Video or book?

Should you let your children watch the television/film version of the text books they are reading at school? This was a letter a reader asked Chris Woodhead in Sunday Times News Review's Q&A last week. As you might expect, the former Chief Inspector of schools was pretty damning on the subject. I remember frantically watching Anthony and Cleopatra (Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, of course) the night before my English A Level.... I was a bit hazy on the plot, still am, probably. I harramphed and said of course kids should be made to read the book, not watch the video but my colleague disagreed. She'd been watching her 13-year-old daughter struggle with Pride and Prejudice. Having loved the book herself she was insistent that the daughter read it before watching Colin Firth flashing his breeches. But the daughter was getting no-where. Then in one of those motherly u-turns we all make she found herself watching the Pride and Prejudice mini-series (promising it would just be the first episode, honest). The girl loved it. And from that moment on has had her nose buried in the book. She can't get enough of it. It was if the video suddenly meant that she 'got it' , she saw past some rather arcane language (the beginning isn't the most engaging if you've no idea what to expect)  and loved the book which she otherwise might have given up on. So should we use Colin Firth, or Cranford, or Liz n Rich to get kids interested in literature? What do you think?

Comments

[Jane]

Re LD - sounds as if the author put in his message anyway if the baddess got smallpox etc. Still doesn't really stop the whole book being lit-porn really, though.

As for book burning, no, I'd burn loads on content - starting with porn and gore. Ditto for films as well.

Re Torrents of Spring - well, glad you're going to give it a go, WB, but I have to say it's yonks since I read it, and the main character is a 'tricky chap' so to speak, not always likeable. But I did find the lyrical descriptions of the Russian landscape beautiful, and the ending is a tear jerker. (Plus, great thing about Turgenev, unlike Tol and Dos et al he wrote blissfully SHORT novels!)

[Lazy Mummy]

Hm.

J - "HHIS" is "Hangs Head In Shame", (think of it as the text equivalent of the "embarrassed" emoticon).

Interesting that Jane could be a potential book-burner and that of course made me wonder if I could be a book-burner. Possibly, if we were burning on quality of writing, not subject matter. So maybe all those ghastly appallingly written thrillers & mills & boons, or Heat/Hello/OK magazines. But actually, probably not, because if people want to read tat, it's up to them, isn't it?

On the other hand, I understand Jane's desire to shelter herself from depressing subject matter in books/films. Since having a child, there are certain types of book/film that I've had a harder time with because I take these things to heart that much more. I definitely go for happier films these days, more light-hearted comedies, but I tend to think of that as a phase in my life, not a moral choice (though my favourite movie of this year was Children of Men, which was v. dark indeed, imo).

[j]

duh triple post but should say- in the end they all die anyway, or most of them.

[j]

forgot to add Jane, the author doesnt deplore anything. LD is a collection of letters. There's no narrative by the author.

[j]

Jane- I think the film doesnt because it is simplified to sell more seats. LD was written a long time ago.

It's a subtle book. The evil women is generally considered to be a portrait of the writer: him, stuck up mountain supposedly in charge of batallion in Napoleonic wars but no orders to do anything, her, women disempowered in C18th France. A very feminist thing for a man to think of in those days.

To start with, she gets all the witty one-liners and gets badly treated, so we quite like her, though she's a semi-professional courtesan. Then she fixes on young Sophie as a pupil, just like Emma in Jane Austen fixing on Harriet. Sophie is up for anything, including scre*ing her music teacher behind the harp, so she's a great pupil. But the women loses control of her.
So she sets up this cruel torture of a devout women, as a sort of highly specialised decadent pleasure- seducing someone who will break her heart over her god as well as a man. Her boyfriend agrees to seduce her, but falls in love.

In the end, the virtous woman is forgiven and goes back to her husband, the guy emigrates, and the evil women loses her beauty and power to small-pox.

If none of that came over in the film, then there's a good reason why we shouldnt write off a book if we only saw the popular adaptation for modern business.

[Wonderbra]

Just to say, Jane, I've ordered Turgenev, to further my foray into Russian lit on your say so and KM, I've been enjoying Dombey on R4, you persuaded me to give it another go. Hurray for AM book club!

[Jane]

J - if the book of LD really does deplore the behaviour of the two baddies, then that certainly makes it a better book in my opinion - I wonder why the play/film didn't? (begs the question of course!). To an extent the 'disapproval' was tacitly there at the end of the play, but I'd hardly call it spelled out clearly. However, maybe the author of the book was only 'deploring' it to get it past the censors etc!

I still think though that, even with clear authorial disapproval and 'moral message' I wouldnt't want to read it because I would just be depressed by its baddies' behaviour. In a way, though at the opposite end of the moral spectrum, although I know I 'should' watch Schindler's List or Sophie's Choice, I've never been able to make myself do so. Just too depressing. Probably clear moral cowardice on my part!

[J]

Lazymummy no problem. (what's HHIS?)

Jane, they changed the end of LD for the play and the film so you will have missed out on the moral message. Also, the language of the book itself makes a lot of points and again you don't get that onscreen- not trying to be prissy as I know not everyone wants to read Jane Austen etc. Perhaps that alters your view.

but I am interested to see that you openly confess to being a would-be book-burner- bears out what Margot was saying.

[J]

Lazymummy no problem. (what's HHIS?)

Jane, they changed the end of LD for the play and the film so you will have missed out on the moral message. Also, the language of the book itself makes a lot of points and again you don't get that onscreen- not trying to be prissy as I know not everyone wants to read Jane Austen etc. Perhaps that alters your view.

but I am interested to see that you openly confess to being a would-be book-burner- bears out what Margot was saying.

[Jane]

"Because I have honestly never met anyone who thought that there were some subjects unsuitable for works of fiction."

It's unsuitable in the sense of being pointless to my mind! Because, as I say, unless it's based on actual case studies, it's just a work of the author's imagination, and what help is that in trying to understand the horror she depicts. It seems such a waste of time to read a fictional account, however 'entertaining' it might be, of such a terrible, horrific thing.

As for Liaisons Dangereuse, I'd rather not have seen the play either - went with a chum when it was all the rage in London - as it is just so incredibly depressing and sordid. What is the point of reading books about things you don't like?? There are vast numbers of books I wouldn't touch with a pair of surgical gloves, however much they may be considered 'literature'. If every copy of LD were destroyed and ceased to exist in any form, the world would be a better place. There are LOADS of books I'd be the first to chuck on any book-burning fires, as they are simply 'bad' for humanity.

[Lazy Mummy]

Oh, fair point. I obviously didn't read her post closely enough. *HHIS*

[J]

Lazy mummy my point was that she wrote the book off without having read it, but criticises others for the same thing.

I dont disapprove of films at all, my posts were about whether you need to have given moral approval to the characters before you can enjoy the book. I said not and gave LD as an example.

[Lazy Mummy]

Oh come on, J! I don't agree with everything Jane says and in general/in principle I don't think a film/TV adaptation should be a substitute for a novel, but there are certain stories that I'll never get around to reading, only watching the films (Les Liaisons Dangereux is one those for me to). I think Jane's general point was that we shouldn't lose articulacy/literacy in our schools because of this, but as educated adults, it's not going to stunt our intellectual development to watch a film instead of read a book every now & then (I think I put Silas Marner in this category too). Let's not split hairs over this one.

