Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Welcome post
This is our space for posting (1) any further thoughts left over from lecture/section conversations, and (2) what we notice about adaptations and "cultural borrowings." Until I can get everyone set up as an "author" for this blog, you'll have to leave comments to specific posts...or just put them under "welcome."
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One of my favorite recent adaptations is the true story literary adaptation, and then to film adaptation: Into The Wild, the story of Christopher McCandless. It definitely relates to the theory of transcendentalism that we have discussed, he often cites Thoreau throughout his journey.
ReplyDelete-Sam Blickle Tuesday section
Since we just talked about Uncle Tom's Cabin, I thought I'd bring up "The Small House of Uncle Thomas" from Rodger and Hammerstein's "The King and I"
ReplyDeletePart 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ekNKr8otk&feature=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvbE-Ztwz5I&feature=related
It's about 14 minutes long in total, but I highly recommend it.
After my class read Heart of Darkness, my high school English teacher screened Apocalypse Now, a film adaptation of Conrad's novella placed into the context of the Vietnam war. It was interesting to see how Coppola's film adapted the novella's thematic preoccupation with colonialism to coincide with the Vietnam War. Apocalypse Now brings the political issues of its time of release into conversation with the issues from Conrad's original text in a similar manner to how issues of feminism are engaged in the Armstrong adaptation of Little Women.
ReplyDeleteApocalypse Now Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vucani2GNg
-Evan Andra, Tuesday 4:00PM Section
I really enjoyed the 1962 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck, directed by Robert Mulligan . I think it added a lot of emotion and meaning to the already great text. Atticus' defense of Tom Robinson reminds me of Mr. March and his strong defense of the slaves he strives to help throughout the text.
ReplyDeleteTo Kill a Mockingbird Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi88P7KfaMA&feature=related
-Leslie Chavez, Tuesday 4:00pm section
One interesting thing about the 1962 TKAM film is that it was made very shortly after the book itself came out--and was so popular that many people (like you) link the novel & film very closely in their heads. It did that so well that you can't imagine anyone remaking that film (who would dare? now I have to double-check to see if there has been a remake, but I don't think so.)
ReplyDeleteWhereas 'Apocalypse Now,' as Evan said, took a novel written three-quarters of a century earlier and changed the setting, thus layering a whole new political interpretation onto it for any reader who recognized the basic outline of Conrad's story in it ("oh, no, are we imperialists too?").
@Sam: 'Into the Wild' is a really rich example,too, with his project of living in the wild as a kind of homage to _Walden_. As with TKAM,it started as a wildly popular book and was made into a moderately popular (and award-winning) film...with one important difference being that McCandless was a real person, and that made some people upset about the ethics of telling his story--there was the question about who could 'authorize' first Krakauer and then Penn to tell it.
ReplyDeleteI was in Karen Yamashita's Asian American Fiction class in the fall and we read Monique Truong's "The Book of Salt", which told the narrative of the Phillipino cook that worked for Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein while they were in France. I think that novels such as this and "March" have the privilege of looking into the past and creating a narrative for an otherwise silent character. I also think that adaptations such as these speak more about the present social and political structures, while remaining in dialogue with the past.
ReplyDelete...and now for something completely different.
ReplyDeleteI thought I would talk about the comic/graphic novel movie adaptations that have been cropping up recently. It seems to me many of these movies miss the point entirely. In order to please test audiences, many of these adaptations forsake the end of the original work they were based upon in favor of increasing the chance of profit. I keep hearing the argument that "studios need to make money so they make some changes," but where does artistic license end and unabashed greed begin? If anybody has seen I am Legend or the recently released Kickass without reading the graphic novels, they are mostly likely unaware of the "narrative liberties" taken within these films. The final plot developments of the novels were practically thrown out in favor of making sure that the audience did not feel alienated by the film. However, I find this rather insulting to the works that these movies were based upon. If the studios can not find a way to transcribe the plot into an adaptation without drastically altering the narrative, I would rather they did not touch the work at all. It is as ridiculous as somebody making a Romeo and Juliet film adaptation where both characters live.
