separate work inspired by the book, I don't see anything wrong with that.
Next problem - I really like the musical. Some of the events and staging and characterisation feel really contrived, presenting a black and white sort of framing for the central premise which is not at all black and white [is a person ever really born/created evil?]. The musical certainly doesn't have the nuances and emotional depth of a Les Mis to me. But it's entertaining and fun and interesting and engaging with some catchy and occasionally great tunes, and I really enjoyed it and would listen to and see it again.
I didn't much like the book. There was some charm in the writing, and I really enjoyed the first half of it, but most of the second half to me was pointless gibberish. I wanted to know what was happening but didn't feel engaged by the character or the plot, I was instead wondering what the heck went wrong, and what was the point of any of what was happening. The exception to this was the very end, the interplay between The Witch and Dorothy. There was genuine tragedy and poignancy to that - but up till then I had wondered why Elphaba, who was so smart and such an independent thinker - allowed herself to fall to behaving like a directionless raving lunatic, spurning all opportunities to shape all of that internal frustration into a useful direction, she who had tried to be such a crusader.
So I definitely understand why the musical changed so much. And admittedly the musical feels a little more two-dimentional, a little more convenient (but significantly more cohesive) than the book.
Hmm - I may not have liked the book but I certainly provoked me! In conjunction with the musical anyway! ;)
Ok, end Katherine thought-streaming/babbling. Let me know what you think if you got this far (hurrah for you!) and could be bothered. :)
P.S. Re-engage Katherine babbling - perhaps it depends on the breadth of the text. For something as immense as Les Mis, or Lord of The Rings say, there is so much contained in that world, that it can be quite advantageous to first digest it in its entirety in a smaller, more palatable package (so a musical, or a 3-part trilogy). One can then return to the text and unpack it in all its glory and detail.
On the other hand when the text is not so grand, more easily imagined, then one can't help being disappointed if we feel that the adapter has failed to capture something considered key.
So maybe all this means is that my imagination is not so immense...
P.P.S. I have not proof-read so I apologise in advance for grammatical and spelling errors, and awkward phrasing.