A great feast of language

What exactly does it mean to get acquainted with a literature classic by watching a television show? What happens when students are exposed to great works of literature by what they view versus what they read? Does this cultural literacy mean that literary classics have become part of pop culture and should be viewed that way?

Certainly a producer can argue when defending a TV adaptation of a classic that students who would have never read a book would at least watch a TV series based on it and get acquainted with literature classics in this way. And that argument seems to be valid. But there are those who can also argue that contemporary TV adaptations of classical novels are often simplistic and add elements of vulgarity believing it will keep the viewer engaged when it pollutes the storyline.

So which is correct? Both may be correct to a certain degree. But they are missing one important point: literary classics have become part of pop culture and should be viewed in that way; not as something whole or pure.

A good television or film adaptation can certainly provide pleasures of its own, but they are the pleasures available in that medium. A good film requires careful attention, just as a good novel, but the kind of attention being paid is not the kind required by fiction. Films can provoke us into immersing ourselves into the scenes since the image moves and forces us to keep track of the information conveyed through editing; it is ultimately the work of the eye and ear keeping pace with appearances. We have to look and listen. Fiction requires a kind of looking, but even our visual registering of a word, phrase and sentence, and the way these elements arrange themselves in a style distinctive to the author we're reading, is an internally-oriented mental process rather than an externally-oriented process of sorting sights and sounds.  Our imaginations then have to finish the job the writer has started. We have to mentally transform the words, phrases, and sentences into actions, thoughts, and the emotions of the characters. 

Seeing a film as either a supplement to or as a replacement for reading classic works, doesn’t make sense to me. It's based on the assumption that works of fiction are stories about characters and that, since a visual medium is able to tell stories about characters, if you faithfully tell the story and present all the characters you've adequately reproduced the book. While it's true that some literary classics, especially those written in the 18th and 19th centuries, have stories and characters, surely it isn't the case that they are conveyed to us in the same way.  What gets lost in the adaptation is narrative voice, fluctuations in point of view, subtleties in characterization, and shades of description. Most importantly, what gets lost is the encounter and richness of  language.