...oh wait.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-qn8EB4mMU&feature=PlayList&p=DDAA23630A24D19D&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=2
~Chris Suba, over and out
I think Schindler's List is one of the most brilliantly done film adaptations. Most people already know the story, but if you don't I highly recommend you see the movie (even before reading the book). It's about a man named Oskar Schinlder in Poland during WWII who manages to save hundreds of Jews from the death camps by employing them in his factory. What makes it most amazing is that it's a true story, and at the end of the film you see many of the real 'Schindler Jews'. Just like Our Nig was legitimized with factual information, so is Schindler's List. Also, since many people see the movie and don't read the book, or see the movie first, as Hutcheon says in his essay on page 4, the book becomes the secondary material even though it was written first. The movie won 7 oscars, here's the trailer:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAH3RTRlCHY
In Wednesday's class (I believe) we discussed the use of Black Face a bit and looked at images similar to those of the Jim Crowe era. That conversation, along with the race dynamics we've seen in our class novels so far trigger me to think of Billie Holiday's song "Strange Fruit".
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs
Interestingly, in researching this song, Wikipedia offered some interesting insight. If we choose to believe it, the site notes that "'Strange Fruit' began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the lynching of two black men." The author often asked people to set the poem to music and it became a kind of protest song in New York. It was later introduced to Holiday and was soon regularly performed.
So, not only is this song an adaption of a poem, but the poem is an adaption of reality. The metaphors intelligently highlight race issues while also sarcastically objectifying it. I wonder what characters in our texts would think about hearing this song...
-kelly koval.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit
I hate to throw out a Jane Austen adaptation because there have been so many of them! However, the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley is one of my favorite movies. I thought the actors did a good job portraying the characters and it generally remained true to the book.
ReplyDeletePride and Prejudice Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARWfCBr0ZDM
An interesting note is that I actually saw the film first, and then read the book. So as I was reading the book, I felt like I was reading the screen play for the movie. I recognized what lines they put in the movie, I noticed what events the movie cut or altered. And most importantly, when Austen was describing a character or location, my mind automatically thought about how the movie portrayed it. As a reader, I was not truly able to make my own images or opinions because I was always thinking about how the film portrayed it. It is a amazing novel, but I think I may have enjoyed it more if I read the book first, and then saw the movie.
After reading the book, I just had to watch the 1995 BBC mini series version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Since it is a mini-series, it came out to be about 5 hours long, but it is one of the best adaptations of the novel. It stayed true to almost everything in the novel and I highly recommend it. You may be able to watch the whole thing on youtube, but I am not positive about that.
Melissa Wright
Heart of Darkness into Apocalypse Now is an interesting example. The Film has superseded the source material in our cultural imagination. Jean Baudrillard, in his book Simulacra and Simulation , performs a cultural analysis of the film, without any reference to the source of the film’s inspiration. Beaudrillard critiques the film as a visual reproduction of war, emphasizing exploitation and voyeurism. The novel’s concern with Colonialism is not a part of his analysis.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/simulacra-and-simulations-v-apocalypse-now/
Another genre of adaptation that generates a life beyond the source material is the animated Disney film. The Little Mermaid exists within the cultural imagination as a film with singing lobsters and a girl who gets her dream man in the end. Hans Christian Anderson’s story bears little resemblance to the film. That mermaid lives to see her dream man marry another woman and can never return to her home in the ocean. So much for happy endings.
--Katrina Benedicto
Taking Detective Fiction fall quarter with Professor Jordan, I delved into the world of Sherlock Holmes for the first time and surprisingly enjoyed it. Sherlock Holmes is a character as much in our collective culture as Uncle Tom, or Cinderella even. So I enjoyed the exposure to the original character, separate from the cultural allusions I had already experienced. Plus, the new movie was coming out, so what better time to read some of the original books!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITU27Sxzi9w
However, I found that the movie was generally misguided, preferring long (somewhat tedious) action sequences over what truly intrigues the reader about Holmes: his investigative skills. The whole point of a Sherlock Holmes novel, or of any detective novel, is the plot: who did what, when, where, how, and why? Instead of focusing on Holmes keen sense of detection and his astounding ability to observe some simple or partially hidden clues and draw conclusions, the movie was mostly action with some (unexplained) plot occasionally thrown in the mix. However, I will say that the played up relationship--the "bromance," as we may call it--between Holmes and Watson was very enjoyable.
