Against Desecration
The fabulous Jon, aka Chuggnutt, sent me this link yesterday, and along with it, the idea for this entry. Be sure to read his entry first; otherwise you may miss the full horror of the situation.
A professor developing a program to summarize works of great literature into cell phone text messages? In a word: yuck.
Seriously, Romeo and Juliet reduced to “bothLuvrs kill Emselves” and Pride and Prejudice now “Evry1GtsMaryd”…could the man possibly be serious?
My first response was, this must be a joke. Not only is it stupid, it’s just so…stupid. For one, why would a student use this if CliffsNotes are available? Yes, I am okay with CliffsNotes; I recommend them to my students to use as a study guide ALONG WITH THE BOOK. Let me make that clear. They must read the book, but some students don’t have good note-taking skills, and CliffsNotes provide that.
But garbled cell phone messages? This is a whole new low: not only a dark day in literature, but in ‘higher’ education as well.
True, it’s an insult to intelligence, but really, I’m mostly against it for aesthetic reasons. I loathe abbreviations and letters interchanged with numbers, basically 12-year-old IM speak. To prove this point, I will now translate a great passage of literature into 12-year-old IM speak, courtesy of Lucas Longley’s nifty little program:
HERE WAS NO POSIBILITY OF TAKNG A WOK TAHT DAY1!!1!1!! OMG WTF LOL WE HAD BEN WAND3RNG INDED IN DA LAAFLAS SHRUB3RY AN HOUR IN TEH MORNNG BUT SINC3 DINER (MRS1111111 RED WHEN THEIR WAS NO COMPANY DIEND EARLY) DA COLD WINT3R WIND HAD BROUGHT WIT IT CLOUDS SO SOMBRE AND A RANE SO PANATRATNG TAHT FURTHER OUT-DOR AX3RCIES WAS NOW OUT OF DA QUASTION
I!11!!!11 WAS GLAD OF IT I N3VER LIEKD LONG WOKS ASPECIALY ON CHILY AFTERNONS DREADFUL 2 ME WAS TEH COMNG HOME IN DA RAW TWILIGHT WIT NIP3D FNGARS AND 23S AND A HEART SADAN3D BY TEH CHIDNGS OF BSEI DA NURSE AND HUMBL3D BY TEH CONSCIOUSN3S OF MAH PHYSICAL INFARIORITY 2 3LIZA O AND G3ORGIANA RED!1!! WTF
Can you tell what book this is from? Can you tell any difference between this and the cell phone text ‘innovation?’
You can’t reduce literature to plot points. You ruin the best aspects. It would be like dumping white paint over the Mona Lisa and writing in black text: Girl Smiles. Not quite the same thing, is it?
Why do we try so hard to turn literature into a chore? Why work so hard to make it soulless? Okay, so you could sum up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with “Boy and escaped slave flee down river on makeshift raft.” But what about the feel of sun on their arms, the mud between their toes, the way Huck burgeons into a young man under the guidance of an unlikely role model?
Emile Zola’s Germinal could be “Miners go on strive, revolt.” What about the pervasive grit, the eternal night, the mad passion of finally escaping the bonds of poverty? James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, turned into “Boy leaves church, writes books”…well, it’s okay to butcher that one. Sorry. I really hate that book.
I just hate to see the vibrant colors sucked out of literature, reducing it to drab shades of gray. I don’t want students to learn about these characters through the scrolling text on a tiny screen. I want students to know Huck Fin and Jane Eyre and all the other wonderful creations, and maybe, with any luck, know themselves better, too.
I’d love to know what he’d say about modern technology.
5 Comments
Oooh ooh it’s Jane Eyre!
Mm, it’s a sad day when I can read horrid teen Internet speak. *shudder*
This whole thing is depressing. People suck.
PS: I really hate Portrait of the Artist as well. It was a painful reading experience.
Your last point is the most telling in my view. The fact that the reading of great, and maybe not so great, literature is in the end about knowing yourself. That self awareness leads to not being ignorant of other’s needs, of the way people think, empathy, and a host of other values and knowledge you just can’t text message or pick up in five seconds.
It’s just another company trying to cash in on the latest trend without any long view of the harm done. I can’t even read that block of text you gave as an example.
Good job, Ingrid! WORD on the Joyce book. Now you will never convince me we weren’t separated at birth.
Thank you for the intelligent and thought-provoking post, Heather! You’re so right…I love that you made a point about empathy, which is the most crucial quality, i think, of a good writer and a good person.