A Spring of New Ideas: Media and the Literary Canon

Ok, since my discussion with Professor Burton, I have a lot of new ideas swirling around in my head.  Where to begin?  I plan on making these ideas more clear with time.

Have you ever read a book and immediately began thinking of the book in terms of a movie?  Even before the era of movies, some books carry cinematic qualities.  The dialogue, scene changes, and character description lend themselves easily to movie adaptation.  In fact, a movie can represent the book to such a degree that it, rather than the book, is thought of as the primary text.  The digital age has propagated a shift in primary textual perception.  In order to make this idea more clear, let me compare it with an example with which most of you are probably familiar.

The A&E version of Pride and Prejudice--how many times have I been criticized for liking any movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice rather than the "classic," rather than the "original"?  Now I am not dissing on the A&E version by any means.  I love it.  But wait a minute...isn't the A&E movie secondary to the actual book as is the Keira Knightly version?  We are comparing movie to movie in reference to the text.  It seems to me that some people have so fixed in their minds that the A&E movie is the living embodiment of the book that they begin to disregard the book as the primary source, saying to watch that movie and to read the book are virtually the same thing.

In addition, now when you read the book, do you see Colin Firth as the dark and daunting Mr. Darcy?  Or the charming Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennett?  How many of you saw the movie before reading the book?  How many of you read the book because you saw the movie?

In my own experience with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I realized I was reading a secondary text to the original.  I read the English translation.  Only then did it dawn on me that even my perception of the "original text" wasn't actually the original at all.  That secondary text acted as the primary text.  Does that make the English translation any less valid?  Because a book is in movie format, does that make it any less valuable?

The digital age has opened our perception of what is and isn't counted as a primary text, whether it be a translation of the print version, the ebook, the audiobook, or a well-made movie adaption.

I propose that the literary canon is opening up again, but this time not to incorporate female or ethnic minority writers, but to include different formats of the literary work.  Or rather, maybe there is a separate, but closely linked, canon being created of digital media, a hierarchy among adaptions (think of the A&E Pride and Prejudice being compared to the Keira Knightly version, or the Disney adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in comparison with the musical, book, or e/audiobook for that matter).  Is there a new literary canon forming made of digital media?  What think ye?

Linking Austen and Hugo in the Digital Age

Ok, Whitney Simons's posts about Pride and Prejudice, relationships, and the digital age got me thinking about some of my own ideas with my research on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, namely how these works of classic literature are being represented and retold in the media.  In order to better delve into the ideas behind the media and literature, I watched a bit of the Bollywood movie Bride and Prejudice.

I had anticipated cringing throughout the movie and feeling like it was an insult to Jane Austen's memory to have her work so utterly perverted.  However, because I have become more inculcated into the digital world, and have formed my own ideas about its merit, I actually found myself enjoying it.  Though this rendition doesn't hold a candle to the original, and though you can hardly keep from laughing during the whole of the movie, I kind of liked seeing the general story of Pride and Prejudice taken totally out of it's original context and applied to a world so completely different (i.e. India).  It was fun, colorful, and playful, typical Bollywood.  It gave the original story a fiery, Indian spice to it, and not an unpleasant one at that.

Ok, now, how does that apply to Hunchback?  Well, I have had the same kinds of ideas as I have explored the different ways that The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been infiltrated into different forms of media.  Being a passionate advocate of the original (well, translated) text, I didn't think that I could ever accept the other forms of media's renditions/interpretations of the story if they did not exactly correspond with what I thought.  However, my ideas have changed.

Not only do these different forms of media give a new light into the story itself (both for Hunchback and Pride and Prejudice), but maybe the most important and useful thing these mediums, these "translations" if you will, have done is make these great works of literature more accessible to a larger populous.  Someone may not have any interest in 19th century British customs and traditions (though I can't imagine why), but maybe they have a passion for Indian culture and dance.  Bride and Prejudice may then introduce this person to the original book in a way that would get them excited about reading it, and the same thing goes for the Hunchback.  All these things tie back to one another.  Maybe the digital humanities is not so detrimental to classic literature as I once thought it to be.