In my opinion, I believe the movie failed as an adaptation because it failed to retain the essence of Holmes as a character and failed to retain the compelling plot of an investigation. Thus, this adaptation taught me that if you want original fans to enjoy the adaptation, you cannot completely change all aspects of the main character(s) or story development.
--Jen Eckert
This topic was already touched upon with the mention of "Little Women and Werewolves", but I find "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" to be a particularly ridiculous adaptation. I believe the same people are involved in both books, and they even have a few others including "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". These are essentially the exact same texts, but they occasionally add scenes with the respective mythical creature. These are completely ridiculous texts in that way, but they are still fundamentally true to the plot, and can bring in many new readers. Of course there is always the problem of exposing a reader to a classic in such a way, but I believe works such as these are very helpful in keeping the modern day reader aware of past masterpieces.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibility_and_Sea_Monsters
To respond to Jessica Eshom's blog about adaptations like Monique Truong's "The Book of Salt" speaking "about the present social and political structures, while remaining in dialogue with the past", I agree entirely. I did not have the pleasure of taking Karen Yamashita's class, but I was in the audience the evening Ms. Troung spoke. It was her response to an audience member's question that was especially revealing to me: the individual asked how Ms. Troung did research for the main character of the novel, a gay Vietnamese cook in 1920's Paris. She replied that she had to look no further than her own experiences working as a corporate lawyer in downtown Manhattan; she had never felt so so devalued as a human being or had had a job that felt so precarious, just like her novel's character. It's the same emotional turmoil in a culture that continues to slip further and further away from its own humanity... nearly a century later.
ReplyDeleteHi Melissa,
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that lately the trend has not been the adaptation of books onto the screen, but of comic books. It seems there is always a film adaptation of a comic book, and that they always reap in the most at the box office. Some interesting ones which are definitely worth watching (that I've seen) are Hellboy(1 and 2), Watchmen, and American Splendor. Why is there such a cultural obsession with these comic book adaptations? Have we run out of ideas for new, fresh films?
-Rebecca Iglesias, Thursday 7:30 section
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to do this post in two parts. Firstly I would like to add my example of an adaptation. When I saw the course syllabus I was very excited to see one of my favourite literary oddities - The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain - and I signed up to do the question on it that week. Twain became something of misanthrope in later life and he seems almost irreconcilable with the beloved father of modern American letters who brought us Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. His essay (for the interested) What is Man? seem to detail his thought process at this time and is available online for free (as is all of Twain's writing). This adaptation may be useful as part of the course more generally, it comes from a 1986 feature length claymation film called The Adventures of Mark Twain. The whole film is an adaptation of a lot of Twain's writing but the segment I want to focus in on is The Mysterious Stranger segment. This segment got the filmed banned or heavily edited by most television companies as it was thought it would disturb young viewers. I think its awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZacgNt94vg
ReplyDeleteWe can always make more....
Part 2) I wanted to give my two cents on the whole Pride and Prejudice and Zombies phenomenon and would like to mention the way in which as well as an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice it is an adaptation of the zombie sub-genre of horror which is replete with its own genre conventions based essentially off our collective nostalgia of and for the 60s and 70s movies of George A Romero and Lucio Fulci (amongst many other lesser known directors). The Whatever of the Dead archtype has been adapted to fit the role of:
comedy - http://www.youtube.comwatch?v=yfDUv3ZjH2k
musical - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIXyiJqMLJI (This trailer doesn't really do justice to this incredible movie and I can't find a subtitled version)
Bildungs Roman - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mo6C6up1Qo
and so on. I'm sure you have many of your own examples. I feel the question we should be posing at the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is not why Pride and Prejudice and not why now but why zombies? For the first time since the 60s and 70s the zombie, usually relegated to a kind of nerdy teenage boy fandom that in my twenty first year I am still very much a part of, is now ubiquitous.
Jack Ramm
I thought there is a really interesting adaption that Professor Greene showed us during Lit 101 lecture. This is regarding adaptations in songs, from the band Nickelback.
