The 'Reinvention' of Literature
What what what the fuck. I'm sorry. But there's some guy making video games out of classic literature like Wuthering Heights and Crime and Punishment. Not that this is so inherently bad, but it's meant to take the Kindle and similar bisnatch to "the next level".
The guy says the new ways to consume literature is structured just like a regular book with words and pages and such. But this won't get non-readers into the new e-reader medium. We have to make a video game/ movie out of it.
This is a solution? What is happening?
I'm imagining cut scenes and dialogue boxes to replace normal text and imagined scenes. Are we really becoming this unimaginative? Are we becoming this lazy as a society that we can't sit down and read a book?
I'm not expecting people who just don't like reading to pick up War and Peace, but come on people. Let's try something that will not continue to shorten our attention spans to that of a tetse fly. There are magazines and graphic novels and picture books and less literary topics (dare I say it? *cough* Twilight) to ease people into the world of proper reading.
Maybe this is a better question: why would people not want to read anymore? Are automatic information downloads really going to be that much more fun than escaping to another world by way of words and your imagination?
Meek, or whatever his lame name is, can go suck it. I don't care if we're living in a digital world--it doesn't mean that everything we do have to be DIGITAL. What's wrong with sitting down and reading a book? And honestly, a video game cannot "[adapt] great works of literature into something that could expand the reach of a book". I'm sorry, movies can't do that either. NOTHING can expand the reach of a book. Nothing. Our imaginations are amazing. If he limits the natural creativity of our minds, how is that expanding in any way? It's restricting. It's helping the rotting process.
ReplyDeleteThis digital age is making people crazy. I think I'm to go and read a book to calm down.
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ReplyDeleteLiterature isn't dead because we are still publishing. It's just moving to a new media because probably in the next fifty years print will be on the internet. The solution is to get people interested reading early or steer them towards books they would enjoy. One of the high school teachers steered me towards Ragtime and historical fiction which led me to be a more avid reader.
ReplyDeleteWuthering Heights would be the worst video game ever.
Here's the scenario: I'm sad, more sad, in love, IM CRAZY, the maids are acting up again, Heathcliffe is like half wolf right, Death/DEARTH.
Worst video game ever.
Although there is a Great Gatsby game that is pretty fun: http://greatgatsbygame.com/
It's getting intensely more difficult to publish though. And for me, something is dying when we stop publishing through the traditional media--with Kindles and Nooks and Hooks and Twiddlebops, they kill literature in a way that makes me shudder. And fine, as long as we can read print on those things, you still somewhat preserve the idea of literature, but when you put them on screen, that's when literature dies.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I have to admit, as much as I'm a cantankerous old book-thumping print lover I'm not completely opposed to this idea in general. I feel like there's a trend in video games that slowly adds more character development, plot, and even dialogue options. As an art form, I think video games are going that way. Games like Mass Effect let you make significant choices that effect your character and even have a morality system. That becomes a kind of multimedia storytelling experience in and of itself. (Though there will always be mindless shooters like Call of Duty and friggin' Halo).
ReplyDeleteHowever, a Wuthering Heights video game sounds terrible. It's the worst of both worlds. A boring video game and a bastardized book. Video games are all about action and it sounds like these games would be a lot of standing around in a room and maybe rotating the camera in Wuthering Heights so it looks like you're giving someone a blog job. (I know that's what I would do.)
I don't think this is the solution to get people more involved in reading. Especially with books like that where there is no action. I can't think of any thirteen year old kid at the video store who would see an Old Man and the Sea game and beg his parents to get it. It's more likely that his grandma would get it for him and his parents would force him to play it. Then he would spend ten minutes on the open water listening to dialogue before he pulled out the game and burned it. Honestly.
Books like that engage you on a different level that video games. It's all about cutting off all other stimulus and taking time to think about something in a different way than you normally would.
Why can't we just let that be?