mymetalphantom (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mymetalphantom) wrote2009-10-28 04:21 pm
mymetalphantom) wrote2009-10-28 04:21 pm
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A somewhat facetious essay
I'm pretty sure this doesn't address anyone on my f'list particularly, but the whole idea of adaptations was whirling around my brain a bit and I was forced to put my thoughts on the subject into order.
I should start off by saying that I am neither angered nor excited by the upcoming Holmes film and will probably not see it until the craziness has died down. I know, right? My lack of curiosity has surprised even me!
Also I should say that literature and film was my specialist area when I was at uni, so I do sort of know what I'm talking about (emphasis on the words sort of) XD
It's meant to be fun, so apologies if I come across as a total gob-shite.
Why it’s okay to love the adaptation
My own brush with snobbery
I remember a few years ago, fresh out of school and at sixth form college, me and a friend of mine were talking to a casual, older acquaintance about Sherlock Holmes, a discussion which had been fun and intelligent for the most part, Holmes fans being of a particularly friendly and supportive nature. Yet as the conversation went on we, somewhat inevitably, ended up talking about Inspector Lestrade, where my friend gracefully allowed me to take the floor in the conversation. “I really love Lestrade,” I said with girlish enthusiasm, to which the casual acquaintance snidely replied, “oh, was that before or after Granada?”
Well, I’ll be honest that came as a bit of slap in the face and left me stunned and, for once, quite speechless. I was too young and nowhere near clever enough or rather ‘knowledgeable’ enough to fight my corner so I think I blushed and stammered, “Ah, well, well, I do like the character in the books as well.”
Of course, I could kick myself now for having given such a pathetic answer to such a wilfully stupid question, but for a while there I did doubt my legitimacy as a Lestrade fan, something which still lingers within me to this very day. I have become something of a self-apologist, pre-empting my discussions with a sort of disclaimer, detailing how the Lestrade in my head is and will probably always be Colin Jeavons. Even though I now know better, there is still a residual doubt as to whether I can be technically classed as a Lestrade fan, having allowed myself to be so influenced by a mere work of adaptation.
I know now that this was just another part of the virulent literary snobbery that exists in Western culture (I, of course, cannot speak for those outside my culture). And it is snobbery of the worst kind that places one form of mass entertainment above another and holds in contempt those who might dare to say “but I kinda liked the film!” At the time of that conversation I was keen to project myself as a member of the rising ‘intellectual working class’, so I was also keen to advocate my preference for the source novel over the adaptation in order to fit in amongst those who had been raised to actually hold this opinion. I didn’t realise that I was doing myself a disservice, not to mention the rich world of ‘culture’.
Now I do know better, and now I want to tell everybody that it doesn’t matter. You can love the adaptation if you want.
Getting some perspective
Let’s start with some perspective. There is pretty much no such thing as an ‘original’ story. Everything in our lives shapes our perception of the world; life experiences, favourite songs, favourite books, television programmes, films, stories you heard as a kid, historical facts...etc. You know that. You can only ever write from your own knowledge (which is why a lot of my writing leaves out descriptions of smell, but that’s another story for another day). Good writers will extend their knowledge by researching, crime authors follow true crime for instance, thus proving my point; those crime stories, although sometimes horrific or fantastical, are not original stories. The whole point of fiction is to adapt this mixture of cultural influences into a narrative. It’s actually very clever but it is not something new.
Take Shakespeare. Shakespeare is a good example mainly because it is considered heretical to doubt the man’s genius, and anyone who does so is considered the worst kind of philistine. Yet this undoubted genius was a great adapter. He took age old spoken stories and turned them into plays. He took historical accounts and twisted them to his own cultural ends. Richard III could not be considered historically accurate by anyone’s imagination, but it took the anti-Plantagenet Tudor era by storm. Propaganda one might argue, but no less genius for it. Is there really that much difference between this and the sensationalising of more modern literary works by the film makers? To take the new Sherlock Holmes movie for example (just to stick to topic); yes it’ll be sexed-up and either it will turn out to be an inspired bit of adaptation or it will be utterly ridiculous, (the jury must remain out on that until we see it) but will that be any different from Shakespeare hijacking Richard III’s (admittedly dodgy) rise to power for his own nefarious purposes?
