Post 2: Remediated Information

When I read the description for this assignment, the very first thing I though of was the process of producing a film based on a book. There are countless examples of this, and many different levels of success. It seems as though, no matter how "successful" the remediation of a story from page to screen, it will always leave many people unsatisfied.

Last semester I had the opportunity to go see Ronald Maxwell speak on campus. He was the director of the films "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals", both of which are civil war movies based upon not only history, but more specifically historical fiction novels. "Gettysburg" is the film version of the popular book "The Killer Angels." He spoke for about an hour and mostly focused on how his films were a slightly different version of the novels, and of the actual events of history. One of the things that he mentioned was how difficult it was to take a fairly dense novel and shrink it down into a movie script. He explained that in the medium of film, it is much easier to expand than contract. Most critics seemed to think the film was successful in adapting the book to the big screen, but it did leave some people unhappy with the final product.

His second civil war film, "Gods and Generals" was met with much more criticism. Critics did not like how African Americans were portrayed in the film. In the film, several southern black characters (both enslaved and free) were seen as conflicted about the war and did not run away and fight for the Union. The film was criticized for not showing the harshness of slave life in the south during the civil war. During his lecture, Ronald Maxwell argued that this criticism was unfair and even racist, and that he did not want to reduce all of his black characters to simple victims. One of the points he made during this part of the lecture was that due to the medium of film it is impossible to give an accurate representation of "African American life in the South during the civil war" as this is a topic which is too complex and varied to address in only part of a 3-hour-long film. He argued that he was trying to tell a story that included complex black characters. I have not seen the movie, so I can't speak about my personal feelings about this, but I feel this is an interesting point and one worth thinking about. This shows how one medium, which often has the disadvantage of a limited scope, can (perhaps inadvertently) drastically change the way the audience sees actual "information" about the civil war and how African Americans lived their lives during this period.

Post 1: Introduction

Hello!

I am about to begin my second year in the MAPC program at Clemson and have definitely enjoyed the program so far. I am excited to start working on my thesis, but not quite as excited to really begin to study for my orals exam this year.

I decided to take this class because digital publishing in all of its forms interests me very much. I am mostly interested in visual and aural forms of communication, rather than written forms. Digital publishing can include a wider array of textual and non-textual forms of communication than traditional publishing can. I have a very strong interest in film/video, as well as music, graphic design and web design and am very much looking forward to how any of these areas may intertwine with the field of digital publishing.