[J]

Jane's first post "The film/TV version of a book is an incredibly useful way of getting children - and adults - 'into the book'. The only danger is when it becomes 'instead of' instead of 'as well as', and if the latter is what is happening in schools, then obviously it's a no no"

Jane's last post

"Liasons Dangereuses may be another one, but I don't know - I've not read the book, the play was quite enough for me, thank you!"

Tut tut Jane, that would appear to be "instead of" rather than "as well as", no?

Another case of don't do as I do, do as I say?

Hear hear Margot!

[margot]

""As to your comments about We need to talk about Kevin, and the like, I'm open mouthed in astonishment!"

Why?"

Because I have honestly never met anyone who thought that there were some subjects unsuitable for works of fiction.

[kieransmum]

You make it sound brilliant, Lisa - I shall try to find a copy from somewhere and put it on my to-do list for when I have some sleep again. Thank you for such an intriguing precis.

On the morality issue - I'm just never convinced enough of what my own morality is from one day to the next to be sure that I can see whether a character in a book lives up to it or not. Anyway, it all strikes me as terribly judgemental. Isn't literature about fun and learning about life outside our understanding, rather than seeing whether characters fit neatly into our pre-labelled boxes of good or bad? I always thought so.

[Jane]

"As to your comments about We need to talk about Kevin, and the like, I'm open mouthed in astonishment!"

Why?

"I am also not sure that having moral endings and characters I like is a pre-requisitive for art."

But I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if a character does something I disapprove of, and doesn't recant or repent, then I don't have sympathy for them. Worse, if I feel the author themselves sees nothing wrong in their behaviour/opinions, then the author doesn't have my sympathy either. I can remember re-watching the film of Mash and thinking, Good God, these are pretty ghastly people, the two lead characters! Totally mysoginist and so up themselves and so smug and downright cruel. Yet it was clear we were 'supposed' to find them sympathatic and 'heroic'.

Whther 'bad people' can produce 'great art' is an old chestnut, and a very difficult one - Wagner is the obvious example.

Liasons Dangereuses may be another one, but I don't know - I've not read the book, the play was quite enough for me, thank you! As a picture of the absolute moral degeneration of two people, it definitely serves as a 'warning' but I don't know what the author 'intended' readers to think about the characters.

"oversimplifying: oversimplifying complex things and ignoring their subtleties or important details"

Not sure what is supposed to be subtle about a parent abandoning their child to go and 'find themselves'?

To me, it seems to depend completely on just what the characters are doing - for example, I disapprove of AK abandoning her child, but I don't disapprove of her committing adultery. That's just my own moral take - adultery is nowhere nearly so terrible a crime (if it even is, in societies where women can't divorce and stay respectable) as child abandonment.

Personally, when it comes to literature, I can't take 'morality' out of the frame when assessing it. To me an 'amoral' assessment is an 'immoral' one, because it posits that morality is not an important criterion.

[margot]

Jane, I found a nice definition of reductive in the sense I meant it:
"oversimplifying: oversimplifying complex things and ignoring their subtleties or important details"
I agree with Wonderbra and J. Reading fiction is not all about whether we 'sympathise' with the characters, or can relate to them. It is so much more than that. I'm afraid your views (without wishing to offend anyone here) remind me of some grim books groups I have attended, where a bunch of women sit around talking about whether they like the characters in the novel or not. That, to me, seems so pointless as an endeavour - you might as well discuss your next door neighbour. Of course sympathy for a character (and how the author manipulates it) is part of one's experience of reading fiction, but the wider sense of the novel and its aims is crucial if reading is going to have a broader impact on one's life than just passing a few hours enjoyably. Which I think it should.

As to your comments about We need to talk about Kevin, and the like, I'm open mouthed in astonishment!

[j]

Interesting debate on whether characters deserve our sympathy if they dont recant, repent and reform. Sounds a little fundamentalist to me.

But I am also not sure that having moral endings and characters I like is a pre-requisitive for art. Cant we be moved as much by a story which ends badly and acts as an awful warning, or just a commentary on the sadness of human life and motivation?

One of the greatest books I ever read was liaisons dangereuses- written by a soldier half way up a mountain in the middle of not being allowed to start his troops going on a totally pointless war. It is such a great commentary on how being powerless sours you. All the fun comes from the evil characters to start with. Then they go too far and you lose all sympathy. It taught me not to be seduced by spin and substance over moral form- but they dont repent at all, the marquise dies evil to the last. And the good characters stay boring right to the end. So do I have sympathy? not really. Is it great art? I think so.

[Wonderbra]

Gosh, Jane, you can't then see any plays by Shakespeare or read many novels then! I can't identify with Hamlet's state of mind, or agree with Macbeth, but there's so much more to the plays than that! That's the challenge for many writers to present a situation that is morally challenging and to give the reader one insight into the scenario they create and are in control of. For me, it depends on the writing. I could see that Tolstoy was stacking all the cards against AK and deifying Kitty, that's what narrators do, they manipulate people. As Lisa says, AK ends up having some gynaecological difficulty, which forces Vronsky to forgo physical contact with her. Tolstoy wants to show that when all the sex is gone, AK and V have nothing and V is long suffering. It's brilliance is not in the fact that Tolstoy's world view is the same as mine, it is in the storytelling and the way we come to care for the characters and how he gradually presents us with an outcome that we may or may not wish for.
If you start saying that all art jhas to fit your moral criteria, you might as well be a literary enthusiast in Iran.

[Jane]

Have to say don't understand the term 'reductive' so can't comment whether only liking characters who behave in ways I consider moral is or isn't reductive! I do think, though, that one thing I feel very strongly about is that some people seem to be able to distance themselves from fictional characters in ways I just can't. If a character is created, then I have to have an opinion on their behaviour, it's a vital part of my emotional engagement with the book, and so 'obviously' I have to decide whether I approve or disapprove of their behaviour and thoughts. Yes, some characters are morally ambiguous, for complex reasons - think Hamlet - and sometimes I think those actions are forgiveable and their reasons justifiable. But sometimes I don't. Abandoning a child just so you can 'find yourself'crosses the line for me. If, as I say, Nora does indeed abandon her child, I wonder if Ibsen deliberately has her do this in order to point out the 'price paid' for women to have their 'independence'. It's a price still being paid by the children of full-time working parents (note parents!) by choice!! Is it justified? Ask the children.

Sometimes, though, I don't think fiction is an adequate conduit for some characterisation. I haven't read 'What shall we do about Kenneth' or whatever it's called, because I can't see the point. Unless the character is entirely and exclusively based on real-world cases, there is nothing an author can say that is of the slightest validity about such a child - it's pointless to write such a book, because it's entirely in the author's head about why her character behaves in such a way. I could even argue that the book is dangerous, in that people might read it and think 'oh, that's why some children turn out to be teenage mass murderers'. It's too serious a subject for speculative and idle fiction, I feel.

