- Adaptation (Text to Film/Text to Text) is interpretation.
- Adaptation can preserve a text (faithfulness to a classic)
- Or keep it alive, fresh, relevant (auteur) new audience, new cultural/social/historical context.
- Adaptations can be original in terms of how they fit a "source" text to new conditions. But adaptations also return us to a source text.
- Adaptations raise the question of what "original" means.
- Intertextuality: Every work adapts "something" from previous works.
Adaptations of Novels
Oliver Twist
18th century novel of the road/orphan's fulfillment of selfhood/art shaping life
Polanski
Fidelity/Reinterpretation - experience of orphan children world wide/Fagin/Victorian setting/Plot
Great Expectations
OT in reverse/selfhood is a social construction - class/orphan makes his own way/destiny is not preordained/there is no returning home
Lean
Fidelity to Dickens/show psychology through image and sound/Fagin/ending is conservative - love conquers all
Fingersmith
Merge the past and present/lesbianism - identity/discourse (writing) power/keep OT and GE relevant/biology/architecture models
Never Let Me Go
Science - Cloning/Can one shape one's identity?/What does it mean to be human? - Childhood/How one lives one's life
Cuaron
Analogy: Set in FL/NY/Name changes/Finn (Pip) is an artist/Ending?
South Park
Spoof on adaptation/adapt GE
PBS
Adaptation - Fidelity