Sanatsal Essay

Serhat Arslan

EN 102

Prof. St. Pierre

Rhetorical Paper

12/04/2009

Movies are Better than Books

Books represent the literature part of the mankind. From the first book has ever been written, we really liked reading and imagining things in our minds. We learnt new words from the books, we learnt new knowledges, we learnt new ideas from the books. But with the development of technology and the industrial revolution, photography machines and film recording machines came to our lives. They started telling us stories and informations also. As the time passes, some people started liking those stories more than the books’ stories. Books stayed exactly the same during that time as the movies progressed and developed with the technology. They began talking and singing with the development of sound cinema. After that, they started to show colors of the world to the audience. Movies, became the best kind of art humans have ever created. It is basically the combination of photography, music, and story.

Story, is the most important part of the books. It is the strongest weapon of books against movies. Books can come up with impressive textual storytelling which can touch us, and affect our imagination. While we are reading those diligently chosen words in a book our writing and communication ability being developed unconsciously. We do have the time to think about the story. In other words, we can control the time and pace so easily in books which in movies you can’t do. But in movies, we can see clearly what is being told to us. It is not somehow vague anymore like in books. So that way we have a settled image in our heads and this situation makes the story more realistic.

The thing that make us see those settled images is photography. It is the strongest part of movies, against books. Because in books, one needs to describe the atmosphere by figurations, identifications, and etc. But in movies one second is enough for audience to understand the ambience and atmosphere, all with colors, light levels, magnitude, and etc. Apart from that, photography is a kind of art that can really impress people, by itself. In movies we have music and story to rainforce the power of photography which makes movies so effective on human emotions.

Speaking of emotions, music, is the best and the easiest way to arouse emotions in one person. So, filmmakers know this and use effective music in their films, that’s why most of the movie scores are done with stringed musical devices. Because it is obvious that string based music is more emotional than tempo based music, which we hardly can find in movies. Music, is the worst part of books, because there is no music in books. Words are trying to arouse the emotions in you but I can’t say that they are as effective as music especially the kind that is used in movies. I also want to include the sound to music. In movies sounds and voices of actors are specific. A writer can describe some voices that has some obvious features but most of the time does not describe a voice that counts as a normal person voice, so this depends on how you imagine it. But in movies, every other person has different characteristics in their own voice, as in real life.

To conclude and sum up, every kind of art is good in itself. Everything that arouse emotions in us is good for us because as human beings we really need to feel our emotions. We need to feel and enjoy life. Books and movies or in other words, literature and cinema are two different kinds of art. But one of them presents us more chances to enjoy life. That’s why cinema is a fascinating discovery of mankind. Books are good for us, books are helpful for us, books are enjoyable, but they aren’t as enjoyable as movies, and they aren’t better than movies.