The Red Tent - TV Series
Hello again! This blog post is an especially exciting post because I am going to compare the TV mini-series of The Red Tent to the novel. Clara (one of my classmates who is reading The Red Tent with me) and I got together and watched part of one of the episodes of The Red Tent TV series.
We tried to do the math (I know this is English, but we had to do it) to make sure that we watched the right part of the right episode. There are two episodes both an hour and a half long, so we figured since we just read the third out of four sections, the first half of the second episode would put us in the right spot. Unfortunately, it was not exactly the right part, and the first 20 pages of what we read were in the episode before. Given that I had to pay for the episode we were watching, I did not want to also have to pay for the first episode, so we just decided to skip it and compare the rest of the section we read to the part of the episode we were watching.
While I did enjoy the part of the episode we watched, there were a lot of discrepancies between the book and the show. (There were also many similarities, but I want to first focus on the differences because those are the most aggravating.)
First, I'll do a quick recap of the section I read for this blog post. It was a pretty wild ride. Dinah meets Shalem - a prince - and falls in love with him. Jacob and his sons are jealous of Shalem's family and are very reluctant to let them get married. After they agree, Jacob's sons venture into the city where Shalem and his family rule and kill Shalem and all the men in the city. This obviously devastates Dinah, who is deeply in love with Shalem. She curses Jacob and leaves home. Shalem's mother, Re-nefer, takes her away to Egypt, where Dinah finds out that she is pregnant. Re-nefer takes her child from her and essentially calls him her son. She sends him away to become a scribe. Over the years Dinah becomes a famous midwife with her new friend Meryt, and she meets a man right at the end named Benia. It seems like they will fall in love and get married (and that is backed up on the family tree in the book).
There are many differences between the show and the book, so I decided to focus on three.
One of the things that I noticed first about the show that was different was the inclusion of Joseph for many scenes that did not include him in the book. After Dinah learns that her brothers are the ones who killed Shalem, Dinah has a conversation with Joseph before she leaves home. This interaction is not part of the book. In addition to that, towards the end of the section that we watched, Dinah finds out that Joseph is traded into slavery, and she worries about him. Joseph is traded into slavery by his brothers in the book, but Dinah does not find out about it. Then, again, Joseph comes back into the show when he is called upon some Egyptian nobility to interpret his dreams. This never happens in the book, and if it followed the book, Joseph wouldn't even be able to speak because his brothers cut out his tongue when he was sold into slavery. I think that it is interesting that they decided to give Joseph a larger part in the show than he has in the book. Personally, I like that he has a larger role in the show because he is my favorite of all Dinah's brothers. In the book, the reader can get a sense that they have a good relationship although there isn't a ton of description of their interactions, but the show solidifies that they have a close relationship. They have such a close relationship that after Dinah home, Joseph thinks that she's dead because she never gets in touch with him. They obviously have a very strong relationship in the show.
While the show strengthens Joseph and Dinah's relationship, it weakens Dinah's relationship with her son Re-mose. In the book, after Dinah gives birth to Re-mose, she is able to stay with him: "Re-mose stayed with me day and night so I could nurse him whenever he cried" (Diamant 228). In the show, Re-mose is taken away from her almost immediately, so Dinah decides to take action. She breaks into his nursery and kidnaps (if it can even be thought of as kidnapping, he is her son) Re-mose and tries to run away. She is unsuccessful because she leaves a trail of blood behind and the guards are able to find her. Because she attempted to escape, Re-nefer beats her and downgrades her to a slave. She is to sleep in the underground quarters and only see her son when it is necessary. This is a big change from the actual book because Dinah is able to stay with Re-mose in the garden as he grows up: "we were sent into the garden, where his mess did not soil the floors and where his prattle would not disturb the work of the scribes" (Diamant 230). In the novel, Dinah's days are "consumed by the endless tasks of loving a child" (Diamant 231). In the show, Dinah does not get the chance to dote on and spend her days loving her son, instead, she has to work all day for Re-nefer. In the novel, Dinah and her son eventually grow apart as he gets older and is sent away, but the show speeds this process up. This is an interesting choice, but I can understand why the show makes that choice. It definitely adds to the drama and skips over extra fluff that is just about Dinah and her son. Even the novel skims over most of their relationship because the time passes very quickly, jumping from days to months to years. The choice makes sense, but I missed being able to see the connection that Re-mose and Dinah originally have as mother and son.