Re illegitimatcy - I read a book once called Children of the Mist about those 'mistakes' that occurred when the upper classes commmited their 'criminal conversations' (adultery!). Sometimes, yes, the child was simply passed off as the husband's - not much of a problem really providing the wife had produced her 'heir and spare', and anyway the upper classes were all pretty much all related to each other anyway, and weren't that short of cash/property to go round! Sometimes though the poor child would be farmed out to baby farms, or fostered, often abroad, and then, yes, although they might be paid for, they had a nebulous (misty!) existence, and the stigma of suspected illegitimacy hung over them. It must have gone further down the social scale as well, as JA has Harriet Smith one of those less august 'children of the mist'.

The stigma lasted a long, long time - I can remember a girl at my school that I'd overheard commented about by other mothers that 'her parents aren't married, you know'.....

[DELILAH]

I'm not sure having a child out of wedlock was quite such difficult situation, I get the impression this happened quite a lot and in aristocratic circles at least there were certain conventions about supporting the children while keeping up appearances. You'll have read the research that suggests that Hans Christian Andersen's real mother was a Danish aristocrat - he got an education way above his ostensible parent's means, for instance, and was a sort of employed playmate for royal children. I've just finished reading "Locust" by Jeffrey A Lockwood ("An entomological thriller"!) which includes a potted biog of the famous entomologist Charles Valentine Riley. Riley was born in 1843 to an aristocratic mother who was not married to his father, a clergyman. The child (and his brother) were given a surname different to that of either parent, and raised by foster parents in the country. Eventually they were sent to public school and Riley was then funded through art school in Dieppe and Bonn before suddenly deciding to move to Illinois, possibly because his father had become bankrupt. There must have been many similar stories. Perhaps that's why boarding schools were so popular...

[Lisa]

Oh crap. After re-reading my post, I'm now terrified that I may just spark another STAH vs. WM debate. Apologies people.

I agree with Margot as well, about literature, movies etc. and how well it shows that life is full of difficult choices, and there may be things we see and hear and we go "I would never do that. I would never run off with the neighbour/abandon my children/kill someone", but then if you were in a particular situation, you might think completely differently and literature etc. gives you that opportunity to step out of your own life and realise that you may be tempted.
I do however, think that it is entirely necessary for you to be able to sympathise or relate to a character, no matter how immoral they are, just so you can enjoy the book. I read "Love in a Time of Cholera" after reading "100 years of Solitude" by Marquez, a book I loved so much, and hated it. I just couldn't stand one of the main characters it was pure torture to read.

[Lisa]

Kieran'smum: I highly recommend reading Anna Karenina. I've just finished it, though over 800 pages it is quite a mission and took me ages to finish. But, after I did, I was practically in mourning after being so used to having the characters around.
The book is rather insightful into Russian society at that time, but also shows how far woman have come. There's one scene where Dolly (has five kids, husband cheated on her with the nanny, then a ballet dancer, than practically anything that's female) discusses women's roles in society at that time, that they produce child after child, lose their figure and their husband's affection, becoming servants to their husband and their children. Best ever advocacy of a woman's right to birth control (as in the pill, I'm not talking abortion) ever. Same with Anna. One of the reasons she ended up so destitute is that she had no other choice. It is hinted at that after she has her daughter (and this could be a complete misinterpretation) she has some sort of medical procedure (presumably a hysterectomy) to prevent her from having more children and from losing Vronsky to someone younger and more beautiful. She is terrified of losing him, because if she did, she would lose everything; her daughter, her livelihood. As a disgraced and unmarried woman in late 19th Century Russia, if he left her she would be destitute.

[margot]

""Must the central character of fiction always be moral? Must they always do the 'right' thing?"

If they want my sympathy, then yes. OK, they can make wrong choices and (eg Lord Jim) and wrong judgements (eg Lizzie Bennet) but if by the end of the novel/play they have not learnt from their mistakes and recanted them, then they don't get my sympathy"

But Jane, is this not such a reductive way to read literature? Just because I *personally* would not abandon my husband, child and suburban life does not mean that I cannot sympathise (in the broad lit crit sense) with a character who does, surely? No wonder you like Austen but not Eliot! I just feel that part of the power of a great novel is to show even a morally dubious character as rounded and perhaps flawed rather than wicked, and that it what makes these literary works gripping. It *is* all about the gamut of human experience, and that includes bad stuff as well as good. Would our sense of ourselves as women in our world not be poorer if we did not have that fabulous triumvirate of wicked 19th century women in literature - Emma Bovary, Anna & Nora? Those stories and experiences just resonate through so much of our subsequent literary culture and beyond. It seems to me so judgemental and as I say, reductive, just to say 'these people are imoral and I cannot sympathise'. We all have a part of us that is less than perfect, and surely reading these texts can help us see and explore that.

I was thinking of all this especially after watching the film Little Children last night. There we sat, my husband and I, happyily married and passionate believers in the sanctity of marriage, urging these characters of Sarah and Brad on in their adultery with enthusiasm! And why? Because the film is so well made, the characters so full and rounded that you can see that life is *not* black and white, but many shades of grey. Even though their actions were 'wrong' perhaps in absolute terms, they were *understandable* in the context of the story. Really, that's what life is like, isn't it?

[Jane]

"Must the central character of fiction always be moral? Must they always do the 'right' thing?"

If they want my sympathy, then yes. OK, they can make wrong choices and (eg Lord Jim) and wrong judgements (eg Lizzie Bennet) but if by the end of the novel/play they have not learnt from their mistakes and recanted them, then they don't get my sympathy. Walking out on your child is hardly a sympathatic act, is it? I guess one could argue that middle class nineteenth century children saw little of their parents, brought up by nannies and servants, and so had little to miss in the first place, but it still doesn't excuse Nora for walking out on her child if, as, again, I'm not sure whether she does, or even if she intends it only to be for a brief 'finding myself/proof I can survive outside my doll's house' period before coming back to her.

I agree re Passage to India - I read the whole damn thing just desperate to find out what did damn well happen in the stupid caves, and never got told. I think it's REALLY cheap writing to do that. Ditto with that ghastly Picnic at Hanging Rock. I hate things not being explained. Total authorial cop out.

The whole of EMF, which I read as a student, I find just about goes into the 'embarrassing' corner now, though to be fair I ought to re-read and see if still has any power, or if it's all just covert homosexuality and spoilt Edwardians etc. The one I re-read most recently, a few years ago, Howards End, seemed utterly bizarre, and the only morally decent character is poor old Leonard or Lionel or whoever he was, that pitiable lower middle class clerk.

Speaking of EMF and TV/film adaptations, I caught the very end of Room with a View the new version and saw they added a coda, whereby the Julian Sands character (forgotten his name) gets slaughtered on the Western Front, and then the heroine seems to pal up with some Italian chappie revisiting the cornfields. Do you think it's 'on' for a modern adaptation to extend a novel in that way? In a way, I thought it worked, though I also think you have to take the author as they wrote it, without adding your own hindsight as 'what happened next'.

Agree re Turgeneve. Torrents of Spring has the most moving scene where the 'anti-hero's' peasant parents turn up at his graveside. And gorgeous descriptions of pre-revolutionary russian country houses and landscape.

