Funny shit you find on CNN (writery) she-who-troll-CV related

[Guest]

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/books/news/11/22/salon.manifesto/

Don't tell me I don't help you get more publicity.

 

[neonlyte]

Interesting article CV - thanks for the link.

 

[Guest]

I think the comparison between film and writing is thin. Film is a language but its grammar is not the camera and mechanics of filming. Following that logic the new puritans should be using quill pens too.

I'd give the writers a trial read but I'd guess a steady diet of their 'style' would leave me thirsty I'm sure.

Thanks, Perdita

 

[Guest]

Boy, this thread is going down fast! Posted 4 and 1/2 hours ago. 19 views so far. That's not very much is it? Nobody interested in the article? Four years old article is too dated?

Come on, authors!

P.S.
My advice to "she-who-trolls-CV":
Do not cheat on your income tax anymore. Remember; cheating tax got Al Capone jailed!

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

CV,

In the immortal words of the very mortal Sonny Bono, "It ain't you babe." Things seem very slow all over Lit. Land.

Tom Wolfe has written an essay on this subject. I hate to paraphrase but the gist is film is to today's culture what literature was before world war II. Film is now the dominate medium of expression in our culture. Literature still has a role, but it's secondary. He blames this, in part, on the swing away from stroy-telling to "high concept" literature.

I've probably bungled that, but IMHO, he has a point. Even here at the AH, threads on movies seem to outnumber those on novels and to attract more participation.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Colleen Thomas]

It would seem to me, the rise of film as entertainment is built on the rubble of individual literacy and intelligence. People don't read as much as they did even ten years ago. The average newspaper is written on the 6th grade level. The cultrue of instant gratification seeems to state, why spend a week reading Moby Dick, when I can run down to blockbuster and see it in two hours, thirty five minutes?

The school system here, values socialization over education. The individual level of reading comprehension has suffered. Along with this, there is a lack of basic grounding in history and geography that makes reading erudite novels dificult. When you cannot place events in the perspective of their time and place, you miss out on a great deal of what a story is about. A tale of two cities, makes little impact if you aren't at least basically grounded in the Atmosphere and politics of the French revolution.

Along with this national dumbing down, comes film. Film, in general, takes great literature and makes it into pretty shoddy entertainment. I have talked to several people who have seen the three musketeers. Invariably they don't understand the background, they don't have any clue to the cynical nature of the men towards women, some even think it's a love story. It isn't. But film has changed the basic parameters of Dumas's work to make it marketable entertainment. Having read the book, long before I saw any of the movies, it's almost laughable how much has been removed.

Film is very rarely art. It's most often a pale reflection of the artistry of the original book or, if original, nowhere near as though provoking or deep as literature. With few exceptions, Film panders to the least common denomenator, while a good book, now speaks to a small, literate, minority.

There are bad books. There are good films. The best film, however, pales in comparrison to the best of books. And the worst films have reached a level of sophmoric incomprehensibility you couldn't write.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Film is very rarely art. It's most often a pale reflection of the artistry of the original book or, if original, nowhere near as though provoking or deep as literature. With few exceptions, Film panders to the least common denomenator, while a good book, now speaks to a small, literate, minority.

There are bad books. There are good films. The best film, however, pales in comparrison to the best of books. And the worst films have reached a level of sophmoric incomprehensibility you couldn't write.

I admit, I'm quite surprised to find myself taking up steel on behalf of the motion picture industry and against literature. But life at times thrusts us into odd positions.

So. Film and art. I must disagree with the first premise, that film is rarely art - but I think that we are not perhaps in such radical disagreement, as I see in your comment about "original books" that you're thinking at least to some extent of adaptations. I tend to agree that movie adaptations tend to diminish books, if only because it's impossible to catch the sheer joy and play of the language. Movies must, by their confines, have a great deal less language itself, and the narrative voice is usually entirely lost.

However, the question of original films being less thought-provoking than novels I find hard to let be. Films speak differently to novels, no doubt. They're something like a cross between a painting and a novel. Like other visual arts, they rely less on words, and so we don't get the pleasure and revelry of fine language that we get in a good novel - a heavy loss, I concede. However, we gain image and symbol conveyed with great speed, clarity, subtlety, and power - surely things worth having, and capable of making a powerful work.

That films often fail to use these tools well is no surprise, but I would argue that books often fail to use their tools effectively as well. I agree that a good book now speaks to a small, literate minority. But then, so does a good film. In fact, the finest and most challenging works in both genres have a great deal in common. If I was to select poetry as an art especially neglected in its higher forms, I might point out that small, independent films face many of the same challenges, and can offer many of the same excellent qualities. Neither is commercially viable on the large scale; for that reason, we don't see either very often, and the average person looking for some light entertainment on a Friday night won't be turning to them. But this tells us more about how often the average person is willing to exert intellectual effort than about whether film or the written word best challenges the mind.