The last difference I'd like to discuss is the difference in Werenro's role in the show. In the novel, Werenro is one of the Grandmother's messengers who invites Dinah and her family to visit the Grandmother. She becomes close with Dinah, but then when she isn't at the Grandmother's tent when they visit, someone tells Dinah that she has been murdered. In the section that I just read, Werenro makes an appearance as a veiled singer at a feast for Re-mose. Dinah recognizes her and finds that, although she is alive, she is disfigured and depressed. Werenro explains that she has been attacked by men on one of her journeys: "the first one pushed me to the ground right in the middle of the road. [...] [The third man] emptied himself into me, who had never laid with a man. [...] [The second man] broke my nose and knocked several teeth from my mouth, and only when I was bleeding was he aroused enough to do what he wished" (Diamant 253). Werenro feels as though she is dead because she is not unhappy nor content. I feel as though this section very important to Werenro's character, and the show just completely skips over it. In the episode, she is a singer, but she has not endured the atrocities she has in the book. She is not at all disfigured, and she only has a very short conversation with Dinah. I personally feel that it would have been good in the show to include Werenro's backstory because she is such a strong woman, and the show is all about strong women. In the novel, after Dinah hears of the terrible things that have happened to Werenro, she is able to confide in her about what has happened to herself over her time in Egypt. Werenro brings her comfort that she does not have in the show. I wish the show had included the interaction between them because it really showcases Dinah and Werenro's strength.
Thank you so much for reading my blog yet again! It is another long one, so I appreciate that you were able to make it all the way through. In case you're tired of reading, I've included the trailer to The Red Tent mini-series if you would like to watch it and see what it's all about. It's a little bit scandalous, but I thought it was a good representation of the show.
We tried to do the math (I know this is English, but we had to do it) to make sure that we watched the right part of the right episode. There are two episodes both an hour and a half long, so we figured since we just read the third out of four sections, the first half of the second episode would put us in the right spot. Unfortunately, it was not exactly the right part, and the first 20 pages of what we read were in the episode before. Given that I had to pay for the episode we were watching, I did not want to also have to pay for the first episode, so we just decided to skip it and compare the rest of the section we read to the part of the episode we were watching.
While I did enjoy the part of the episode we watched, there were a lot of discrepancies between the book and the show. (There were also many similarities, but I want to first focus on the differences because those are the most aggravating.)
The poster for the mini-series (from IMDb)
First, I'll do a quick recap of the section I read for this blog post. It was a pretty wild ride. Dinah meets Shalem - a prince - and falls in love with him. Jacob and his sons are jealous of Shalem's family and are very reluctant to let them get married. After they agree, Jacob's sons venture into the city where Shalem and his family rule and kill Shalem and all the men in the city. This obviously devastates Dinah, who is deeply in love with Shalem. She curses Jacob and leaves home. Shalem's mother, Re-nefer, takes her away to Egypt, where Dinah finds out that she is pregnant. Re-nefer takes her child from her and essentially calls him her son. She sends him away to become a scribe. Over the years Dinah becomes a famous midwife with her new friend Meryt, and she meets a man right at the end named Benia. It seems like they will fall in love and get married (and that is backed up on the family tree in the book).
There are many differences between the show and the book, so I decided to focus on three.
One of the things that I noticed first about the show that was different was the inclusion of Joseph for many scenes that did not include him in the book. After Dinah learns that her brothers are the ones who killed Shalem, Dinah has a conversation with Joseph before she leaves home. This interaction is not part of the book. In addition to that, towards the end of the section that we watched, Dinah finds out that Joseph is traded into slavery, and she worries about him. Joseph is traded into slavery by his brothers in the book, but Dinah does not find out about it. Then, again, Joseph comes back into the show when he is called upon some Egyptian nobility to interpret his dreams. This never happens in the book, and if it followed the book, Joseph wouldn't even be able to speak because his brothers cut out his tongue when he was sold into slavery. I think that it is interesting that they decided to give Joseph a larger part in the show than he has in the book. Personally, I like that he has a larger role in the show because he is my favorite of all Dinah's brothers. In the book, the reader can get a sense that they have a good relationship although there isn't a ton of description of their interactions, but the show solidifies that they have a close relationship. They have such a close relationship that after Dinah home, Joseph thinks that she's dead because she never gets in touch with him. They obviously have a very strong relationship in the show.
