Thursday, November 15, 2012

Miss Bart in the Past and the Present


          After watching the recent adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth I’m interested in the comparison between the two. For the most part the only difference is with the verbally intense scenes, i.e. Selden and Gus, where Lily is kissed by the men; I think this was simply added to make the movie more enjoyable for a twenty-first century audience, but if that’s so it also means a sad truth: nowadays people have no desire for the intellectual, meaningful, and much slower part of the human experience. This happens to be a major part the psychological realm as well because as technology increases people seem to become more and more attuned to the fastest route to understanding and getting what they want; although, it’s said that many TV watchers are better at multi-tasking, and even more so, that internet users are typically better at sifting out useful information in a heap of random details. So the question is: are we better off interacting and constructing our view of the world in such quickly created conjectures? It’s hard to say…
          
          On the one hand a person can’t deny the kind of intimacy reading the thoughts a joyful, hurt, discouraged, or excited protagonist offers; you don’t get the same kind of personal interaction with a film because the information coming at you is already processed in clearly defined images (one would hope). In doing so the viewer is deprived of the action of having to interact with the text, whereas a reader can compute the emotion on a much more detailed and specific level. However, films may be an advantage to some who are more akin to visual details: someone who has a high need for affect (an emotional person) may react much stronger to a sad scene in movie because all of the energy typically used for processing words and the negative emotion are ignored, and the viewer instead is forced to take in the sad feeling with every ounce of attention. In light of that, the question may seem farcical—that really neither is better than the other, just different—but I should propose that that isn’t case: I believe a textual copy is a much more valuable piece of information to obtain and process simply because by reading a person is forced to think about what is being presented. And this requirement of thoughtfully processing a book makes it, I think, a much more enriching experience; not to say a film can’t be as rewarding (there are plenty of notable aspects to a movie like beautiful music that you don’t get in reading a book). In that case I would almost prefer a novel with such intrinsic value like The House of Mirth not to be transcribed into a film: or at the very least, if it must be made into film that the movie do its source enough justice to cause the audience to go out and read the book for themselves. 

Picture Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx36dTxo9DtqExoDinqAQFnuHvWP9CbViEEDPDT29Qz4Haqs4Vd4NI-RWKOZfJP7c-f7vyE2-kddeN_LEfpq2uCFiDsuj5Xhyrt8n2oQHdIq_CCt0DYK5PZqGk57jDmdVqVLkK4DOi6qc/s1600/The-House-of-Mirth-286426.jpg

2 comments:

  1. What about audio versions (such as the one you chose)? Did you notice that the picture has an audio version by Elinor Bron, who played Mrs. Peniston in the movie?

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    1. I didn't notice at all. haha I guess though audio versions can be worthwhile as long as they represent the novel well like a great movie does.

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