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| Editors: | |
| James Blasingame | James.Blasingame@asu.edu |
| Lori A. Goodson | lagoodson@cox.net |
FILM and the Young Adult Novel
Films are a powerful influence on most of our students. As much as teachers may not wish to face this fact, films compete with books as theprimary mode of stories, and "stories matter, and matter deeply" (McConnell,1979, p. 3). Perhaps film's popularity as well as its power lies in itsemotional immediacy. Although, like books, films tell stories, film stories aretold in the language of dreams -- images, color, movement, sound, and light(Foster, 1984). This medium goes immediately to the senses and requires nointermediary literateness on the part of the viewers. Thus, films are verypowerful and emotional; they are potentially "extra-rational" experiencescapable of exerting a great deal of subconscious influence upon untrainedviewers.
As film and related media continue to dominate our culture, the ability toteach in the book-oriented classroom will become increasingly more difficult(Rose, 1983, p. 238). Yet, young adult novels are powerful literary competitorsto films. Many films for teenagers are adaptations of young adult novels, andmany other teenage films are like young adult novels in plot, characterization,and theme.
The Teenage Film Goer
Typically, the most dependable filmgoer has been the teenager who "goesto the movies" to get away from Mom and Dad (Mom and Dad like to stay at homeand rent videos). Teenagers offer another feature that filmmakers love -- theyare an easy sell because they are lacking in discrimination and sophistication(Considine, 1985, p. 272). Whether it's Avia Shoes, LA Gear, or Snickers, oncethe herd accepts the product, the herd keeps selling the product. And so itgoes with movies (Karutani, 1984, p. 22).
Teenage Books
The teenage film market is different from the teenage book market. Thebook market is relatively splintered; so a single book will probably neverconnect with the entire market. And the market is smaller than the potentialfilm market because publishers need readers, that is, youngsters who areliterate. Filmmakers do not have that restriction since almost all people havebeen trained since birth to comprehend many, if not most, films.
Another market difference is that teenage books are cheaper to produce but arepotentially less profitable than films. But books can make money, particularlyif a book is accepted by English teachers. Whereas film marketing goes directlyto the teenager via television, radio, and word-of-mouth, book marketingtargets teachers as agents. The success of Hinton, Blume, and Zindel can atleast partially be attributed to the free marketing provided by English andlanguage arts teachers. The book market benefits from free reading assignments,book reports, sustained silent reading, whole language theory, and so on.
Schools and teachers have little influence with filmmakers since filmmakers godirectly to their potential audience. Minor attempts have been made to haveeducational organizations endorse films. For instance, the National Council ofTeachers of English (NCTE) was asked to consider endorsing NeverendingStory, which the producers saw as teacher friendly. But NCTE and thefilmmakers never got together, and the idea was dropped. Schools do not countmuch in marketing films. Thus, for films, no teachers intervene, no socialconscience comes between the consumer and the product, and the result may be amedium more representative of the teenage consumer than books.
Teenage Films
Teenagers consume all kinds of films. "In America movies reflectteenage, not mass -- and definitely not adult -- taste," writes Thomas Doherty(1988, p. 1). Batman, The Terminator, Predator, andLethal Weapon, for example, are not made exclusively for teenagers butdepend upon the teenage market to make a great deal of money. Yet, there arecategories of films that are aimed primarily at the teenage market. Some ofthese films are the ever-popular "kill-a-kid" movies such as the Nightmareon Elm Street series or Prom Night, and some are the "sexploitation"films like Porky's or Bachelor Party.
These films that pander to the worst instincts of youth are counterbalanced byfilms that are intelligent, provocative, free-spirited, socially dynamic, orentertaining. Like the new adolescent fiction, these films are a recentphenomenon, and many of them are adaptations of adolescent novels. Because ofthe huge market for film, filmmakers look everywhere for ideas, and there is nobetter source of stories than books (Eidsvik, 1977, p. 33). Yet, because oftheir differences, books and films have always had an uneasy alliance. Ofcourse, successful movies have been made from books (Spiegel, 1976, p. 197),but most of the good adaptations are from action books such as TheGodfather or Gone with the Wind (Beja, 1979, p. 85). Films that aremade from "thoughtful" novels often get in trouble, such as The GreatGatsby or Moby Dick. Yet, a good treatment of a good novel, likeGrapes of Wrath, can work.
Young Adult Novels and Films
This uneasy alliance has characterized the relationship between youngadult novels and films. There have been a number of adaptations of young adultnovels to the screen. Huckleberry Finn has been adapted many times;Lord of the Flies and A Separate Peace have been made into films.The first of the new adolescent novels adapted to film was From the Mixed UpFiles of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler starring Ingrid Bergman. Adaptationsfrom Robert Cormier's works include I Am the Cheese in 1983, and TheChocolate War in 1989. The most visible adaptations have come from threeS.E. Hinton novels: Tex in 1982, then The Outsiders, andRumble Fish in 1983.