A century ago, people were bemoaning the novel as the end of civilization. Cheap, ugly, tacky novels were displacing poetry as the focus of modern artistic endeavor and consumption, and no one was happy about it. And well they might complain, with the flood of penny dreadfuls and cheap bodice rippers and ... well, all the sorts of things I write But in and amongst that were buried fine works of great artistic value - just as Wordsworth shone amidst a deluge of sentimental and valueless doggerel. All forms of artistic endeavour have their strong and weak practitioners; all have their genius and their vulgarity. I think film the same. I would not like to see "The Picture of Dorian Gray" remade into a sentimental love story. Nor would I like to see it supplanted by "Snow Dogs" or "Jersey Girl." But I think that "Farewell My Concubine" could stand proudly next to it as quite its equal in power, tragedy, depth, and searing analysis of the artistic impulse.

I'm glad of it.

Shanglan

 

[tolyk]

There are bad books. There are good films. The best film, however, pales in comparrison to the best of books. And the worst films have reached a level of sophmoric incomprehensibility you couldn't write.

I'm not so sure about that I've read some pretty bad works.

My personal grudge against the movie industry is that actors get paid so much when all they are doing is entertaining us. Comedians don't get paid nearly as much and I generally find them a hell of a lot more entertaining. Especially considering how many bad actors we have now.

I've not had the opportunity to see a professional play, or the opera. I would very much like to go to a live theatre but due to it also being a minority part of the entertainment business, ticket costs are generally out of my range. (I know, not always, and sometimes the quality of acting/stage props/etc aren't even affected by the cost of the tickets, you know what I mean)

What I find silly is when people memorize actors lives, and keep up with the hollywood dating scene. I mean, how many people keep up with the 'behind the scenes' world of Authors? We're a secluded lot and we like our privacy (generally).. anyways, I forget where I was going with all this, so toodles

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

If we can agree that the medium is the message, then filming literature, or novelizing original films, is a process of bastardizing the message through the use of the wrong medium.

In a word Perversion

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Speaking of PERVERSIONS, how you been, Burley?

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Speaking of PERVERSIONS, how you been, Burley? ...

I loaded up all my tap shoes and tassels and headed north of the 49th parallel. I didn’t quite make it. I now reside in Southern Ontario — a few kilometres west of Toronto, to be precise.

I am still employed in my former profession, with far fewer hassles, and my lawyer says I should be granted full citizenship well before Arnie takes possession of the White House.

I’m told I chose a fortuitous year to immigrate — no hockey season!

 

[Guest]

I think people who cheat on their income tax is STupid.

Oh, yeah. Authors, keep the thread up!

 

[TheEarl]

They get the slang, the profanity, the brands, the computers and the TV just right. (The delightful Briticism "mong," as in "to mong out in front of the TV," occurs more than once.)

Just wanted to say: Never heard this expression before in my life. To me 'mong' is an insult, whether playful or meant to be hurtful, deriving from mongoloid. Never heard of any other slang context.

The Earl

 

[Guest]

Note to the readers:

This thread is being written entirely by "she-who-trolls-CV".

A few words about her then. She is a semi-professional journalist.

She is:
A hack
A snooper
A busybody
A peeping-Tom
A voyeur

She is a 'hater'.

She hated me just because I am a man (She is a lesbian).

I have nothing against lesbians: but I strongly dislike 'haters'.

Right now, she's pissed off with me because I 'outed' her.

She's pissed off she cannot 'out' me. See - her name was on public domain. Mine isn't.

Keep hating, "she-who-trolls-CV", because I'll never 'hate' you.

P.S.
Do not cheat on your income tax anymore, "she-who-trolls-CV". It's not good for you.

 

[brightlyiburn]

Note to the readers:

This thread is being written entirely by "she-who-trolls-CV".

A few words about her then. She is a semi-professional journalist.

She is:
A hack
A snooper
A busybody
A peeping-Tom
A voyeur

She is a 'hater'.

She hated me just because I am a man (She is a lesbian).

I have nothing against lesbians: but I strongly dislike 'haters'.

Right now, she's pissed off with me because I 'outed' her.

She's pissed off she cannot 'out' me. See - her name was on public domain. Mine isn't.

Keep hating, "she-who-trolls-CV", because I'll never 'hate' you.

P.S.
Do not cheat on your income tax anymore, "she-who-trolls-CV". It's not good for you.

You know, I dislike trolls as much as the next person, but this is starting to feel a little childish. For someone who doesn't hate her, you sure are making a big deal out of her.

 

[Guest]

You know, I dislike trolls as much as the next person, but this is starting to feel a little childish. For someone who doesn't hate her, you sure are making a big deal out of her.

Why do you keep referring to yourself in third person?

Schizo, are you?

 

[Guest]

Why do you keep referring to yourself in third person?

Schizo, are you?

See what's happening here?

"she-who-trolls-CV" doesn't get my self-deprecating third person/second person joke!


No wonder she copped out.

 

[brightlyiburn]

Why do you keep referring to yourself in third person?

Schizo, are you?

If you are implying that I am trolling you, then you're the one with the problems. I don't know who you are or what the hell you're talking about.

 

[Guest]

bump

 

[Guest]

bump

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

bump

Can the Rump join in the bump?

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Guest]

bump

 

[Guest]

bump

 

[Guest]

bump

Ceev, you really must enlarge your vocabulary.

not trolling, Perdita

 

[bg23]

bump

the list of Avery alts grow and grow...



BUMP!
and grind.
and wriggle.
and squirm.