From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #409 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Tuesday, July 31 2001 Volume 01 : Number 409 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:24:48 -0600 From: Terry L Jeffress Subject: [AML] Editing Literature (was: Sex in Literature) On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 12:10:09AM -0600, rwilliams wrote: > And, as a Graduate Instructor at USU having graded several papers on > the subject of "external cutting defil[ing] the sacred realm of > authorship and artistic vision," I have to say that logically there > isn=92t any substance to this argument. Take, for example, the > brouhaha about editing Titanic or any of the R rated movies in Utah > County. The "artistic integrity" argument goes something like this: > The director created the film with a specific logical sequence in > mind, and to interrupt or skip over these scenes, thus catering to > the "less mature" audience, would be to disrupt the artistic > wholeness of the film. Okay, great. But the same logic implies two > very overlooked arguments: To me the artistic integrity argument takes on a very different tone when you apply the same editing techniques to a book. Say I want my kids to read _Catcher in the Rye_ but without all those nasty words. So I take my copy of _Catcher_ to my local book doctor, who for a fee will use a razor blade to cut out all the objectionable words and scenes. How vile to treat a book in such a way. I cannot stand to see a book mutilated. When I get a book out of the library, I flip through all the pages and set all the bent corners straight. You people who bend the pages instead of using a bookmark make me sick. Heck, I can barely stand to write in a book. I even have two sets of scriptures. The expensive leather bound edition just for reading and the cheap simulated leather covered edition in which I can make marks so I can simulate the proper image of the well-read Elders Quorum instructor. When I apply my distaste of book mutilation to the practice of modifying films for the taste of the reader, I get the same bad taste in my mouth. I know many people who freely admit to skipping over boring sections of books -- they flip past a few pages until they get past the "council of war" scene and get back to the real action. Why not use the remote control and just skip over the objectionable scene - -- or wait until the movie comes out on network television. =20 Heck, if you find the scene that objectionable, then don't buy the film in the first place. Even if you edit out the scene, you still know the scene existis. When you talk about the movie with your friends, they will all assume that you have seen the nude scene -- unless you go out of your way to make a discraimer about owning an edited version. (Besides, you paid for the scene anyway. Hollywood will never know that you object to the nude scene. The producer will just chalk up one more sale and keep making the same type of movies. If you really object to such films, then you should boycott those things you find objectionable. I don't own the film in question, but not because of the nude scene -- the film bored me to distraction.) I agree that visual images have a different mental staying power over the printed word, but to me that just means that we have to practice some extra vigilance when selecting our visual versus our verbal entertainment. Somehow it seems to me a sort of capitulation to view an edited version of a film. If you really object to the content of a movie, then you probably shouldn't watch it at all. Again, the producers still see you cash, and have no way to tell that your money paid for a diffrerent verison of the film. You end up tacitly supporting the film instead. (I guess all the people who paid to have objectional scenes edited out of video tapes could have sent the bits of tape back to the producers with a note.) But tape editing only provides a short-term solution. Within a few years, you will only find DVDs on the shelves. And a few more years after that, theaters will have digital projectors that no longer use easily editable films. How will you then edit out the scenes? Pay someone to burn a new DVD one for you? The only successful long-term solution -- for any medium -- becomes personal integrity. What will we as individuals allow into our minds? And because each individual must set a personal limit, then we really cannot draw any line in the sand over which no one else should cross. (With the one exception of our minor children, for whom we set the limits until they have learned their to set their own.) - --=20 Terry L Jeffress | The first thing an unpublished author | should remember is that no one asked him | to write in the first place. With this | firmly in mind, he has no right to | become discouraged just because other | people are being published. | -- John Farrar - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:00:10 -0600 From: Barbara Hume Subject: Re: [AML] Jennie HANSEN, _The River Path_ (Review) At 08:50 PM 7/26/01 -0700, you wrote: >There are some points of discontinuity that are puzzling. One >that comes to mind involves Matt's decision to purchase cell >phones for himself and for Dana. Having delivered the phone to >her, she soon finds herself needing to make a call. She runs to >a phone booth, finds it busy, and goes looking for another one. >No explanation is given as to why she couldn't just use her cell >phone. Maybe the character is like me. I got a cell phone recently, but I keep forgetting about it. I forget to charge it, or I leave it at home. Maybe she did the same. (I think I do it because I know the reason my son encouraged me to get it is so he can find me when he wants a free babysitter.) barbara hume - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:31:13 -0700 From: Thom Duncan Subject: Re: [AML] Sex in Literature ???n ??e wrote: > John Williams brings up an interesting point, which leads me to a question. > > I agree that there is a difference between vividly portrayed sex in film and > vividly portrayed sex in literature, and that literature is a safer place > for it. > > In modern times, however, a very popular novel will likely result in a > popular film, and the sex scenes in the novel will end up in the film. One wonderful exceptionis Jaws. In the book, the sleazy affair between the Richard Dryfuss character and the Sheriff's wife was deleting, to the betterment of the film. It should have been deleted from the book. If ever a plot line smelled of padding, this was it. I counted the pages from the time the affair stopped to the time the Jaws plot returned - 100 pages of useless deversion. The Reader's Digest version also toned down the sex scenes, improving greatly on the book. > I haven't seen _Jerry Maguire_, and I have no plans to see it. Another film > with a very graphic, if distant sex scene that I did see was _The Name of > the Rose_ from the novel by Umberto Eco. I did not read the novel, but have > to believe that the scene in the movie must have come from the book, given > the importance of the scene to the title. What I found unrealsitic about that sex scene is that the woman was way too good looking, given the times, the hygiene practices of the day, and the and the state of denstistry. > It would reveal a bit of conceit to write a novel with a movie sale in mind, > I suppose, but if novels are the safe place for sex and movies are not, > wouldn't a Mormon author want to bear in mind that whatever sex he puts into > a novel may end up graphically portrayed in a film? Yes, given that the director is usually the last word on how to do a scene. I've read the original script of the film American X. It starts off (in the film) with a rather graphic sex scene overheard (but seen by the audience) by the main character's younger brother. The script just has the brother hearing the sounds from the other room. > This is an important question to me as I write about sexually-charged topics > in my novel doing my best to avoid vivid portrayals. I can succeed in the > written word, but if anyone were to make a movie out of it, I'd feel like a > pornographer. I'm not even counting on being published much less making a > movie sale, but I have decisions to make. Serious considerations. Suppose you do get the book published, and it makes a move sale. You, as a new writer, would have NO rights over the final film version. Thom - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #409 ******************************