Value in the Difference of Media: A Primer on Poetics

Hello again, everyone! So last week was a bit of a break from the ruminating on media and adaptations, but as this is my last week for posts this month, I wanted to add some thoughts to my post, Value in the Difference of Media: The Hobbit, hopefully giving some answers to the questions I raised, mainly:

• How can we most objectively evaluate adaptations from novel to film (or at least not feel so lousy when someone butchers our favorite book)?
• Are there elements that transcend media, or are books and film completely different?

My answer (I don’t presume to call it the answer) revolves around a literary concept: Poetics, or as I describe it, the aesthetics of literature.

We’ve Got More Than Poems Now…

Note: I’m not an authority on the subject of poetics, which is a heavily academic subject; I’m merely attempting to show how this concept is important in evaluating cross-media literature. This is a very complicated subject, so if you have more to add or think that I missed something, feel free to comment below.

This stuff get complicated, yo.

Everyone has their own idea about what makes art beautiful. Is it the colors? The shapes? The use of materials? The subject matter? Even if you’ve never stopped and consciously asked yourself why you like a painting or a sculpture (or more informatively, why you didn’t), you have underlying assumptions about what art should be, or do. This is called aesthetics – “a particular theory or conception of beauty or art : a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight” (Merriam-Webster.com, definition 2). This term deals almost exclusively with visual arts, but the idea of aesthetics can also be narrowed further to address literature specifically.

Have you ever wondered what exactly makes people enjoy some books, but not others?

I know, I know. The thought of Twihards even accidentally doing something literary makes my head spin too.

What’s the deal with that Twilight craze? I read the first two (before they became the spastic teen girl favorite) and they’re not too bad, but certainly not good enough, in my opinion, to elicit mass hysteria. While psychological and sociological explanations are probably more useful here (marketing, hype, peer pressure, etc.), there was obviously something about these books that really connected with what these readers view as good literature.

We all have these inclinations (although perhaps not as zealously), to respond to what we conceive of as good literature. Even when we recognize that what we’re reading or watching isn’t well executed, sometimes a book or movie just does something for us. This is what happens when a story approximates our idea of poetics – “a particular theory of poetry or sometimes other literary forms,” in this case, novels and film (Merriam-Webster.com, definition 1b). However, a more useful definition for me, as I stated above is: “the aesthetics of literature,” or to attempt to combine these definitions:

Poetics: a particular theory or conception of beauty or art in literature: a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and stimulates the mind.

The word “poetics” comes from the title of a collection of Aristotle’s lecture notes about how his students should classify, discuss, and write poetry in ancient Greece. It is considered the first organized attempt to create a framework of analysis for poetry (which would include Homer‘s epics, the tragedies, and comedies, which are much closer to stories and films than, say, a poem like “The Red Wheelbarrow”). When Aristotle was discussing these concepts, it’s important to note that novels and film did not exist, and therefore his concepts of how to evaluate literature cannot always be directly applied to these relatively new forms of media.

Since Aristotle, however, writers, playwrights, philosophers, and whoever else had a mind to, have discussed and framed new forms of poetics, spanning every artistic period to our current day. Many literary critics base their approaches to literature on a specific poetics (although there can be a very distinct difference between literary criticism and poetics, but I won’t get into that here). The point of all this is to demonstrate that there is actually such a thing as a structured approach to opinions to novels and film, and, depending on how that structured approach evaluates literature, different media can be held to the same standards. But on the other hand, depending on how finely tuned your approach is for individual forms of media, you may not be able to apply those standards to others.

So, if we’re going to be fair to these movies, we need to use a poetics that can include both film and novels so that we can compare apples to apples, and then we further need a way to compare one adaptation to another; in short, we need a poetics for adaptations.

What Does All of This, I Don’t Even…

“Adaptations” of novels to film are supposed, by marketing and consensus opinion, to take what’s great about the book and faithfully translate that to film with as much accuracy as possible. First, we need to identify some key elements that exist in both film and novels in equal degree. Some examples would be:

• Characters
• Setting
• Pacing
• Tension
• Scene

If you wanted a poetics for adaptations, your framework for evaluating whether or not a film like The Hobbit or Harry Potter is successful as an adaptation would look something like:

• Do aspects of characters in the film match those of their analogue (if it exists) in the film?
• Is the literal manifestation of setting in the film an adequate representation of the descriptions in the text?
• Compared relatively to the pacing of the book, does the film take enough time where required to adequately represent important parts of the story?
• Is the tension of the narrative from the novel translated to the film?
• Are scenes from the book represented adequately, and given enough time and development so as to capture their importance to the story?

