Movies vs. Books

Movies and books have been at war with one another since the popularization of film.  Nobody who lives a relatively modern life has not at one point heard: "the book was better".  Although this phrase is often times a pretentious remark used only to highlight that the speaker is a "learned reader", the abundance of its use is what makes it more interesting. 

I have personally watched all of the movies corresponding to the appropriate texts we have read this year.  Minority report, although my personal favorite of the batch, does not quite fit into this war I have been describing, as the short story and the movie adaptation are so different that there is little reason to compare the two.  The best text to analyze in this case is going to be Revolutionary Road.  I am as tired of talking about this book as anybody else at this point, but it is just too good not to mention.  Although Yates has said that he developed the dialogue between the Wheelers incorrectly, it is what defines most of the desperation throughout the book, making it a somewhat painful read that is surprisingly hard to put down.  This desperation is mostly lost on the movie, with Leo looking a bit too juvenile to play his age in the book.  Revolutionary Road is not a bad movie by any means, and I will not claim that it is inferior to the book, but certain important elements, and particularly Yates' narrative voice, are missing. 

This brings me to the main point, the degree of freedom an author has with words is far greater than that of a filmmaker.  Part of the reading process is the visualization of ideas that begin as nothing more than shaped lines.  When a viewer watches a film, and particularly after reading the book that it is based on, their visualizations are shattered in most cases.  If they aren't, then the author has done a particularly good job of describing them.  When a viewer’s ideas are shattered, they tend to get angry, which is usually the origin of the dilemma.   

As to why books generally become movies, and not the other way around, little digging is needed.  It has little to do with the fact that people do not have the patience for books when a movie is available.  Filmmakers are not doing a favor to the impatient members of society by producing a movie based upon a book.  It is simply done due to a preexistent fan base that is reliable.  I will admit that book readers tend to be more loyal than moviegoers, and I am not quite sure why this is, but when you have a following that enjoys your work, and the process of making a movie is as simple as green-lighting production based upon your work, most authors will not turn it down.  I am not going to bring up greed or anything of the sort, and although I would love to discuss an author themselves wanting to see another interpretation on their work, a blog post simply isn’t the place for that.  My closing argument contends that books become movies because it is an easy project.

The Hunger Games Review

I would like to take a look at the reviews for The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. All of the reviews were found on the Barnes and Noble website, but they all come from different sources. The Hunger Games is about a post-apocalyptic World in the future where the main character, Katniss, is forced to compete in the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is an event established by the dictatorship they all live under where one boy and one girl are chosen from each district (there are 12 districts) and they are forced to go into an arena and fight to the death. Katniss chooses to take her sister’s place in the games, by volunteering. She and a boy from her district, Peeta, go to the arena to fight all other 22 tributes to the death. The Hunger Games are a widely popular television show throughout Panem (the country).

One review for The Hunger Games is found in Publishers Weekly and was written by Megan Whalen Turner. The direction she decides to take with the review is a plot summary first. She spends two paragraphs with plot summary, and then decides to analyze some key things about the book. She starts off by analyzing why the Hunger games were a televised event. She says that the fear of reality television is the fear of our generation. The fears of other generations were runaway science, communism, overpopulation, and nuclear wars. She thinks our main fear today is reality television. I do not think I agree with this. She may have just said this for the purpose of her review, I cannot think of any other reason. We have many other things to fear today, like global warming or terrorism. I think that is what defines the fears of our generation, not reality television. I have never even heard of that being a legitimate fear of this generation.

She proceeds to talk about how this World Collins creates could become a reality and we need to watch out for that. I do not agree with that either. I think the purpose of Collins writing these books was to protest war. Her father was either in a war or a protester of war, and taught Collins about peace and resistance to war. That is what I think these books were really about. I do not think we need to worry about our society becoming like the one in the book any time soon.

I think that this book review was interesting. She was definitely voicing her own opinions and not really considering many others. She had a good flow from topic to topic, and her word choice was eloquent, but I do not agree with her review. I think it is interesting how different her interpretation of the book can be to mine. I think that means the book could mean many different things to many different people. I wish she would have talked more about the actual book than the fear of reality television.

The danger of Customer Reviews

Customer book reviews personally give me mixed emotions. On one hand, they allow many people with different opinions and values to give their opinion on the books they’ve read, yet, on the other hand, there is no way to be sure about how reliable the critique is.

