On The Pretensions of Bibliophiles

"The book is always better than the movie."

You ever hear that? I know the specific individuals I can place this quote to. A colleague here, a fellow student there, a group of Asian & African Literature students discussing how the film to 'Jane Eyre' in 2011 was supposed to be worse than the original text (I saw the film, I disagree). 

And now-Hunger Games; the latest young adult crossover series turn super ultra mega blockbuster film. 

This, of course, has me ranting and raving to my friends (and consequently on this blog) on why this "Book is always better than the movie" policy is asinine. 

This, of course, has me making observations and rantings about other pretensions I often hear from fellow bibliophiles that I highly disagree with. 

"The book is always better than the movie." When I think of this statement I think of a counter posed by a great film professor I had named Tom Sauret. His quote: "Comparing films and novels are like comparing apples and oranges." 

He's absolutely right. Each work of artistic expression has it's own language (to also cite Sauret), what I like to call "the mechanism of presentation." Sauret defined film's language through four mechanisms: its mise en scene (what's depicted in the shot), its artistic use of light, its editing, and its artistic use of sound. This is all true, but film does have a very overt literary element to the presentation. Even non-narrative films like those by Stan Brakhage have a lyricism indicative of literary poetry. With narrative films it is more overt, but while it may seem easy to compare this literary element closely to prose, I feel that is inadequate. It is more useful to compare it with drama, which is more predicated on dramatic action or characters accomplishing objectives. 

Consequently a film adaptation of a work of prose focuses on carrying the story through dramatic action. This means that an element of the book that involves more of an in depth exploration of a character will probably not be fit for film. 

Now, television has begun the process of being a little faithful to source texts, a la 'Game of Thrones.' But fellow bibliophiles, you need to stop getting hurt by how a film interprets a text. Adaptation is not the same as copying, and likewise a film exists within its own rules and language and should be assessed on its own rather than as an extension of a book. 

I should also state that I am a cinemaphile.