Author, author!
But, I hear people argue, Sherlock Holmes has an author! What about the author?
Well authorial intent doesn’t really count for much, does it? I think trying to second guess a Victorian author’s intention is an exercise in futility in itself, especially this author, whose sole intent was ‘to make money’. To put the authorial intent up there as something to be stuck to religiously puts you the reader in the back seat, being dragged along by a tyrannical author imposing their world view upon you. You will interpret anything the way you want to. Society will interpret anything the way it wants to.
You could, and many do, argue that Sherlock Holmes is clearly a homosexual, and you could pick out all of those lovely little bits that back up your claim. And you are not wrong. You're not right either, though. You merely hold your opinion and if you can back it up then all the best to you. Would the author really have intended that? Probably not. Do you care? The very fact the vast majority of Holmes fans I hang out with happen to be 'Holmesslashers' implies that, beyond the obvious respect for the characterisation as the author has written it, they don’t really care that much about Sir Arthur’s intentions. That’s okay, I don’t either. It has become common practice to legitimise an adaptation by stating your intention to ‘go back to the book’, something which Guy Ritchie did assert when he first spoke of his own Holmes project. It’s a fallacy, though. Okay, so you’ve picked out those bits of characterisation from the book, but you’ve cherry-picked, haven’t you? Everyone chooses to focus on those aspects that appeal most to them and reject those that don't. To use a personal example, I never (or rarely ever) mention religion in my own works of fanfiction. Why? Because I’m not comfortable with that so I would rather leave it out, leave it to others who might be more comfortable with it. Yet there is canonical evidence for religious beliefs. See, cherry-picking. My personal hero is not a religious person. Canonically, I am wrong. Yet, I don’t care.
I kinda like the film
So this leads me nicely into an actual discussion on adaptation and brings me back to my story from the start of this piece. Again it needs perspective. I would say at a rough guesstimate that I probably started reading Holmes canon in 1997, when I was eleven or so. My introduction to Granada’s Holmes did not predate this, even though the start of the series predates my birth by a few years, so I was therefore aware of it, but there was probably only a gap of a few months between my reading the canon and viewing this adaptation; hardly any length of time for an eleven year old to develop any deep sense of the canon.
Now to the issue of Lestrade. Like the majority of the peripheral characters in these stories he isn’t described with any great clarity. He is described sometimes as looking like a rat and sometimes like a bulldog, two creatures that, I would argue, look nothing like each other. Perhaps my young self can be forgiven for being dense on this issue but really only Sherlock Holmes is described in any detail, which may account for why the image of him leapt to my brain and has remained staunchly unmovable ever since. Although, to say that his appearance was conjured out of nowhere is a false premise; although not based on any one specific person he undoubtedly would have been formed from the back catalogue of images in my brain of people I have come across in my lifetime. Yet the other characters I had a little more trouble with, so inevitably I sought inspiration from around me and Granada’s Lestrade, quite without my permission, established himself as my overriding view of the character.
Is that wrong? Leaving fangirly notions aside for a moment, does that make me any less of a fan because I refused to see the brilliance of the character before I allowed myself to be carried away by a mere actor in a mere television programme?
Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. I have a great love for the books and now my reading pleasure is enhanced by the fact that finally I have some idea what that character looks like, what his mannerisms are, how he talks. It’s perfectly normal to draw conclusions from your experiences and in the 20th and 21st centuries our experiences have included films and television.
And now I’m going to be really heretical. What if you happen to prefer the adaptation to the original? What if those little moppets from the eighties prefer Granada’s Holmes, what if, heaven forefend the little moppets of 2009 prefer Guy Ritchie’s film? What if, shock!, our Russian friends prefer Vasily Livanov’s friendlier, more jovial Holmes as opposed to the cold, detached, borderline savant of the books?
Well...so what if they do? So what if they prefer their culturally more viable product? Soviet era Russia is a far cry from Victorian Britain, as is 1980s’ Britain or 2009’s Britain. These stories have to alter with the change in culture, because they would be of no relevance and of no interest otherwise.
