Disrespecting a "classic"

[Marter]

Off-topic: OMGYES YOUR AVATAR *fanboy SQUEE!* I'm performing a Nightwish song at my college in December. Just sayin

The only unfortunate thing is that she's no longer a part of Nightwish.

But, yes, there are lots of films shown in class that are boring, in large part because they were partially made to show off. The crowds at the time wouldn't have seen anything like that and would be mesmerized. Meanwhile, we're left going "That's it? I can do that with my phone!"

Important to film history, but not exactly something to get excited about.

 

[malestrithe]

For me, the supposed classic that I don't see the point to is Watchmen. I read it for the first time in 2004. I read every word in the comic book in one sitting. I did not see the god damn big deal behind it. The most I can say about it is people started to believe Alan Moore's hype way too much.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

classic books i hate... well for one: To Kill A Mockingbird. found it boring and predictable. it had no real structure at all.

It has structure that is highly predictable. Hell, the structure is as solid as it comes - a legal proceeding is the framework.

writing was good but there really was no main premise at all.

Like most works considered part of the classical canon, it expresses many themes rather than a single one.

a court case is kind of thrown into the middle and that's about the most of it but it's all through a child's eyes

It never struck you that there could be something important about the narrator? For example, the innocence of childhood and the effect of the book's events on the same?

and... it's just something i didn't enjoy much.

I think that's a fair statement - a great many books they force people to read in High School are fairly devoid of fun. But that doesn't mean the book lacked structure of themes or was devoid of meaning or value. Just that it isn't a fun read. Lots of books are like that. Personally, I liked A Separate Peace when most people I know would gladly pitch that book into a fire given the opportunity.

i'd say the same thing about Romeo & Juliet. story was cheesy and stupid.

It's a story about two dumb kids doing dumb things because of love. There is resounding truth to be found in the tale.

there were no realistic emotions or reasons for anything in it and it made it hard to connect to it and feel anything.

I don't buy this one. Petty family feuds? Hell, those happen today both on the small scale (neighbors for example) and the large (countless examples of stupid things nations bicker and fight over today) .

also the intro pretty much tells you the ending which is dumb,

Knowing the end isn't terribly important. Like most things, the beginning is just there to get you interested and the end is just there to close it out. All the important stuff is somewhere in the middle.

if the ending is the twist, why would you ruin it right in the beginning?

You wouldn't but then its designed to be a twist not so it works. The technique is called foreshadowing - fairly common device in storytelling.

it's really stupid reading something when you already know what's going to happen.

It is a rare work that defies expectations. From the moment the Death Star is introduced you know that the rebels will have to defeat it by the end. Hell, the entire work is predictable given that it follows the formula of the monomyth that a summary of the monomyth theory may as well be the synopsis for Star Wars.

To put it another way, there is reasonable cause to believe that every story that will ever be told has already been told in one form or another. That doesn't mean that a particular version of that story lacks value. Just because you've already seen the hero's journey play out in Die Hard doesn't mean you can't enjoy it in The Matrix. Just because you've seen a story about Machiavellian politics in the Godfather doesn't mean you can't enjoy that story playing out in Game of Thrones.

 

[Batou667]

Just to second/third a few previously expressed opinions:

LoTR, the book, is a tedious mess. Perfunctory blow-for-blow "...and then this happened, and then that happened, and then..." recounting; bland, robotic prose without a hint of any passion; twee and grating dialogue and a fetishistic obsession with the fluffiness of pillows and the deliciousness of breakfast (Hey, Tolkein, show, don't tell, muthafucka).

Kubrik films: lucky for him that he's dead, because I've taken personal offense to the unwarranted length of some of his films and I think I'd be compelled to track him down and throttle the bugger if he were still alive. Most irritating. It's ironic though because a lot of his style is very good, and I generally adore films that are "Kubrikesque", such as Moon.