The film version of The Outsiders, like the book, has been wellreceived by young people (Barr, 1986, p. 515), and the film, like the book,plays better to young people than to adults. The film is a well-meaning moviethat is pleasant to see but does not do well under close scrutiny. Yet, thestrong and weak points of the film are indicative of the strengths andweaknesses of this whole film adaptation game (Scott, 1983, pp. 34-35).
The film version of The Outsiders, closely adapted from the novel, takeson many of the pluses and minuses found within the novel. The characters usemuch of Hinton's sweet, simple dialogue, and despite the violent theme, theloneliness and innocence come through beautifully in the film (Johnston, 1983,p. 237). And the film, like the novel, effectively portrays young peopleholding onto youth for a few more precious moments in an alienating world. Yet,the gang fights, hard-to-believe in the novel, are even harder to believe inthe film -- more like stylized West Side Story dance fights than realkids fighting as the movie wants viewers to believe. Also, Dally's death in thenovel is melodramatic. In the film, it is worse -- like bad television withpolice cars and kids converging from all angles. This is one of the mostimprobable police shootings ever filmed. These badly done scenes scar thisfilm's sense of authenticity.
Many scenes from books do better when imagined than when made concrete in thefilm. For instance, when Ponyboy is being dunked in the fountain by the Socs,the book describes him losing consciousness this way:
I'm dying, I thought, and wondered what was happening to Johnny. I couldn'thold my breath any longer. I fought again desperately but only sucked in water.I'm drowning, I thought, they've gone too far . . . . And haze filled my mind,and I slowly relaxed. (p. 51)
In the movie, a viewer sees Ponyboy underwater and then red cartoon paintspreads across the screen. Whereas the book effectively portrays Ponyboy'spanicked thoughts, the movie resorts to an ineffectively jarring external play.This failed effect is a good example of how difficult it is for a film torecreate an individual's thoughts. Most of the book, because it leaves much tothe reader's imagination, works better than the film. For instance, the rescueof the children from the burning church in the book concludes:
. . .We dropped the last of the kids out as the front of the church started tocrumble. Johnny shoved me toward the window. "Get out!"
I leaped out the window and heard timber crashing and the flame roaring rightbehind me. I staggered, almost falling, coughing and sobbing for breath. Then Iheard Johnny scream, and as I turned to go back for him, Dally swore at me andclubbed me across the back as hard as he could, and I went down into a peacefuldarkness. (p. 83)
In the movie the boys are shown in the hot, burning church with three children.No one is having a hard time breathing. No one is panicked. The blackened facesof the boys are obviously makeup. In the book, the scene is beautifully drawnlike a bad dream. In the movie, the viewer is jarred by how badly the scenecompares to the viewer's concept of the reality of the situation (Kracauer,1960).
The music in the movie is terrible. The title song, "Stay Gold," sung by StevieWonder, is like a Las Vegas lounge song; it creates exactly the wrong mood forthis film set in Oklahoma. The background music is often sappy, overplaying andeven sabotaging the emotional scenes, in contrast to the emotional yetcontrolled tone of the book.
And, of course, much of the eloquent, simple writing is gone. This is howHinton describes the way in which Ponyboy experiences the sunrise:
The dawn was coming then. All the lower valley was covered with mist, andsometimes little pieces of it broke off and floated away in small clouds. Thesky was lighter in the east, and the horizon was a thin golden line. The cloudschanged from gray to pink, and mist was touched with gold. There was a silentmoment when everything held its breath, and then the sun rose. It wasbeautiful. (p. 69)
The movie shows a standard film sunrise that in no way conveys the beauty thatis brought out in the writing. Like an author, a film director must interpret,since neither the book nor the movie can do an actual sunrise. Both give anartist's impression, and in this movie the interpretation is trite anduninspired.
And yet, despite all its faults, the movie has merit because of excellentacting and wonderful use of the camera to underscore the acting. The castincludes an amazing array of future stars: Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, MattDillon, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez. But it is C.Thomas Howell as Ponyboy who gives the finest performance. His portrayal ofPonyboy is almost perfect: vulnerable, sad, kind, sensitive, sweet. And thedirector wisely uses close-ups and medium shorts for most of the dialogue.Faces are lit with a thematically appropriate gold glow that highlights smooth,youthful cheeks and wide, innocent eyes. When Ponyboy is talking to Dally, orCherry, or his brothers, or particularly Johnny, it is a very good movie. Thoseimages of golden, young faces are not easily forgotten and mean as much as manypages of written description. Those moments separate the movie from the bookand give the film its special identity.
