To the surprise of virtually no one who ever met me, I was a deeply annoying child. I described myself as an old soul. I was heavily involved in a number of campaigns for local politicians. And I loved nothing more than telling fans of a movie that the book was better.
Although I have broken most of my annoying habits, I have never been able to completely break the last one. Generally speaking, I stand by it – the book is usually better than the movie. But maybe I am only saying that because I usually read the book before I saw the movie. Or maybe I am just stuck in my old habits – according to Google, there are many lists titled “movies that are better than the book”. Some of the top hits are The notebook, Fight Club, And Jurassic Park. Since I have seen all of these films and read none of these books, such lists are completely useless to me. (However, they make me wonder, what came first, the cachet or the market success? I didn’t even know The notebook And Jurassic Park were there any books before today?)
Instead, I will look at a more modern, more urgent, and certainly more intellectually stimulating example: Bridgerton.
“But Isaac,” I hear you ask, “you’re not telling me that even though you spent the summer researching your thesis, juggling three jobs, writing for both this wonderful publication and The Daily Pennsylvanian, and trying to navigate the full-time struggle of being a New Yorker in Los Angeles, you still managed to find time to read the Bridgerton Books? Even though you don’t like most romance novels?”
Of course I do, dear readers. Of course I do.
I am currently on the fifth book – Eloise’s story entitled To Sir Phillip, with lovewhich is, if you can call it that, an absolutely mad novel so far – but of the last four books, I’ve only really liked one: book four, the story of Colin and Penelope, which formed the basis for the third season of the television series. It’s a story that has been the subject of much heated debate online about how adaptations should work.
From the beginning Bridgerton as an adaptation of the book series has always sparked a digital discourse. Most of the discussion is not-so-veiled racism from people who are upset that Shonda Rhimes has taken the world of Bridgerton a modernized take on the Regency era in which many of the main roles are filled with actors of color, while all of the book characters are white. These arguments are stupid, and so are the people making them.
But there are other changes in the Bridgerton adaptations that are worth discussing. The details of Anthony and Kate’s engagement, for example, have been completely rewritten. In the books, they get involved in an engagement because their mothers catch Anthony trying to suck the bee venom out of a sting Kate received on an exposed part of her breast (yes, really, romance novels are that silly and awesome). In the show, there are some love triangles that I not only find better (I love love triangles! So sue me!), but are also just plain convenient considering Simon and Daphne got involved in an engagement last season for scandal and decency reasons.
There are changes, like this revised engagement, that are made for logistical reasons. We don’t want to do two Temptations back to back. However, changes made for character or tone reasons can often get tricky. Look at Colin and Penelope; in the book, a confrontation occurs because Penelope reads Colin’s texts, which makes Colin insecure. In the show, the same thing happens, but with the change that the passage is quite salacious this time. It’s a change made to make Bridgerton sexy again (fans were mad because the couples had to wait longer to start dating in seasons two and three compared to season one). But it misses the core of the conflict in the book, which isn’t that Penelope somehow objects to Colin dating Greek girls, but that Colin and Penelope are both struggling with feelings of jealousy over each other’s relationship to writing.
So should the series have stayed true to the book? In this case, yes. But what’s missing isn’t an argument about the writing. What’s missing are the messages and themes behind that argument. That’s what an adaptation should stay true to – the details are unimportant.
A much larger example is The advantages of being a wallflowerwhich I think I am the only one who hates it vehemently. The book is a slow, painful journey through the life of the main character Charlie and is ultimately about the impact of his aunt’s abuse on his dealings with the world, his fellow men and women. The film, on the other hand, is a coming-of-age vehicle starring Emma Watson and Logan Lerman that also happens to be about sexual abuse. The details are again irrelevant – it’s the stunning cast, the horrific American accent that Ezra Miller does, the tacked-on revelation of the abuse at the end, the Advantages a bad adaptation. It loses the ethos of the novel and the perspective and approach of the novel.
And then there are projects like American Psychowhere it is arguably impossible to judge the book and the novel in the same way. They are apples and oranges. The book was written by a gay man and focuses on masculinity and its aversion to homosexuality in an undeniable, central way. The author is also certainly a misogynist and this creeps into the novel even as it tries to illustrate how damaging and violent misogyny and its role in constructing a model of hegemonic masculinity can be. The film, on the other hand, was written and directed by women and does not have the same defining motif, such as fear of AIDS, as the novel does.
Although in both cases the crisis of masculinity is presented as opposed to the fear of perceived femininity, in the book the focus is more on gay men representing this femininity along with the women, while in the film it is almost exclusively women who do so. The film also makes an effort to put the female perspective much more into focus. In the end, they are two different stories, although they have many of the same details, characters and plot lines. I would not confuse the two as American Psycho The film is either a good adaptation of the book or a bad one – it is a completely different approach and interpretation of the book – something completely different from a direct adaptation of the book for the screen.
There are so many ways to approach an adaptation, and infinitely more ways to judge the execution of an adaptation. But the most common approach, which equates absolute attention to detail with a well-done adaptation, misses the point and devalues the core elements and messages of the original text. Getting lost in the details only leads to a life of misery, nitpicking, spoilsports, and an overall CinemaSins-esque attitude that serves absolutely no one. A good adaptation doesn’t have to hit all the same plot points or have all the character names – it just has to have the same heart.