Gottschall writes that "Reading is often seen as a passive act: we lie back and let writers pipe joy into our brains. But this is wrong. When we experience a story, our minds are churning, working hard" (5-6). Do you think the same thing could be said of movies? When viewers experience the kind of stories told via the medium of film, are their minds "churning, working hard"? To what extent is the activity of the mind a reflection of the media being consumed and to what extent is a reflection of the consumer?
I think that for some movies, yes the mind does have to work quite a bit. Suspense movies, movies with cliffhangers, or anything that really makes the viewer think about what they are seeing will cause quite a bit of work. However, with reading, you are often left to fill in enormous gaps all by yourself. When reading the Hunger Games, I did not picture Jennifer Laurence as Katniss. It was more of a shifting character that's appearance varied based on the different trials she faced. With a book, you have nothing more than the storyline, and all you are getting is bits and pieces at a time. With a good book it's almost impossible to figure out what way the story will go, because you can think of so many possibilities. You don't have to do that with a movie. In movies, they provide the visuals. They have all the details already laid out for you, and in many cases these visuals will give away the plot line before the movie even ends. One of the problems people talk about a lot is that kids are watching too much TV. However, we live in a society where if you don’t watch TV, you are labeled the outcast. I didn't watch much TV growing up and spent most of my time in books. I believe this helped me use more of my mind which benefited me growing up, but I will still considered “weird” quite a bit because I didn't watch MTV. As society constantly pushes television and digital stories compared to books, I am afraid that eventually we may lose our storytelling ability all together. We will be stuck in circles of the same old stories because we have lost the ability to create them in our minds.
ReplyDeleteI think that the mind works nearly as hard during a movie as it does during the reading of a book. The beauty of movies lies in the fact that they ARE visual. Personally, I feel greater emotion watching a movie than I ever have reading a book. I'll use Miranda's book/movie reference for example. When I read The Hunger Games, it broke my heart when Rue was killed; however, when I watched The Hunger Games, I couldn't stop my tears, especially while witnessing Katniss in such pain and despair.
DeleteAlso, like Miranda mentioned, some movie genres, such as horror, mystery, or action, leave viewers with much more creative room than the typical romantic movie. However, I believe the same could be said of books.
To an extent, the "churning" of the mind is influenced by what is seen on screen. For example, during a romantic movie, the mind is going to churn out ideas and inferences that have to do with relationships. However, the outcome of such ideas is usually determined by the personality of the consumer. During the romantic movie, two consumers will both churn out imaginative inferences about the outcome of the movie, but a hopeless romantic and hard-core realist will have completely different endings to their inferred outcomes.
-Sidney Lewis
For the most part, I do not believe that watching a modern, Hollywood film requires a degree of mental involvement that even comes close to the experience of reading a novel. When shown a movie, an individual merely processes what is occurring, and there are no details to be expounded upon. When reading a book, an individual cannot help but insert or manipulate the text into what he or she secretly desires. Take Pride and Prejudice, for example. Girls: Whenever Darcy was described, can you honestly state that you weren’t building an image of Prince Charming in your mind? Guys: Whenever Hawthorne began to describe Jane, did you not immediately envision the most beautiful girl you know…? While great movies may take our breath away, they are not likely to leave us imagining. I believe that books reflect the imagination of the consumer while movies reflect the imagination of the producer.
ReplyDelete- Dillon Rea
I think, in part, the same can be said about movies. While viewing movies our minds are constantly anticipating how the story will end or the next turn it will take. However, I do believe that when reading a book our minds are working harder, as they do not have the visual picture already made for them. While reading we create our own scenes in our mind, but when watching movies they are already provided thus taking that experience away from us. I think that when we watch a movie less is left to the imagination. Therefore, our minds are not given the opportunity to expand and create images and deeper explanations to fill in the gaps left by the storyline of a book.
ReplyDelete-Alex Porter
I would agree that movies do require a bit of "mind churning," but some require a bit more than others. If I were to walk into a movie theater and purchase a ticket to any movie, the brain work would be similar. I would be reading the actor's body language, facial expressions, and and tone of voice, as well as piecing together details to draw my own conclusions. This is the minimal effort needed in a movie, but often older movies require a bit more. Personally, I am a fan of black and white films. When I become deeply absorbed in one, what my eyes see in black and white, my mind can see in technicolor. I end up surprised the next time I go to watch it because I remember the colors so vividly. I feel that the disdain (mainly in the younger generations) for black and white films is because of the need to be bottle-fed the details in order maintain interest. In my opinion, nothing can churn the mind more than a book or a word-of-mouth story.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I feel that while some movies do force the viewer to focus and be attentive in order to understand, no movie that I have ever watched has been as able to suck me in and make me want to be part of the story like a good book. I believe the reason is because movies are condensed into at the very most a three-hour story, whereas books can be stretched out and can take months to read and enjoy. Books also have the liberty of being able to have many subplots that take place throughout the story, while movies are usually constrained to one conflict that is being resolved. This is why, with rare exception, books are not usually successful when adapted into movies. I was a fan of the Harry Potter books as a child, but I refused to see the movies for the simple reason that I didn't want the storyline of the books to be ruined by what I feared was to be a story arc that was mangled beyond repair by Hollywood. That is why I feel that books engage our minds more, because movies are constrained so that even those with the shortest attention spans (such as small children) can be entertained.