Taking the case of LenFilm’s version from Russia as a case in point, consider the fact that all mentions of Holmes’ drug dependency have been removed. Does this make the version less canon? Yeah, I think so, a little. Does it make it a poor adaptation? No, not at all. Drug use is an incredibly contentious issue and if, in a certain culture, it is considered far too taboo a practice to assign to a television hero then I don’t mind if you leave it out. Hollywood certainly did. So, there is a good case to be made for leaving certain aspects out to make it more accessible to a culturally different audience.
Hijacking Science
Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that adaptation is the key to survival. Those species who adapt to changes in their environment are the species that survives.
As I mentioned above, these stories have to be altered during adaptation in order to appeal to their audience. This is the whole point of adaptation. Just as the spoken tales of our ancestors were adapted into written stories so must we, as the aural/visual generation, adapt these written stories into films or television programmes, if we consider them important enough to preserve. To preserve these stories we must be prepared to release ourselves from the shackles of literary snobbery which claims that the world of the aural/visual is uncouth and inferior. Which of the many spoken tales survived do you think; the ones that were allowed to be written down, or the ones that people fought for to remain spoken?
A cursory glance at the Internet Movie Database revealed that there have been 132 Holmes adaptations (film/TV/PC Games), including the new one due to be released this December and excluding the very excellent Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (an adaptation of an adaptation if you will) and also excluding adaptations that don’t have “Sherlock Holmes” in their title or subtitle. The earliest of these dates back to 1905 and 105 of these predate my birth. We are surrounded by them and even the oldest Holmes fan alive today has not known a world without a Holmes adaptation. Everyone gets annoyed at Basil Rathbone wearing his deerstalker in the city (and yes, that’s just stupid, isn’t it?) but we must not forget that because of this potent image that has infiltrated our culture, there is probably not a single person in the Western world who has no idea who this Sherlock Holmes guy is. That’s quite important, isn’t it?
So, even if the new film due out this year upsets 99 per cent of the original fans, if it inspires a handful of people to embrace the world of Sherlock Holmes, then it has served its purpose admirably.
I didn’t like having my status as a fan questioned simply because I happened to like a certain adaptation and just because I occasionally place it alongside the literary canon. I wish I had known then what I know now, because I would have called the person out and shown how fatuous their snide comment was.
Conclusion
We need adaptations. Oh, by all means slate any adaptation that you think is rubbish if you really must, if you really cannot sit on your subjective opinion then have at it, but don’t indulge in any fantasy that suggests that because you have been a fan for a long time your opinion is an objective one. As you read the book for the first time you created your own adaptation in your mind, coloured by your perception of the world and influenced by your experiences. We are never objective as far as literature is concerned. As annoying as I personally find it we cannot be the arbitrators of adaptations just because our canon!love predates it. We can debate, certainly, and I will be happy to debate the relative merits of adaptations with you until we grow old and weary of the conversation, but still I would only ever be able to give you my subjective opinion; an opinion which would be neither right nor wrong.
There is a comforting side to this though. No, really. It means that it’s okay to love the adaptation. I’m not wrong for allowing my perception of Lestrade to be wholly influenced by Colin Jeavons’ performance. You are not wrong for thoroughly enjoying LenFilm’s productions, despite their somewhat cuddly Holmes and lack of drug use. You are not wrong if you happen to really love a particular adaptation and even to use it to further your enjoyment of the canon as a whole. It all just adds to the rich diversity of life and to try and undermine adaptation would be to indulge in an intellectual snobbery which we should be working to stamp out.
So, tl;dr? You know what guys? It’s okay to love the adaptation.
I should start off by saying that I am neither angered nor excited by the upcoming Holmes film and will probably not see it until the craziness has died down. I know, right? My lack of curiosity has surprised even me!
Also I should say that literature and film was my specialist area when I was at uni, so I do sort of know what I'm talking about (emphasis on the words sort of) XD
It's meant to be fun, so apologies if I come across as a total gob-shite.
Why it’s okay to love the adaptation
My own brush with snobbery
I remember a few years ago, fresh out of school and at sixth form college, me and a friend of mine were talking to a casual, older acquaintance about Sherlock Holmes, a discussion which had been fun and intelligent for the most part, Holmes fans being of a particularly friendly and supportive nature. Yet as the conversation went on we, somewhat inevitably, ended up talking about Inspector Lestrade, where my friend gracefully allowed me to take the floor in the conversation. “I really love Lestrade,” I said with girlish enthusiasm, to which the casual acquaintance snidely replied, “oh, was that before or after Granada?”
