TKAM: Week of 1/12

How would you prove or disprove that one version of To Kill A Mockingbird is more affective in delivering its message than the other? Be sure to provide specific pieces of evidence to support your opinion. 

     Overall, "To Kill a Mockingbird" was a pretty good movie. However, in terms of how well it did in delivering the original message of the book, I thought it was pretty bad. This can be blamed a a few reasons, one of which being the fact that the movie was obviously not directly from Scout's perspective. The book is narrated by Scout-- we hear everything from her. Everything in the book has been interpreted by a child but we don't see that in the movie. The movie shows us exactly what's going on around the characters, meaning nothing is really interpreted and told to us the same way Scout did. In other words, we're given the plain old facts in the movie (which isn't bad). I thought this took a lot away from the message of the book projected onto the movie. A lot of the book's message was showing you how these events in a child's life were affecting the way she thought and grew up during the narration/thoughts.

     Another major fault that prevented the message from coming across is the fact that they cut out a lot of things. The many scenes left out did not affect one single message as there are a variety of messages in the book that the movie did not cover. Take the absence of Mrs. Dubose for example. In the book, Mrs. Dubose serves to support the message of courage and even a bit of not judging people. In the movie, she's racist for what was probably less than a minute before she never appeared again. Without her, the message of bravery is not emphasized as much and we even miss a little development in Jem's character. Was this a great loss? Incredibly so.

     As I mentioned before, there were many scenes left out that impacted different messages. The message of stereotyping (both gender and race) was emphasized way less in the movie when these scenes/characters were completely cut out (so sorry, Aunt Alexandra. You will be mildly missed). Just with that To Kill a Mockingbird in its book version becomes far more efficient in delivering the wide variety of messages, all equally important. While the movie may have failed at delivering the message, I have to appreciate the fact that it finally put a face on Arthur Radley. The book may have described him but there's nothing like watching the movie and having your interpretation of the character completely crushed.

Nothing like it.