Music, for a time, was devoid of imposed imagery. Listening to a song I was free to make any associations I wished except perhaps while looking at the album cover. Then along came MTV. It revolutionized how I thought about popular music. Images were now chosen for me. I felt something unique and personal had been irretrievably denied.
Certainly a similar comparison between books, before the advent of film, can be made. Readers did not compete with someone else’s depiction of the characters they envisioned, except perhaps for those with illustrations.
It is hard to shake Vivien Leigh’s portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara or Madonna singing, “Like A Virgin.”
Once we witness an evocation through a lens, our perception is unequivocally changed.
Something lost? Something gained?
Definitely lost! I cannot stand it when someone else interprets the written word in a way that fits the adaptor’s vision and not the writer’s. Granted, the adaptor can be as valid a reader as anyone else, but often times, the adaptor makes changes that contradicts the written word or merges/edits in a way that contradicts other parts of the text, all for the sake of budget or time.