I chose to look at the customer reviews on Barnes and Noble online for a popular, yet seemingly controversial book that I have heard in conversation recently, Fifty Shades of Grey.  There were a wide range of reviews that people had left, from the general this book sucked/ this book was great, to the more detailed reviews that explained why they didn’t like the book because the writing “sucked” and there was no literary value in reading it at all. Then there were the reviews talking about how it was originally a Twilight fanfiction- but I am not even going to go there!

While I respect people’s opinions when it comes to books and think that they do have a right to review however they’d like, I feel that it is the responsibility of the person who is looking into the reviews to realize that the reviews they are reading are just people’s opinions.  I find it a bit disturbing that the reviews that are voted “most helpful” are, a lot of the time, the negative reviews. Does this mean that people are seeing a negative opinion and choosing not to read a book because of it?  

While customer reviews can give a general idea to a potential buyer/ reader if a book is right for them, I think it is wise for people to remember that, a good majority of the time, the reviewers are not an expert in literary techniques. A person reading reviews needs to remember that claims that the book is “crap” and that it is not good writing is not coming from someone who actually knows what, literary wise, can be considered crap.  Just because the style of narration is not good for the reviewer doesn’t mean another person might love it.  This concept also works for the positive reviews as well.

I think the main point I am trying to argue, is that even though customer reviews can be a useful tool in helping someone decide whether or not a book will be good for them to read, they also can persuade people against trying a book for the wrong reasons.  It is because of this, that I personally don’t read customer reviews, for the most part, until after I have finished a book.  That way, I am able to see other people’s opinion of the book, while having knowledge of what they are talking about in their reviews.  This can help formulate my opinion about the book, but that will ultimately come from my own personal opinion of the book.  So when is a customer actually helpful?  When a potential buyer wants to get background information about the book, customer reviews can be very helpful.  On a whole, I do not think customer reviews are a bad thing. In fact, I think they have the potential to be a great tool for people looking for information about a book that comes from people who are more at their level, unlike the experts.  However, it is when someone reads one or two negative reviews and allows that to sway their decision that causes the problems.  By doing this, many people could potentially surpass a book that they believe is a ‘masterpiece”.  

Amzon.com on The Hunger Games

For this particular post I decided to go as mainstream as I possibly could, which means The Hunger Games and Amazon.  I figure if there is anywhere on the internet to sample reviewer climate, this will be a fountain of material.  To further this idea, I went with the front page reviews (which are lengthy enough to dissect), which are the most read by those looking into this book and still giving credit to the reviewers on Amazon.

First and foremost, it is evident that these reviews come and go just as fast as the book trends themselves.  Resultantly, you can feel the author of the review trying to get as much information out the door as possible before his commentary fades into the abysmal depths of the internet.  In short, the reviews are rushed, not in content, but you feel it in the reviewer's writing voice.  Additionally these reviews tend to very quickly summarize the plot of the books and find some way to label it as well, "Love triangle" and "Boy meets girl"; plenty of things you have heard all too many times.  They also throw in hooks that tend to be used out of context of the rest of the review.  One author in particular needed something to frame the word “naked”, so he used an unimportant scene from the book (relative to his review).  The mentality of salesmen, but this is really not unexpected.  
 
This leads me to summarize this culture as one of incredibly fast pace.  These books just pour in, best sellers shift so rapidly (although the book in the top slot tends to stay there for a while) that reviewers are just trying to smash their two cents into the mix before the door closes.  I don’t think there is really much to be gained from having your voice heard on a site as big as Amazon, and the reviewers don’t do much to advertise their sponsors or anything like that.   I really do believe they work at this pace because it is impossible to be heard otherwise.  

That just appears to be the reviewer culture at least, and although I am not a part of the reader culture, I can extrapolate what they are like based on the way the reviewers attempt to reach them.  Very much of literature is now pop culture, and that is obvious in the case of what top selling books have become.  Teenage oriented chronicles about things and stuff.  That isn’t really an issue though for the sake of writing this.  What is important is the pace.  

I deduce that the readers require only a brief synopsis of what they are about to read before making a decision.  With entertainment being nearly infinite in society, cutting out all of the potentially dull material before it ever sees the light has become a popular trend.  This system developed for the readers though, who are products of this culture.  

In closing, this is a fact paced world, which was unexpected.  It makes sense in the case of movies and other forms of media, but books have always kind of been exempt from the whole pacing issue.  I suppose it was inevitable though, patience is a trait possessed only by those who once survived without constant and instantaneous entertainment.  It is not a weakness to lack it in modern times; it is just the changing operational style of the industry.

