Friday, September 15, 2006

Watching vs. reading

Tyler Cowen has some theories about why we read books in bits but watch movies all the way through. I'm ADD and will happily break a movie into bits. Anyway, worth a look.

Posted by Tripp at 6:54 PM

6 comments:

mademoiselle sand said...

I'd happily break a movie into bits, too. I...think slowly. There's a gap between my seeing something and understanding it. Watching films in the cinema confuses me slightly because in cinemas there's no chance to pause and mentally connect sequences of visual images with the actual narrative. I'm thankful I watched 'mulholland drive' on DVD, otherwise it could have been messy for me; that part where the thing with the weird face comes out from behind the wall...oi yoy...

4:09 AM
Tripp said...

In the case of a movie like Mulholland, I like to watch it one way through, and then go back to try and figure out parts that were mysterious.

I think the directors take advantage of the fact that you have no chance to pause. This lets them get away with more than an author can. Of course actually showing something on screen can be harder than describing the fantastic in books. There is little left for the imagination. This is why I think Stephen King books don't translate well into movies.

10:01 AM
mademoiselle sand said...

re: directors and pause- some west african cinema (i.e. Nollywood) allows for a culture of film-watching as communal, and often pace their narratives slower and repeat motifs and images so that everyone in the cinema/watching the DVD can put in their commentary and shape interpretation of the film- okso that was a longwinded way of saying that the whole family can go 'o my god! he's cheating on her! bastard! bastard!' before moving on to a resolution. A friend of mine who watched 'moolade' with me complained that it was moving too slowly, but I was grateful for the sedate pace =)

re: stephen king books translating poorly into films - what about 'the shining'? I think Kubrick did a good job of maintaining the sense of complete and utter dread that the reader is made aware of when the family are alone in the hotel- corners and corridors become too much to deal with looking at, even if there's nothing bad immediately apparent...

9:17 AM
Tripp said...

That western african comment is interesting. I saw a film from the region (the name escapes me) some time ago and I was surprised at the pacing. You've explained it!

Yes, the Shining is a great exception, and I think it is because it was made by a great director. He managed to take elements out of the book and add the right level of mystery. I am thinking, for example, of the man in the dog suit, who appears for about 30 seconds in the movie

3:46 PM
mademoiselle sand said...

what? man in dog suit? when...?!
I'm going to have to steel myself up to watch the shining again...

5:30 AM
Tripp said...

In the book, if you recall, one of the episodes of the past involved a man who dressed in the dog suit and was a sex slave for other men (and women? don't recall). He may have come to a bad end as well. This was part of the dark past of the hotel.

In the movie as mom and Danny are fleeing from evil Dad, they pass a room where they see a man in formal dress with a person in the dog suit crouching before him. It's
rather quick in the film, which makes it more creepy

11:00 AM

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