skip to main |
skip to sidebar
To get to school, I have to take an hour bus ride each way. I get motion sick, so I can't read on the bus, so I spend my time listening to a podcast called Literary Disco. It's a podcast with three friends talking about books, and sometimes pop culture stuff, and sometimes other stuff that has absolutely no relevance whatsoever but is still funny and entertaining.
Anyway, on one of their podcasts I was listening to a few days ago, they were talking about the excitement around books being adapted into movies. Rider, one of the members of the podcast, was asking why people are so excited to have something that can only exist in their head translate onto the screen. Shouldn't movies and books be kept entirely separate? Is it because we feel pleasure in judging the accuracy of it? Do people want to be pretend filmmakers, and that's why after watching movie adaptations they say "Oh yeah, they got it right"?
They only spent about five minutes on it on the podcast, but it got me thinking. I mean, I was just as excited as everyone else for the Catching Fire movie. But it's an entirely different experience watching an adaptation than just a normal movie. With a normal movie, you just enjoy the story and where it takes you, without knowing what happens. Part of the enjoyment of a regular movie is the plot and the discovery of plot points. In Catching Fire, for example, I knew everything that was going to happen and was even waiting for those events. Okay, up next is the poisonous fog. Then the monkeys. Oh, yeah, there they are! I definitely think part of the reason that I loved Catching Fire so much was because of it's accuracy in regards to the book.
So I think that judging an adaptation on its accuracy is part of why we love adaptations, but only a small part. The ultimate dream for fiction readers is that their fictions would become reality. Yes, what happens in a book happens in someone's head, but I think when a book is turned into a movie it becomes that much closer to being real. There are now real people, real voices, and real-looking events to associate with the fictional events of the book. I think those visual images are a big part of what readers are so excited about in regards to movie adaptations.
That's just my own personal hypothesis as to why there is always so much excitement around book to movie adaptations. What do you think is the reason for the excitement? Do you think book to movie adaptations should exist? Why? Why are they so important to the book community? Would it be better if we all just left books alone? And what did you think of Catching Fire? Or if you haven't seen it, how excited are you to see it?
OK, THIS is why I hate making a promise to blog every week. Because you get to these days where you know you don't have anything to say but nothing, and you have to post anyway.
I was going to write a book review, because those are faily straightforward but the only book I've read lately is Half the Sky - which is a good book, and I do recommend it, but non-fiction book reviews are something I'd rather stay away from (at least in public). Especially when the book is on a topic as complex as what Half the Sky was on (international development and women, in case you were wondering).
Then I thought I could talk about the latest thing I'm interested in (like I did when I talked about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries two weeks ago), but the only thing I could think of was that I watched Newsies on Saturday night with some friends and fell in love with it again. But really the most I can say about that is that it's awesome, and that every song and dance is absolutely amaziinggg.
Or I could talk about how today for some reason I was thinking of how I went to see The Hunger Games in theatres with my best friend a total of three times, which when you say out loud to people sounds really weird and then you kind of feel embarassed. Especially since you're working in a Christian school and a lot of people with a Christian background struggle with seeing past the violence in that book to see the big picture (lots of people have problems with this kind of not-seeing-the-big-picture thing, by the way, not just Christians).
But I love The Hunger Games anyway. However, because of all the different opinions and views and the popularity of THG, I find myself quite often wishing that I was the only one who knew about it and could love it in secrecy and peace, as opposed to having to feel like I have to defend my love for it all the time, or explain that I am not just reading them for the so-called love triangle that everyone else seems to be hooked on.
Books can go the other way, too. For example, I adore the book Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta. So often I wish more people I knew had read this book and fallen in love with it. Unfortunately most people have different tastes, and there is almost nothing more heartbreaking than wanting someone to fall in love with a book so you can love it together, and have them come back just to have them shrug their shoulders at you.
Well. Obviously I have nothing to say today. ;)
So, what books have you fallen in love with that you want to share with the world? What popular books do you wish you could keep all to yourself?
So. Maybe I'm just crazy, or maybe I'm just looking waaay too deep into things like I always seem to do. But, I don't know, I get kind of annoyed when I see tons of stuff about "Team Gale" or "Team Peeta" or just in general the obsession over the supposed romance present in The Hunger Games. I can't help but think that, by focusing so much on the romance, we're missing the point.
The first time I read The Hunger Games, I was horrified. It was horrifying to think about kids being forced to kill each other. That same feeling came back when I was watching the movie last night. Is it not sick that all these people from the Capitol are cheering, laughing, being sucked into the TV story of the Games when these kids are going in there to kill each other?? How can you not be thinking that there's something really wrong with this society, where the main entertainment is an annual war between kids?
There's a John Green quote, that's referring to the difference between lying and writing fiction, that I like. It highlights something about fiction that I like (and that I don't think my non-fiction loving father will ever understand).
"...The other big difference, I would argue, is that lies are attempts to hide the truth by willfully denying facts. Fiction, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the truth by ignoring facts." (Source)
Fiction can be used to reveal the truth. I think different types of books do this in different ways. Contemporary novels, for example, can reveal truths about people and individuals. Dystopian novels have such potential in this area, I think. They have the potential to awaken people to the realities of our world today.
Yes, The Hunger Games is fiction. But today's society's obsession with entertainment and reality TV is real. Violence and war in this day is very, very real. Heck, even kids killing each other is a reality in some places around the world. Lots of dystopian fiction shows us things about our world by extremizing them, or even just incorporating realities into fiction. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Feed by M.T. Anderson, and others.
It just makes me really frustrated. How can you read books like The Hunger Games and not think beyond the romance?? How can you not ask questions like "how far-fetched is that, really? Could it happen? How different are we really from the crazy entertainment-addicted Capitol citizens?" and then answering them with things like "You know, maybe it can happen. Maybe it is happening. Maybe we're not that different."
The Hunger Games is so, so much more than the romance, or the stupid "love triangle". Dystopians should, I think, make us wake up to harsh realties in our own reality, our own society, our world today. They should make us think. Every book should make us think. But I think (whoa, lots of thinking... haha) that the relationship in The Hunger Games, or any book, should not be our focal point.
What do you think? Are we missing the point of The Hunger Games?
Posts
