Continued Education from Hollywood

Potential Wise Saying for the Day: "The only 'ism' Hollywood believes in is plagerism." Dorothy Parker

We watched yet another Literary classic this week: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island as performed by the intrepid Muppets and friends. Hans Zimmer wrote the music for this song-ridden desecration...and he did a snappy job. Those songs stick with you like yesterday's garlic salad: they just keep coming back up atcha.

As an interpretation of a literary classic, Muppet's Treasure Island would be like saying that you understand Harriet Beecher's Stowe immortal, and world-changing classic, Uncle Tom's Cabin from watching the 3 minute cutified version in The King and I--sure, you get a few of their names and that it's something about pirates, treasure, and a kid--or maybe a rat--oh! and adventure, it's about adventure. And grown men wearing dresses, as well, we can't forget that... Or maybe that was something else...

Speaking of Uncle Tom's Cabin: I'm actually reading it for the first time ever. I was somehow spared in school...so now I'm doing it, and get this, of my own volition. Upon first glance of the book, I'm ashamed to say that I exclaimed--right in front of two professional librarians, "Wow! I didn't know it had so many words in it!" Yeah, I is leterary, allright.

The book sat on my nightstand for nearly three weeks before I picked it up out of guilt. "I'll just read the first chapter...I'm sure it'll be slow and boring..." Right. The first page drove me to tears. This woman painfully described the attitude of the Southern whites to such a degree it takes one's breath away. After 50 pages (out of 600) I flipped to the back...I couldn't help it...if I was going to wade through this horror, I needed some hope it would all turn out somehow. The last 50 pages offered a little balm, but not much. Of the few main characters, the ones that ran away lived lives of relative hope. The others were torn apart and destroyed, viciously and graphically.

And, if Stowe is to be believed, the entire book is written from stories told to her by ex-slaves she interviewed and by abolitionist friends who had collected various descriptions of traders, owners, and runaways.

It is a sickening book. And one that everyone should read...

My goal is to get through the middle 500 pages in the next three weeks.

I had hoped Hollywood hadn't gotten it mitts into this one...but of course they did...a quick check on imdb.com shows that Uncle Tom's Cabin has been made into at least 13 different movies from 1910 through 1987. In comparison, Treasure Island has had 62 versions made by the Great Illuminators, if you aren't fussy about having something made in English to count. I guess Hollywood has left Uncle Tom alone, in its own way. God rest its soul.