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  3. Nowadays many novels are adapted into films or TV plays. What do you think o

Nowadays many novels are adapted into films or TV plays. What do you think o

游客2023-12-05  44
问题     Nowadays many novels are adapted into films or TV plays. What do you think of film adaptations of literature? Write an essay of about 400 words on the following topic:
                My Views on Film Adaptations of Literature
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答案                 My Views on Film Adaptations of Literature
    One objection is commonly made to adapting novels to the screen. In what follows I shall argue that it is ill-founded.
    This objection goes like this; (a) novels are, by definition, long and complex; (b) films are, also by definition, short and relatively simple; ( c) how can you translate a book-length literary work into a 2-hour long cinematic experience without substantially compromising the novel’s integrity? The film cannot be sufficiently faithful to the original work for the audience to appreciate its subtlety; ( d) so adapting novels to the screen is no good.
    Against the premises of the argument—namely, (a) , (b) and (c)—I have no complaint. But the reasoning from (c) to (d) , i. e. the conclusion, is fallacious. That the reasoning is bad can be seen more clearly by considering an analogous argument: particle physics is concerned with subatomic particles; mechanics is concerned with the motion of and application of forces to visible, extended bodies; how can you focus on bodies—which are large-scale objects composed of invisible particles— without neglecting the microscopic world? (e) So mechanics is no good.
    Since (e) is clearly unacceptable, the argument constitutes a reduction ad absurdum. The model is that you can’t repudiate A simply because A seems pale in comparison with B. A may have its own raison d’etre, and indeed for film adaptations there are two. The first is that film adaptations have something to offer which novels simply are incapable of; a fresh, vivid, true-to-life sensory experience. Reading novels requires a lot of imaginative and mental efforts, and sometimes you ( or, at least, me) may just want to lie back, switch on the screen and enjoy yourself for a while, without having to rack your brains to figure out who is who or what is what. Now, someone may counter this claiming that he has a keener imagination, even livelier than his senses. Credibility aside, this surely cannot be the reason why others, who may have duller imaginations, should not be allowed to use their eyes and ears. To possess a finer faculty may be a blessing, but to impose that upon others is sheer snobbery.
    The second reason for the existence of adaptations is that it may play a complementary role. The analogy between particle physics and mechanics is relevant here. It is a well-known fact that many large-scale phenomena are explained only at the atomic or even subatomic level, so that anomalies observed at the macroscopic level may lead to new discoveries at the microscopic level. Similarly, audience who are fascinated by the film will naturally want to know more about the details, thus entering the subtler world of literature and satisfying themselves with all those things which literature alone can not offer.
    To sum up, the relationship between a novel and its film adaptation may be seen as analogous to that between a book and its preface. The preface serves the unique function of allowing casual readers to satisfy themselves with light reading, but it serves also as an invitation to a fuller perusal of the book itself.  In either case, however, to demand that the preface be eliminated is simply ungrounded.
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