Underprivileged Media

It has taken me forever to formulate this damn thought... For days I walked around with this idea into my head, and yet every time I sat down to my computer I would just stare at the blinking cursor for the longest time with no bloody idea about what it was that I was going to write about. No more, though. This time I pinned that elusive thought down and stapled it to the floor of my brain several times with industrial-strength BOSTON staples. So there, thought.

I have always felt like there is a war that new forms of media have to fight in order to gain acceptance. We've talked about this a little bit in class, but it is something that has been driving me INSANE since before I can remember. It seems that a newer medium is forced to prove itself to be of value to society, and most times this is an uphill struggle. I've been thinking about this specifically with respect to video games and comics. Both media have similarities with both film and written text. My problem in the matter lies in the concept of viewing comics and video games as bastardizations of text. It's a very elitist point of view to take, and probably has something to do with why I became a media studies major. When I was younger, I think it's safe to say that I was somewhat looked down upon by my older sister for being so invested into video games. At that point she had spent the majority of her literate years sequestered away from the world and entwined in her books. She would often criticize me (sometimes quite harshly) for playing video games, and tell me how they could never compare to a good book. I've still been waiting for her to be proven right. I say this because I think it is ridiculous to try and judge one of these media on the basis of the other. I could never genuinely say that I got more satisfaction out of a video game than I did a novel, and I could never say the converse. It seems to be quite a similar case for comics (although my sister didn't give me quite as much hell, since I did have paper in my hands). Does the fact that they have pictures in them make them too proletariat for the average novel connoisseur? Hrmmm....

Another obnoxious thing I find is when people go to see a movie which was based off of a novel/video game/comic/TV show/etc. and then walk out of the theatre saying things like "OH MY GOD, THE NOVEL WAS SOOOOO MUCH BETTER." And it always has to be a movie rendition that sparks this thought process. It just seems absurd to draw direct correlations between subjects on two very different media formats. I mean, sure there are probably parts cut out that people liked or whatnot, but the material itself undergoes an immense transfiguration. If you have a little freetime, reduce a 500 page novel down into a 120 page screenplay. Then if you have a bit of extra time to spare, turn that into a feature-length film. Also bear in mind that during all of this the material is being parsed through multiple brains, so the result is not the vision of a single mind's eye. So you liked the book. Good. You didn't like the book. Good. You liked the movie. Good. You didn't like the movie. Good. But it just doesn't make sense in my mind as to why anyone should feel the need to say that one was better than the other.

$5.00 says that nobody walked out of the theatre after seeing Brazil in 1985 and said "Well, it was a nice try, but the song is far better." Put that in your pipe.


Incidentally, I love my sister.