Akira - did you mean the telephone directory manga, or the film? I thought the manga was overblown and self-indulgent, but actually a pretty good disaster story first and "LOL super powered kids" story second. The film is crap.

Heart of Darkness - unenjoyable, yet good. Hey, at least it's short, right?

 

[lacktheknack]

Oh God. I have a lot of these. Literally almost every required-reading I've ever done, I disliked.

Spoiler: The List

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The House on Mango Street
The Stranger
The Giver
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
1984
To Kill A Mockingbird
Several Edgar Allen Poe stories, including The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Casque of Amontillado
Things Fall Apart
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Do you just have a vendetta against assigned reading? Over half of those (ESPECIALLY the Edgar Allan Poe stuff) are bloody amazing.

OT: I couldn't finish The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, I really couldn't. When the author suddenly inserted a two-hundred page description of Paris in the middle of the story, I just gave up.

Also, "Night" by Elie Wiesel. I know it's an incredibly important memoir, and that it's somewhat of a masterwork of biography, but I would sooner viciously attack myself with dull forks than read it again.

I'll put it this way: "Night" was so incredibly dark that my final project (it was school assigned) was a happy little board game about dying horribly in Nazi research projects, and not only did the teacher not throw it out, he gave it 100%. Under any other circumstances, that kind of passive-aggressive idiocy would have gotten me suspended.

 

[The_Echo]

Oh God. I have a lot of these. Literally almost every required-reading I've ever done, I disliked.

Spoiler: The List

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The House on Mango Street
The Stranger
The Giver
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
1984
To Kill A Mockingbird
Several Edgar Allen Poe stories, including The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Casque of Amontillado
Things Fall Apart
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Do you just have a vendetta against assigned reading? Over half of those (ESPECIALLY the Edgar Allan Poe stuff) are bloody amazing.

I know that 1984 is very well-received, especially among those on this forum. But really... I never read through the whole thing. And not through lack of trying, mind you. And Poe never struck me as anything too brilliant, and certainly not too enjoyable (for me). Which I find odd, given I do enjoy Lovecraft, who was influenced by Poe.

 

[lacktheknack]

Oh God. I have a lot of these. Literally almost every required-reading I've ever done, I disliked.

Spoiler: The List

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The House on Mango Street
The Stranger
The Giver
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
1984
To Kill A Mockingbird
Several Edgar Allen Poe stories, including The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Casque of Amontillado
Things Fall Apart
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Do you just have a vendetta against assigned reading? Over half of those (ESPECIALLY the Edgar Allan Poe stuff) are bloody amazing.

I know that 1984 is very well-received, especially among those on this forum. But really... I never read through the whole thing. And not through lack of trying, mind you. And Poe never struck me as anything too brilliant, and certainly not too enjoyable (for me). Which I find odd, given I do enjoy Lovecraft, who was influenced by Poe.

And the Shakespeare? Somehow, high school English classes inspire intense hatred for Shakespeare, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.

Plus To Kill A Mockingbird and Things Fall Apart. How do people dislike To Kill A Mockingbird? I can understand disliking Things Fall Apart, but To Kill A Mockingbird?

 

[Sacman]

The amount of times Blade Runner is on this list is disappointing... I don;t want to live on these forums anymore...

I mean seriously it's no 2001,as far as artistic achievement goes... but it's still certainly a good movie... even if were not bringing in artsy fartsy stuff... at least with people not liking 2001, most of the time, you can blame it on the dwindling attention span of the mass public... and the fact that it more of than not goes over most people's heads... but still I know people that can't get passed the first scene with the monkeys and that just makes me want to silently cry myself to sleep... <.<

OT: Citizen Kane... because fuck... it might still be an interesting movie in the filmmaking sense, but it's in that weird position for me where it does everything right... but it doesn't do anything super special awesome... except the cinematography...