Re DHL - if you ignore all the weird and unbelievable people and pscyhology etc in his novels, his strength is in describing the physical world - shows up most in his poems. Incredibly powerful and vivid imagery.

[kieransmum]

Hmm. Clearly I need to go back and read Dickens again. I think it's the long minor ones that drain me - I have started Martin Chuzzlewit about three times - perhaps when the kids leave home. I agree I loved Hard Times Tale of Two Cities Great Expectations etc but I was much younger then. And they are the short ones. Dombey and Son, though, WHAT a novel. Best of the lot, I think, even better than Bleak House.
At the moment I'm reading Confessions of a Bad Mother (Stephanie Calman) - it should be prescribed reading when you leave hospital!

[Wonderbra]

A very incisive interpretatio, Margot. Tolstoy makes AK's defection pointless, by making her take opium, miss what she can't have to the point where it destroys her and be a clinging, shadow of her former self. It's definitely a cautionary tale for those who might consider divorce.
Gipsy, I love Dickens too. There's a warmth and camaraderie often in his novels that I find heartening. My children are now familiar with David Copperfield and Great Expectations, the youngest was in musical versions of them, which sound dreaful, but were really quite good. They love them and no-one does Christmas better than Dickens! I liked your point about wigs etc Jane. I guess it's true there are some really grotesque elements, but I always thought that was a sign of the times and the odd upbringings of many Victorians.

[margot]

Jane, I was really struck by this comment of yours:
"Re Doll's House, what I don't like is that Nora walks out on her child - I'm pretty sure she does, doesn't she? Not acceptable!"
What on earth do you mean?! Must the central character of fiction always be moral? Must they always do the 'right' thing? The world of letters would indeed become a boring place! Surely the whole point of fiction is to explore the unknowable and unsayable limits of human experience.

Anyway. I wonder if we modern women tend to prefer Nora to Anna because Anna chooses suicide, still, in fact, trapped in an essentially borgeouis staus quo, whereas Nora chooses life - a real life free of the controlling power of her male relations (although sadly, without her child. I'm reminded of the Alice Munro story, The Children Stay, which explores some of the same ground).

[Gipsy]

I loved Wuthering Heights. Really liked the unusual narrative and the characterisations. Catherine thought the universe revolved around her, and Heathcliff was utterly self centered. And in the end the universe showed just how irrelevent they were.

I often rave about Dickins, and I know quite a few other people who do too. I never get tired of reading and re-reading Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two cities.

What can't I stand? EM Forster. A Passage to India was something I had to absolutely force myself to get to the end of. Tolstoy is also someone who I could never get to grips with.

Turgenev on the other hand, absolute pure brilliance.

[Lazy Mummy]

I've never read AK either - it's probably time I did.

KM, that's an interesting point about Dickens. Now that I think about it, I think the last person I know who sat down & read Dickens was myself, reading Bleak House and that was six years ago. Personally, I love Dickens - his caricatures and pace of story and plot (doesn't bother me that there's little psychology in there), but you're right, I prefer Austen. I think it's that she's so perfectly bitchy in a perfectly socially acceptable way. The other thing about CD is that many of his works are so long (being originally serialised) that starting one of them sometimes seems like a monumental effort. After all, when will you finish it, between work, kiddies, the washing up & watching DT in Dr Who? You won't read anything else for at least six months, maybe longer!

DHL - yes, he falls into the ghastly category too. I'll never understand why he is so lauded & part of the canon when really he just made purple prose acceptable.

[kieransmum]

Feel embarrassed now at never having read AK. Always felt oodles of sympathy for Nora but would need to re-read now that I have children, might feel differently.

One of the reasons that I asked about Dickens was that I think he's really fallen out of favour with this generation of recreational readers - perhaps too much caricature, and not enough inner psychology? Or is it the anti-woman thing, as Jane points out? We all know he's very good, important, etc, but when was the last time you heard someone RAVE about him, the way we do about JA and GE etc?

I think when you read something has a massive impact, not just in terms of how old you are but what kind of culture you are living in at the time.

Oh, and I always empathise horribly with Dorothea in Middlemarch (although my husband would probably prefer I pointed out not on the grounds of husband's impotence!)

[Wonderbra]

Yes, Kitty is awful! Levin is clearly Tolstoy and all his anti-industrial ideas crystallize throughout the novel. I am much more sympathetic to Nora than AK, too Margot.
I think it is fascinating how much of our own baggage we bring to literature and criticism stays alive because each generation sees something new. I wonder though if poor old DHL saw women in a bit of a strange way, coloured by the way they reacted to his manner, or if Mabel Dodge Luhan and Frieda Lawrence weren't just total one-offs.

[Jane]

In AK I seem to remember that Kitty was an awful character - one of those dire 'perfect women' that men like to create for themselves. Also, Levin is so clearly Tolstoy himself that it's embarrassing - just as all DHL's novels are embarrassing that have a character in them that is clearly dear old DHL himself.

Speaking of DHL, I find his depictions of women completely bizarre - have you ever met ANY woman who is the slightest like any of the women in any of his novels? They seem to be screamingly a construct of his own mentality as to what women are 'like'. Mind you, that's probably true in general of all novels - can an author ever write convincingly from the inside of a character of the opposite gender to themselves? Maybe that's why JA is successful - she never gets inside men's heads! (And I've always been totally struck by a comment I read years ago that she never shows a scene where woman are absent - you never see men talking to each other without a woman there, as JA was wise enough to realise she did not know what men were like when not in the company of women)(probably best not to know, really - would probably put you off big time. Still would really....!)

As for FFTMC, what most put me off the book was the film, as I can't STAND Julie Christie (that awful pouty mouth!), and Bathsheba was so incredibly stupid as well. She had EVERYTHING going for her - a young, attractive single woman in possession of her own comfortable financial indepedence and her own business, the farm - and totally blew it. (Anyone remember the awful TOTD adapation by Polanski set in NORMANDY??!!! It was so OBVIOUSLY not Dorset that only an Amercian could think them swappable - yes, I know he was banned from the UK, but really, what's the point of making a Hardy film if you don't make it in Dorset?!)(The Tess wasn't bad, as I recall, but Angel was hopelessly wet, but then I suppose he's supposed to be. The blood dripping through the ceiling was good though!)

Re Doll's House, what I don't like is that Nora walks out on her child - I'm pretty sure she does, doesn't she? Not acceptable! That was another one where the film puts you off - who in their right mind would cast Jane Fonda as a 'doll'?Totally unconvincing! (Hedda, yes, Nora, no!) I seem to remember though there was a British TV adaptation with Trevor Eve as hubby and the end where he breaks down is incredibly moving.

[Wonderbra]

Yes, absoluutely on AK vs Nora. AK declines so dramatically into a paranoid, malicious and jealous creature when Vronsky stands by her! I still love the almost overcivilised portrayal of society, against those who are beginning to challenge it politically. The character of Levin and his honesty and confusion about his lack of feeling for his newborn son made me think of AM thread about disengaged dad recently. AK's characters have so many names it can get tricky.
I could never really get into Hardy, although I so wanted to because of Tess and Bathsheba.