Well, I’ll be honest that came as a bit of slap in the face and left me stunned and, for once, quite speechless. I was too young and nowhere near clever enough or rather ‘knowledgeable’ enough to fight my corner so I think I blushed and stammered, “Ah, well, well, I do like the character in the books as well.”
Of course, I could kick myself now for having given such a pathetic answer to such a wilfully stupid question, but for a while there I did doubt my legitimacy as a Lestrade fan, something which still lingers within me to this very day. I have become something of a self-apologist, pre-empting my discussions with a sort of disclaimer, detailing how the Lestrade in my head is and will probably always be Colin Jeavons. Even though I now know better, there is still a residual doubt as to whether I can be technically classed as a Lestrade fan, having allowed myself to be so influenced by a mere work of adaptation.
I know now that this was just another part of the virulent literary snobbery that exists in Western culture (I, of course, cannot speak for those outside my culture). And it is snobbery of the worst kind that places one form of mass entertainment above another and holds in contempt those who might dare to say “but I kinda liked the film!” At the time of that conversation I was keen to project myself as a member of the rising ‘intellectual working class’, so I was also keen to advocate my preference for the source novel over the adaptation in order to fit in amongst those who had been raised to actually hold this opinion. I didn’t realise that I was doing myself a disservice, not to mention the rich world of ‘culture’.
Now I do know better, and now I want to tell everybody that it doesn’t matter. You can love the adaptation if you want.
Getting some perspective
Let’s start with some perspective. There is pretty much no such thing as an ‘original’ story. Everything in our lives shapes our perception of the world; life experiences, favourite songs, favourite books, television programmes, films, stories you heard as a kid, historical facts...etc. You know that. You can only ever write from your own knowledge (which is why a lot of my writing leaves out descriptions of smell, but that’s another story for another day). Good writers will extend their knowledge by researching, crime authors follow true crime for instance, thus proving my point; those crime stories, although sometimes horrific or fantastical, are not original stories. The whole point of fiction is to adapt this mixture of cultural influences into a narrative. It’s actually very clever but it is not something new.
Take Shakespeare. Shakespeare is a good example mainly because it is considered heretical to doubt the man’s genius, and anyone who does so is considered the worst kind of philistine. Yet this undoubted genius was a great adapter. He took age old spoken stories and turned them into plays. He took historical accounts and twisted them to his own cultural ends. Richard III could not be considered historically accurate by anyone’s imagination, but it took the anti-Plantagenet Tudor era by storm. Propaganda one might argue, but no less genius for it. Is there really that much difference between this and the sensationalising of more modern literary works by the film makers? To take the new Sherlock Holmes movie for example (just to stick to topic); yes it’ll be sexed-up and either it will turn out to be an inspired bit of adaptation or it will be utterly ridiculous, (the jury must remain out on that until we see it) but will that be any different from Shakespeare hijacking Richard III’s (admittedly dodgy) rise to power for his own nefarious purposes?
Author, author!
But, I hear people argue, Sherlock Holmes has an author! What about the author?
Well authorial intent doesn’t really count for much, does it? I think trying to second guess a Victorian author’s intention is an exercise in futility in itself, especially this author, whose sole intent was ‘to make money’. To put the authorial intent up there as something to be stuck to religiously puts you the reader in the back seat, being dragged along by a tyrannical author imposing their world view upon you. You will interpret anything the way you want to. Society will interpret anything the way it wants to.
You could, and many do, argue that Sherlock Holmes is clearly a homosexual, and you could pick out all of those lovely little bits that back up your claim. And you are not wrong. You're not right either, though. You merely hold your opinion and if you can back it up then all the best to you. Would the author really have intended that? Probably not. Do you care? The very fact the vast majority of Holmes fans I hang out with happen to be 'Holmesslashers' implies that, beyond the obvious respect for the characterisation as the author has written it, they don’t really care that much about Sir Arthur’s intentions. That’s okay, I don’t either. It has become common practice to legitimise an adaptation by stating your intention to ‘go back to the book’, something which Guy Ritchie did assert when he first spoke of his own Holmes project. It’s a fallacy, though. Okay, so you’ve picked out those bits of characterisation from the book, but you’ve cherry-picked, haven’t you? Everyone chooses to focus on those aspects that appeal most to them and reject those that don't. To use a personal example, I never (or rarely ever) mention religion in my own works of fanfiction. Why? Because I’m not comfortable with that so I would rather leave it out, leave it to others who might be more comfortable with it. Yet there is canonical evidence for religious beliefs. See, cherry-picking. My personal hero is not a religious person. Canonically, I am wrong. Yet, I don’t care.