ReplyDeleteAs an avid movie goer, I’d have to hope that in a majority of the films I watch my mind is “churning”; however, I will agree not to the extent it would be if I were reading a book. That’s primarily due to the fact that most of the imaginative work is done for us in films. We don’t have to wonder what Tolstoy’s Princess Lise Bolkonskaya looks like when Anastasiya Vertinskaya portrays her. I think in part that’s a major draw of movies-why read the book when you can just watch the movie? It’s less effort all around and the cost of a movie ticket is a few bucks cheaper than your average paperback. Cutting corners may save time and effort, and that’s definitely the case when you allow someone to do a lot of the imaginative work for you, but I’d assert you’re the one who loses out. A part of being human is engaging your imagination, and books demand that. Authors “draw” lines and “our minds supply most of the information in the scene-most of the color, shading, and texture” (Gottschall, 5). I’d wager all of that imaginative work is the reason that most folks who read novels that are then made into films usually don’t care for them. Your vision of the characters, the setting, and sometimes even the plot vastly differs from that of those who made the movie.
ReplyDeleteBoth books and films work the mind, but in completely different ways. When reading, a person has to transform the words on the page into pictures, but with movies this process is done for the consumer. Where movies begin to work the mind is in the subtleties of the shots. The shots in the movie work like context clues in books. They allow the reader to infer the story line. One great example of this is in the film Psycho. By using a simple low angle shot and lighting to shadow the face of Norman Bates, the antagonist of the film, Alfred Hitchcock makes the viewer’s mind fill in the gap that Bates is not exactly right. However, at that point in the film, the consumer still does not know the extent of Bates’ evilness, which allows the mind to wonder and work to fill in the story. There are always exceptions to this type of work, but there are also exceptions in literature. Do books like Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey really make the mind work as much as The Great Gatsby or 1984? The exceptions with books are like the summer blockbusters of the film industry. You don’t have to think much, but they sure are fun the consume.
ReplyDelete-Ashton Mayle
In some ways, yes. The mind is churning with emotions, anticipation. But not nearly as much so as with books. When reading a book, the mind has to come up with the characters looks, different sentences and phrases can be said or taken differently from person to person, the reader must 'fill in the blanks'. Whereas in a movie, the character is set out in front of the viewer with looks all made up, the way something is said is finite, and most blanks are left there in a way that everyone is thinking the same thing. In a book, the reader can choose if what one character says is done so sarcastically, lovingly, or rudely. In a movie, the viewer hears it the way the director intended it to be spoken and heard. In some ways, the way one's mind works through films can be chosen by the viewer, such as whether or not they even like good guys or bad. But in most, the mood, the reflection, most all of what the mind processes during a film is chosen ahead of time for them by the movie makers through the lighting, tones of the actors, setting of the scene and even the music in the background. One certainly does not have as much freedom as to where one gets transported in a movie as they do while reading a book.
ReplyDelete-Maranda Clymer
I can remember the first time I got lost in a book. I was in first grade, sitting in the library with the rest of my class, and the teacher was calling my name as the class was over. I never heard her. I was so enthralled with reading that the rest of the class was out the door and the teacher had to come over to me and tap me on the shoulder. That is the power of reading. From that moment on, I knew I had found something special. I thought that reading was the ticket to go places, experience things, and immerse myself so completely all with the power of a good book. I have never found a valid replacement for reading. Movies have their place, and there is nothing like a good movie. But realize that it is anothers’ view. Not yours. You don’t really have the power to daydream with a movie. It happens too fast on anothers’ time table. All those images speeding by and your brain trying to make sense of the images. With reading, you can stop and ponder. You can go back and reread a passage. You can build your own fantasy out of the raw material in the book. There is no substitute for reading.
ReplyDelete- Jia Ying Loh
I’m happy—and not surprised— to see that we have so many fans of reading in the Honors Program. I must say, though, that while it is true that readers of books are asked to visualize the scenes that are described, I think it is a mistake to say that books churn minds and movies don’t.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, as Ashton and others have pointed out, some books are a lot more complex and layered than others, and the same thing can be said of movies. I also think that it is a mistake to say that just because you “see” a scene in a movie there is nothing else for your mind to do with it. Images in a movie may be as rich and complex as paintings that art historians may spend countless hours poring over. The complexity of a cinematic text is not just a measure of the lines that are written into a screenplay, but also of the body language of the actors, the way they deliver their lines, the way the director films them, the way the editor cuts the scenes, and much, much more.
Finally, it must also be said that complexity is, to a significant degree, in the eye of a beholder. Some readers and viewers are able to see layers that others don't. On the other hands, some minds seem invulnerable to complexity. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. You can also hand a reader a complex book, or take him or her to a complex movie, but you can’t make him or her think!