I was nine years old when the first Harry Potter book was published and thirteen when the first film debuted. By those facts alone, I have severely dated myself but I don't care. I grew up with the series, both the books, and the films, and I wouldn't trade that to be younger. I experienced them as the rest of the world did: as they made their mark on literary and film history.
Now, I have seen the movies MULTIPLE times, but - and here begins the scolding - I have only read the books once. (Maybe twice? My memory is fuzzy.) However, I remember tons of details from the books that I know don't appear in the films. So, it was a very good, and absorbing, one and only reading, that cursory event.
Reading Philosopher's Stone again was a neat experience. I was constantly comparing what was left out of the film and exactly how faithful the film stayed to the source. It was insane. For example, when Malfoy tells Harry who he should be friends with, the dialogue is identical even though where the conversation takes place is different! I made a note about it my reading journal, it was that important.
The seminars in my class for this book covered the settings of Hogwarts and Diagon Ally and the Harry Potter franchise and Pottermore. The one presenter, a friend of mine, was surprised in her research that critics were harsh on the first film because of all the time spent on creating the world and not on the character development. She made a good point that it was the first film in a highly publicized series and part of making sure it kept going (as a film series) was making the worlds come to life.
For me, reading it again encouraged me to re-read the whole series again. (So, readers, beware of those posts to come after much more of me trying to catch up on my other reading.) I'm looking forward to experiencing the adventures, sorrow and excitement of Harry, Ron and Hermione all over again. I'm hoping to pick up on things I didn't the first time around, and now that I'm older, I'm sure I will. Also, comparing them to the films, good and bad, will be fun because I have a whole new outlook on the whole field of adaptation studies.
The class consensus was that Philosopher's Stone was a good adaptation in terms of other films we had viewed compared to their source texts. I don't like the word 'compare'... Evaluate? Study? I will have to try to come up with another word. Anyway, it was very faithful to the book and kept the 'feeling' that we keep returning to in our class discussions. Adapting fantasy is hard, especially the worlds and the intricacies they present if they're not at all familiar to the audience - readers or moviegoers.
It has taken me a long time to get to this post about my class novels. I still have three left to go and I'm hoping to get them done here in the next little bit, considering my class is now over. My biggest debate is posting my seminar paper on here as it's own post! Maybe I will.
No comments:
Post a Comment