Artistic resonance can prove so disparate between its victims that we would do as well to speak in contrary tongues as we argue the varying (dis)merits of an artifact. Which makes these sieges on our various loves so curious. For some the fight over nothing is the joke. For others their very own worth is on the line. For one truth must have its champion. Another just wants to see the world (or their combustible friend) burn. To many the fight is the fun. For myself, it is agony.
As one so bonded to my narrative interests I suppose it should not surprise that I am as vulnerable as I am. And years of being diminished for them proves both a callous and a wound. A harmless barb thrown at a comic, the denigration of a genre, it all lands in one way or another. I’ve gotten the looks, I’ve gotten the laughs, I have gotten the dismissals, and while I will stubbornly not let it diminish my interests, it does sunder my communal capacity.
So how could I ever do this to another? Knowing what those actions cost me, how could I diminish another in the same fashion? Selfish, evil, and insecure are words that quickly climb the flagpole. I make conscious effort not to, and even when I have a dissenting opinion I attempt to couch those terms in the same way I would want to hear the opposing full and honest opinion, but I fail. More often than is excusable for one as affected as myself, I fail. The language quickly goes to arrogant dismissal and claims to authority. I repeat the things I hate.
An example, my relationship with the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings is complicated. I saw Fellowship and was overjoyed to see a vision of this narrative deeply embedded in my person. What is more, I saw hordes of others getting a window into this beauty and I thought, “Yes, they finally see why this story is worthy.” Well, subsequent movies began to erode my opinion of their adaptive prowess and the audience’s comprehension. A number of contributing factors played into this: an evolving understanding of what I loved and would pursue in storytelling, a deepening appreciation of Tolkien each subsequent read, increasing frustration with choices of adaptation and poor payoff in their changes, a realization that just because I had an investment did not mean I had to blindly follow (Attack of the Clones played a part here), increasing frustration in directorial style, and more. Very soon I found myself on the outside once more. The fire behind this was fully ignited one day in a bookstore as I listened to a large group of people discuss how much better the films were than the books. And I continue to hear this opinion expressed whether verbatim or suggested.
And so I began expressing myself. Sometimes I do it with charity. Sometimes I have the arrogance turned to 11 seeking to defend my little plot of land as if I am its final ordained paladin. It is ridiculous. It is foolish. But when a thing you deeply love is besmirched, you do stupid with vigor.
Why have I been considering this? Well, this post went a little sideways on me, but I have been considering some of my aversion to all the adaptations of things I care about (The Lord of the Rings, various comic properties, Dune) into live action. Often I bemoan this cultural assumption that live action is story’s best form despite the common refrain that the book is better. People’s feet do the talking and if you listen, even their mouths. And it hurts me; I start turning to the arrogance of calling our society illiterate minions of sapped attention and just putting on the full curmudgeon. And I play the fool, dance and all.
But, despite my protests and better-than-thou rubbish, why do I find myself opening a book from my childhood when a trailer hits this week? This is really where my questioning began. Why do I reread The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan? Why did a live-action portrayal of the Two Rivers and a Myrddraal get me cracking a book? Why am I marking November 19 in my head’s calendar as a night worthy of an event? Because I am a fool hypocrite.
There are other components to this, meritorious reasons in fact, but by and large hypocrisy looms. All of my arrogance as a “read the book!” yeller laid bare. I am the little insecure child fighting for his little island of the Weird. The show may come out, and the “it was better when”s may all come along. But I am a child flung by the winds of my fancy.
Oh well.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.”
The Eye of the World
by Robert Jordan
No comments:
Post a Comment