[Lazy Mummy]

Thos Hardy? Agreed! I almost added him to my original list of boring reads. Had to read Madding Crowd for O level & hated it so much I couldn't even bear to watch the BBC adaptations of Jude or Tess or any of them. Thought his poetry was OK though.

Hmm, may be time to turn this question round a bit. Which authors do people like (JA excepted, since we've established that she's superior to the Brontes)?

[DELILAH]

Then there's Thos Hardy's women, who frankly need a slap or a course in communication and assertiveness skills (or both). I can't bear to read them.

With reference to the other thread on midwives, I love Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm (the film, though good, is nowhere near as good as the book) and that bit where Flora Poste describes the sorts of books she won't read, that involve bedposts, and moaning - and eventually you work out she's talking about childbirth.

[margot]

See, weirdly, I don't have such a problem with Nora. Her angst seems to me somewhat understandable. But I don't get Anna at all. Perhaps I am just a gloomy Ibsen type rather than a over the top Russian.

[Jane]

Yes, I definitely think when you read a book affects how you perceive it. Catcher in the Rye (oops, typed it as 'catheter' in the rye ... showing my age?!)(though a history buff might call it cathar in the rye?), really has to be first read when you are an adolescent, though I wonder how modern adolescents take to it? I think it will stay the course, but I wonder?

I think one very big divide in reading is whether you are a parent yet or not. That's why AK is unbearable to me - leaving her poor child to grow up without his mum. Awful! Ditto when Nora walks out of her Doll's House.

Similarly, when you are young, I don't think big age gaps between hero and heroine are so noticeable, or so objectionable. It never really dawned on me that Jane Eyre was young enough to be Rochester's daughter, but these days I would find that rather creepy. Ditto with Emma and Mr K (oops, I'm sounding like Mrs Elton!)

[kieransmum]

I'm sure it is, M and WB - I have this eerie relationship with Forster where every time I reread his books they seem completely different, but always speak to exactly where I am at the time.

[Wonderbra]

Uncanny, Magot, as I was just musing on the same theme and have just reread Anna Karenina. I still can't sympathise with her, though. I was also thinking about Pynchon just before KM posted, as being impossible. I had to read The Crying and Dombey and Son at university and still have those nightmares about having to go back and sit finals years later with those two texts. Tristram Shandy was Ok for some reason. I had wondered if R4 adaptation of Dombey this week would help, but then couldn't face that sparse uptightness of radio voices, despite the freedom it gives you to see the imagery the way you want to.
My daughters were so enraged at Kiera Knightley's annoying stock grinning to herself in the recent P&P film they gave the DVD away! They were transfixed by Kenneth Branagh's Twelfth Night, though and they aren't even studying it.
I have broken my no tv rule, this week, for Cranford and I'm having it taped and delivered, the first episode was so perfect. I guess it is an age thing, I would never have read it before I was sixty otherwise.
Oh yes and Daniel Craig as Lord sriel? I had envisaged someone really stern and haughty, like a young Eric Porter, not someone people lust after in their shorts.

[delphine Verhaeghe]

my most unreadable book?
Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte
I also hate Shakespeare, result from seeing the 'adapted'(half hour longer...) version of Richard II by a modernistic theatre company (no decor needed, i guess you know the type)when i was in high school. Going to the theatre was never the same again, and i never touched his books again

[margot]

These discussions about what we like to read: I was thinking about this last night. Do you think *when* you read something affects how you feel about it? I mean in the sense of being emotionally at a point to get the most out of it? I read Anna Karenina as a young mother in my 30s and found it gripping, but could *not* sympathise with her; my mother read it when she was 18 and thinks it is the most passionate novel with Anna a fabulously fully formed character. I wonder whether there are some things we come to later in life, and perhaps Austen and Eliot particularly are two such cases. The quite harsh economic realities in Jane Austen don't really make sense or strike you especially hard when you are 16. The Brontes, however, being less dense as texts (I think) are much more accessible, hence, I suspect, their popularity among teenage girls when compared with the tougher 19thC novelists.

[Anglobeast]

I simply gather that we have to use all possible means as to keep in touch with History. Our time is not the good one as children watch stupid programs on TV and are perverted with a sort of attitude consisting in thinking "I know" (in my subconcious I know I know nothing). I am inclined to recommend good adaptations (like P&P with Firth and Ehle, or "A ROOM WITH A VIEW" by James Ivory). We have to be aware that a wrong tone of voice (people speak too fast with diferent voices nowadays) can ruin not only the film, but THE PERCEPTION OF THE AGE THAT WE ARE PRESENTING TO PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY YOUNGSTERS. I mistrust some modern adaptations for that sort of fault. Being a French who discovered the English language only ten years ago thank to my British family, colleagues and videos, I always recommend Original Versions (the 1968 version in full Russian of WAR & PEACE from Sergei Bondarchuk, that won the Oscar in Hollywood, will always be closer to the soul of Tolstoï than any British, French or American version). Beware of authenticity when you want to communicate a good taste of History to our kids. Meanwhile, we mustn't forget to show them decent documentaries (I recommend the official CHURCHILL biography from Martin Gilbert). No matter if they read before or after a film, they must learn to make the effort to read. Mr Blair said recently that when you mention the fact that you go to church, you are sadly considered a "nutter". Soon, it could be said the same about reading. By the way, watch again and again all the 'Yes Minister' or the 'To the Manor Born' series. They are already part of the past. It is useful if we want to keep a rich future, however it will be.

[deejay]

When Dr Zhivago was released in England I struggled to get past page4 - then I saw the film. I could not put the book down until I'd completed it.
Whilst revising for my 'o'levels long ago, I was inspired by the film version of Julius Caesar albeit it full of American accents.
So two examples of films leading to enjoyment of the books.

[Emma Bonsere]

What about adaptations for film or TV that actually *improve* upon the book?

I tried reading some Morse books after the 1990s' TV series, and found the character as played by John Thaw more nuanced, believable and sympathetic than his literary manifestation.

The 1994 film of “Little Women” (with Winona Ryder, Christian Bale, Susan Sarandon and Kirsten Dunst) was a joy, but when I subsequently read the book, found it preachy and rather dull.

[kieransmum]

It is this dire evangelical fiction series about the Last Days. When the Anti-Christ is roaming the earth (he runs the UN, in case you didn't know) and all the good Christians have been whisked away to heaven in a rapture, but the ones left bizarrely don't get mad at God for abandoning them and decide to join his side to fight evil anyway. So it turns into a kind of religious action story. I think that's it. Correct me if I'm wrong, anyone who's actually read the damn things.
Oh and yes, they are, supposedly, for adults. (snorts dismissively)

[Lazy Mummy]

OK, what *is* the Left Behind series? I'm scared already. Is it for adults or teens?

[kieransmum]

Oh lord, the Left Behind series? Do I have to, or can I just take your word for it that they're as dreadful as you say?

[Jane]

"but her descriptions of landscapes, buildings and even clothes are sketchy at best."