Every single 3D Final Fantasy game... they're not classics... even in the 2D realm, Final Fantasy games have always been ridiculously poorly design especially for an RPG, stupidly linear and there hasn't been a single FF game where the plot wasn't a convoluted mess and the cast wasn't filled with a bunch of pricks...<.<

Micheal Jackson... just in general... sure his music is catchy and all... but it's still just pop... not a whole lot of anything once you scratch away the surface...

and that's about it I think...

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Shakespeare is pretty bad, for all the attention he gets, imo.

 

[Furioso]

The absolute worst offender on that list is The House on Mango Street. This more than any other book would I recommend you never pick up. It's told in a series of only-vaguely-related vignettes, meaning that there's no real plot going on. This makes it nigh-impossible to care about any of the characters, which really puts a damper on the almost-end of the book, where--SPOILERS--the protagonist and narrator is raped. Not that you would necessarily know, as the description of the event is vague at best. I think the worst part is that I honestly can't see where this novella fits into the educational sphere. I sure as hell didn't learn anything from it. Except that I hate it.

Agreed, hell, even our teacher hated the book, and made sure to let us know. Shame it was required reading. I think I lost brain cells while reading it... I think one of the chapters was a paragraph long about how some red shoes were pretty...

 

[Thistlehart]

Warning! Incoming rant!

Death of a Salesman left me suicidally depressed (not an exaggeration) for about two weeks after having to read the script and watch the damn movie/play in HS. Then I to sit through the damn thing all over again in college. Seriously, fuck that story.

If I want to read about human misery brought on by stupidity, I need only look over a newspaper. It's not clever or insightful to say people can ruin their lives and the lives of others because of delusions of grandeur. I had to try hard not to cheer when that dope offed himself at the end. I don't care if it was supposed to be a tragedy.

On that note, The Great Gatsby shared much of the same issues. Gatsby and Daisy really deserved each other. They would have made a rather appropriate couple of moping dimwits. I was hoping Daisy'd bite it during her drunk-driving rampage. While I wasn't as affected by this ugly story as by Salesman, I didn't dislike it any less.

I'll admit, though, I'm an English major that hates "literature." It's generally overrated, miserable, tripe. Very rarely is there a good story in any of them where one can glean something other than "Humanity is a vile creature, life sucks, you will be sad the whole of your life, and there is nothing you can do about it." Granted, there are stories that rise above that, but they are few and far between.

Among the good ones, though, is a story that has been mentioned earlier in this thread. Yes, it was dry. I'll happily admit the author wasn't much of a storyteller, but some of the themes were, to say the least, inspiring. That's something I cannot and will not say for most of "literature." The Lord of the Rings, while dry and dreary, had underlying themes of perseverance, hope, and triumph over impossible odds. I can't think of any other piece of "literature" (at the moment) that can claim that.

Gatsby and the Salesman can be read by the "edgy" literature types who worship their own misery. I'll take my "genre" fiction that can at least inspire hope, and I won't be weeping in the corner when life gets hard.

I'll grit my teeth, sling my stricken friend over my shoulder, and climb that fucking mountain of fire.

/rant

 

[dangoball]

snip

Man, don't ever try Silmarilion or The Count of Monte Cristo. LOTR is lighweight to those
I would recommend The Dune by Frank Herbert, though. My personal favorite sci-fi.

OT:
Trial by Franz Kafka. Seriously. I respect that guy as a writer, but Trial is just so damn AFASLKDJF&#366;ALS! One paragraph over 20 pages? Yeah, no. Stopped halfway and never going back to it.
And Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Protagonist is an arrogant ass most of the story and it's just so not fun to read.
Just for the record: I read Monte Cristo, Egyptian Sinuet and Shogun in my early teens, so attention span while reading never was a problem.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I'll second Playful Pony in saying that the LOTR books sucked reading through. Tolkien was not all that great a writer. Like...sure. Describe stuff, but get to the bloddy point one of these days.

I agree, Tolkien is like a weird ordeal where actually reading it is not fun at all but afterwards it's fun to remember the story itself. But the writing is a huge fucking slog.

