Been reading alot of Jack London lately. I read the first part of White Fang to my class and then proceeded to show them the film. I had to look on the box to make sure it was the right movie. The beginning of the book recounts a dangerous journey through the Yukon. Disney told me a story about a dog that loves his owner. DRIVLE, PREPOSTEROUS OFFAL. There, take that Disney, you book killer.
You might say, hey that was a really violent reaction to a Disney film...you might say that. But then I would say, not only did Disney totally remake the story, blending in elements of To Build A Fire and Call of the Wild (not the one in Gaylord, though that place is awesome!), but they defeated the purpose of Jack ever writing books.
In Call of the Wild you know who the winner is? The dog. Who dies all through the book? Humans. Does the dog care? Nope, he's a dog, he wants meat and to make puppies, that's all. He knows that a stick in a man's hand is bad and that wolves are his realtives. No over-personification needed. Tell it like it is Jack!
Disney took the entire tone of the book, sucked all the spine-tingling realism out and left me with a pile of a boy-loves-dog-coming-of-age-in-the-Canadian-wilderness-crap. (yeah I said it).
Some say Jack's books are a bit Darwinian, survival of the fittest and all that. I say, look, Nature is cursed and the Natural World will kill you if it can so don't go out in the snow in -85 degree weather and if you let your wolf-husky loose in the woods chances are it will run away and become wild.
So stay out of the Yukon!
3 comments:
twoinaday = awesome! I didn't realize disney made the movie, but it makes sense. What did you expect, that the dog wouldn't come back?
And why are you always showing videos. . .read them the beginning of the Fellowship and then stick that in. That sticks a bit closer to the book. ;)
The part where the guy plays the Jewish Harp is kind of cool.
* boing-boing-boing-boing *
I showed my class the same movie a couple months ago and it actually worked well for me because I read a different Jack London book that focused more on the Yukon landscape.
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