31st January 2005, 5:35 PM
Quote:No, it's just that you like to lump things into certain bizarro-ABF categories in that twisted mind of yours to make arguments easier for you to create.
You do that all the time though... how you don't read what other people said closely enough and thus misstate and miscategorize what they mean... and is is wrong to think something when you so strongly defend visual and say virtually nothing good about written? Weltall assumed the same thing about what you were saying so I really don't think you can blame it all on me this time.
Quote:Not only does that sentence have nothing to do with what Ryan and I were talking about, but you just had to say something so incredible ignorant that no words can accurarely describe what I'm thinking in reply to that sentence right now. Do you think of everything in the most juvenile of terms, ignoring obvious meaning and trying to somehow balance what you think is some sort of black and white contest? I don't even know how to begin to reply to something so weird that has zero bearing on what we were discussing. It's like two people talking about the qualities of celluloid versus digital and then some weirdo coming in and saying "oh so you think that celluloid is easier to use for brushing your teeth???!!".
It's hard to get all the context of your conversation when a lot of it was obviously done on IM and not here on the forum you know... but anyway, it's true. It's not ignorant, but a reflection of how you argue, OB1... you take a position and strongly defend it! That's what you do! And here, since film was "under threat", you defend that at the expense of books. Pretty simple and wholly accurate. Sure, you say that you think they are equal. But your tone... I definitely got the impression that you are just saying that and that you don't really believe it. Why else would you talk almost solely about visual examples (and then throw in the requisite comment that they are equal)?
Quote:It has as much merit as Ryan and yours. Like both of you were doing, I was removing some very important aspects of the the topic at hand in order to give my (hypothetical) argument more merit. Ryan's point was that books inherently require more imagination than movies do because in a movie when you see a car that's what everyone else sees, while in a book a car is going to be described in detail for you to imagine in your head. What I was doing was taking this very simple example that is isolated from the entire point of my argument and doing the same thing that Ryan did. The point is not what the car looks like--the point is what exists beyond the car and what the car represents and what purpose it serves in the story. So the imagining comes not from picturing the car that has just been described to you, but seeing beyond that to the purpose of the car's existence. So basically the only thing books inherently require more imagination than movies do is in forcing the reader to use a little bit of imagination (if the books is descriptive enough) to picture that car, something that is so insiginificant compared to actually understanding what the car means. Compared to how much thought and imagination goes into understand what the car means... simply picturing is a non-existent point. And since that true imagining is unquantifiable, there is no inherent advantage one way or the other. If you really struggle to use that "artistic attention" span of yours to picture that car then you're missing the entire point.
Let me simplify that response: "You are right that books require more imagination in some regards but I think that that is irrelevant." Of course you do, since if you can't be right then the thing you are wrong about has to not matter...
Anyway, I disagree. What the car looks like DOES matter. Those elements are the core of the argument that books require more imagination! No matter how many times you deny it you simply cannot describe something in words the same way you can in an image. And more of what you say I just don't understand. So imagination is only more required in books if the book has a detailed enough descriptive style to give the person a mental image to start with? Absolutely not! The opposite is almost true, actually -- the more detail it provides the less individual imagination is required. That requires more interpretation and deduction (to figure out what the verbal image would look like), but less pure imagination... now, you definitely need some amount of detail to have a place for your imagination to start, the works that require the most imagination are probably ones where there is a 'grey area' where your imagination can work on top of what is described. With movies this just doesn't really happen.
Sure, in movies you can have plots just as deep and complex as you can in books. Not with as much length of course (and how much that matters depends on the writer in the cases of both movies and books) But imagination... it's just not the same. And I don't think it really can be. The very use of images precludes that.
Or rather, to restate my point, while what the car means is also an important question, the imagining of what the car is and what the car looks like is also a very important and very relevant question which you should not degrade as you do.