All three of the films based on S.E. Hinton novels are the best of theyoung adult novel adaptations. But these relatively good films should be usedcautiously or not at all in the classroom to compare with the books. Perhapsfilm adaptations could help novice readers visualize the characters, relate tothe themes, and understand the plots. But there is a price to pay forsubstituting a filmmaker's vision of a book: the film will forever change thenovel in the imagination of the reader. Who has seen and read To Kill aMockingbird who doesn't imagine Gregory Peck as Atticus? Can Dally fromThe Outsiders be anybody but Matt Dillon? Gone with the Wind andWizard of Oz will always be movies, rather than books. Film adaptationsirretrievably interpret the novel for the viewer-reader.
When the film adaptations are badly done -- and many have been terrible -- themovie can sabotage the book. After seeing The Chocolate War, a viewermay easily question the power of the book, for the movie badly weakens itscharge. The sabotage is compounded by the faithfulness of the film adaptation,which until the end is like a dramatic reading of most of the dialogue asRobert Cormier wrote it in the book, although the movie changes the ending inan unconscionable way. The problems of this film are subtle and hard to analyzebecause not only is it generally faithful to the book but also the acting isbasically competent. The failure of the film has two causes. First, thefilmmaker had no genuine artistic vision of this project, but merely attemptedto recreate the book. The book is dark. The movie is literally dark -- gray --for its entirety. Cormier writes a scene where brother Leon harasses Bailey,one of his students. The film depicts the scene. Cormier shows a class of boyscarrying out a prank on an unsuspecting teacher. The film depicts the scene.And so on. Thus, there is no intelligence besides Cormier's behind this film,which brings in the second problem. All the film could depict are the externalsof the book -- the action, the dialogue. In the book, the real electricitycomes through in the inner-life drawn with incredible talent in words byCormier. What the film lacks, as all films must, is the author's interiornarrative thrust. A good filmmaker compensates by creating her/his ownstatement, but by using movement, composition, sound, color, lighting, andediting, thus creating a new and different work of art (Foster, 1979). Sincethe filmmaker of The Chocolate War offers no worthwhile compensatingfilm statement, what the viewer receives is the external world of TheChocolate War with all of the narrative inner life of the book gone.
These are Cormier's words:
A figure was advancing toward him on all fours, like an animal. The aspect ofthe beast -- nightmare, after all. He shrank back, his skin hot and prickly,like the onset of hives. (p. 46)
and
Then he saw the mustache of moistness on Brother Leon's upper lip, the wateryeyes and the dampness of his forehead. Something clicked. This wasn't the calmand deadly Leon who could hold a class in the palm of his hand. This wassomeone riddled with cracks and crevices. Archie became absolutely still,afraid that the rapid beating of his heart might betray his sudden knowledge,the proof of what he's always suspected, not only of Brother Leon but mostgrownups, most adults: they were vulnerable, running scared, open to invasion.(p. 22)
These passages, powerfully written, are not filmable for the most part, sothey, and all passages like these -- the very soul of this haunting book -- areleft out of the film. And what is left is merely the behavior, the exteriors.
Results of the Failures
The failure of the film of The Chocolate War created ripples. Thefilm was produced through an independent company, Management CompanyEntertainment Group (M.C.E.G.), in an era when most films can be made only withmajor studio backing. Every failure of a small, experimental film makes it moredifficult for the next risky movie project. And, compounding the problem,adolescent novel adaptations generally have not made successful films.
Even The Outsiders has not been strong enough to attract a wideaudience. Although readers of the books go to some of these movies, the vastnon-reader teenage film audience tends not to see them. And TheOutsiders is one of the most successful of these adaptations bothartistically and financially. The Chocolate War fails on both counts.I Am the Cheese and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.Frankweiler disappeared without a trace. Thus, the lessons filmmakers havelearned from these adaptations is that they do not work financially orartistically. The book business can take splintered audiences but the filmbusiness cannot. Soon after Coppola made The Outsiders and RumbleFish, his Zeotrope Studios went bankrupt.
Young Adult Films
Yet, strong, intelligent movies about and for teenagers have done verywell financially and artistically, and many of them can and should be used inthe classroom. These films have strong similarities to the new adolescentnovels in themes and characters. They take teenagers very seriously. In manyways, these films are the equivalent breakthrough in the cinema, overcomingPorky-esque teenage exploitation films, as new adolescent novels werethe breakthrough in the literary field overcoming insipid oroverly-romanticized fiction. As in the new adolescent novel, young adults areplaced in a world that forces them to grow up faster than anyone concernedabout young people would hope. This is a world of alienation and loneliness,filled with dangerous temptations.
