Tuesday, January 25, 2011
War of the Worlds : Text vs. Radio
I don't know if I'm just so accustomed to visualizing text, but I found listening to the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds kind of frustrating. Maybe it was just the realistic, scattered way in which it was organized, but I found it difficult to concentrate on the radio version. There were sections where I lost what was being said, where certain words or phrases weren't clear. If that happened while reading the text version, it was easy to glance back and pick up the lost information. For me, listening to the radio version was a lot like watching television: it was almost too easy to visualize things, and there was little for me to really pay attention to. When reading, it takes a little bit more work to really visualize a sequence of events, whereas it felt as if everything was given. The sound effects added to this: I wasn't made to come up with sounds that would fit the situation, they were provided for me. I felt as if, for me, this took away from the experience of the piece as a whole.
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While I preferred the radio version over the text version of War of the Worlds, I can see where Melissa is coming from. I think being so accustomed to text makes the organization of the radio version very confusing to follow. When reading a book, if you do not understand a paragraph, you can go back and re read. Re-reading is not an option when listening to an audio version. Listeners have to keep up at the same pace as the narrator which certainly can be difficult and some people would prefer to simple read.
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