Reading Rage
18 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Arts, Books, Film, Harry Potter, Opinion, Twilight
Now most people agree that art is subjective. What appeals to one does not appeal to another. Yet somehow I end up feeling that I should definitely not like what I like.
For instance I love the Twilight books , and I am not a teenage love sick girl. I am in fact a twenty three year old married (young) woman with a degree in the arts. Yet when I admit this (yes it feels like a confession) I feel scorn. No I am not pelted with olives and thrown out of buildings, but I can see I have lowered in the listeners estimations. They then say ‘Oh I can’t bear the Twilight films’, and follow the exclamation with a damning comment about the screenplay/casting/direction, as if that should settle the matter.
For some reason people will judge a book they have not read by the film they have been forced to see. Other examples of this misjudgment include Harry Potter, and my favourite book; The Time Traveller’s Wife. Now I have also admitted to liking the Harry Potter and Twilight films. I enjoy them for recreating the atmosphere I so wished to delve into when I first turned the pages of my beloved books. But people who have NOT read these books have no right to judge ME for enjoying them, as my enjoyment stems first from the original literature, rather than from the film as a thing in and of itself.
As most book lovers know films versions are often disappointing. Anyone who has read The Time Traveller’s wife and then seen Rachel McAdams hideously miscast as Clare feels this pain acutely. What was a beautiful, original and haunting novel with a believable depiction of love and a terrifyingly tragic portrait of grief is turned into a shadow of its former glory. A long lost sister of the Notebook, rather than the one of a kind tome that flew out of bookshops as if bewitched.
Yet from now on when I declare it as my all time favourite work of fiction, the response will most likely be ‘Wasn’t that a Rom-Com with Eric Bana? Yes I saw that, It was AWFUL’
I will not be responsible for my actions thereafter.