While the show strengthens Joseph and Dinah's relationship, it weakens Dinah's relationship with her son Re-mose. In the book, after Dinah gives birth to Re-mose, she is able to stay with him: "Re-mose stayed with me day and night so I could nurse him whenever he cried" (Diamant 228). In the show, Re-mose is taken away from her almost immediately, so Dinah decides to take action. She breaks into his nursery and kidnaps (if it can even be thought of as kidnapping, he is her son) Re-mose and tries to run away. She is unsuccessful because she leaves a trail of blood behind and the guards are able to find her. Because she attempted to escape, Re-nefer beats her and downgrades her to a slave. She is to sleep in the underground quarters and only see her son when it is necessary. This is a big change from the actual book because Dinah is able to stay with Re-mose in the garden as he grows up: "we were sent into the garden, where his mess did not soil the floors and where his prattle would not disturb the work of the scribes" (Diamant 230). In the novel, Dinah's days are "consumed by the endless tasks of loving a child" (Diamant 231). In the show, Dinah does not get the chance to dote on and spend her days loving her son, instead, she has to work all day for Re-nefer. In the novel, Dinah and her son eventually grow apart as he gets older and is sent away, but the show speeds this process up. This is an interesting choice, but I can understand why the show makes that choice. It definitely adds to the drama and skips over extra fluff that is just about Dinah and her son. Even the novel skims over most of their relationship because the time passes very quickly, jumping from days to months to years. The choice makes sense, but I missed being able to see the connection that Re-mose and Dinah originally have as mother and son.
The last difference I'd like to discuss is the difference in Werenro's role in the show. In the novel, Werenro is one of the Grandmother's messengers who invites Dinah and her family to visit the Grandmother. She becomes close with Dinah, but then when she isn't at the Grandmother's tent when they visit, someone tells Dinah that she has been murdered. In the section that I just read, Werenro makes an appearance as a veiled singer at a feast for Re-mose. Dinah recognizes her and finds that, although she is alive, she is disfigured and depressed. Werenro explains that she has been attacked by men on one of her journeys: "the first one pushed me to the ground right in the middle of the road. [...] [The third man] emptied himself into me, who had never laid with a man. [...] [The second man] broke my nose and knocked several teeth from my mouth, and only when I was bleeding was he aroused enough to do what he wished" (Diamant 253). Werenro feels as though she is dead because she is not unhappy nor content. I feel as though this section very important to Werenro's character, and the show just completely skips over it. In the episode, she is a singer, but she has not endured the atrocities she has in the book. She is not at all disfigured, and she only has a very short conversation with Dinah. I personally feel that it would have been good in the show to include Werenro's backstory because she is such a strong woman, and the show is all about strong women. In the novel, after Dinah hears of the terrible things that have happened to Werenro, she is able to confide in her about what has happened to herself over her time in Egypt. Werenro brings her comfort that she does not have in the show. I wish the show had included the interaction between them because it really showcases Dinah and Werenro's strength.
Thank you so much for reading my blog yet again! It is another long one, so I appreciate that you were able to make it all the way through. In case you're tired of reading, I've included the trailer to The Red Tent mini-series if you would like to watch it and see what it's all about. It's a little bit scandalous, but I thought it was a good representation of the show.
Hi Lily,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I'm glad we got to watch the show together! Looking back, it's really neat to see how we wrote down many of the same notes while watching but chose to focus our attention on entirely different subjects.
I also liked seeing Joseph in a more central role and thought it added depth to his relationship with Dinah. The part at the very end, with him being called in to interpret dreams was really interesting to me. I believe dreams could easily be a motif for The Red Tent, but its most notable appearances have been in connection with the female characters. For example, at the beginning when Leah dreams of a pomegranate with eight seeds and then has eight children. There are some times when dreams have been associated with men, but typically, they appear as nightmares. I am reminded of the time when Jacob was so fearful of his brother Esau, that he dreamed of a war between them. The directors of the show probably spent less time focusing on motifs than Diamant did in writing the novel, but what do you think this could mean for Joseph?
Hi Clara -
DeleteThat's a very good question. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what it means for Joseph. I did some research, and according to BibleGateway.com (which is essentially the Bible online), Joseph being called on to interpret dreams happens in Genesis. After Joseph correctly interprets the Pharaoh's dreams, he is put in charge of Egypt. So in terms of what it means for Joseph, to me it seems less like they were concerned about the meaning of dreams connected to Joseph and more like they wanted him to have a bigger role, so they included something that had happened in the Bible so that it went along with the story.
Good discussions of the differences between the show and the book, Lily, as well as discussions of the impacts of those changes. Your post also looks really good. Do you think you'll want to watch the whole mini-series when you finish the book?
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! I definitely think that I will finish the episode that I already purchased and watched part of. I might watch the first episode, but I would have to pay for it, so I'm a little iffy on whether or not I'll watch it.
DeleteI really like that you did a post comparing the series to the book (or at least a section of it)! That is a very good and interesting idea, seeing as frequently TV and movie versions of books are much worse than the book itself. It is nice that you stuck with three separate but significant differences between them and went in depth, Great post Lily!
ReplyDelete