In my undergrad years, I had a lit professor who would always talk about pieces being "in conversation" with each other. Seriously, the gateway to a good grade would be those two words.
Aside from that class, connections between different works interest me. I also love modernizations/revampings of classic lit. The Hamlet movie with Ethan Hawke was cool-- he gives his "To be or not to be" speech while walking down the aisle in Blockbuster store. I like when musicians reference literature too. Just the whole mixing together of lit, music, and film is something that fascinates me. On a less scholarly note, I found a music video on YouTube. The song is called "Sweep the Leg" [Karate Kid reference] and William Zabka, the bully from the movie, appears in the music video... I love pop culture.
Got a cool CD via my public library. It is called Songs Inspired by Literature: Chapter One, Artists for Literacy. There are tracks inspired by Tolstoy, Robert Frost, and John Steinbeck. There's also more contemporary pieces that are referenced. Aimee Mann's "Ghost World" is a song inspired by the Daniel Clowes graphic novel, the graphic novel being an inspiration for the feature film. I had heard this Aimee Mann song before but never even connected it with the graphic novel. Looking at the lyrics, the song definitely is "in conversation" with the graphic novel. Listening to the song makes me love the graphic novel and film even more.
Living in the 2007 world where anything can be found online, I think it is fun when we connect these pieces of lit for students. I'm not a Robert Frost fan but hearing David Lamotte's "Dark and Deep" makes me want to go back and reread Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening."
1 comment:
I definitely agree with you -- and I think that cognitively and imaginatively important things happen when we transform pop culture into new things. For example, if you search for Harry Potter fan fiction online -- you can see so many variations written by readers of the Harry Potter canon. A lot of the conference here has been about these kinds of practices -- using one medium to influence another, like music inspired by literature, or YouTube video productions of written work. Creative work + incredible media affordances = a brave new world, perhaps?
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