Comparing A Text and A Play. Literature & Language Essay (Essay Sample)

Comparative Essay
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A comparison of Jean Cocteau’s Play “The Human Voice” and Ted Kotcheff’s TV film “The Human Voice.”
Although artists are creative owing to the ways they depict various aspects in the society, the artistic media chosen for their work can affect the perception of the audience. Jean Cocteau’s works have been subject to literary analysis, and many scholars agree that he a multi-talented individual who was not afraid to express his deepest feelings and perceptions. Cocteau was a poet, a playwright, a scriptwriter, and a painter. Finding such talents in one individual is extremely rare. Furthermore, his works were also controversial in the way they boldly depicted aspects in the society that other artists opted to avoid. One of his most influential works is the play “The Human Voice” written in 1928 and performed in 1930. The play takes the audience through the agonies of a woman afraid of losing her lover, and so she engages in a telephone monologue where she seems to be imploring her lover not to leave her for another woman. The play was adapted into a TV film in 1966 and directed by Ted Kotcheff. The themes in the works of both Cocteau and Kotcheff are the same because they depict the same work; however, the artistic approaches represented by the two artists are different because they use various media forms.