The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Book vs. Movie.

By Anonymous -
The differences of the experience of watching a movie versus reading a book is immense, especially when that book is as unique as “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. A movie, almost by definition, is something you watch, and is thusly always a third-person experience. Books do not have this limitation and can be written in a variety of viewpoints depending on how the author wants to convey their story. In the case of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, that story is told through a series of letters by a 15-year-old named Charlie sent to his anonymous friend. Because the book is written from a first-person perspective, all the events of the novel are filtered through Charlie’s bias. Charlie is writing these letters after he has experienced the events he is writing down. This means he has time to reflect, edit, and censor himself for the sake of the letters, creating something of an unreliable narrator for the reader to how these events truly impacted him in the moment they occurred. This is especially true considering Charlie’s repression of his molestation by his aunt making him closed off to certain subjects like sex and rape. However, when these events are depicted in the movie, we are seeing them in “real time”, so to speak. As Charlie is not writing letters directly to us, the audience, in this medium, we can see Charlie’s actions, reactions, and emotions as they happen, without any filters to disguise them. This creates for a more visceral experience as there is no room made for the viewer’s imagination to fill in the gaps Charlie leaves behind. What we are seeing is the absolute “truth” of Charlie’s reality. We are not limited to only his perspective, but to the responses of those around him in those moments as well. Neither method of depiction is superior than the other, both offer their pros and cons, and allow for their own unique stylistic choices. What’s interesting is that a single story can almost feel like a completely different one depending on the way it is consumed.

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 17, 2016 at 5:42 PM

    I think you nailed this! I agree that there's pros and cons with the book and movie, either way the audience is getting what they want such as seeing the emotions but are also missing the feeling that Charlie is writing to them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 17, 2016 at 9:30 PM

    I absolutely agree with you, Tyler, but I think that you should have mentioned some of the content that's missing from the movie that's present in the book, and for what reason. For example, Charlie's sister's pregnancy was cut from the movie, but it was present in the book.

    Because of this, we never really see much of them bonding in the movie, and I wonder if this was intentionally done.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownSeptember 19, 2016 at 5:58 PM

    I enjoyed getting both of them personally. Reading the book gave me an insight to charlie as a person and his immense thoughts. The movie was so well edited and well written that it felt like that was the other side of the same story. It was the omniscient view that I needed in order to feel like the story was complete and well rounded. Especially since the entire plot is so amazing

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  4. UnknownSeptember 19, 2016 at 5:59 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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