YA Books to Movies: A Lifetime of Disappointment

Seeing the glossy promotional posters for the new Ramona and Beezus movie starring Selena Gomez as Beezus has renewed the anger I felt as a tween when my beloved young adult books were turned into shiny, boppy movies that totally ruined everything about the books themselves.

Now when I re-read YA books, particularly those from the 70's and early 80's, I'm truly surprised at how spare and realistic they often are. The endings are often abrupt and unresolved, and instead of a lot of cheesy poetic editorializing, we often get the straightforward narration of a young person. Read Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, and be struck by the dark undercurrents of her post WW2 life coupled with her naivete and adolescent awkwardness, all told through her eyes. And what about Harriet the Spy? I knew that book was totally weird even when reading it as a kid- her relationship with Ole Golly and the line drawings of Ole Golly's mother terrified me. Roald Dahl is another one whose work clearly has a sinister, if kooky, edge (which was actually pulled off in the first Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory! And maybe The Witches? I can't remember.)

Even as a kid (though I was a little too old for the movies when the rash of 90's era ones came out) I was disappointed in these movies, which, distinctly, lacked any of the bite of the originals. I knew that Harriet was supposed to take place in the 1960's, that Matilda and her story were intensely and irrevocably British. I was aghast to see the girl cast as Sarah Crewe in The Little Princess; this was a character who was repeatedly described as odd, weird-looking, and a little off-putting. Sure, she had a kindly heart, but she wasn't supposed to be a child model.

And when I think about Ramona, I think about her overworked parents who struggled with money, her house in Klikitat street in the rainy Pacific Northwest, her so familiar hatred of staying with the babysitter or at another kid's house because of aforesaid working parents, and Beezus feeling horribly awkward and embarrassed about everything. This shiny, allergy-fighting pharmaceutical commercial-esque sunniness and Gomez' airbrushed face seem to have no relation to the original characters.

Taking the protagonist and giving her shiny hair and these ease of a one-dimensional popular girl is a common theme in movie-making, and somehow I can't imagine film executives pouring over Barthe DeClements oeuvre and saying, "Do you think we made this twelve-year-old girl character realistic? Do you think we picked up on the dryness if the original text?" Instead we get the Hannah Montana phenomenon, where everything for kids is glossed up and filled with ridiculous distractions, all made with the assumption that children cannot pay attention to anything for more than 20 seconds. They are probably thinking, "Little girls like glitter, hair extensions, pink, and commercial tie-ins!' We can take men and sometimes women seriously, but the media is clearly uninterested in how children might really think, act, and feel, even though we were all children once and of course can trace the route of our grown-up insanity from childhood.

Of course, this movie also comes after the recent trend of making movies ostensibly about little girls, but are really about the director's "vision," including The Fall, Tideland (do NOT see that one) and even the slightly better but still under the same category Pan's Labyrinth. These films featured young female protagonists only as innocent foils to the fucked-up goings on around them.

I love good YA because, at its best, it is simple, painfully realistic storytelling, as opposed to the meaningless jerking-off that makes up the work of so many "real" authors, who mostly seem interested in little girls sexually, or, again, merely as innocent foils. Is there a coincidence that the most famous "real" novel featuring a little girl is probably Lolita? I love good YA because it says, "These stories are not trivial." Believe it or not, realistic honesty in art if often more meaningful than obtuse truths and hidden themes. And because they are about kids, particularly little girls, the genre will probably never get its due.

PS: Ohmygod.

PPS: For more on this subject, read my The Golden Compass review!

Mary's YA Book Review Korner

Hey there! You may remember this voting option from my post a few posts back, and though I think only like one or two people voted for this, I think it's a good potential series for this blog. (It did receive more votes than Mary's Zombie Movie Review Korner, though, which was quite notably unpopular.) Potentially these reviews fall under the "not related to fashion" category except that this book totally relates to fashion.

Our selection today, generously lent to me by Gaby, is Freak Show by James St. James, one of the original "club kids" and author of Disco Bloodbath (best title ever!) that true/fictionalized account of the club kid, special K-fueled murder story that was turned into the movie Party Monster with Macauley Culkin. In case you never saw that, it's one of those movies where you're like, "I think this is the worst movie I've ever seen...or maybe that's what makes it great!" Actually, I think it was pretty bad, but everyone says that Macauley, despite appearing like a horrible actor, really portrays club kid/murderer Michael Alig very well. I kind of doubt this because I think Macauley cannot act, but I have a soft spot for him because he seems relatively artsy and non-pretentious, he was in Home Alone and he turned out to look like an Aubrey Beardsley-drawn doomed Victorian consumptive rent boy(uh, ignore Seth Green), and, for whatever reason, I find this very attractive.

Anyway, St. James kind of is really scary looking, and has had a lot of Botox and is partial to appearing on America's Next Top Model wearing a clown suit, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved this book. The story follows high school senior Billy Bloom, who moves away from his artsy friends in Conneticut to a conservative town in Florida, and becomes a victim of the wealthy football player and cheerleader hiearchy.


Billy is not really a drag queen- he refers to himself as, among other things, a "gender obscurist", spending his time in outrageous costumey, over-the top looks, from swamp monster to ultra-prep. What I found so inspiring- empowering, even, is that Billy Bloom expresses himself through fashion, but not in that trendy, designer-y way we are encouraged to, but creatively, inventively, and uniquely. His personal style becomes both a parallel to his horrible situation at his new school as well as his own artistic way of fighting back against the "Aberzombies." I too spent much of high school trying (with mixed results) to look as different from my classmates as everyone else, and cannot help but applaud this non-traditionally aggressive way to make yourself heard.

Freak Show is written in this ultra-chatty way with zillions of references and caps lock and exclamation points and a new paragraph every sentence, and at first I didn't think i would be able to make it through many pages of that, but I think the tone fit the book quite well. It's sort of like a lightweight teenaged fairy tale, but doesn't gloss over all the horrible abuse Billy suffers at the hands of his drone-like tormentors. Plus, a lot of the references are pretty funny. This story could easily be made into a wonderful film for teens, kind of like a Hedwig/Beautiful Thing hybrid, that I personally would enjoy watching. More importantly, I think this is one of those YA books with a genuinally positive and unique message, and think both boys and girls of varying genders would benefit from it.

Edited to Add: Photo of Macauley Culin and Seth Green. Sorry for the delays! I can only do these posts through HTML so it's really easy to screw up and then Blogger just made it disappear until I fixed it.

PPS: Is that Janeane Garafalo on those Weight Watchers ads? If it is, ohmygod.