I'd say this is deliberate on her part though - not only was she clearly suspicious about excessive 'emotionality' in respect of the romantic movement (all Anne Eliot's 'sound advice' to Captain Benwick about too much poetry being dangerous!) but, after all, she was writing a contemporary novel and so expected everyone to know more or less the place and look of what she was writing about. She does have Lizzie Bennet emote about the Lake and Peak Districts though, but set against this is Mariane's excessive sensibility about landscapes etc. She does have some very telling examples of using external landscape to reflect internal landscape (not sure what the correct term is in lit crit jargon!), most famously the walk Anne Eliot takes with the rest of her family and seeing the farmers ploughing 'meaning to have spring again' - as of course, was she.

But I agree you don't read JA for the descriptions, but for the deadly one liners - (eg "A very amiable young man of five thousand pounds a year".....) That's why, I think, you can read her over and over again, and still find yourself smily wryly.

BTW, I thouroughly recommend her juvenalia - some of it is hilarious, real laugh out loud stuff.

[Jane]

"Can't understand it, as everyone tells me it's one of his most readable."

That's cos it's so short! (and because it's so short it's the only Dickens I've read...)

(Mind you, I don't like Dickens anyway as he's just far too grotesque. I can remember reading, I think John Carey, on how Dickens was obsessed by protheses - huge numbers of characters have wooden legs, plus things like wigs etc, which is a bit weird to say the least, plus of course he was a pretty grim character and ghastly to women and about them.)

[DELILAH]

I could never get into JA until I saw the movies, and realised suddenly that it's because she's totally crap (by the standards of modern novel-writing) at describing things visually. She does great dialogue and motivation, but her descriptions of landscapes, buildings and even clothes are sketchy at best. Compare S&S with Gone with the Wind, for instance. But once you've got a decent movie in your head, her books become a lot more palatable. Even if that movie is Clueless.

Unreadable books: I raise you the entire Left Behind series. Mind-numbingly repetitive evangelical porn - written exactly like porn literature, with "born again" or "turned to Christ" instead of orgasms.

[Lazy Mummy]

Ha! I thought this would be a pleasant change from slagging off CV (PLEASE - no distractions!)

KM - yes, I have that problem with reading dense texts these days, vs. reading plane-lit. I read a lot of popular non-fiction at the moment, because it's easier to put down on a moment's notice.

Dickens...I read Bleak House while sitting on the beach at the Aegean a few years ago & could hardly put it down, despite usually being a "chick lit" girl on the beach. On the other hand, I've tried three or four times to read Hard Times (which my father has been recommending since I was about 16) and just can't get past the third or fourth chapter. Can't understand it, as everyone tells me it's one of his most readable.

[Jane]

LM - quite right! I'm sure there are vastly more boring books than M/march. I should have said "the most boring book in the English language that I forced myself to finish because I thought I should because, well, it's GE, innit, and she's like, significant, and also you ought to support her because she was an ugly woman in a world that was even viler to ugly women than the world is now - unlike other dead boring books which I don't feel I 'should' read because life is too short for rubbish, which I suspect most contemporary novels are anyway, or at any rate, those that are any good will stand the test of time so I might as read them when I'm 100 and they are classics and of 'proven worth' cf social ephemera and narcisistic up-their-authors-own-shining-backsides"....

Hope that clarifies!

It's an interesting 'artistic' point though - should art always be interesting to be 'great'? ie, can any book that is 'great' also be boring?? They can be hard work, yes, and require the reader to make an effort, but should they actually be boring? And anyway, is it too subjective a dismissal....?

It's a rather depressing thing to say, but I'm sure one of the reason's JA remains so popular is because her novels are so short. I've certainly noticed that so far as kiddy-lit is concerned, books these days are written at much greater pace than they used to be even a generation ago. I tried reading The Dark is Rising to my son and he was bored stupid because he just wanted to 'get on with the plot' ... far too much descriptive narrative and not enough action. Mind you, that's not entirely related to length - HP is mega-long, but it's very pacy (apart from the very first opening chaps which, as I say, a good editor should have cut drastically, but now never will, such is the sainthood of JK!).

[Jessica]

At A-level dramatisation of texts can be used in essays as a 'critics opinion', one of the magic 'AOs' students have to get, just the same as an academic's essay. Therefore, everyone should read the book then watch the film. I did A levels last year and watched all the films when I'd read the books. I loved the TV. adaptation of North and South! Now am at Uni and going home this weekend to watch Cranford with my mum.

[kieransmum]

Ha ha I thought that would get the Pynchon fans going. Never read The Crying, though.
Anyone else find it impossible to concentrate on hard books for fun? I can still read for study, but I struggle hugely to focus on a novel plot unless it's written in EasySpeak.

Oh yes. And what happened to Dickens? Does anyone read him any more?

[margot]

No! The Crying of Lot 49 is excellent.

Are we talking boring or unreadable though? Not the same thing in my view. I can see that Tristram Shandy is interesting, yet unreadable. Salman Rushdie - readable yet utterly dull.

[kieransmum]

I raise you anything by Pynchon except Gravity's Rainbow.

[Lazy Mummy]

"Middlemarch is STILL the most boring book in the English language - absolutely deadly"

OK, it's not my favourite ever either, but really *the* most boring? Surely we can do better than that? For a list of unreadable books, I raise you:

--Tristram Shandy
--Finnegan's Wake
--Foucault's Pendulum (OK, maybe translations of foreign works can't count)
--Anything by Salman Rushdie except Midnight's Children & Haroun & The Sea of Stories

*ducks back below parapet quickly, waiting for the inevitable onslaught from Rushdie fans*

[Jane]

I don't think I can remember a Michael Jayston Mr R, but I do remember a Ciaran Hinds one. I was looking forward to it as he'd just been Captain Wentworth (very persuasively!), but disaster - he had stringy hair and a moustache. Awful awful awful! However, much to my surprise I actually enjoyed the recent Toby Stephens one, even though he's always just the sneering Bond villain to me - he did it surprisingly well (must be a good actor....). The only thing I really really hated in it is that it brings out they were going to pack poor little Adele off to boarding school. Horrible. (what's supposed to happen to her when Jane does a runner, BTW?? I can't remember.)

[Jane]

Did anyone here like the film version of P&P? Didn't work for me at all. Not only KK in it (how anyone is expected to i/d with a heroine who is a stick insect is beyond me!), plus too wet hero, plus, worst of all, the Yanks just don't get the British class system - all those pigs running around....look, this is England, not Ireland....(!!!)(and I'm sure pigs didn't run round posh houses in Ireland either....)

I did quite enjoy the ancient LO film version, if only for LO and GG, but the disaster was updating it l5 years to the Cranford era (and making Lady C 'loveable' at the end).

The key to any adaptation is to remember that P&P is quite a dark novel - the family stand on a knife edge of ruin, both financially thanks to the entail and socially thanks to Lydia (God, that girl needs a good slap!), and to acknowledge that Mr B, however witty etc, is yet another Austen Bad Father (like her own, I believe). (By the way, does anyone know how the entail landed on Mr Collins, as he is clearly descended through the female line, so how come he gets the estate, if he's not a male descended heir???)

[EmsMum]

I got hooked into reading Jane Eyre by the BBC classic serial (Michael Jayston, anachronistic but wonderful swelling strings of Elgar for title music). Finished the book before the series had finished airing. Similarly with Dickens (hooked by Our Mutual Friend, carried on avidly reading everything else). Even War and Peace following the dramatization with Anthony Hopkins as Pierre.