I kinda like the film
So this leads me nicely into an actual discussion on adaptation and brings me back to my story from the start of this piece. Again it needs perspective. I would say at a rough guesstimate that I probably started reading Holmes canon in 1997, when I was eleven or so. My introduction to Granada’s Holmes did not predate this, even though the start of the series predates my birth by a few years, so I was therefore aware of it, but there was probably only a gap of a few months between my reading the canon and viewing this adaptation; hardly any length of time for an eleven year old to develop any deep sense of the canon.
Now to the issue of Lestrade. Like the majority of the peripheral characters in these stories he isn’t described with any great clarity. He is described sometimes as looking like a rat and sometimes like a bulldog, two creatures that, I would argue, look nothing like each other. Perhaps my young self can be forgiven for being dense on this issue but really only Sherlock Holmes is described in any detail, which may account for why the image of him leapt to my brain and has remained staunchly unmovable ever since. Although, to say that his appearance was conjured out of nowhere is a false premise; although not based on any one specific person he undoubtedly would have been formed from the back catalogue of images in my brain of people I have come across in my lifetime. Yet the other characters I had a little more trouble with, so inevitably I sought inspiration from around me and Granada’s Lestrade, quite without my permission, established himself as my overriding view of the character.
Is that wrong? Leaving fangirly notions aside for a moment, does that make me any less of a fan because I refused to see the brilliance of the character before I allowed myself to be carried away by a mere actor in a mere television programme?
Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. I have a great love for the books and now my reading pleasure is enhanced by the fact that finally I have some idea what that character looks like, what his mannerisms are, how he talks. It’s perfectly normal to draw conclusions from your experiences and in the 20th and 21st centuries our experiences have included films and television.
And now I’m going to be really heretical. What if you happen to prefer the adaptation to the original? What if those little moppets from the eighties prefer Granada’s Holmes, what if, heaven forefend the little moppets of 2009 prefer Guy Ritchie’s film? What if, shock!, our Russian friends prefer Vasily Livanov’s friendlier, more jovial Holmes as opposed to the cold, detached, borderline savant of the books?
Well...so what if they do? So what if they prefer their culturally more viable product? Soviet era Russia is a far cry from Victorian Britain, as is 1980s’ Britain or 2009’s Britain. These stories have to alter with the change in culture, because they would be of no relevance and of no interest otherwise.
Taking the case of LenFilm’s version from Russia as a case in point, consider the fact that all mentions of Holmes’ drug dependency have been removed. Does this make the version less canon? Yeah, I think so, a little. Does it make it a poor adaptation? No, not at all. Drug use is an incredibly contentious issue and if, in a certain culture, it is considered far too taboo a practice to assign to a television hero then I don’t mind if you leave it out. Hollywood certainly did. So, there is a good case to be made for leaving certain aspects out to make it more accessible to a culturally different audience.
Hijacking Science
Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that adaptation is the key to survival. Those species who adapt to changes in their environment are the species that survives.
As I mentioned above, these stories have to be altered during adaptation in order to appeal to their audience. This is the whole point of adaptation. Just as the spoken tales of our ancestors were adapted into written stories so must we, as the aural/visual generation, adapt these written stories into films or television programmes, if we consider them important enough to preserve. To preserve these stories we must be prepared to release ourselves from the shackles of literary snobbery which claims that the world of the aural/visual is uncouth and inferior. Which of the many spoken tales survived do you think; the ones that were allowed to be written down, or the ones that people fought for to remain spoken?
