So I’ve been following the robust conversations y’all have been having regarding The Hunger Games. And while much of the discussion has focused on the premise of Games—can anything worthwhile be gleaned from a story that focuses on kids killing each other?—it sparked another thought in me.
What has the power to be more influential—the book or the movie? And more broadly, do books or movies have a greater impact on our lives?
I haven’t seen The Hunger Games. But from what I understand the film—while undeniably violent—is less graphic than the book. Suzanne Collins’ prose paints us a picture of a shattered, sick society and rarely turns away from its inhumanity. The camera in the PG-13 movie, on the other hand, sometimes turns away when things get ugly. According to Mary Pols of Time, “The Hunger Games Book may be more R rated than the movie.”
Pols goes on:
But even though the movie is milder, reading and watching a screen are very different ways of obtaining information, one active, one passive. Reading is perhaps the most intimate act of intellectual self-exploration. We make choices as we read; do we linger and imagine those dogs, gnawing at a human now a “raw hunk of meat” or do we race on to the next adventure? We can put the book aside and return to it when we feel ready. …
A movie, which comes at you through the one-two punch of sight and sound, leaves less room for escape. There are the hands to hide behind, the bathroom to visit, but because the film will end in a finite time not of your choosing, it is also more likely to pressure you into staying within its embrace.
I’ve had ongoing discussions with a friend of mine about the power of the written word versus the power of the moving picture. Pols is quite right about the active/passive split between the two media. And frankly, because you must actively engage with a book, I believe it has the potential to be far more influential. When I read a book—a good book—it sticks with me. I still remember crying during C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle when I was 11, or darkly mulling over the final words of The Heart of Darkness when I was 18 (“The horror! The horror!”).
But because you’re so actively engaged with whatever you’re reading, you’re potentially more aware of its influence. Books force us to think. And as such, they also allow us to make decisions about what the book has presented to us. Are its messages worthwhile? Are they worth learning from? Good books often allow us the opportunity to look at the world, and ourselves, through a slightly different lens. But what we do with that new view is up to us.
Books force you to swim through them. With movies, you’re allowed to float. We don’t have to engage with them on the same level we inherently must with the written word. And as such, I think, we can underestimate their influence.
As we float along in the film, we still soak in what it has to offer: images, themes, language. We walk out of the theater thinking we’re just a few dollars poorer and a tub o’ popcorn heavier. And yet, what we’ve seen sticks with us, too.
Good movies, like good books, force you to think. They encourage you to mull over what you’ve seen and challenge you to do something with it. A passive medium becomes active. The most insidious influence, I believe, comes from films that don’t encourage much thought: They bombard you with images, assault you with harsh language and make you feel as if it hasn’t influenced you at all. So what if you repeat a nasty joke from the film? So what if you replay some of the more tawdry images from it in your mind? That’s not influence … is it?
Make no mistake: Whenever we read something, whenever we watch something, we’re learning. We’re changing. We’re being influenced—sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big.
That’s why, when I watch a film, I try to treat it like a book. I don’t want to let the movie wash passively over me; I want to actively engage—to scrutinize the messages, to ponder the themes. The more I treat film with an active rather than passive mindset, the better able I’ll be to sift through what’s there, keep what’s worthwhile and shake whatever’s left.
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