Robert Stam was able to reiterate
previously covered material from Hutcheon in a palatable manner while providing
new insights regarding adaptation and its criticisms. These criticisms have
been prudishly moralistic and based on fidelity or a perceived lack thereof. The
author concedes that there is truth in a film’s inability to be 100% faithful
to a text; however, the term “unfaithful” should be utilized to describe
disappointment with the finished product in relation to our expectations as
viewers, which are based on “imaginative reconstruction” as readers. Further, there are logistical factors which
prevent a film adaptation from attaining complete accuracy to the source text.
An adaptation is inherently different and original simply due to its change in
medium. While we imagine words of a novel in the mind’s eye, a director must be
specific with all included details of a scene. Film requires these specifics,
but they may not have been included in the original material. Even shifting
from the single-track medium(written word only) of a novel to the multi-track
medium of film requires embellishment; the director must consider the sound
track, performances, effects, sets, etc., and the complexity of resources
available. Needless to say, literal fidelity to source text is therefore
impossible.
Additionally, there may not always be the
assumed “golden nugget” in an original text, as authors are sometimes not even
aware of their own deepest intentions. Because each text is received
differently by each reader, the source material remains open to be interpreted
and imagined individually. As per Stam, “any text can generate an infinity of
readings.” Yet, readers change with time and by location; this means that the
meanings of references in literary texts can be lost.
As learned in Critical Perspectives on Literature, to be successful, an
allusion (or reference to a literary or historical event, figure, text, or
object) requires the reader to share knowledge or experience with the author.
Stam simplifies this by saying that the greater the lapse in time, the more
likely a source text will be reinterpreted with present values: “Each
adaptation sheds new cultural light on a novel.”
Stam suggests that the essence of the medium of expression
(or “medium-specify”) be that to which an adapter remains faithful; every
medium has its positives and negatives, and both the novel and film have
“cannibalized other genres and media.” This reduce, reuse, recycle, he states,
has film adaptations caught in a cycle of “intertextual reference and
transformation, of texts generating other texts in an endless process.”
Adaptations in subsequent works can include changes in plot events, locale,
time, language, point of view, historical context, language, voice, tone (from
serious to parody), characters (quantity and individually), and much more. “The
adopting film can then take up, amplify, ignore, subvert, or transform.” Consequently,
we as critics should not be concerned with literal fidelity. Rather, more
attention to “dialogical responses” will allow us to welcome “the difference
among the media.”
That which makes us uncomfortable can also make us think.
Dr. Grossman’s introduction immediately reminded me of her comments prior to
the class screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925
Soviet silent film, Battleship Potemkin. The difficult and
unpalatable propaganda piece not only changed the way I view film, but also my ideas about what I was viewing. That one still sits in my gut like a bowl-full
of marbles, but a new perspective was indeed gained regarding “human identity
and culture.” Adaptations also bring up new concerns and ideas in different
media, and all three can shift with cultural priorities. These can be
considered violations from the original source material, but - in fact, if new
questions about fundamental issues are asked, the adaptation is potentially an
original itself. Elasticity, or the linking
of all associated works that precede or follow a text, allows for critical
thinking, in-depth investigation, and “fundamentally creative activity.”
Experimental and innovative adaptations engage with new viewpoints and
“surprising contexts.” If successful, they recombine “intellectual matter that
sparks further creativity.” Though the source escapes me, a paraphrased Asian martial
arts saying comes to mind: the measure of
a master is how many masters he has created. Perhaps the measure of an
adaptation is how many additional works it inspires, and each (regardless of
medium) should be seen as an individual artistic activity. Those done well may
be untethered from the metaphorical umbilical cord of the parent work.
Throughout the introduction, Grossman utilizes Mary
Shelley’s metaphor of a “hideous progeny.” Undead monsters are the source text,
resurrected and reborn as difficult offspring (or adaptations) that feed on
predecessors in order to survive and transcend mortality. The rebirth is
painful and can be both strange and uncomfortable to watch; bits and pieces of
parents are sewn together to create a new life. The more different the child,
the more unsettling it is for the parent’s loved ones to behold. Watching this
offspring’s journey can be unsettling and unfamiliar if an expected apparent
pattern is lacking. Yet, this child, at its most daring, becomes experimental
in reshaping and retelling their ancestors’ stories in new and relevant ways.
It takes us along as a passenger away from the “home text” on a “deeply
imaginative” journey to challenge conventional boundaries and “change our
perception of previous works, as well as of the media.” Consequently,
autonomous life and “unique expressiveness” are made possible “when elastic
relations among texts are enacted.” Similarly, a child in most circumstances
grows and flourishes best under the influence of multiple relations; the mother
is only one element contributing to its healthy development, and isolation is
detrimental to not only a literal child, but also to the figurative progeny
adaption. The fragility of unnurtured offspring is explored, and warnings are
provided against procreation motivated primarily by financial gain. Adaptations
“only become hideous when appropriated and mangled by commercial hands.” Instead,
we are asked to “reorient ourselves to our knowledge base and our relationship
with previous texts.” We are invited to “respond with imagination and
compassion…read the story in a new context and…to meet the Creature on its own
terms.”
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