A cursory glance at the Internet Movie Database revealed that there have been 132 Holmes adaptations (film/TV/PC Games), including the new one due to be released this December and excluding the very excellent Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (an adaptation of an adaptation if you will) and also excluding adaptations that don’t have “Sherlock Holmes” in their title or subtitle. The earliest of these dates back to 1905 and 105 of these predate my birth. We are surrounded by them and even the oldest Holmes fan alive today has not known a world without a Holmes adaptation. Everyone gets annoyed at Basil Rathbone wearing his deerstalker in the city (and yes, that’s just stupid, isn’t it?) but we must not forget that because of this potent image that has infiltrated our culture, there is probably not a single person in the Western world who has no idea who this Sherlock Holmes guy is. That’s quite important, isn’t it?
So, even if the new film due out this year upsets 99 per cent of the original fans, if it inspires a handful of people to embrace the world of Sherlock Holmes, then it has served its purpose admirably.
I didn’t like having my status as a fan questioned simply because I happened to like a certain adaptation and just because I occasionally place it alongside the literary canon. I wish I had known then what I know now, because I would have called the person out and shown how fatuous their snide comment was.
Conclusion
We need adaptations. Oh, by all means slate any adaptation that you think is rubbish if you really must, if you really cannot sit on your subjective opinion then have at it, but don’t indulge in any fantasy that suggests that because you have been a fan for a long time your opinion is an objective one. As you read the book for the first time you created your own adaptation in your mind, coloured by your perception of the world and influenced by your experiences. We are never objective as far as literature is concerned. As annoying as I personally find it we cannot be the arbitrators of adaptations just because our canon!love predates it. We can debate, certainly, and I will be happy to debate the relative merits of adaptations with you until we grow old and weary of the conversation, but still I would only ever be able to give you my subjective opinion; an opinion which would be neither right nor wrong.
There is a comforting side to this though. No, really. It means that it’s okay to love the adaptation. I’m not wrong for allowing my perception of Lestrade to be wholly influenced by Colin Jeavons’ performance. You are not wrong for thoroughly enjoying LenFilm’s productions, despite their somewhat cuddly Holmes and lack of drug use. You are not wrong if you happen to really love a particular adaptation and even to use it to further your enjoyment of the canon as a whole. It all just adds to the rich diversity of life and to try and undermine adaptation would be to indulge in an intellectual snobbery which we should be working to stamp out.
So, tl;dr? You know what guys? It’s okay to love the adaptation.
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Also, you most definitely did not come across as a gob-shite. XD
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Yeah, I said at the beginning that the message doesn't really apply to my f'list, because you all seem to get the point of adaptations, so this was a little bit like preaching to the choir but still *shrugs* It's fun to sound off occasionally :)
And it's not so much that I'm ashamed of the Lestrade love, merely that I something wonder how legitimate it is. Unfortunately my reading of canon and my viewing of Granada happened so close together that I will never know how my feelings would have developed without Granada's input.
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Retelling stories allows you to keep those bits you think are important enough to preserve and reject those bits you think aren't. That's good, that's how our attitudes towards certain issues changes, which I think we all agree is (mostly) a very good thing!
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I'll add another example to this very well-written essay that goes beyond 'the original' and one that, I admit, I've fallen prey to as well: academic snobbery. It happens in every field. Doctors tend to hate medical dramas (my father can't stand to watch "House, MD" and tends to spoil it for everyone by guessing the mystery illness by the end of the first half and then loudly bemoaning how silly it is that no one else is getting it.
And I can't stand the show "Bones". This is my bias, but I am a forensic anthropologist, and that hologram table bugs the crap out of me. I know a lot of crime scene investigators and medical examiners who hate "CSI", but the fact is that these shows, despite their glaring factual flaws, bring attention and interest to our fields. They will eventually, perhaps, enrich the field by bringing in a new generation of professionals whose input and perspective may have never come without that window afforded to them by a rediculous television show. And that's a good thing.
No matter how stupid that hologram table is.
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The only character I liked was the director of the museum in season one. He was fabulously stuffy, and I loved him for it. I was really convinced he worked in a museum and loved him some dusty old stuff. He even reminded me of some of my professors.
So of course they got rid of him one season in and replaced him with Miss-Kitten-Heels. Grrr. Stupid show.
