The Frame

I wrote out a bunch of this last night, but then lost it just before I posted. Grr Arrgh. So this is a recreation, and I’m not sure I got it all. Anyway, these are questions that are bouncing around in my head as I work on a paper about Bride and Prejudice as an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I got good feedback on a short version of the paper when I read it in class last week, but now I have to lengthen it, and most of the class suggested that I delve more into the adaptation theory side of it, which is really what I’m interested in. I just don’t know what I fully think about it yet (which is why I chose it as a topic…writing helps me sort out my thoughts…hence, blogging!). If you have any thoughts, feel free to throw them at me; if not, that’s fine…I’m not sure I have thoughts either, and I mostly just needed to write down what I’m thinking about (see above, re: writing to think).

• Is it possible for a film to be a good film without also being a good adaptation?
• Is it possible for a film to be a good adaptation without also being a good film?
• Is it possible for a bad book to become a good film?
• Is it possible for a good book to become a better film?
• Is the book always better than the film?
• If so, what makes it better?
• If not, what makes the film better?

• What is the relationship between the book and the film?
• Is one more important than the other?
• If so, which one and why?
• Is every adaptation a new original?
• If so, then does the filmmaker have the same rights over the film as the author had over the book?
• If not, why not?
• Does the filmmaker have a responsibility to transmit the details of the book as exactly as possible?
• Does the filmmaker have a responsibility to transmit the themes of the book as exactly as possible?
• Does the filmmaker have a responsibility to guard against misunderstanding of the book based on the film version?
• If yes to any of the previous questions, to what extent?
• If yes to any of the previous questions, what relationship exists between the book and the filmmaker’s personal vision?
• Does the audience have a responsibility to understand that a film adaptation is not necessarily the same as the book?
• If so, to what extent does this mitigate the filmmaker’s responsibility to guard against misunderstanding?
• If not, why not?
• Is this too much to ask of a modern movie-going audience?
• If so, would it not be better, if more difficult and time-consuming, to educate the audience rather than limit the filmmaker?

• What is the purpose of a film adaptation? (disregarding purely commercial reasons)
• If the filmmaker has nothing of his own to say about the book, why adapt it?
• How do theories of authorship and reader-response affect the discussion of adaptation?
• Does a filmmaker have the same rights to interpretation as a reader does?
• If so, should he be free to form his film based on his own interpretation?
• Is it helpful to think of a given film adaptation as one of many possible readings of a book?
• Is it helpful to think in terms merely of “different” adaptations rather than “good” or “bad” adaptations?
• If so, to what extent?
• At what point does a film cease to be an adaptation and become “inspired by” a book?
• Is it helpful to think of all adaptation as “inspired by” rather than “adapted from”?

• How much of all this is defensiveness on my part against a view of film as second-rate?
• Is it possible to see both the book and the film as independent, equally valuable works of art that are related to each other but do not bear responsibility toward each other? (as, for example, Ulysses is related to The Odyssey but not lesser than it, or The Lord of the Rings is related to Beowulf and Icelandic myth but is not responsible to them, or Shakespeare’s plays are taken from earlier sources but their lack of fidelity to them is not considered a weakness, or Rent is based on La Boheme but is clearly its own entity)
• If so, is it desirable?
• If not, why not?
• Is a unified theory of adaptation even possible, or are we forever stuck in dealing with adaptation on a case-by-case basis?
• What other questions should I be asking?

My main troubles right now, I think, are authorship and the effect of the film version on the book. Right off the bat, I don’t think film is a lower art form than literature. Hence, I struggle with giving the author of the source work priority over the filmmaker (i.e., author of the film–yes, I tend toward the auteurist position in film criticism), except in the sense of temporal priority perhaps. Even then, I hesitate to deny the filmmaker the right to make his film however he wants to. I mean, most of Hitchcock’s films were adapted from novels, but no one claims priority for Pierre Boileau over Hitchcock when it comes to the authorship of Vertigo, and Vertigo is certainly a better film than it would have been had he stuck to Boileau’s book. Of course, we’re speaking there of a pulp writer and a master filmmaker, but I’m trying to find a more general theoretical basis for adaptation than a purely case-by-case examination of every book and film. And one of my classmates brought up the question of the effect of the film version on the book, in terms of the possible misinterpretations and misunderstandings a film could introduce to the book. (For example, the 1999 Patricia Rozema film of Mansfield Park, in which Fanny Price is not the Fanny Price of the novel, but an amalgamation of Fanny and a young Jane Austen, culled from her diaries and letters–the film is very good as a film, I think, but what does it do to people who read Mansfield Park, expecting to find the same character they liked in the movie?)

I haven’t included remake questions, because that’s not what I’m working on right now, but that opens up a whole other can of worms–you can see in my sidebar a link to a blurb about remaking The Birds, and my link text indicates that remaking The Birds would not be a good idea. But why do I think that? Why shouldn’t a current filmmaker remake The Birds if he wants to, and change it if he wants to? I freely admit to having double standards here, which is precisely why I want to figure out what my underlying guidelines should be before I start treating individual cases.