Definitely encourage viewing!

Shakespeare is meant to be seen rather than read - a good film is probably better than a duff local offering but a great theatre production is best. Dissect afterwards if you must but the play's the thing!

[Lisa]

I totally agree with Jane on Wuthering Heights. One of the worst books I have ever read, and felt so cheated after those hours of my life after I finished it.
For Jane Austen, tried numerous times to read her but found her too boring (having always read authors like Joseph Heller [Catch 22] and John Steinbeck [Of Mice and Men]). But, saw many of the movies based around her novels, like Emma, Clueless etc. so when I finally managed to get through Emma, really enjoyed it, as I could picture bits from Clueless and Emma when reading it. However, on the Brontes vs. Austen: absolutely loved Jane Eyre and read it about three times, so can't really say. Generally (controversially) I prefer books written by men, apart from Toni Morrison and the incredible Harper Lee.

[Jane]

"Who's up for Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel then"

Me me! By the way, what IS it with Nicole Kidman????? Nice looking but hardly sets the world on fire, and I guess she's a 'woman's actor' because she's clever, but I just do NOT get all the fuss over her?? I bet blokes don't go for her much either - for all the wrong reasons!

As for Brontes V Austen - well, definitely not comparable really I think, but have to say I adored JE when I was adolescent, but then they are far more moral characters than the dire C and H in WH (I just BET H made his loot in the slave trade!!!). As for GE, sorry, Middlemarch is STILL the most boring book in the English language - absolutely deadly (though I do understand why GE as nothing but a lowly female had to prove to the male establishment how clever she was). The only thing I love in it is GE's delighting venom about the ghastly Rosamund - you can just FEEL the plain woman's loathing for women who are beautiful madams - the same loathing comes out in JE with the unspeakable Blanche Ingram.

[Theta Sigma Mummy]

Hmmmm. Austen/Bronte. My two favourite books of all time are Jane Eyre and Persuasion. P&P is in my top 10, too. I can't stand Wuthering Heights though, if that's any help (well. I quite like the Kate Bush song.)

[michele]

Thanks for the unexpected sight of Mr Darcy ( the only REAL Mr Darcy) which brightened my night as I glanced through all posts. Still gorgeous after all of these years!

[margot]

Come on folks! I make my first ever flippant, slightly smutty comment on AM and no-one even blinks!

I agree about the Austen/Bronte thing though. I've never found that George Eliot fans get on with the Brontes either.

[Lazy Mummy]

"Nothing and no one can make Wuthering Heights either watchable or readable! Dreadful book. Awful people. Hate it."

I remember my A level English teacher telling our class that people fall into one of two camps: Austen fans or Bronte fans (20 years on, I think he was right: haven't met anyone who claims to love both). Even at seventeen, I knew which camp I was in and it's never been the Brontes - can't stand all that purple prose and ghastly emoting. Give me Austen any day (or for modern writers, McEwan or Gardam; no one else can compare).

[margot]

So, who's up for Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel then .... ?

[Jane]

Forgot to add that the wet-shirt scene in the CF P&P left me quite unmoved - except perhaps to hilarity. Who wants to meet some bloke dripping with pond weed and algal water??? Yuk.

[Jane]

Nothing and no one can make Wuthering Heights either watchable or readable! Dreadful book. Awful people. Hate it. Best adaptation of it is Monty P's 'Wuthering Heights in Semaphore' with H and C signalling wildly to each other from distant moorland peaks!! "Oh Cathy!"..... "Oh Heathcliffe!" (etc)

[Charlotte]

I love all things literary, but it still took me 3 attempts and the Juliet Binoche film version to get me into reading Wuthering Heights as a teenager - particularly with all that thick Yorkshire dialogue from Joseph the servant... Almost as hard to read as the strange futuristic/aboriginal dialect that the narrator uses in the middle section of 'Cloud Atlas' (now /that/ would make an interesting film...!), which again nearly made me give up.

BTW, re. the L,W&W comments below - the CGI of the recent film left me a bit cold, but then when my husband showed the old BBC version to his class of 8 yr olds at Christmas a few years ago when he was a primary teacher and they /laughed/ at the White Witch's evil hordes of vampire bats and ghoulies - and they used to terrify me as a 10 year old! So maybe we need to move with the times...

[j]

never reading the book at all is a disaster. Recognising that the book is a sufficiently good story to inspire a modern director and actors they recognise- that helps them to get over the strange idiom.

[Maturemummy]

I struggled - very hard - with history at school. I then watched, enthralled, the BBC's magnificent cycle of "Wars of the Roses" plays (as I call them)and am now a walking amateur encyclopaedia on the Plantagenet dynasty. The plays brought them so much alive. Pity I was in my 20's when they were first shown! Some film and screen adaptations are ridiculous - the Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier version of P&P, for example, although I love it precisely for its utterly ridiculous ending.I would be wary of letting a child struggling with the book watch it,though. I am outraged at the film version of "The Cider House Rules". I cannot watch it. By and large, I am in favour of good and faithful adaptations of books. By the way, I have never seen Colin Firth climbing out of the lake in his wet shirt. Colin Firth is delicious but that was "So Not Mr Darcy" that I cannot watch the series at all.

[Rachel]

At university I took an entire module on comparative studies of a book and it's film adaptation. It was fascinating.

Generally I think it is better to read the book first than watch a film or play so that you can develop your own opinion and visualisation of the characters and the most important parts before you see someone else's opinion (i.e. the directors). Watching the adaptation then allows you to critique your own reading.

I do not have children but when I do I will be encouraging them to read first and watch second but supporting both reading and watching and anything else which encourages and compounds an interest in literature and culture.

[kieransmum]

I agree with Jane. Now I must go and lie down and recover.

Seriously, I think she's right, because I also think it depends on the child. A bookish home will probably produce a book-aware child - and some children will find literature enthralling without the aid of extra stimuli. Others need more help. The important thing is not to over-depend on them, and to remember that film adaptations are not an inferior copy but a work of art in their own right. (A friend of mine did a very interesting Ph.D on this subject)

[nick]

oops - forgot to mention that at school we were forced to sit through Olivier's Henry V every year because our english teacher was in it as an extra - that didn't give us much incentive to enjoy the story just to laugh like drains at his performance!

[nick]

I feel it is fine to use a good film/tv/stage version as an additional learning aid although often I feel that the "non-essential" parts that are edited out are just the sections that would help most with exam questions. I am not really up with what is being studied currently but in the dim and distant past I did H.G.Wells' Time Machine for A level and I doubt if either of the film versions would have helped much other than with major plot elements.

A lot depends on how faithful the adaptation is to the original, after all West Side Story IS Romeo and Juliet and The Lion King IS Hamlet (albeit both of them are quite heavily disguised) and no-one would seriously suggest them as study aids, at least I hope they wouldn't!

I have to agree with Jane re Harry Potter, I started to read the first one to my son and he soon persuaded me to return to our favourite greek mythology because HP "was so boring",he did however enjoy the film when it came out although neither of us was sufficiently hooked to return to the printed version.

