I was watching TV this morning when it occurred to me; more and more books are being made into movies or TV shows. I make it a point to see as many of them as I can, just to see if they cast it well or they did the book justice, though I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a book reproduced on screen and thought it surpassed its original. There were several I thought turned out well, but none that I concluded was better than the book.
Most of the time I don’t feel disappointed if the screen version wasn’t better; I generally don’t expect it to be. And some of the time I don’t even get offended when the two versions differ greatly. Take Shadowhunters for example, a television show based on the book series by Cassandra Claire, and the one that got me started on this entry.
Fans of the book might not be fans of the show. It turned the cocky and brooding hero from a charming leader to a militaristic side note. It changed his love interest from a brave and determined girl next door into a warrior, albeit a wobbly one in too high heels. It transformed the sultry bad ass into a sultry drug addict, and the story line has deviated so far from the book the title is now the only resemblance. I found the books entertaining, with intriguing characters who had endearing flaws. I find the show to be boring despite all the additional drama they’ve pumped into it, and yet I record it every week to watch while I ride the stationary bike. That’s because I’m not invested enough in it to care.
I enjoyed the books. Really enjoyed the books. But they didn’t change my life, so the show isn’t going to ruin anything for me. They can change the plot, change the characters and turn it into something that I don’t recognize, and that’s perfectly fine because I wasn’t that attached to it in the first place. That’s the way I feel about most page to screen stories. But there is one page to screen story I am attached to, and I’m not sure I can bring myself to watch it reproduced in a way I don’t recognize.
The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, now a TV show on Starz, is a story I can’t bear to see changed.
I did watch the first season, and for the most part I enjoyed it. Obviously not all my favorite pages would make it to the screen, but overall I thought the casting was good and it stuck to the plot I love, until the end, when one of the main characters asked the other if he was happy. In a manner of speaking this broke my heart and turned me off the show completely, because in the book that question didn’t have to be asked.
I suppose my love of this story stems from the time in my life during which I read it. My career and thus a portion of my identity had imploded, and I was suffering my first and thus far only bout with depression. About the only thing I had the energy for much less interest in was my kids. I had nothing left for me or my husband, a symptom he recognized without realizing the cause. He accused me, correctly, of loving him but not being in love with him. At the time I wasn’t really capable of love, and while I knew that wasn’t a sustainable way to live our lives I had nothing more to offer. Then my friend gave me Outlander.
I was late to the party so I was able to jam through six books in a month. I became engrossed not just in the story but in the lives of the two main characters, Jamie and Claire. Here were two people that loved each other, but had to fight for that love. External obstacles drove them apart, flaws that they each possessed tested one another’s patience, and sometimes their own insecurities or even their kids crept in and threatened happiness. But they didn’t let any of that drive them apart. And as Jamie so perfectly put it, “I like to see the years on your face because it means you’re alive.”
I was mourning my career, mourning that lost piece of my identity, mourning my youth; I didn’t want to mourn my best friend or our marriage. I didn’t want to mourn our family. So I got my shit together. I put my husband back on the priority list. I made time for me. I put my family and our well being before all of the external stuff that was pulling me under, and I started to float again. Since then I’ve been really happy. I can give one hundred percent of myself to the people that mean everything to me, and still have time for things I want to pursue. All it took was a fictional story to help me appreciate what I had and decide to fight for it.
The second season of Outlander sits untouched on my DVR, and I still can’t bring myself to watch it nearly a year after it first aired. When you credit a story for snapping you out of a downward spiral, and you watch a critical part of that story fade away to dialogue that wasn’t necessary in the original, a part of the magic fades away too. I don’t want to tarnish the impact the books had on me by replacing it with an imperfect revision. So I’ll watch as producers change up books I enjoyed, but I’ll change the channel when they tinker with books I love.
Michele Lenard 