Stephenie Meyer

            Stephenie Meyer is the author of the hit “Twilight” series. There are many people that love her for who she is and what she does, but at the same time, she almost lives in infamy. Many people despise her for authoring the Twilight books.

            Stephenie Meyer has a personal blog on the website www.stepheniemeyer.com. She writes new posts every once in a while, and there are a lot of interviews that have been conducted with her. She does a good job constructing her online persona through her blog posts. There is also a lot of insight given by the posts she has made with transcripts of her interviews with people online.

            Much of her blog is actually written by her little brother Seth. I won’t be looking at that, obviously, because it isn’t her or her opinions. Many of her posts are directly related to her work. She likes to talk about herself a lot, which I suppose is normal for a blog. What I find to be interesting is her relation to her business and personal life. She talks about filming and her new books and projects and then goes into talking about some strange and close relationship she has with this girl.

            I am not sure that Stephenie Meyer actually contributes to literary culture today through her blog. “Literary culture” is just defined as the culture created by modern or classic literature. Stephenie Meyer definitely contributes to the culture through her books and the movies made from her books, but she definitely doesn’t contribute through her blog. Her blog is very sparse and contains almost nothing of value to society in terms of literary culture. All she talks about is work; she doesn’t talk about how her work should contribute to society. She doesn’t propose any progressive ideas through her blog. It is very bland and worthless in this way.

            Stephenie Meyer does, however, create a profile for herself by blogging online. She lets her readers know that she really does care about her work by talking about it all the time. This can be very important. Without her blog, maybe her readers would picture her as uninterested in them and her work. With the blog it lets the readers know she really cares about her work and what she does.

            Right now, personally, I would say that my favorite author is Suzanne Collins. I think the work she did with “The Hunger Games” was phenomenal. I think it was a very powerful book that carried many messages. It spoke to people with different views in very different and powerful ways. I do not follow her or her blog. I could not find anything about her. Also, I am not sure I want to follow her blog. I sort of have a personal picture of her and who she should be. If her blog reveals that she is someone who I thought she wasn’t, I may approach her work with certain predispositions I didn’t have before I checked out her blog.

The Legend Mr. Tyson

This post will be dedicated to one of the more inspirational figures I can think to mention in today's society, Neil deGrasse Tyson. For those of you who don't know of him, he is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. This man's résumé is one of the most impressive on this planet by far, but what sets him apart from the rest of the scientific community is his presentation. Where you'd find conceit in a scientist, Neil substitutes understanding, and this quality has effectively made him the voice of the scientific community.

 As a little introduction, I have embedded one of my favorite videos starring Neil, this is a great example of the presentation that I mentioned earlier.  



Following that introduction, I can now get to the heart of this post, the crafting of one's digital persona.

Neil carries himself much differently than the standard celebrity when it comes to the internet, most of them being far too concerned with publicity and self preservation to ever speak their mind (The few of them that actually maintain their own online personality that is).  He is willing to take jabs at those who deserve it most, often expressing his resentment toward any bad judgment call made in his field. 

Neil's virtual persona is unique in the sense that he very frequently addresses controversial topics, but receives very little scrutiny and/or bad publicity for doing so.  He achieves this through that presentation I have been talking about.  At no point will Neil make an unsubstantiated claim, which is step one toward being unoffensive, but in addition to this, he manages the tone of both his voice and his writing exceptionally well.  His statements creep just inches past neutrality, but that is the beauty of his delivery.  It is subtle enough that those looking to scrutinize won't waste their time, but to the appreciative, the message generally speaks for itself, often times more than if he had elaborated on it.

Neil is also very involved with online communities that are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, or at least appreciate it at a fundamental level.  He is a hero over at reddit where the above movie spawned the meme "we got a badass over here". Neil himself is not particularly fond of this one, as it really has little to do with the subject matter of the video, but the hand gesture is so emotional that escaping the meme was out of the question from day one.

His video reacting to the meme:

The most effective form of delivery he frequently employs is comedy, something very common among those seeking admiration on the internet. Instead of responding harshly to opposition, he will try his best to turn things into a joke (often times about himself, or another group all together). It all blends well into making someone a very lovable internet phenomena.

He is certainly more than just an internet personality, and is also one of the more intelligent people in existence, but he has taken his rising popularity much better than other related stars, and this really sets him apart.  I am very good at the internet, and I have yet to find any scientist who has handled fame as well as Neil has.  He is a very interesting fellow, and there is plenty more to follow.  I would encourage everyone to check out a few of his videos (he often guest lectures at universities).