Funny thing about Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. He was writing a novel that was also a Middle-Earth a history book, almanac, and encyclopedia rolled into one.

Hence the large, detailed digressions into myths, legends, histories, and folklore.

I absolutely love Tolkien's work and I actually enjoyed reading The Lord of the Rings, but I COMPLETELY understand why people say it's not fun to read. The writing doesn't flow the way that most people (myself included) believe that novel writing should, because, again, it's not just a novel.

 

[Dense_Electric]

The original Half-Life. The gameplay-story blending was genius, everything else about it ranged from "okay" to "shit." The story was okay, the gameplay wobbled between meh and shit, the jumping puzzles were shit, the difficulty curve practically didn't exist, and even compared to shooters that came just a year or two later, it doesn't hold up.

 

[conmag9]

Lord of the Rings. Bored me to tears, which is quite hard seeing how much I like fantasy so much. Great amounts of detail, always in the wrong place. I don't mind lots of reading! I'm a huge fan of Wheel of Time, a series whose books are large enough to serve as clubs. I just find it incredibly hard to sit through (the Hobbit turned out better).

Oh, and Great Expectations. I despise that thing. The only good parts were those involving the convict (shows how much I care, given I can't remember his name) and the boy sweeping the shop in that one scene (I'm biased, as I played that part in my school's performance and got the audience laughing like nuts at it). Having to read that made my eyes rebel and steadfastly refuse to work on the letters. Ugg.

Quite a few people in my high school literature class had similar reactions to Canterbury Tales, but I rather enjoyed those...

 

[Red Oni]

This isn't a very specific answer but I won't enjoy anything if it is required reading. I prefer to discover classics by myself, not being assigned to read 20 pages a night and to a report on them.

 

[Dango]

Anything by Tennessee Williams. Seriously. Just fuck that shit. Also, if you like his plays, you are a bad person.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I've enjoyed most of the books put in front of me in Lit classes. Private Peaceful was just straight up good. Depressing, but good. Shakespeare is funny. Even Pride and Prejudice grew on me eventually.
But the 50's stuff we did last year was dire. Fucking Death of a Salesman is one of the most retarded things I've ever read. It tries to be all existential and insightful and deep, but every single character is such a boring, stupid dipshit that I can't care about any of them. The whole thing comes down to 'senile dude has delusions of grandeur. Ruins life.' And then you get to the 'kitchen sink dramas' which vary from merely 'ok' to utterly drab and pointless.
The only thing I took away from that whole year was that people in the 50s' had fucked up senses of morality and lived entirely dull, joyless existences. Fuck you, 50s'. The 60s' were much more interesting.

'Cat on a hot tin roof' was shit too. The blurb described it as 'sultry', but it wouldn't make a nun blush. It boils down to hours of a sexually confused or possibly just homosexual bloke and his frustrated wife bitching at each other. Fuuuu-

Anything by Tennessee Williams. Seriously. Just fuck that shit. Also, if you like his plays, you are a bad person.

This ^

As for poetry, I loved Wilfred Owen to bits, but most other poets can fuck themselves with a rusty spoon. John Donne in particular is an arrogant, hypocritical, smug arse. Grrr.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Romeo and Juliet is a terrible play, one of Shakespeare's worst if you ask me. It's not well paced, plotted, or characterized save for a few of the minor characters.

I feel that it improves when you consider that it was never intended as a love story at all. You're supposed to be sitting there laughing at these idiot teenagers who know each other for like 2 days and then want to run off together. We all know the couple who keep putting facebook statuses like 'omg I love X so much' after knowing each other a week, and then milk the break up for sympathy like there's no tomorrow.
Romeo and Juliet are that annoying teenage couple, and also the most melodramatic and absurdly angsty teenagers of their time.

 

[King of Asgaard]

The Day of the Triffids.
My word, was that a slog.
The only highlights were the three of suicides, but other than that, there is nothing interesting about the book.