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Originally Posted by Galadriel55
I am very much in agreement with the general idea of both points. We very much do bring along baggage of expectations to any adaptation, and it can't not colour our opinion of it to some extent.
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It is far more than mere "baggage". It is one's philosophical predispositions, which can often operate seemingly unconsciously but not necessarily so, that predetermine how one reads a text. Edward Said's examination of "Orientalism" is a prominent example of the conceptual framework I am referring to but the problem is not limited to post colonial studies. See Toni Morrison's
playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. Other examples come easily to mind where attitudes towards the changing depiction of women really underlay the negative opinions about Galadriel in RoP--the complaints about Galadriel say more about those who speak them than they do about the depiction of the character, especially when spoken as an alleged gatekeeper of the Tolkien universe. Or when attitudes about Hollywood lead those gatekeepers to assume they know the erroneous minds of writers who all suffer from the same mindset. Its an essentialism that operates prejudicially or blindly. Another example: Professor Drout has acknowledged in his FB posts about RoP that he really cannot come to terms with film--"I am not a film person". In other words, he doesn't appreciate how the medium works; he even admits he fastforwards a great deal (but he does not tell us what triggers this fastforwarding). That means, for him--and this is my interpretation of his statement--that the standard for him is always set by the conditions of literary text rather than by how the story can be constructed by the visual/oral text. And I say this with a great deal of respect for Professor Drout's work on Tolkien.
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For myself, this has been my philosophy [ie, fanfic] to which I turn for consolation and to preserve my sanity whenever some hair-pulling article would pop up. Bit there are two buts which still won't let me rest in peace even with this more forgiving outlook....I think I'll wait for the thirs episode to air before I start watching, based on the reviews posted on this forum, and then perhaps I can give a better response to the first and main point of your thread
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Oh my, you are quite angsty aren't you? Will you be calling down a fatwa on the showrunners and writers even before you view any of the series? Because really you are not here talking knowledgeably about the actual TV series itself but about the epitexts which preceded it. I guess this is your statement about what you will bring to viewing the series, but it really does not tell us anything about the series itself.