ReplyDeleteNickelback made two songs called "How You Remind Me" and "Someday" that sound exactly the same. Would this be considered as adaptation or just plain cheating? This also brings the question of what our society allows to be adaptation and what it defines as fraud or copying in general.
I am posting the two songs and a youtube video of their mash-up that a person made.
"How You Remind Me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQh1ccqu8M
Someday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VMFdpdDYYA
Mash-up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvujgcbaCF8
This is a recent adaption, but the movie "Precious" adapted from the book "Push" reveals an interesting topic based on the director, that i recently read in a review in Bitch magazine. The director changed two of the women characters who assist and are role models to Precious in the book that are described as having a darker complexion to a much lighter complexion in the movie. The director himself made a comment of his own relating to lighter complexions as more beautiful in his opinion or worth saving, as he recalls in his childhood of how lighter skinned children were allowed to sit closer to the pulpit in church. Anyways, I thought this was interesting how the idea of beauty changed from writer to director.
ReplyDelete-Kiley M
When it comes to adaptations, I think there’s one text that has the inspired the most number of novels, films, musicals, theatre productions, TV shows, and many other forms: The Bible. I remember watching the Ten Commandments as a kid. I saw the Passion of the Christ a few years back. There is an entire section in Boarder’s called Christian Literature. The New Testament and the Old Testament have both inspire a large amount of films; I found this list on wiki:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_the_Bible
Some of the most popular bible adaptations are Genesis (the creation story), Moses (The Ten Commandments) and King David, King Solomon. Ben-Hur, one of the most amazing films ever, is a biblical tale. There are countless dramatic portrayals of Jesus Christ. Who hasn’t seen a white bearded man in white robes with long rich hair pretending to turn water into wine, healing the sick, and walking on water? I think we all have a Hollywood inspired image of Jesus when we discuss the life of Christ. One of the most popular adaptations, by far, is Revelations/Apocalypse.
-Rogelio Valdez (Roy)
I found Melissa Wright's review of Pride and Prejudice interesting and gave me ideas about the different movie adaptation of Jane Eyre (Bronte). Melissa, I totally agree that the book should be read prior to watching the movie. I read the book first before watching the movie, and when I saw the recent 2005 adaptation, contrast to your experience, I didnt truly enjoy the movie because they cut out some of my favorite scenes in the novel. And because it's a movie, I felt all the events were abrupt and didnt fully catch the essence of the novel.
ReplyDeletei've never been a big fan of movies that are based on novels because they tend to ruin the novels for me. but one night I decided to watch a movie adaptation of Jane Eyre. I found an adaptation to what I believe is the BBC version of it (with Ruth Wilson), and the movie was lengthy, maybe 2 hours. This movie adaptation gave an accurate depiction of the novel and they didnt cut any of my favorite scenes. The scripts stayed true to the novel.
it's also interesting because Jane Eyre has a prequel called Wide Sargasso Sea, and I great;y enjoyed the point of view of the Bertha. It fills in the gap of what happened to Rochester's wife, who she was, etc.
MARIA MEBANA TUESDAY SECTION
I thought an interesting play on a type of adaptation was the film Capote, which details the process of how Capote came to write In Cold Blood. In a similar way that March purposes untold stories as its focus, Capote purposes the untold behind the scenes details of the writer’s obsession with getting the story. In this manner, the lens focuses on the author's struggle and questionable conduct that made the novel possible. Perhaps taking the in-depth, jarring quality that Capote's crime novel was so popular for, and deepening it further by exposing the high-level of participation Capote had in the case, as well as how close emotionally he did indeed get to a murderer. The emphasis on the once marginal aspects of the first narrative (In Cold Blood, and Little Women) works to de-center the reader/viewers understanding of that which came first and broaden the possibilities for understanding narratives in a new way.
ReplyDelete-Katherine Thompson
I'm a huge fan of older films, mainly of the noir era and the 40s/50s black and white films. Some of my favorites are the very sentimental films directed by Frank Capra, such as "It's a Wonderful Life", which was released in 1947 and "loosely based" or adapted from a short story entitled "The Greatest Gift" by Philip Van Doren Stern.
