Getting to Know You

This article on the adaptation of Russian "literary classics" to tv concludes:

One argument that producers brought forward when defending TV adaptation of classics a few years ago, when the trend had just started, was that teenagers who would have never read a book would at least watch a TV series based on it and get acquainted with literature classics in this way. And that argument seems to be valid. The rationale of those who argue that contemporary TV adaptations of classical novels are vulgar and simplistic may be right to a certain degree. But they are definitely missing one important point: literary classics have become part of pop culture and should be viewed in that way, not like something sacred.

What exactly does it mean to "get acquainted with literature classics" by watching a tv show? Simply to know that they exist? This was for a long time one of the implicit justifications of "exposing" students to great works of literature--make them aware that these books exist so that they might know where the "best" examples of human expression can be found, might be able to follow a conversation in which these illustrious names are mentioned, or might even--gasp!--one day read the books and take them seriously. But I doubt that E.D. Hirsch understood "cultural literacy" quite to mean that "literary classics have become part of pop culture and should be viewed in that way, not like something sacred."

I've tried as earnestly as I can to understand the logic behind the notion that it's good that "teenagers who would have never read a book would at least watch a TV series based on it." This is also a long-standing justification both for making adaptations of "literary classics" and for showing such films and programs to students as either a supplement to or an outright replacement for reading the works in question, but it has never made sense to me. It's based on the assumption that "literary classics" (specifically works of fiction) are stories about characters and that, since these visual media are able to tell stories about characters, if you faithfully tell the stories and present all the characters you've adequately reproduced the book. (Or even if you haven't, it's not a big deal because viewers will still get "acquainted" with it.) While it's true that some "literary classics," especially those written in the 18th and 19th centuries, have stories and characters, surely it isn't the case that they are conveyed to us in the same way from "classic" to "classic." What gets lost in the adaptation is narrative voice, fluctuations in point of view, subtleties in characterization, shades of description. Most importantly, what gets lost is the encounter with language. And this is unavoidably true even in adaptations that are not "vulgar and simplistic."

To believe that adaptations are acceptable substitutes for the works adapted is to believe that the experience of watching a film or television show, even the most intelligent and well-wrought shows, and reading a novel are essentially the same. Or at least the differences are negligible enough that the "essence" of the work is still getting through. It seems to me an implicit devaluation of what is actually the distinguishing feature of fiction--its status a patterned prose, as writing--to maintain that it can be translated into visually realized images without sacrificing its essence. A given adaptation of The Master and Margarita may work on its own, visual, terms. It may even be more successful than another adaptation at capturing something recognizably "Bulgakovian" in the treatment. But it still isn't The Master and Margarita, and viewers of the film who don't become readers of the novel still don't really know what it's all about.

A good television or film adaptation can certainly provide pleasures of its own, but they are the pleasures available in that medium. A good film requires careful attention, just as does a good novel, but the kind of attention being paid is not the kind required by fiction. It can provoke us into immersing ourselves into the mise-en-scene (in a way perhaps analogous to painting but not continuous with it, since the image moves) or force us to keep track of the information conveyed through editing, but this is ultimately the work of the eye and ear keeping pace with appearances. We have to look and listen. Fiction requires a kind of looking, but even our visual registering of word, phrase and sentence, and the way these elements arrange themselves in a "style" distinctive to the author we're reading, is more an internally-oriented mental process than an externally-oriented process of sorting sights and sounds (although a kind of "listening" is also certainly involved, as language manifests itself to our mental "ear"). Our imaginations then have to finish the job the writer has started. We have to mentally transform the words, phrases, and sentences into the "actions" or "thoughts" or "emotions" of the "characters" we agree are being brought to a kind of life. (Films, of course, do this work for us.) And we have to keep straight the way in which the characters and their actions are being presented to us in a particular sort of formal arrangement, an arrangement that is again mostly a phenomenon of our mental engagement with the text. Sometimes--as in some modernist and postmodernist fiction--this formal arrangement overrides our immediate connection to the characters and the actions and has to be processed before we can even comprehend the characters and actions.

I don't say that fiction is superior to film (I have a background in film study and criticism myself), but to the extent it makes the kind of demands on us I have described, it certainly is different in its aesthetic and psychological effects. For a "literary classic" to finally be appreciated, it has to be appreciated as literary. It probably doesn't do any harm to people (as opposed to literature) when they're allowed to be "acquainted" with literature through film, but I can't see that it does them much good, either.

Comments

[jonathan]

I used to watch Masterpiece Theater as a kid and I went on to read Hardy and James as a direct result. I can't be the only one either. I'm sure more people read Jane Austen because of the recent boom in Austen film adaptations too. So at best it does lead people to the books themselves. At worst it's entertainment of a different sort and does no discernible damage, unless one could prove empirically that it resulted in FEWER people reading those books. Your argument that watching such fare isn't a substitute for reading is unimpeachable, though.

[Daniel]

My first experience of Crime & Punishment was with a (I think) BBC miniseries as a young boy. I'd only ever heard of the book before that. It gave me a sense of the narrative plot, and the setting, all that. Can't say whether it did me well or badly.

[Lloyd Mintern]

While it seems the content flow is a one-way street from books to film, the more important story I think is how film influences the form and structure of literature, and dictates the imagination of younger writers altogether.

[Jacob Russell]

Just what is it that becomes "part of pop culture?"

Something stripped of its source--or any source. Neither film nor book. And this, evidently, is its real meaning--that it become common coin.

A cultural equivalent of money. "Not something sacred" What does that mean? --creating an abstract artifact, cut loose from the gold standard, leaving its value measurable only in terms of its currency of exchange.

But unlike money, exchange can be made only with other equally empty cultural artifacts. Value is assigned when the artifact is given some temporary utility as a function for selling a real commodity, political or commercial.

Jane Austin's novels are not degraded by the films that draw from them, but by our according them value because they have demonstrated such success in selling films.

Every reviewer who pumps that bit of wisdom into the septic tank of pop culture, reinforces exactly this transvaluation--or devaluation.

In "pop culture", words don't create or destroy value: they reveal what we choose to value or disvalue.

If there is no escape from ideology, as Zizek demonstrates--what ground to criticize this diminishment?

None, but in the absence we find in the works themselves. In their Lack... In the silence that is their well of meaning--tainted, to be sure, by our very act of drawing it forth, but granting us, in that absence of meaning, a freedom we cannot own or subsume--but only live and respond to, again and again.

[Jacob Russell]

Though it was a struggle--and took years of study, I did manage to get through Austin in English.

[Jacob Russell]

Make that, AustEn...

ESL problems, yaknow...

[Jacob Russell]

On literature in translation, I'd also recommend Milan Kundera's Die Weltliterature, in THE CURTAIN.