rant inspired by Aliteracy

[Milz]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> CMC wrote:
> 
> > These words from the WP article should be pretty chilling for HP 
> > lovers:
> > 
> > "[Aliteracy is]  the parent who pops the crummy movie of "Stuart 
> > Little" into a machine for his kid instead of reading E.B. 
White's 
> > marvelous novel aloud. Or the teacher who assigns the made-for-TV 
> > movie "Gettysburg" instead of the book it was based on, "The 
Killer 
> > Angels" by Michael Shaara."
> 
> I had an English teacher who did this a lot.  The movies were very 
> good ones--Washington Square (from Henry James's The Heiress, or is 
it 
> the other way around?), Billy Budd--but it is absurd that she 
showed 
> us the movies without even assigning the books/stories.  I think 
she 
> was pretty burned-out, though, and was in search of easy lessons 
that 
> she could justify as exposing us to great literature.
> 
> I would never allow a child of mine to watch Stuart Little until 
> he/she has read or been read it.  Even if the movie is a 
masterpiece, 
> it's robbing the child of a terrific trip of the imagination to do 
> otherwise.
> 

I had an English teacher who did this once in a while. One movie I 
remember watching was "Bartleby the Scribner" based on the Herman 
Melville short story. I read the story sometime after and the movie 
was close to the book. But I think those types of movies are few and 
far between ("Pudd'n Head Wilson" based on the novel by Mark Twain 
was also pretty good). There have been too many adaptations that have 
been murdered by the adaptors taking too many liberties with the 
book, imo.  Willa Cather hated how one of her novels was adapted for 
the movies that she stippulated in her will that none of her works 
could be adapted for a period of time after her death. 

Milz (who is eager for yet suspicious about the Potter movie)