Wednesday, March 12, 2014

SOS - Save Our (tweethis)Statement


I'm struggling, folks.

Wikimedia Commons
I've tried sharing my ideas on Facebook but the lack of mature answers made me realize that that method may be a dead end. Or that my idea is too broad. Or that I need better friends.

After reading the posts of others here, I am relieved that I am not the only one who has struggled with sharing their statement on social media. After reading Robbie's and Analee's posts in particular, I was inspired to at least try it out on here. Maybe I just need to fine-tune my ideas and make them less broad? I don't know.
Here, let me explain:

The paper I wrote earlier this semester was about the visual content in Lewis Carroll's works, and how it was an important aspect in his books. Important enough even to challenge the written word in value. I loved writing about that.

Now I'm working on research for The Princess Bride, which has little visual material to study. There's a map in the front, and the chapter headings are decorated, but I don't think that's enough to relate back to John Tenniel's masterpieces in the Alice works.

I've been playing with the idea of relating the visual importance of the illustrations in Carroll's works to the visual importance that perhaps the movie "The Princess Bride" has on reading the novel. Note - the author of the novel also wrote the screenplay of the movie.

I am drawn to this idea, and yet I feel like I am treading thin ice. I do not want to end up with a paper that belongs to a film criticism class. Does that make sense?

What do you all think? I don't want to seem like I'm begging here, but I could really use some help with this.

Ok, so maybe I'm begging.

I have no shame.

Help.

7 comments:

  1. I think that as long as you focus specifically on how watching the movie affects reading the novel, it will work as a literary criticism. You don't want to go too far into analyzing the movie, but maybe go more in depth comparing how the visuals influence the readers when they read the book. Same with Carroll and the illustrations in his works. I think it'll be a really interesting paper. I think you'd be joining the realm of the book vs. movie debate by bridging the gap between the two.

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    1. That is a great idea! Thank you so much! I agree, I think it would make a very interesting paper.

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  2. I'm struggling with a similar problem with the film criticism. I think you could pull it off if you are very very careful to focus on literary analysis. I think the only way you could bring the film into it is if you focused on the screenplay and not the visual aspects of the movie. That's tricky though. What would your thesis look like? Would you be comparing Alice still? Or would it be a book-film comparison? I'm pretty sure that comparing the illustrations in Alice to the film Princess Bride would be a stretch. Try crafting some "real" thesis statement and things may become a little more clear for you. Good luck!

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  3. The theme here seems to be about not focusing on the film so much as on how the visual stimuli affect the readers before or after they see it. Or maybe the lack of? Hmmm... maybe it totally changes interpretations. Or maybe it just makes it easier to connect words with images.

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  4. Perhaps you should change the focus of "visuals" from literal visuals to figurative visuals -- by which I mean descriptions, imagery, etc. Or perhaps what are the characters' responses to sights, sounds and appearances? If you enjoyed writing about the Visual Stuff that much, why not see how the characters see it?

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  5. I agree with Tori. Just talking about Alice's illustrations to Princess Bride Movie is a big jump of medium. But the fact that the Author did also do the screenplay is really cool. Maybe you could compare how he adapted it into a more visual format (the screenplay) verses how whoever did the illustrations adapted Alice? I also really like the idea of Adam's in relating the visual imagery in the book, but I haven't read the Princess Bride for years, does it contain enough of that?

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    1. Excellent points. It really is a stretch, but both pieces were adapted to be more visual, so I can bank on that.

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