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You make an interesting point about academic snobbery but, alas I'm unqualified to comment really. The day they make a television show about a film and literature nerd, I'm sure I'll be on hand to point out the inconsistencies XD
I do though, have many friends who are well on their way to becoming doctors (of medicine and many other disciplines) because they watched a lot of sci-fi shows when they were kids. They sit and watch them now and cringe at the bad science but they still kinda love 'em.
I suppose that to watch most films/television and read most books etc., you have to accept some creative license as far as "truth" is concerned. Take into account The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Now, I thought that book was pretty badly written, but a fun book and had a great premise. What really pissed me off was when Dan Brown went around saying that it was all fact and all true. He was trying to legitimise his story but really, he was just lying to gullible/less knowledgeable fans and that really annoyed me.
Still though, back to the main point, it's all right for you to get annoyed with those sorts of shows. It's fine that you don't like Bones because at least you're aware of the "value" of these shows. No one should be expected to be objective, just understanding.
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And it is snobbery of the worst kind that places one form of mass entertainment above another and holds in contempt those who might dare to say “but I kinda liked the film!”
YES. Oh, thank you! This is the most wonderful thing to hear, because I've always wanted to believe it, and I have, but as always, to have people I respect believe it too makes it much easier.
Shakespeare is a good example mainly because it is considered heretical to doubt the man’s genius, and anyone who does so is considered the worst kind of philistine.
Yes again! And it's so - gaah! - frustrating, because he's human, for heaven's sake. Take Titus Andronicus: fascinating play? Yes. Immature writing? Also yes. I love TA like whoa, but it's a young playwright's play. He can't be expected to have come out of the womb brilliant!
And your actual point, aside from my blathering, is brilliant. Shakespeare did adapt, and people don't freak out about what he did to Richard III! Well, one of my friends, a medievalist, actually does, but it's a kind-hearted sort of freaking. She loves poor Richard, so she does.
the jury must remain out on that until we see it
THANK. YOU. I have a long rant about the movie and the pre-viewing reaction to it that I'm not sure I'll ever post (seeing as I only just remembered having written it!) and it upsets me more than I feel is logical that some of the fans haven't been waiting to see it before judging it.
Well...so what if they do? So what if they prefer their culturally more viable product?
*HUGS you* Again, THANK YOU. Bwah! Yay! And the whole conclusion - again, love. So much love.
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And your Lestrade-love is no less significant than anyone else's
You're right of course, but it's an anxiety that comes from being told that adaptations are of little value to culture. It's hard to rid ourselves of prejudices when they've been forced upon us in this way.
This is the most wonderful thing to hear, because I've always wanted to believe it
You can believe it, my dear! A lot of new adaptation theorists hold this opinion, so hopefully the tide is turning on literary snobbery. Of course, it needs enlightened academics like your good self to hold true to the belief ;)
because he's human, for heaven's sake
I personally really dislike The Tempest. For subjective reasons. I found it dull and I disliked ALL of the characters. Does that mean I think less of Shakespeare? No, because I love a lot of his other plays. I'm just asserting some common sense, something sadly lacking in academia.
Hee hee, I know a few people who cringe a bit at Richard III. The Richard III society is doing some sterling work trying to redress the balance. But yes, you would never get an old school academic criticising Bill Shakespeare for being just an adapter, but that's what he was. And a bloody good one at that!
The reaction to the film that we haven't actually seen yet is VERY annoying. Like I said, I'm oddly blah about the whole thing, but maybe that's because I'm just a little weary of all the nonsense that always accompanies films like this.
And my comments on Russian Holmes follow on the heels of having to defend my position on it, on another person's journal. I'm never sure why the Russian's are criticised for preferring their version when it's been created for their specific culture. Of course they're going to prefer it!
Partly to do with Britain (understandably) wanting to assert authority over a British product, but also perhaps, a knee-jerk negativity to all things Soviet era? Maybe, maybe. Again, a question for someone more qualified to comment than I am.
Anyway, that's enough of me being a nerd.
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I haven't been around enough to see anybody criticizing it. That's just silly, as you say! Of course the majority are going to like something better that was created specifically for them to like! I'm sure there were some Russian fans who were upset at the changes to the canon, just like there always are.
