Why Johnny can't read

Rob Price

Rob Price

There's a fine irony in the fact the movie "Beowulf" was released just days before the U.S. government reported Americans are reading less.

The government report, issued by the National Endowment for the Arts, found 52 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 read a book voluntarily in 2002. That's down from 59 percent in 1992.

These statistics suggest it would be unwise for me to open a bookstore in my retirement years. Obviously, Americans are doing something else with their leisure time besides reading. What would that be?

I suspect they're doing things like watching the movie "Beowulf," which opened in neighborhood theaters last Friday and earned close to $10 million that single night.

What makes "Beowulf so popular? For starters, the movie uses some sort of high-tech digitalization technique called "performance capture" to reconstruct the actors and their environments. Everything looks like the artwork in a glossy comic book with very high production values. Think of the digitalization used in the "Polar Express" movie, then think of something more subtle, and expensive. That's is a very good comic book up there on the silver screen.

For many lucky viewers, there also are hundreds of theaters outfitted to show "Beowulf" in 3-D. This must be a spectacular special effect, because there are lots of arrows and spears and men hurtling through the air in "Beowulf." And for men with the emotional maturity of a 16-year-old - which means most of us - there is the added feature of a semi-nude Angelina Jolie, for whom the 3-D movie effect must have been invented.

My wife and I watched the movie Friday in our friendly neighborhood theater, which is not equipped with 3-D technology. And I would consider the watching the movie a second time in a theater equipped with 3-D technology - if only "Beowulf" were a better movie. Actually, it's one of the sillier movies I've seen in the last few years. It's so silly - full of dialogue like:

Beowulf: Aargh.

Friend of Beowulf: Argh

- that it's difficult to discuss intelligently.

So my wife and I called a friend who also saw it and who loves silly movies like "300." Perhaps, we thought, she would have the critical intelligence necessary for discussing "Beowulf."

"Craptacular," she said. Just for a little background: "Beowulf" originally was a long poem written in Old English (unintelligible for most people) sometime around the sixth century. Here's what a more modern translation of the poem's prologue looks like:

Lo, praise of the prowess of peoplekings

Of speararmed Danes, in days long sped,

We have heard, and what honor

the athelings won!

It's not easy for the average 18-24- year-old to wade through, even though there are exciting battles between the warrior-prince, Beowulf, and three big monsters: Grendel, Grendel's mother and a dragon. "Beowulf" is a serious poem - an extended narrative that explores the nature of heroism and what it takes to be a good leader and wise king. The conclusion of the poem in particular is sad and eligiac, and I kept waiting for a similarly sober moment in the movie "Beowulf," but no such luck.

Part of the problem, I think, is the "performance capture" technology, which de-emphasizes the characters' humanity and stresses the artificiality of the medium. Another part of the problem is Angelina Jolie - not Ms. Jolie herself, but the way the movie exploits her. In the poem, Grendel's mother is a scary hag. The movie turns her into a digital seductress. The scenes between Beowulf and Grendel's mother aren't not so much sexy, as silly. They're an example of how the film makers have taken a serious - and entertaining - piece of literature and dumbed it down.

Twenty-five years ago, I was teaching English at Virginia Tech, and I introduced the poem "Beowulf" to classes of sophomore students. It's not easy to read, but those kids waded into it, and had a little fun with the rhythms and themes of Old English.

Now, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, those days are behind us. Modern American kids are reading less and watching movies like "Beowulf" more. We could accuse them of not taking their literature seriously. More to the point, though, I suspect the producers who gave us the movie "Beowulf" never took their literature seriously in the first place, except as something to turn into a comic book.