Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • masthead
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 21
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass fall 2020
    • interview with Porsha Olayiwola
    • new book reviews
    • new opinion editorials
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • fall 2020
    • spring 2020
    • fall 2019
    • spring 2019
    • fall 2018
    • spring 2018
    • fall 2017
    • apprentice 2017
    • spring 2017
    • fall 2016
    • spring 2016
    • fall 2015
    • spring 2015
    • fall 2014
    • spring 2014
    • spring 2012
    • winter 2012
    • fall 2011
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews >
      • Ed Briant
      • Eugene Cross
      • Josh Denslow
      • Christopher DeWan
      • Katherine Flannery Dering >
        • Aftermath
      • Eric Dyer
      • Julie Enszer >
        • Avowed
      • Mitchell Fink
      • Olivia Gatwood
      • David Gerrold
      • Cynthia Graham
      • Ernest Hilbert
      • Paul Lisicky >
        • The Roofers
      • Scott McCloud
      • Jan Millsapps
      • Anis Mojgani
      • Pedram Navab
      • Kelly Norris
      • Porsha Olayiwola
      • Michael Pagdon
      • Aimee Parkison >
        • The Petals of Your Eyes
      • Brad Parks
      • Chris Rakunas
      • Carlos Ramos
      • Mary Salvante
      • Jill Smolowe
      • Jayne Thompson
      • Julie Marie Wade
      • Melissa Wiley
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • photography
    • audio
    • video
    • new media
  • archive
    • read past issues
    • order print issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter

Media's Depiction of the Novel: Do We Have A Choice?

11/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Pictureimage credit: Pinterest
by Nicolina Givin

I sat on my couch on the fourth of October and flipped through the channels on my television. I caught a glimpse of Emily Blunt grabbing a blonde by the back of her head and dragging her onto the floor. The title, The Girl on the Train, flashed at the end and I was in bewilderment. “That’s a movie now?” I thought to myself. The movie was released to theaters on the eighth. I picked up the novel, which had been sitting on my bookshelf for some time, and opened the cover, ready to finally read what everyone was about to see on the big screen. I could not have the world tell me the plot and ending before I could figure it out myself; I had to finish it before the movie release. Why was I motivated soon after that preview to read the book rather than when I first purchased that book eight months prior? The answer was always sitting there on my bookshelf, but the media pushed me towards it and spoke clearer to me in that thirty-second preview.

​A generation raised on a technological dominion is controlling the tug of war between paper books and Kindles, but recently, a pawn on the chessboard has pushed both forms of reading into a new limelight. Movies have  issued all of us a timeline—this is how long you have until the movie comes out and this is how long the book has actually been published. This reverse psychology is a ploy to make us think a book is popular only because it’s a movie—the only publicity coming from media strung advertisement. We think to ourselves: I must buy this book to find out what everyone is talking about; I must avoid that fear-of-missing-out feeling. Film may act as a stepping-stone, bridging the gap between readers and nonreaders , but are we too lazy to take the time to discover new literature on our own, or do we solely crave the literary satisfaction of the media telling us what’s worth reading?

After a movie has been released, there is a sudden high demand for the novel it has depicted.
The Hollywood Reporter states that there were 36.5 million copies of the bestselling trilogy of The Hunger Games sold (in print) after the movie premiered, a 55 percent jump from the 23.5 million copies in print before the first film’s release in 2012. The fact that novel sales have spiked is always good news; having people to talk to about the literary components engulfing our favorite characters is always great. However, it is not the love for literature that has driven these people to the store, it was the media.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
​Between hash tags, blog posts and status updates, the world has a constant injection of cultural phenomenon. It is physically impossible to ignore the announcements of which movie will be the “most anticipated of two thousand and whatever” and if that movie was “based on the best selling novel by so and so.” The amount of pull I had towards that dust-littered book because of a televised movie preview and the constant chatter about it on social media was incredible. The power of social reformation had done exactly what I tried fighting, forcing me to read merely because it was what everyone else was reading. Where did my individuality go? When did I give up the gift of choice and conform to the media’s marketing tactic? The thought of being controlled by Big Brother-like paranoia gnawed at me and I vowed to read because I wanted to, not to keep up with the Joneses.

Bottom line: Don’t let the media make you a puppet. Read for the literary sake of reading. Read the book and then see the movie, or vice versa. Don’t let the media trick you into thinking that a book’s merit is solely based on its Rotten Tomatoes score. A simple mentality and love for literature will only determine which novels you deem fit for reading, not the media, and certainly not Hollywood.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    thoughts on  writing, art, & new media by glassworks editorial staFF

     


    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    March 2013
    February 2013


    Categories

    All
    50 Shades Of Grey
    Adventure Time
    Amazon
    Art
    Audio
    Autocomplete
    Best Seller
    Bibliotherapy
    Books
    Bookstores
    Book To Movie
    Britannica
    Cartoons
    Censorship
    Characters
    Chooseyourownadventure
    Cliche
    Code Switching
    Controversy
    Drag Queens
    Dystopian
    Editorial
    Education
    Emoji
    Encyclopedia
    Facebook
    Fandom
    Fanfiction
    Fantasy
    Fiction
    Fight Club
    Film
    Football
    Future
    Gamebooks
    Game Of Thrones
    Gender
    Genre
    Google
    Google Poetics
    Google Poetry
    Grammar
    Habits
    Halloween
    Health
    Identity
    Insta-love
    Journaling
    Julia Cameron
    Kinesthetic Learning
    Language
    Library
    Literature
    Manga
    Marginalia
    Media
    Mental Health
    Morning Pages
    Multi Modal
    Multi-modal
    New Media
    Nihilism
    Nonfiction
    Normalcy
    Nostalgia
    Obscenity
    Op Ed
    Op-Ed
    Opinion
    Over The Garden Wall
    Podcast
    Poetry
    Politics
    Pornography
    Pronoun
    Publishing
    Race
    Research
    Rhetoric
    Rules
    Sampsa Nuotio
    Scandal
    Science Fiction
    Search
    Self Publishing
    Self-publishing
    Sequels
    Series
    Sexism
    Slam-poetry
    Social Media
    Spoken Word
    Standards
    Steven Universe
    Superheroes
    Teaching
    Technology
    Television
    The Goldfinch
    The New York Times
    Trigger Warnings
    Trilogy
    Twilight
    Video Games
    Visual Novel
    War
    White Vernacular English
    Wikipedia
    Workshop
    Writing
    YA
    Young Adult

    RSS Feed

Picture

260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
glassworksmagazine@rowan.edu

All Content on this Site
(C) 2021 glassworks
Photos used under Creative Commons from RomitaGirl67, ** RCB **, George Fox Evangelical Seminary