These young adult films have succeeded where the novel-to-film adaptations havenot. Pure film is not encumbered by the need to translate one medium toanother; so these films have had the benefit of being planned only as movies.
The Breakfast Club was one of the most popular of these films. Yet,ironically, this film has less action than any of the young adult novel filmadaptations. This film is set in a suburban Chicago high school library on aSaturday morning where five students gather to serve a detention under thesupervision of a vice-principal. Like The Outsiders, the film is abouthow young adults get trapped in group identities that exclude contact withoutsiders and inhibit honest and sensitive communication.
Unlike The Outsiders, the teenagers blame much of their isolation andunhappiness on the adults in their lives -- cruel and uncaring parents andteachers (McDermott, 1987, p. 27). The film is a carefully crafted series ofepisodes that build to an emotional climax. These scenes are bridged by musicalsequences that portray various non-dialogue activities such as running throughthe school halls, dancing and ripping up library books, or confronting boredomat library tables. Most of the movie is talk. The talk is hostile, hateful,painful, cruel, harsh, gross, sexual, violent, and eventually honest,sensitive, and revealing. Unlike The Outsiders, there is not a falsemoment in the film. And unlike The Outsiders, there is no literarybarrier that the filmmaker, John Hughes, had to overcome. The episodic qualityof the movie allows it to build like ballet. The rhythms of the movie areextraordinary, building in intensity until near the end where the kids sit in acircle, and for the first time in the film, quietly reveal themselves withgenuine and deep feeling. It is at this point that the flaky girl (AllySheedy), in an intense closeup, sums up all of their positions when she saysthat when you grow up, your heart dies. The movie ends with a long, basicallynon-verbal, episode where one young couple makes love, another forms arelationship, and the "brain" of the group reads the required punishment themein a voice-over with a hard rock accompaniment as each member of the BreakfastClub leaves the school, forever changed.
The Breakfast Club, unlike The Outsiders, is an excellent filmthat achieved wide acceptance by teenagers and a large crossover adultaudience. Other successful young adult films include Fast Times at RidgemontHigh, Fame, The Flamingo Kid, My Bodyguard,Foxes, St. Elmo's Fire, Risky Business, SixteenCandles, All the Right Moves, The Karate Kid, Losin'It, and Stand By Me. The success of The Breakfast Club helpedto make possible the continuation of this genre with the productions ofPretty in Pink (1986), Hoosiers (1986), Ferris Bueller's DayOff (1986), Big (1988), The Dead Poet's Society (1989), andthe quirky Heathers (1989).
Teaching Film
The power of The Breakfast Club underscores the legitimateconcern of parents and teachers because the value messages young people receiveare complicated and serious. The film seems to give approval to drugs andcasual sex and promotes the view that adults are untrustworthy and unreliable.Themes that run through this film include ambition, family, love, career,anger, alienation, loneliness, cruelty, money, success, and justice.
Thus, the young adult film, like the young adult novel, is ripe for careful andwell-guided classroom exploration that sets young viewers questioning andpondering what they saw, what they felt, and what they believe (Coles, 1986, p.26). This is not a recommendation that teachers explain to their students whatfilms are about and what values they should perceive. Rather, films should besubject to classroom reader response discussions and activities that allow eachviewer to recreate and analyze important film experiences. Film responses areoften wildly subjective. Reader response techniques will allow students toexplore the themes and values in these very complex movies by eliciting theirsubjective reactions that, as in good reader response discussions, should begently prodded, disciplined, and refined by co-viewers. Thus, these discussionscan bring forth a community of reactions that give depth and insight into thefilm (Cox, 1989, p. 289).
Film study should become a major part of the modern curriculum if education isserious about helping shape thinking skills required in the new technologicalage. Students need help in understanding, appreciating, and controlling themost powerful stories that enter their lives. Not only must students discussimportant films, but also they must read and write about them in order to learnabout film. Ironically, by studying films, students will be learning the veryskills that film has so badly eroded -- language literacy skills.
References
Beja, Morris. Film and Literature: An Introduction. Longman, 1979.
Coles, Robert. "Seeing Is Not Believing," American Film, May, 1986.
Considine, David M. The Cinema of Adolescence. McFarland, 1985.
Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War. Dell, 1974.
Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. Dell, 1967.
Johnston, Sheila. "The Outsiders," Monthly Film Bulletin,September, 1983, pp. 236-237.
Rose, Cynthia. "The Fiction of S.E. Hinton," Monthly Film Bulletin,September, 1983, pp. 238-239.
Scott, Jay. "The Wild Ones," American Film, April, 1983, pp. 30-35,64-65.
Hal Foster is Professor of English Education at the University of Akron andauthor of The New Literacy: The Language of Film and Television,published by NCTE and a new methods book, Crossing Over: Whole Language forSecondary English.
