we watched "peter pan" (2003) the other night. i understand the difficulty of adapting fiction into film but i am disappointed anyway. why do people always want to take a story that is perfectly lovely and simple and clear and add to it? that things must be subtracted i understand ("princess bride") but that things get added, especially things that change (what i perceive to be) the basic mores of the story ("charlie and the chocolate factory") is something i'll never get.
every love song on the radio is about your love. every biography is essentially your story. every experience speaks to your experience and every horoscope describes you perfectly. you take the specifics of a story and smudge them away until there are nothing left but basic values, then you take the ones that you approve and clasp them to yourself, wanting to see how perfectly they fit. see how this song uses the words "i love you"; that's exactly how you feel. she struggled against adversity and so did you; so you're the same. if i've traveled there then i know what it's like and you don't have to try to explain, and you are generous and stubborn and today will be lucky.
the thing is that the more you push and pull and shove things around until they look like something that you understand, the less they are something you really understand. the less they are something you can understand, i think.
i never really liked william carlos williams, i never understood the beauty of a red wheelbarrow and though so sweet and so cold has moved into my heart it's a very small space compared to a tedious argument of insidious intent. i like a little ambiguity. and i like cover versions, i like reinterpretations, i like personal footnotes in impersonal essays. so i'm not saying i require the thing itself or nothing; i'm not saying my feelings don't come with a soundtrack and a slideshow, because they totally do. but to work there has to be a response, not just an edit and addition and then a flat presentation.
i'm straying; i'm sorry. where was i going? what i wanted to say is that is that i see you taking pictures, songs, words, and adapting them to the story you want to tell me, but in a way that takes away from the original intent without actually adding anything to what you want to say. robin hitchcock sang you're projecting onto me/what you'd like yourself to see but this is even worse, a step further: you're projecting onto me what somebody else saw somewhere else. i am disturbed, i am increasingly disturbed, i am disturbed to the point where i don't know if we are even having the same conversation anymore. i need you to talk to me in your words, not exclusively quotation. i need you to look at me and see me, not a jumble of presupposition. i need you to listen to me, not to the voices i remind you of. and i need you to hear what i say, not what you thought my words should be.
Yes! Excellent.
Posted by: scratchy888 | January 03, 2007 at 12:07 AM