Adaptation

Literary adaptation to film is a long established tradition in cinema starting, for example, with
early cinema adaptations of the Bible (e.g., the Lumière brothers’ thirteen-scene production
of La Vie et passion de Jésus Christ, 1897, and Alice Guy’s La Vie de Christ, 1899). By the 1910s,
adaptations of the established literary canon had become a marketing ploy by which
producers and exhibitors could legitimize cinema-going as a venue of ‘taste’ and thus attract
the middle classes to their theatres. Literary adaptations gave cinema the respectable cachet
of entertainment-as-art. In a related way, it is noteworthy that literary adaptations have
consistently been seen to have pedagogical value, that is, teaching a nation (through cinema)
about its classics, its literary heritage. Note how in the UK the BBC releases a film, made for
screen and subsequently television viewing, and then issues a teaching package (video plus a
teacher and student textbook). The choice of novels adapted has to some extent, therefore,
to be seen in the light of nationalistic ‘value’.
A literary adaptation creates a new story, it is not the same as the original, it takes on
a new life, as indeed do the characters. Narrative and characters become independent of the
original even though both are based – in terms of genesis – on the original. The adaptation
can create stars (in the contemporary UK context, Colin Firth, Pride and Prejudice, 1995, Ewan
McGregor, Trainspottiny, 1995, Robert Carlyle, The Full Monty, 1997), or stars become
associated with that ‘type’ of role (Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham-Carter, Nicole Kidman,
Holly Hunter), whereas the novel creates above all characters we remember and associate
with a particular type of behaviour (e.g. Mrs Bennett, Darcy in Pride and Prejudice). As André
Bazin says 1967, 56), film characterization creates a whole new mythology existing outside of
the original text.
Essentially there appear to be three types of literary adaptation: first, the more
traditionally connoted notion of adaptation, the literary classic; second, adaptations of plays
to screen; and, finally, the adaptation of contemporary texts not yet determined as classics
and possibly bound to remain within the canon of popular fiction. Of these three, arguably, it
is the second that remains most faithful to the original, although contextually it may be
updated into contemporary times, as with several Shakespeare adaptations (for example, Baz
Lurhmann’s Romeo and Juliet, 1996, which is recast into contemporary Los Angeles). The
focus of this entry is primarily on the first type of adaptation, although mention will be made
of the third type.
Literary adaptations are, within the Western context, perceived as mostly a European
product – almost as if Europe has the established literary canon and northern America has
not. It should be pointed out, however, that, while this European heritage cinema is the one
that predominates and while it represents a deliberate marketing ploy for exports (Europe
sells its culture to the ‘rest of the world’), the United States does have its own literary classics
that get adapted – the novels and short stories of Henry James and those of Edith Wharton
spring to mind (e.g., Portrait of a Lady, Jane Campion, 1996; The Age of Innocence, Martin
Scorsese, 1993). Jack Clayton’s 1974 version of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is arguably
the benchmark movie of lavish literary adaptation Hollywood-style. Modern classics, written
by African-American novelists, also rank quite highly (e.g., Alice Walker’s The Color Purple,
Spielberg, 1985, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Demme, 1998). Otherwise, Hollywood is more
commonly associated with popular fiction adaptations (especially detective fiction).
In relation to other generic types, critical literature on literary adaptations is
somewhat thin. There appears to have been a surge of interest during the 1970s (e.g.,
Bluestone, 1971, Marcus, 1971; Horton and Magretta, 1981; Wagner, 1975) and then again
in the mid-1980s through the 1990s (e.g. Morrissette, 1985; Friedman, 1993; Marcus 1993;
McFarlane 1996; Griffith, 1997). While literary adaptations have not attracted much analytical
attention in the field of film studies per se, one could speculate that the first manifestation of
critical writing in the 1970s is linked to the introduction of film courses into Departments of
English and Foreign Languages. The fact that the focus of these studies was on questions of
fidelity to the original text would tend to support this argument. Furthermore, this interest in
literary adaptations could be read as a reaction to the more difficult branch of film theory
being practised at that time, namely, structuralism and a bit later post-structuralism. The
more recent interest appears to correspond to a time when literary adaptations are at their
most popular on screen (particularly in Britain and France).
Fidelity criticism, which makes up a great deal of literary adaptation criticism, focuses
on the notion of equivalence. This is a fairly limited approach, however, since it fails to take
into account other levels of meaning. More recently (Andrew, 1984; Marcus, 1993) have
stressed the importance of examining the ‘value’ of the alterations from text to text. For
example, films are more marked by economic considerations than the novel and this
constitutes a major reason why the adaptation is not like the novel. Furthermore, it is clear
that the choice of stars will impact on the way the original text is interpreted; adaptations will
cut sections of the novel that are deemed un-cinematographic or of no interest to the viewers.
In other words, there is always a motivation behind the choices made. Marcus (ibid.) and
Monk (1996, 50–1) have pointed to the need for a third level criticism: that is, to see the
adaptation within a historical and semiotic context. Thus, it is not sufficient to show, through
fidelity criticism, the difference between the texts, nor does it suffice to do a textual analysis
based on a demonstration of how the film renders (or not) the language and style of the
original through mise-en-scène, editing techniques, the symbolic use of images and, finally,
the sound-track and music. We need to understand the meaning of these differences within
a socio-political, economic and historical context. We need to understand the signs of
difference. Adaptations are a synergy between the desire for sameness and reproduction on
the one hand, and, on the other, the acknowledgement of difference. To a degree they are
based on elision and deliberate lack and at the same time in the privileging, even to excess,
of certain narrative elements or strategies over others.
Film adaptations are both more and less than the original. More not just because they
are in excess of the written word (through having both image and sound). But more also
because they are a mise-en-abîme of authorial texts and therefore of productions of meaning.