You might have noticed from these examples that while this would be a good way to tell if a film was a good adaptation, it doesn’t leave much room for the film-maker to be original or creative. While you might argue that the point of an adaptation is exactly not to be original, you might see the rub when it comes to changes made between media that actually improve the narrative (e.g. Dr. William’s example of the Aragorn not carrying The Shards of Narsil, or changing the tone of The Hobbit to better fit with the trilogy).

It is also very different in intent from deciding if the adaptation is itself a good film.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

It leaves us with a choice: to decide if we should come to movies like The Hobbit and judge them by a poetics of adaptations, or if we should just let them be movies instead. Personally, I’m ok with doing both. I can look at The Lord of the Rings and call it a “bad” adaptation, and then look at something like Life of Pi and call it a “good” adaptation, but then turn around and say the first is a good movie and the second isn’t. But I’m doing so based on two separate systems of poetics, and that’s an important thing to remember.

I hope this discussion has been useful to you, and helped you to see how this isn’t such a simple issue. There’s a lot of room for debate here, but that’s only because it’s part of a larger discussion. If you have any questions about my approach, or just plain disagree with me on something, let me know in the comments below!

LXIII

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Poetry consistently pursued has a way of marking the passages of life.  For the writer at least, and maybe to a lesser extent for his public if he is any kind of a communicator, it leaves a psychological record: what he was reading, where he was hiking, what it was all doing in his head.  The next poem marks a far more significant event than most, though unfortunately it does not necessarily follow that it is a more significant poem.  My daughter, Heather, was born on April 5, 1978.

A METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT

Strange things are taught by Christianity:

That God was born to live a human life;

The mystery of the Holy Trinity

Reflected by a husband and his wife

When, by becoming one, two are made three.

It is an awesome thing to slowly see

The growth of one whose coming was prepared,

The Scriptures say, from all eternity—

This, as all others.  But this one we’ve shared,

Yes and will share:  the holy mystery

To be a copy of the Trinity.

Remember: for more poetry like this, go to https://www.createspace.com/3562314 and order Stars Through the Clouds!  Also look for Reflections from Plato’s Cave, Williams’ newest book from Lantern Hollow Press: Evangelical essays in pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.  https://www.createspace.com/3767346.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Little Children: Cognitive Acceptance and Spiritual Gifts

I have always found it fascinating that our Lord told as many stories as he preached sermons. In fact, Christ usually included stories and parables in his discourses to help communicate his point to his audience. Stories resonate with people, and they tend to understand and remember them better than sermons. I had a friend comment to me one day that she remembered sermons better because of the stories the pastor integrated into sermon.

Ironically, Christ also told stories to be cryptic. He told stories not only because his audience would remember his discourses and truths better but also because he could communicate to the right people. Not everyone understood his stories (nor that his stories were about them), but Christ proclaims that the Father has obscured his teachings (including his parables) “from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants” (Matthew 11:25).

How interesting it is that Christ used the term infant to describe the people who could understand his teachings. At first, it seems like Christ might be speaking ironically. His words about God withholding truth from the wise correspond to Paul’s statement to the Corinthians about God choosing the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. Christ, thus, might be playing with meaning here as to who actually might be the more foolish or immature person.

Nevertheless, our Lord has decided to use one of the lowest members of his society for an analogy of his followers. Though Christ probably had a social comparison in mind when gave this statement, my study in children’s literature has brought me to a place of one possible understanding.

In studying developmental psychology, I have learned that children think concretely. They do not have the cognitive ability to think abstractly, which will not occur until they reach puberty. Hence, when you tell a child that he must behave because Santa Claus is coming to town, you will see his eyes light up and suddenly you have the best behaved child on the block. This child believes in Santa because you, the parent or teacher or adult figure, have said it is true and what you say must be so.  A child usually cannot comprehend that you are pretending unless you have told him otherwise. (Interestingly, children know what it means to pretend, though they sometimes have trouble understanding the line between pretend and fact.)

Children, further, accept everything their parents tell them because they tend to focus their understanding of relationships around the home. If asked who their best friends are, young children might tell you their mother, father, or sibling. All they really know are those who they have contact with every day, so their association with the word friend happens to be the people most familiar to them. As they grow older, they tend associate their friends with people outside their home.

Further, most of their activities revolve around the house. If asked what the word love means, children will project that meaning onto an individual or action, possibly stating again their parents tell them “I love you” and kiss them good night. Rarely can they conjure an abstract equivalent meaning to love, such as affection, sacrifice, unconditional, and unmerited. They think concretely, so everything about their reality centers on the tangible and familial.