ReplyDeleteThe movie is centered around a young man named George Bailey who is in dire straits in the beginning of the film and the narrator, basically the voice of God, is telling a guardian angel his story and expressing that George is in need of guidance.
Certain scenes definitely stand out in my mind which draw largely on sentimental value. For instance, the scenes in which Clarence, George's guardian angel, shows him what his town would have been like if he was never born, are extremely poignant. When George encounters his old boss, who in the beginning hits him because he is so distraught after his own sons death and then realizes the error of his ways, is shown as a worn out old drunk who is being thrown out of a bar. It is rather hard to watch and a real tearjerker, as the boss' revelation in the beginning is so emotional.
Another scene like this one is obviously the scene when George is seriously thinking of throwing himself off of a bridge into a freezing river below. James Stewart, who plays George, does such an amazing job in drawing very intense emotion and sympathy from the viewer in this very controversial debate he is having with himself over committing suicide. However, he doesn't do it as his guardian angel prevents him by throwing himself in instead and prompting George to rescue him.
The film is noted to be the number one inspirational American film of all time. I feel that this is largely due to its significant use of sentimental situations brought about by George's very humble and generous character, which doesn't benefit him largely except in the simple happiness and delight he derives from life's basic pleasures. It is just generally an amazing adaptation from such a short piece of work.
Juliana Linder
Tuesday
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAn adaptation that I found to be particularly interesting was one I watched in a Shakespeare literature class with Professor Margo Hendricks last year. Near the end of the class we were introduced to a 2001 film adaptation of Macbeth called “Scottland Pa.” Instead of an Elizabethan castle in Scottland, the film took place in modern day Pennsylvania at a burger joint. Two employees of the burger place usurped the owner and took over the business. The film was the definition of a dark comedy. For example, they murdered the owner by dipping his head into a deep fryer. As there are many Shakespeare adaptations, I find it interesting that this particular one stuck with me so well. I think the way the film was able to capture the original feelings and themes of the play, and in particular to capture the affects of madness upon the main characters post-murder, was what struck me. Despite the vast differences in setting and several other elements, the film was able to remain true to the core of the original work. “Scottland Pa.” is exemplary of adaptation in general for me. I find that while adaptation can do quite well to modernize the themes of a text and make them real to an audience of today (this is particularly beneficial in the case of Shakespeare), adaptation can simultaneously cause the loss of other important aspects of the original text, such as the language and historical implications that were present. Adaptation can be a stimulating and thought-provoking spin off of an original text, and I in no way mean to demean the importance of adaptation. The very existence of adaptation illustrates the organic process that is true to any art form—art grows from art and therefore ideas expand upon ideas. It is a continual growth process that is vital, if not the sole purpose of, literature, film, and any other art form. I very much think it is vital to read and acknowledge the original text previous to viewing or reading an adaptation. However, I think it is equally important for adaptation to exist and propel the expansion of thought and idea inspired by earlier thoughts and ideas.
ReplyDeleteApril M. Short
Tuesday
One of my favorite adaptations has to be "Gone with the Wind". Due to the length of the original novel (1000+ pages), the film varies from the novel at times, but it still rings true as the characters are portrayed. What I find most interesting about the movie and the novel is that much like To Kill A Mockingbird, the film was released very soon after the novel's publication, so that people who read the novel associated it with the film and vice versa. I'm very much a proponent of reading a book before seeing a film adaptation, mainly because I prefer it if the film adaptations follow the novel closely (like many of the films done by the BBC), but I must say that GWTW is one of the films that is equally as good if not better than the novel.
ReplyDeleteHow do people feel about the whole "mash-up" genre? In my opinion, I can't say I'm a fan. I understand the appeal of people taking classic works such as Pride & Prejudice and Little Women, and adding a "horror movie" feel to the text, but to me it doesn't seem to add any true value. I read P&P&Z and I felt like the author was just marketing on the resurgence of Pride and Prejudice (after the 2005 movie came out.) It might have been different if the author had tried to really work with the text, but the idea of using Austen's words and then throwing in a little violence and gore seemed like a cheap adaptation to me.
