Ceci n'est pas une pipe (Rene Magritte 1929)

It could be this constant reinterpretation of material (see blog June 7^th) that is also interfering with teaching and learning. I was horrified recently talking with a friend and their son, who is at high school. In English, he has only read one book during the entire year, but has watched 8 films based upon the different books they are learning about. How poor a learning experience is this. This is immediately removing the reader/listener (viewer, in the case of these students), from the personal journey or interpretation of the concepts and meaning in the text as written by the author. Certainly, when reading a book, people develop their own interpretation of the content, based on personal history (see how we are staying on track with the latest divergence from me waiting in the room for my father?). Your interpretation may not be exactly what the author had in mind when they wrote the book. But unless you can sit and talk with the actual author, that is how you reach an understanding about every book. You interpret it and make your decision based upon your understanding.

Watching a film (while very enjoyable and takes less time) can never be a way of understanding the book itself. For the film, is already a re-interpretation of the book’s meaning by another person, of whom it appears, may never have even read the actual book they have made the film about. But the director may have developed the film from a script they were commissioned to direct. Or even worse a director may have been halfway through making a film, before being fired and replaced by the studio with another director, who may want to create his own influence on the film and script. This also happens with writers being replaced on a project. I know it was never a classic book, but the film ‘Kindergarten Cop’ took 17 teams of writers to rewrite before the final script according to studio gossip. Apart from the theme, I wonder how much of the original survived through this process?

And was this the concept Rene Magritte delivered to his audience in 1929 with ‘The treachery of Images’? Arguing the idea that everything we see, is an interpretation of the original. Even the chair you are currently sitting in, is an interpretation of the idea of a chair. This may not be so easily applied to books but it is possible it can so easily be applied to film. Have you ever watched a mock-umentary? Where the film is made in the very style of information delivery, that of a documentary, yet, its content is not true or actually revealing. These forms of film making, play upon common knowledge of the populace. Use of stereotypical behaviours, characters and beliefs, which unfortunately some actually believe are the real behaviour, characters and situations.

(Continued tomorrow)