Essay for English American Cultural Study (1) class
Q: Describe one or more important differences or similarities between films
and writing,
and their consequences. Do you conclude that one of these media is essentially
weaker
than the other, in some way?
1. Similarity
Films and writing are technologically quite different from each other.
Films utilize visual
and auditory channels. Writers use written languages. However, since the
ultimate purpose
of both films and writing is communication, film makers as well as writers
need to be aware
of their audience, i.e., the people who will view what they make, or the
people who will read
what they write. In order to communicate their messages, they try to make
their ideas as
clear as possible and call up every possible methods of persuasion. Notwithstanding
that
those methods have been developed in each genre in different ways, they
seem to be
essentially similar. One of the methods is gselecting and orderingh as
we have studied in
this class. When, for example, a novelist writes a fiction about a historical
hero, he will
select episodes only fit for his message and will arrange them in the order
of his own point
of view. Another writer who has a different idea about the same hero may
write a different
story by choosing different episodes. It is same with film makers. When
a movie maker
produces a film adaptation of a novel, he will usually select only a part
of the novel and
may change the order of story in accordance with his interpretation of
the novel, and
sometimes he may change even the ending. Take the 1939 production film
of gWuthering
Heightsh, for example, it cut out the second generationfs story, whereas the 1992
production
includes that portion.
Another method is gabstract patterns and their convergence toward the epilogueh,
which is generally utilized in poems. Though movies do not have any rhyme
or rhythm,
they can effectively utilize patterns and motifs for the same purpose,
as we have observed
in gAmerican
Beautyh and gCitizen Kaneh.
2. Differences
On the other hand, it is also true that there are important differences
between films
and writing due to the technological factors:
Firstly, films can provide a huge quantity of information by visual and
auditory images
equivalent to several Gigabytes. It can stimulate our perceptions directly
by showing us
every detail of beautiful costumes, furniture, houses, landscapes, complexion
and expressions
of characters, and so on. However, films are not good at showing human internal sentiment
and poetic feelings, such as internal monologue, stream of consciousness,
and so on.
On the other hand, writing, for example, fiction novels, the quantity of
information is very
limited because the content is only a written text. No matter how hard
the writer tries to
put information in his pages, he cannot compare with screen images. But,
the writer can
represent freely internal sentiments of characters. He can also bring in
poetic and
metaphorical expressions as well.
Secondly, the play time of a film is very limited. The film makers have
to compress the
contents of several hundred page novels into two hours or so. Therefore
it will be natural
for them to cut or abridge some parts of it. And whereas films automatically
show us the
whole story without stopping while we are sitting in the theater, novels
donft. Nothing will
start unless we read them anyway. It will take us long hours to finish a whole volume.
However, we can proceed at our own speed. Accordingly it will give us enough
time of
reflection and imagination while reading.
Thirdly, as a novel is a communication with narrators controlled by the
author, it allows
us a more freedom in our imagination than films which are produced by collaboration
of
many narrators, such as producers, directors, actors and actresses.
3. Consequences
Those differences between films and writing will bring us, for example, following consequences:
Suppose that we read a certain novel, for example, gThe Scarlet Letterh by Nathaniel
Hawthorne for the first time and finish it with a very good impression
and later see a film
based on it, for example, 1995 Hollywood production starring Demi Moore.
Some of us
may be disappointed with the production. Why? There may be many reasons
for it. We will
mostly focus our attention on how the film satisfies our imagination produced
by the novel,
that is, the question of faithfulness. Someone may think that he cannot
stand this gfreely
adaptedh and gdeviated from the original storyh version. Another may think
that it lacks
a study of sin of adultery, psychological torment, presented in the original
story. It is because
these do not match their imaginations. The movie maker or director may
have a quite different
idea about the novel according to his own interpretation.
On the contrary, when we view a movie first and then read the relative
novel, we tend to
stick to the images produced by the movie and will have less free imagination
about the novel.
The impression produced by visual and auditory channel is too strong to
get rid of.
4. Conclusion
As far as we compare the original story and its film adaptation, especially
in case of literature,
films seem to be weaker than writing, because such good novels as listed
as canon are full of
interior psychological aspects of human being which are very difficult
for movie maker to
represent. However, I think that it is due to a disadvantage of a film
imposed by the criterion
of gfaithfulnessh to the original novels. Apart from those adaptations,
films can be very strong
media. They can compensate their shortage of emotional representation by
fully utilizing their
visual and auditory channels, such as the ecinematic narratorf as called
by Seymour Chatman.
I think that gCitizen Kaneh and gShaneh are as good as famous novels and
the film of gGone
with the Windh is also as good as the original novel by Margaret Mitchell.
In this point, Paul
Auster, an American author, who is also an active screenwriter, gives an
interesting statement
through a protagonist of his novel gThe
Man in the Darkh (2008) regarding the film gTokyo
Storyh by Ozu, gSome films are as good as books, as good as the best books,
and this is one
of them, no question about it, a work of subtle and moving as a Tolstoy
novella.
Jan. 20, 2010 @Shigekazu Yamamoto
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