Lizzie Crosthwaite
Tuesday
I'd like to add an adaptation to the list of those, like March, that "creat[e] a narrative for an otherwise silent character" as Jessica said. Lamb by Christopher Moore is an adaptation of the Bible that addresses the part of Christ's life left out of the New Testament - that is, everything between his birth and crucifixion. The novel is told from the perspective of Biff, Christ's childhood best friend. Okay, unlike March, the protagonist in Lamb was NOT in the original work (although *spoiler* Mary Magdalene does make an appearance). But Biff plays a similar role to March, in that he completes a part of the narrative that some readers might argue was missing from the original. I think both Lamb and March bring up interesting questions about artistic license, considering both of them are adaptations of works whose authors are no longer around to offer their perspectives. Moore and Brooks have both acknowledged some of the historical and literary liberties they took when adapting the works that inspired them. As readers, where do we draw the line for adaptations that we feel build on the original works and offer something new (as I would argue both these novels do) versus adaptations that we feel either a)deviate too far from the original, or b)compromise the integrity of the original work?
ReplyDeleteThe 2004 film “The Merchant of Venice” is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play of the same title. The play stages an opposition between the Christian citizens of Venice and the Jewish citizens, namely the character of Shylock. Perhaps the most interesting facet of the play is the complicated role of the villain. One could make many arguments about the villainy in the play -- the Christians are the villains, Shylock is the villain, or that there are no truly good characters in the play at all and that everyone has a touch of villainy. However, the 2004 film strips the play of this complexity and provides the viewer with a singular view, naming the Christians as the ultimate villains and granting Shylock ultimate victimhood. While the actions of the Christians are undoubtedly despicable, the film stages the narrative to exclude all instances of Shylock’s villainy, providing the viewer with an inarguable view of wholehearted anti-Semitism. This singularity of viewpoint and narrative-telling hearkens back to March and the problem of singularity with March as the narrator. For the first part of the book, the reader is only provided with March’s narration and viewpoint. In part two, however, when the narration is given to Marmee, the reader realizes how truly problematic March is as a narrator, unveiling a myriad of misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and exclusions. Though the 2004 film “The Merchant of Venice” maintains its staunchly singular viewpoint, both the film and March are demonstrations of the complicated nature of singularity of viewpoint, whether it is a director’s choice at a deliberately one-sided reading of a narrative or an author’s choice to demonstrate the problematic nature of a particular character and his story-telling.
ReplyDeleteKindra Wilson
Last quarter I noticed an interesting parallel between the film "My Fair Lady", and the Opera "Pigmalion" by Jean-Philippe Rameau. "My Fair Lady" is about molding Audrey Heburn's character from a street urchin into a refined woman of society. This work is undertaken by a linguistics scholar, most famed and proud of his ability to detect a person's origin and even place of residence in a town by their accent.
ReplyDeleteRameau's play is about a man who is more in love with a statue he made exemplifying a woman than with his real girlfriend. In a way, both men are seeking to create their ideal woman, regardless of the woman's opinion, or the opinion of others.
The play "Pigmalion" is obviously influenced by Ovid's "Metamorphosis", where a similar story occurs where a man falls in love with his statue, and Venus turns the statue into a woman. Again, this story is adapted to Balzac's "Sarasine", only this time the origin of the statue is a castrato.
Thus, although the story has similar traits, it seems that sexuality is portrayed differently in each version, relevant to the modern discourse of sexuality at the time each one was published. The modern version, "My Fair Lady", is a more Feminist, compared to the heterosexual normality exemplified in Ovid's myth (which is again another adaptation from Greek myths). Thus the adaptations are unique in the sense that they are relevant to their own times.
One aspect of the film adaptation of "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" is how the portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi, by Mickey Rooney, creates a racist discourse that was not so present in the book. The character is played as incompetent, loud, and clumsy. His purpose is to make the audience laugh at things that are stereotypically Asian about him. That he is played by a white actor, and that the white audience sees it as comical only exaggerates the discrepancies between what many white people "know" and how varied Asian culture is.
ReplyDeleteIt is when an adaptation takes these kinds of liberties, that the original work is distorted by something that shares no real connection to it.