To explain: there is the original text (T1), the adapted text (T2), the film text (T3), the director
text(s) (T4n), the star text(s) (T5n), the production (con)texts (T6n), and finally the various
texts’ own intertexts (T7n). Such a chain of signifiers makes it clear that the notion of
authorship becomes very dispersed. Thus, quite evidentially, the film is less because the
original author is only one among many (we hear complaints from the audience: ‘it’s not what
the author wrote’). But it is also more because of the density of new texts (and textual
meanings, purposes and motivations) clustered around the original (again audiences
complain: ‘it’s not at all like the book’). Imagine, finally within this context, the effects of
modernizing a classic literary text.
Audiences might complain. And yet they go in their droves to see the classics on
screen. Higson (1993, 120) is right to say that the replaying or downplaying of the original
material is at least matched by if not superseded by the ‘pleasures of pictorialism’. Our
pleasure is deeper than our pained expressions at the end of the film. Strong (1999, 61)
usefully invokes the term ‘neutering’. Although he uses it in a somewhat more specific context
– namely, when the adaptive process alters the original’s rendering of their own time –
essentially this effect of neutering and appropriation of a text is a basic practice of adaptation.
To a greater or lesser degree, the adaptation neuters the original interest (or a part of the
novelist’s intention) thereby appropriating it so that it ‘makes sense’ within the present
context (for example, Emma Thompson’s script for Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, 1995,
provides a feminist re-inscription of the original Austen novel).
Classic adaptations are less than transparent. They materialize the novel into
something else and the result is a hybrid affair, a mixture of genres. More crucially, a temporal
sleight of hand and thus intention occurs. By way of illustration of this point let’s take the
Austen, Forster and Pagnol novels and their subsequent adaptations. These novels were
modern texts of their day and set in their time yet they were deeply nostalgic for a lost time
in the past (be it for social, economic values or traditions). A major motivation of the narrative,
then, is a nostalgia for what is no more. A sense of lack, of loss is redolent within the novel.
Over time, however, these once modern texts become classic texts entering the literary
canon. By the time they get to the stage of film adaptation they are no longer of the present
time and so become transformed into what we know as costume or heritage films. What was
present is now of the past. A further shift occurs, however, in our reception of the film. It is
nostalgic pleasure we are after, not understanding. Thus our focus shifts from a desire to
know the times the novel is referring to in socio-economic or political terms, to a desire to
see the times (in terms of costume and décor). Thus the earlier intention of the narrative – a
nostalgia for a past – is neutered. What drives us, the audience, is a nostalgia for the present
times of the novel, the lived moment of Austen’s heroines, or Pagnol’s and Forster’s
characters – our ‘imagined’ past, not that of the original text for which that present time
represents unwanted change. Both the novel and the film are looking backwards nostalgically,
but not at the same past.
Production values tend to match the perceived value of the original text. Thus, literary
classics have high production values and the aim is for an authentic re-creation of the past
through appropriate setting, quality mise-en-scène, minute attention to décor and costume,
and for star vehicles to embody the main roles. Audience expectation is such that demand for
authenticity and taste is carefully respected. Popular fiction adaptations make no such
demands of taste. Sets can be flimsy, actors unknown, the whole purpose here is for cost-
effectiveness. A small budget therefore means low production values. It does not necessarily
mean, however, a loss of value. Indeed, many of the 1930s’ and 1940s’ Hollywood B-movies
have gained such value that they have entered the Western cinematic canon. Nor have
contemporary literary adaptations, while inexpensively produced, been without impact in the
evolution of film history. The British New Wave of the 1960s, for example, relied heavily on
contemporary texts for their source of inspiration and produced a grainy socio-realism
(closely aligned with kitchen-sink drama) which mainly focused on the socio-economic crises
of young working-class males. The socalled New Scottish cinema also draws on modern
literary sources and provides low-budget movies with a raw realism of economic deprivation
that mostly, but not exclusively, concerns the young male in crisis and the drug culture of
contemporary Glaswegian youth (particularly male youth). The adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s
novel Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) is the benchmark movie in this context.
Modern adaptations of contemporary novels have national value to the degree that
they tell us something of the current political culture that surrounds us; the adaptation of
classics have nationalistic value in that they mirror a desire to be identified with values of
tradition, culture and taste to which certain elites, especially political elites, and generations
aspire. They only indirectly refer to the current climate in so far as they disguise through the
past, a present that is not always without provoking anxiety and fear. But the traces are there.
As Strong (1999, 286–91) points out, the gay subtext of Forster’s Room with a View (Ivory,
1986) comes seeping through even if it does not threaten or challenge the particularly
homophobic political culture and legislation of the Thatcher government in Britain at that
time. Strong (1999, 63) makes a particularly interesting point about the distinction between
contemporary and classical adaptations – one that comes down to gender. Classic literary
adaptations with their almost obsessive focus on detail – an effect of miniaturizing – lead to
an increased feminization of the original text. If we take this idea further, it is as if the film
clothes its male protagonists in such a way as to make them safe, contain them as an ideal
male who mirrors in the fanciness and detail of his own costume that of his female
counterpart. We may forget the very real power wielded by men as we stand in awe of their
prettiness. Viewed in this light, this feminization comes to represent a containment and
displacement of our contemporary myth of sexual equality and even unisexuality. The
contemporary adaptations such as those of the British New Wave, argues Strong (ibid. 62)
and to which we could add the Scottish New Wave, are ones which masculinize the original
text in their over-investment in the individual youthful male protagonist. These films that
focus on the male represent him as unruly, potentially threatening, powerful, wild. But given
the process of masculinzation inscribed into the filmic text, the vicious twist at the end that
he is doomed to fail, die or remain the same should give us pause for thought.