HP remains I think the only book I ever started to read to him that I could not be bothered to go back and finish myself.

[Lazy Mummy]

Jane - I think we must have seen the same Shakespeare plays as teenagers! That's exactly how I remember them being. Also saw That Production of Ian McKellen playing RIII & was equally mesmerised by the one-handed coat buttoning. Brilliant. (Sorry to miss him as Lear in LA, now that he's so famous it's impossible to get tickets).

[supermother]

I remember all the arm twisting to buy my oldest boxed sets of all sorts as background work for English A level. hope they helped because they were certainly expensive. More extepsnive than my getting and reading all of Thomas Hardy free from the library 20 odd years before when I was doing the same exams.

I don't see why not as long as they are reading too but some bad schools don't even have the children read all the set works as they are too long and they just look at extracts and films etc. That is obviously a bit of dumbing down and not on.

[Jane]

When I was a teen or thereabouts the telly decided to do the 'complete works' of WS set in the time setting of the plays (eg, Roman togs for JC etc), which all sounds v. good etc etc, BUT they ended up being MONUMENTALLY boring! I think they were all filmed in a studio and it showed and they were stagey in the worst sense of the word. They had good casts, but despearately dull dull dull and definitely put you off WS. When you compare them to films such as Brannagh's HV and McKellen's Nazi RIII, they are no where. OK, the RIII is a bit 'contrived' though I thought the film wasn't at all bad as a version of the original production (saw it twice - riveted by watching IMcK put a glove on with one hand!). Again, sadly, I'd say that the old LO versions definitely of HV and RIII have not dated well, though Hamlet is still pretty atmospheric, even if the Freudian stuffy is pretty passe now. (though nowhere near as atmospheric as the russian version from that era)

As for Northern Lights, well, the entire thing is pretty bonkers as far as I'm concerned, and I'm only going to see it to see DC with a beard!

Re LW&W, I thought Tilda Swanton just wasn't scary enough (the TV version witch was much scarier), and the Mockney Beavers were a disaster. It was quite interesting to see the links with WWII - hadn't really spotted that before. Like I never spotted rise of Nazism in LOTR either!

[Lazy Mummy]

It really depends on the quality of the book/film/TV show doesn't it? There are certain films I'm glad I saw after reading the book & hope to prevent my daughter from seeing until she's read the book (Lord of the Rings & Pride & Prejudice & LW&W all come to mind, actually), largely because I think there is so much value in visualising things for yourself first (HP books also fall into this category, now I think of it). Of course, at 3, we're a long way from this just yet (tho' we do Thomas the Tank Engine and Charlie & Lola in both media - and she appreciates both. Actually started with TV for C&L and then moved to books).

I remember writing a paper on this at university - the development of a myth from Roman times through to modern, including film adaptations. Interesting stuff. I also recall a series of extremely dull Shakespeare videos, forced upon us during O levels by our well-meaning English teachers, but they were terribly boring productions and almost put me off for life (fortunately saw the RSC just in time).

Agreed about the importance of theatre; we've done a couple of small plays at the Children's Theater here so far & will do a big induction w/ Nutcracker ballet this Xmas (the big thing in America at Christmas). Can't wait for St Trinian's - hope they release it over here...

[J]

Jane - Agree that live theatre is magic and the Creation theatre tours round here with fantastic Shakespeare in their mirror tent that the kids fight to go to.

My main worry is when the adapted film is not a play but a book and they have dumbed it down for a wider audience. I'm a bit worried about what they will have done to the Philp Pullman Dark Materials as it sounds as if they have sanitised the religious message to sell more seats in the US. Sensible of course given they had to pay to make it, but therefore not as good as the book.
And on the Lion W&W thing, I was a bit creeped out by the way it was sold as wholesome evengelical entertainment, I do find the American religious right has too much influence on childrens film. I think Harry Potter was much better being made in the UK. That did a lot to get kids reading the books- virtuous circle.

Still, they cant damage St Trinians, hurrah, which I shall take my teen daughter to in order for her to see proper girl power, not that milk and water princess diaries rubbish :)

[Wendy V]

I too remember my daughters getting hooked on Jane Austen after seeing P&P on telly, and one daughter's knowledge of Jane Austen subsequently helping her ace the interview that got her into Cambridge.

He's not exactly at exam age, but after watching the DVD of The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe (excellent film adaptation btw), my six year old son clamoured for me to read him the book as a bedtime story. We're now almost through the entire Narnia chronicles. Handwriting practise this week (homework in Year One? - never happened in my day!) was to write down some instructions. My son remembered Aslan's instructions to Jill in The Silver Chair and asked - asked! - if he could copy out the entire paragraph in cursive handwriting. Amazing, as before that he'd been reluctant to write more than a sentence at a time; nor had he got the hang of joining up letters. So yes, there's no doubt that a film or TV adaptation can lead a child to literature - and literacy.

[Jane]

Though I agree with saying that there's nothing wrong with a v good TV/film adaptation, and agree some theatre productions can be a bit dire in terms of 'absolute quality', I do think live theatre has an increasing virtue these days, as so many children (and increasingly adults!) simply only see film/TV. Personally, I'd love to see a theatre production of P&P - but only if someone sufficiently yummy were playing Mr D.

[J]

tell me how come going to a second-rate local drama production of a play is education but watching a fantastic professional production on DVD is somehow dumbing down?

[Jane]

S&S and MP have their virtues, but if that's all JA had written I'm sure she would be regarded as pious and dull dull dull, instead of the patron saint of Mills and Boon!!

[Mrs L]

MP and S&S are not the dulls! I couldn't put either of them down, and have read both several times. S&S is my favourite of JA's (have read and loved all of them)

[Jane]

"So should we use Colin Firth, or Cranford, or Liz n Rich to get kids interested in literature?"

To me, this is a no brainer question - yes, of course we should! My son was bored stiff by the first couple of HP chapters - and any good editor would have cut them drastically, they are SOOOOO slow! - and it wasn't until the first film came out that he was hooked. Then he was totally hooked!(Yup, we did the midnight runs to the bookshop - huge fun!)

The film/TV (not to mention the audio!)version of a book is an incredibly useful way of getting children - and adults - 'into the book'. The only danger is when it becomes 'instead of' instead of 'as well as', and if the latter is what is happening in schools, then obviously it's a no no (and SO by the way, is that ghastly practice of simply doing 'key scenes' from Shakespeare plays...).

It also is a great way into teaching them critical appraisal - my son had to both read Animal Farm, and watch the cartoon version, and then make a comparative analysis, and ditto for Good night Mr Tom. It really brought out critical faculties on why the film versions were the way they were, and how they differed, and how the effects on the audience/reader differed etc etc. I thought they were really mind-stretching for him to think it through and then write it up as an essay.

Of course, sometimes the film version can put readers off - I must say if I'd never read Mansfield Park but only knew that Billie Piper was playing Fanny Price, that would definitely put me off both! (not that it's an entrhalling book anyway - funny how JA wrote only two 'scorchers', P&P and P, and then just the 'dulls', MP and S&S (plus the two 'funnies' NA and E) - amazing the difference a 'real' alpha hero makes for a book (D and CW of course!)