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  • Essay / The Beatles adaptations in the films Yellow Submarine and Across The Universe

    The psychology of adaptations Music is a powerful tool for the expression of ideologies, especially when it comes from respected and popular artists. In the 1960s, the Beatles were the best known, with more than 500 million records sold worldwide. Alongside the rise of the Beatles, the 1960s led to the escalation of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was arguably the most controversial in America, and many different artists expressed their opposition, including the Beatles. Through their music, the Beatles transmitted an ideology of peace, solidarity and love and opposed war. However, music is not the most effective means of protest. Although music can bring people together, it alone does not educate as completely as a combination of visual and aural mediums. When music is adapted to also combine a visual aspect, the message and facts are processed and remembered more effectively. Learning is easier when ideas are presented in a multimedia format. Additionally, adding visuals benefits memory due to the image superiority effect, which means that due to the strong symbolism associated with images, humans are more likely to remember images than simple ones. words. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Fortunately for the Beatles, they not only advanced their message of peace through music, but also through visuals. Two examples of visual adaptations that have successfully used The Beatles' music to advance their message are Yellow Submarine, made during the era of The Beatles' popularity, and Across The Universe, a more modern creation. Examining these two examples is vital because of the Beatles' far-reaching messages. They were the most famous and influential, but what made them that way? Why did their art and the messages of their art make so much noise? This is not only due to the Beatles themselves, but also the way their music was used. By using certain cognitive structures, adaptations of their music successfully advanced the ideas that the Beatles were trying to promote. These films used powerful visual techniques that made ideas memorable and easy to remember. Additionally, the ideology, peaceful protest, and reasons why the Vietnam War was wrong were not always easy to understand, and the use of multimedia made education easier. The idea of ​​the "visual learner" and the "auditory learner" is one that has exploded over the past 10 years, but research is now beginning to counter this by focusing on universal techniques that make learning easier. learning regardless of the assumed learning style (Pashler et al., 106). A study conducted at the University of Haifa explored how a multiple representation model (a sheet explaining concepts using visuals and words) could teach students better than a single representation model (a sheet using only words). The study found that the effect of MR models helped students significantly. The article states: "The diverse and distinct RMs appeared to provide students with the ability to easily notice and identify certain pieces of information throughout the display, thereby facilitating these students' use and manipulation of larger quantities and more varied types of information, compared to students in the SR group who noticed less information based onthe unitary text-only display to which they were exposed” (Eilam & Poyas, 376). The conclusion of this study was that multiple representations using visuals and words helped students see and select more information, allowing them to use it more effectively. Additionally, the study found that students exposed to MR models performed better on tests of the material. One might question the reliability of the study due to the earlier theme of "learning styles" and suggest that students who were assigned to conditions that had visual representations were more likely to perform better. to the test, and vice versa. However, the groups were selected by random sampling and the p-value (the probability that the results of the experiment were due to chance) was less than 0.05%, the reliability bar. This shows that the results of the study could be replicated regardless of the student's supposed "learning style." The results of this study support the theory that to facilitate the teaching of concepts, a combination of several mediums is most effective. Yellow Submarine is a film created as an adaptation of the Beatles music album of the same name. His first impression is that of simplicity; the animation is extremely flat with thick outlines and bright colors. The idea of ​​simplicity comes with childish qualities, but The Yellow Submarine is the complete opposite. It is a critical counterculture narrative, produced around the time of the Vietnam War with a clear intention of protest. This narrative is shown throughout the storyline, following the tale of a fight between the oppressive "bad blues" and the people of Pepperland, preaching the idea of ​​peaceful protest through the use of music as their only weapon to succeed. However, there is more beneath the surface, as certain characters are also used to show other themes. The character "Jeremy Hillary Boob Ph.D." only speaks in superfluous rhymes and mentions that if he spoke normally, the others would all realize that he doesn't actually know what he's talking about (Yellow Submarine, 1968). Jeremy's character is a critical portrayal of society's upper class who uses superficial cues and elitist language to place themselves above others, without really having any substance or depth. Another representative character is the Vacuum Beast, which sucks up everything in a quest for destruction, ultimately sucking up the entire world and itself. This monster shows the rejection of the emphasis on consumerism, destruction, war and profit. Unlike the Yellow Submarine storyline, these other themes are not obvious at first glance and require the ability to analyze and notice subtle ideas. As noted earlier, multiple representation models use the combination of two media, usually both words and visuals. Yellow Submarine is an MR model, with the visuals of the film and the incorporation of music being the two mediums used. MR models have advantages, the most important of which is the viewer's ability to notice more information and select more subtle themes. This is very important to Yellow Submarine because it uses subtle themes criticizing certain aspects of society. Although the overall theme of anti-war and peace is important, the ideas behind it are just as important and much more subtle. Using an MR model for the film made it easier for the viewer to notice these themes and understand the narrative at work without the many different themes so blatantly obvious that it becameconfusing for the viewer to follow everything. The adaptation was therefore an important creation due to its increased effectiveness compared to the musical album. Besides the importance of using multiple mediums, visuals are extremely important in their own right. The picture superiority effect states that pictures are more likely to be remembered than words, and this is because pictures are more easily encoded and more easily retrieved from memory due to their symbolic nature . In addition, by assigning a symbol or image to a word, it becomes more memorable. Many studies have been done, dating back to the theory's creator, Allan Paivio. A study, conducted in Sweden, explored how memory interacted with images versus words, to confirm the theory. The authors state: “The second main finding of these experiments was the superior accessibility to memory of the items studied in the form of images. With precision measurements, the “image superiority effect is a well-known and widely studied phenomenon” (Stenberg et al., 436). Although the authors acknowledge that the picture superiority effect clearly affects memory accuracy in other studies, new study results show that pictures also contribute to the accessibility of memories. This means that one is more able to remember something shown through an image, and the reaction time to memory is also faster. The film Across the Universe is an anti-war critique much like Yellow Submarine, and is also an adaptation of the music of the Beatles. However, it takes a different approach to the latter and, instead of using more subtle, underlying themes, it takes the blatant events, especially historical events, and brings them to the forefront. For this reason, Across the Universe does not require as much critical thinking, but rather requires excessive memory to process and understand all of the information provided that advances the anti-war and counterculture message. For example, certain events such as the 1967 Detroit riots and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. highlight the race relations issues criticized in the film. Additionally, the drafts of the Vietnam War serve as a negative climax, becoming extremely clear in the scene where a character is drafted and treated more like packaged meat than a human. Sexuality is also addressed when Prudence, a character whose sexuality is unclear but who is interested in other women, sings a song in which she pines for a fellow cheerleader, then sinks into an episode of depression later when her crush chooses a man instead of her (Across the Universe, 2007). These themes of race relations, sexuality, the anti-war movement, and more, class relations, drug use and abuse, are loud and clear throughout the film. The choice to attempt to convey so many different ideas then requires the viewer to retain excessive amounts of information via memory. Using a visual adaptation of music is successful due to the increased capacity of memory for visual stimulation. As explained in the previous study regarding the image superiority effect, visuals are more useful for memorizing information. Due to Across the Universe's use of so many strong themes, extreme memory capacity is required. Music itself does not have the same memory capacity, and by only trying to convey a limited number of messages through music, the viewer would be unable to follow everything and would become confused. Thus, by adapting the music.