I've only come across people who don't want to watch it because they don't think they'll be able to get past the fact that it's in Russian. Some of them the fans have managed to win over, though, and they ended up adoring it too :D
Partly to do with Britain (understandably) wanting to assert authority over a British product, but also perhaps, a knee-jerk negativity to all things Soviet era?
Yep, could be. I think I might be too young (or I grew up without any particular influence) but I never heard the cold war "Russians are the enemy" thing. I had to have Rocky and Bullwinkle explained to me because I didn't realize Boris and Natasha had anything to do with politics XD
I love your nerdness! It makes for the best posts!
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These stories have to alter with the change in culture, because they would be of no relevance and of no interest otherwise.
I think the originals will always have relevance, and that it's important for a true understanding to attempt to approach them from as close to authentic a perspective as possible. Sure, I'll never be a Victorian--and thank goodness for that!--but the closer I can come to it when reading the Canon, the deeper my understanding will be, and therefore, the more insightful and authentic my own interpretations will be. Interpretations are important, but the originals will always retain 100% of the original information, which no interpretation can, and will therefore never lose their relevancy.
no subject
Very good point. I agree that an adaptation that ignores the original is more an original work than an adaptation, definitely no arguments there and like I said we can discuss the relative merits of each adaptation and I think we can draw a few conclusions as to how 'canonincal' (for want of a better word) an adaptation is.
As to relevance; to speak for a wider selection of people, well as much as it pains me (no really, it kills me dead!) some people probably don't find a lot of relevance in Victorian novels. As much as we in these parts love the original stories, some people will just not be that interested. So the films have to appeal to those people too (because we must not forget that, although an artform, the movie industry is a money making machine as well). The new film (from clips I've seen) seems to be much faster paced and more dramatic than the stories in canon, appealing to the action-adventure audience of the 21st Century.
Yet for every little moppet that bounces out of the cinema squealing about how kewl that film was, there will be some people genuinely interested in canon, and that will be in no small way down to the fact that the film appealed to them on a base, cultural level and will probably in some way colour their perception and interpretation of the canon.
And thus the story has been preserved. I imagine this has been happening ever since those early adaptations, and the canonical stories are still going strong. Many novels don't survive time, as they are rejected by a culture whose morals and values have changed. I know it annoys a lot people, but I actually find comfort in the fact that even people who've never picked up a Holmes book in their life, could indentify him by his deerstalker and pipe. It means that he still carries some cultural capital and is therefore, far from dead.
As for interpretation...well unless I'm the reincarnation of ACD (unlikely, I'll admit), I'm pretty sure I'm not privy to the original information, I only have my interpretation to go on. I cannot guess at his intentions when he wrote a certain thing in a particular way, I will merely interpret it in accordance with my world view. It's why literature lovers meet and discuss books, because interpretation is fascinating and actually says a lot about the reader.
Anywho, I hope that made a little bit of sense, lol. I know that when I'm in full flow I've got a pretty smart mouth on me. It comes from smart-arsed people, like the one from the beginning of my essay, trying to prove they're cleverer than me. Hence my call to arms a the end! XD
no subject
That may be why the new movie bothers me less than it could. It bugged the hell out of me when Holmes didn't have grey eyes (yay new poster!), but on the other hand I have no problem with the focus on fighting and action because yes, those are THERE in the Canon, no matter how relatively minor a part they play. The Holmes/Irene bothers me more as Watson SAYS "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler," and how much more explicit does it get? But on the flipside, as much as I'm not at ALL fond of their Lestrade from what I've seen so far, I have to admit he's not a completely uncanonical portrayal. Those aren't the Canon traits I choose to focus on in MY interpretation of the character, but they're there.
I think my big point about interpretations and originals, though, is that it bugs me a lot that our culture doesn't do more to stress the difference. Both are valid, both are wonderful, but they're not the SAME. I suppose I'm temperamentally inclined to view the original as the "true" character, though I think there's some reason for that, but I can't view someone who's seen the movie three dozen times but never cracked one of the books as a Sherlock Holmes fan. They're a fan of "Sherlock Holmes" the movie, and yes, that's a good thing, but it's not the same thing. BUT, I think you're absolutely right that the movie will drive new people to the books, and that's wonderful. And even if it didn't, the existence of the movie would still be wonderful. Just not as much for our corner of the fandom.
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