In some regard, we can draw a spiritual application to this psychological behavior. Because children think so concretely, they believe anything you tell them. Followers of Christ perhaps will accept his teachings in this way. They trust their Father’s word almost completely and become defensive when someone says something contrary to his teachings. This is not a blind acceptance, though. Christ says that the Father himself gave them this ability. However, they receive Christ’s teachings as concrete truth, willingly accepting his words with faith and repentance.

Further, Christ uses the most familial term we know to express our relationship with God: he is our Father and we are his children. They have concrete evidence of the Father and his love for them through Jesus Christ’s personhood and his life and death. Christ is also the tangible person with which we associate abstract spiritual terms: the Way, the Truth, and the Life, for example. As proverbial small children, we hold fast to this relationship which encapsulates our need for our Father’s love and our desire to have his Son as our only true friend, all of which God gives us out of his love and good pleasure.

Christ makes several other analogies to his followers and small children. Most of the time, he does so to humble them and demonstrate the severity of their want of love and mercy for their fellow man. Here, however, Christ shows his disciples a different image of their childlike position to their Father. Truly, God has given his children a unique gift in understanding the truths of his Son’s teachings, for they all reveal his character and redemptive design and their need and total dependence on him.

On War in Fiction: War is a Necessity

I would guess that most of us who decide to take up our metaphorical pens these days to write fiction have probably never been in an actual war.  (That includes me, of course.)  It is interesting then that war and conflict are featured so prominently in so much fantasy and science fiction.  Don’t get me wrong; I think that’s a good thing.  I would much rather we have to stretch to understand that subject than that we know it too well, but it does present a problem:  How do we write believable stories that involve war when we really know so little about it?  The answer is (and hopefully will remain) that we must learn by proxy, from the experience of others.

In this series of posts, I’ll be exploring some themes gleaned from military history to illuminate points that I think many people misunderstand and thereby dispel the corresponding misconceptions about war.  I hope you find them useful!

__________

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

–Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry

For many years now humanity has suffered from the gratifying delusion that one day, of our own accord, humans will end all war.  That is a wonderful goal to be sure…but, if history and human nature are any indication, it is complete moonshine.  History teaches us to abhor war, to put it off, to try to avoid it if at all possible.  But history also demonstrates that, at some point war is an inevitability because of human nature.  Nations will take the opportunity to enslave or otherwise exploit each other, just like individuals do.  Worse, each nation can take it in turns, since leadership comes and goes in each and every one of them.  If nations that still value freedom don’t stand up the oppressor–most likely through war–the alternatives can be far worse.  We can just think what life in Europe under the Nazi’s would have been like, if we need an example.  If you want your fictional worlds to be based on any sense of reality (granted, you may not), then the sooner you realize this the better.  All cultures, no matter how peace-loving, must also prepare for war.

The fantasy that says that war is simply a temporary condition that will one day be overcome is, in its more recent incarnations, a result of scientific idealism.  By refusing to acknowledge the reality of the Fall of humanity and the resulting sin nature, people inevitably ask, “Since we’re all basically good, why can’t we just get along?”  “IMAGINE!”  If you really don’t have a firm grasp of what humanity is, then you can easily believe that this dream can be realized.

Over the course of the Twentieth Century, there were many attempts to make that happen.  Communism in Russia and China was intended to “break the cycle of history,” thereby ending the eternal war between the haves and the have-nots and ushering in an era of world peace.  After forty million or so murders at the hands of Stalin and Mao and multiple “low intensity conflicts”, how is that working out for everyone?

Signing the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Right.

While there is nothing funny about communism, there is hardly anything to take seriously about the Kellog-Briand Pact, signed in 1928.  In it, the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and others offered “a frank renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy….”  Eleven years later, all of these countries were embroiled in World War II, the largest and most destructive war in history that culminated in the use of atomic weaponry!

Sadly, it is a testimony to the gullibility of the human race and a profound ignorance of history that these ideas are still floating around.  If the Twentieth Century should teach us anything, it is that socialism and utopianism are equally ridiculous ideas.  How I wish that weren’t true!

War, it seems, is a universal reality.  Nations distinguish themselves in how they prepare for war and how they pursue it when it comes.  Generally speaking, good nations are the ones that don’t use war to force their whims onto others.  Bad ones conquer with the sword what they cannot through debate and discussion.  Wise politicians and generals prepare for future wars so thoroughly that, though they will hopefully never need to fight them, when they do, the wars are insured to be as short and clean as possible.  Ignorant leaders leave their peoples open to invasion, destruction, and defeat.  The middle ground between the two is tenuous at best.

Of course, I am speaking of human nature, and we are also talking about fantasy and science fiction.  Why not simply introduce an inhuman species that operates on a different level?  That would be fine…but then you risk the rest of us no identifying with or enjoying your creation.  Readers tend to connect most strongly with characters and cultures they can see some of themselves in.  If your cultures are truly inhuman, you risk losing that connection.  If your stories have humans in them–or if you want humans to identify with them, you will have no choice but to take war and conflict into account.

There are plenty of examples of how to do this, ranging from the “Star” franchises in science fiction to fantasy classics like the Lord of the Rings.  Since war is a fact of life–as much as we might abhor it–let’s use our imaginations to treat it right, to set up examples in our minds of what it really means to be strong, heroic, and fair as opposed to simple naivete.   In doing so, we can hope to influence thousands of people toward those ideals when the real events occur.

__________

 Next Week:  Rachel returns on Fridays!  I’ll be back in April 5 with more thoughts on war and fiction. 

Science Fiction Round-up: Video Games Driving Technology, and Cyberflippers

Hello everyone! Last week I went on about media and important differences between them (etc. etc.). It was a thorough and in-depth article, and this week I was supposed to dive right back into it.

Well, I think we need a quick break from that. So instead, this week, I’ve compiled another Science Fiction Round-up for your reading pleasure. If you’re new, this is a series of articles I’ve scrounged from my own vast surveys of SF-related news sites and blogs (because I’m into that sort of thing) and pull them together for your inspiration. I get ideas from reading these things all the time, so I thought I’d pass them on to you. You’re welcome!

As I’ve outlined before, there is a unique, chicken-and-egg relationship between science fiction and technology. Many ideas in science fiction literature comes from actual science (obviously), however, many technologies are developed after being imagined by SF writers. Similarly, a lot of technological development is spurred by video games, either because the tech is useful to the gaming industry, or as a consequence of the games themselves.

Oculus Rift: Affordable Virtual Reality (Finally)

One example of this is the ever-sought (but rarely successful) niche of Virtual Reality. It’s interesting to note just how popular the idea of virtual reality is in popular media, but how unsuccessful virtual reality products have been historically. From Morton Heilig’s Sensorama to Nintendo’s Virtual Boy (which I actually own), virtual reality products have never really taken off. But of course, a certain quality vs. cost calculation has always been it’s bane (these products are always really expensive and never deliver much).

This is all changing, however, with the Oculus Rift, widely being touted as one of the first viable attempts to mainstream virtual reality. The system is intended as a display for video games, which have been the focus and driving force behind the technology in the consumer market, whereas simulations (such as aircraft and parachuting trainers) drive it in military and corporate markets.

In any case, this is an exciting development, but it mostly feels weird to me that we are actually going to have to integrate this technology into our lives in the near future. For instance, this article deals with thoughts on how to properly gain someone’s attention politely while they are using the Oculus Rift device, since you wouldn’t want to freak them out too badly in the process.

Source: NYTimes.com

Soon You May Have An Excuse to Scarf That Snickers Bar

I can’t tell from reading this article if the creators of this project got the idea from Deus Ex: Human Revolution or not (the chicken-or-egg scenario again), but the connection is clear. In the game, protagonist Adam Jensen, a cyborg, has to eat powerbars to replenish his strength after he hits someone in the face. In the game, it’s a mechanic that keeps the player from pile-driving every single enemy. In real life, it could be a legitimate way to power internal implants. The idea is to use the resources already present in the body to generate electricity for devices in leau of a battery. In this case, the biocells take oxygen and glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream and break them down to create a charge.

It’s unlikely that the researchers responsible for the bio cells actually got the idea from Deus Ex, but the idea has been floating around in SF and video games for years. It’s interesting to see that this appears to be not only possible, but a very practical technology.

Source: The Escapist, BBC

Finally, Prosthetics for Quadruple Flipper Amputees

To end on a completely different note, apparently some Japanese researchers found it necessary to give artificial flippers to a loggerhead turtle. After being caught and mangled in a fishing net in 2008, the turtle lost its flippers. Scientists have been trying since to design prosthetic flippers to allow the critter to swim normally. It’s taken a lot of tries (this is their 27th iteration) but I think they’ve come pretty close:

I’m not quite sure about the general applications of this research, but I’m finding it hard to care. Daw.

 

Well, that’ll be it for this week. Next week I’ll get into the details of elements that transcend media. Until then, how much is too much for virtual reality? Since the push for mainstream VR is coming soon, do you think you’ll buy into it? Let me know in the comments below!