To Be Sure, One Must First Know to What End the Adaptation Is Designed: for the Cinema Or for Its Audience
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―To be sure, one must first know to what end the adaptation is designed: for the cinema or for its audience. One must also realize that most adapters care far more about the latter than about the former.‖ —André Bazin, ―Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest‖ A RHETORICAL APPROACH TO ADAPTATION: EFFECTS, PURPOSES, AND THE FIDELITY DEBATE DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University Matthew Everett Bolton English Graduate Program The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Brian McHale, Co-Director James Phelan, Co-Director Frederick Luis Aldama Sean O‘Sullivan Copyright by Matthew Bolton 2011 Abstract A Rhetorical Approach to Adaptation seeks to transform the longstanding debate in adaptation studies about the proper way to conceive of the relation between adaptations and their sources. More specifically, it draws upon key insights of the rhetorical theory of narrative to move beyond the debate between traditional advocates of formal fidelity to source material and more recent arguments that both sources and adaptations are infinitely intertextual. Despite their differences, both of these critical positions are content to compare events, characters, and techniques. In contrast, my rhetorical perspective closely attends to the multi-layered purposes—thematic, affective, and ethical—of both source and adaptation. By providing a new framework for understanding adaptation—source and target may use different means in service of similar purposes, similar means to achieve different purposes, and so on—I reposition fidelity as only one possible purpose for any adapter, while also detailing different kinds of intertextuality and what they accomplish in the work‘s own terms. My dissertation moves past the original debate by showing that adapters may consider differences not only in media, but also in historical situation, audience, and authorial vision. As a result, ii my rhetorical approach provides both better evaluations and better analyses of adaptations and their sources. A Rhetorical Approach to Adaptation combines its theoretical case for a fresh conception of adaptation with a series of new readings of modern and postmodern narratives. I have chosen narratives that foreground tricky problems of adapting print sources to film, specifically: how to deal with the shift in authorship in filming an autobiography (Susanna Kaysen‘s Girl, Interrupted and Harvey Pekar‘s comic series American Splendor); how to deal with different conceptions of—and expectations about—flesh-and-blood audiences (Annie Proulx‘s ―Brokeback Mountain‖); how to set up and deliver an effective twist ending (Ian McEwan‘s Atonement); and how to convey the ethical dimension of a narrative that depends as much on its narration as on its events (Toni Morrison‘s Beloved and Russell Banks‘s The Sweet Hereafter). From these case studies emerges a new theoretical approach to adaptation, one which recognizes the fundamental differences between different media while also comparing them in fruitful and incisive ways. iii Acknowledgments My gratitude, first and foremost, goes to my dissertation committee. Jim, Brian, Frederick, Sean—without your advice, your insights, and your encouragement, this study would not exist, and I would be a much poorer scholar. To Brian and Jim, in particular: your input at every stage along the way has been essential, and your pages of emails, your keen challenges at every step, and your infinite patience and support are proof, if any was needed, that any project like this has a host of unattributed co-authors. Further thanks to dozens of other academic betters whose questions and advice along the way never failed to improve my thinking about whatever the day‘s sticking point was. To Robyn Warhol, for her advice on queer theory. To Jared Gardner, for his thoughts on Harvey Pekar. To the members of the Narrative listserv, whose reading and viewing suggestions will keep me going long after the project is finished. To the anonymous readers at Adaptation, whose valuable insights on an article-length version of my second chapter led to improvements all around. To a host of scholars from various conferences, some of whom I am also privileged to count as friends—Paul Dawson, John Hellman, George Butte, Jim Walsh, Dennis Cutchins, Nico Dicecco—our conversations have rung in my ears every time I sat to down to write. And to Tom Garza, who was there iv at the start of this journey: your generosity compels you to forget as much of your former student as you remember, and for that, I thank you. Emotional support and academic challenges don‘t buy plane tickets or pay conference fees, sadly, but I have been extremely fortunate to have financial support, as well. First, the bulk of this work was written with the support of a Distinguished University Fellowship from Ohio State. In addition, travel grants from Project Narrative and the Ohio State English Department have allowed me to present earlier versions of this work at a variety of conferences; the feedback I received at annual Narrative conferences and the 2011 Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association Conference was invaluable, and I would not have attended any of them without financial support. Finally, particular thanks goes to additional support from the G. Michael Riley International Academic Fund, which, along with support from Project Narrative and OSU, allowed me to travel to Berlin for the 2010 Conference of the Association of Adaptation Studies. This conference was particularly important to my work, and without this support, it would have remained out of reach. To my colleagues at Ohio State, in the 2010 dissertation seminar, in Jim‘s monthly potlucks: your conversations, critiques, and questions have shaped my thinking indelibly. In particular, Sarah Copland, Nick Hetrick, Anne Langendorfer, Paul McCormick, Lindsay Martin, Lizzie Nixon, and Cate St. Pierre: it is humbling enough to call you colleagues. How could I have hoped for the honor of calling you friends? And finally, to my family, the one I was born into and the one I have chosen. Milo, my constant companion as I read and write: you are a dog of exceptional character v and the best person I know. Mom, Dad, and Travis: this house stands only because of the foundation you poured. And to Kathy, Zoe, Patrick, Nina, Michael, and Hilary: your pride pushes me to do what I do, your love makes me who I am. My life is built on words, but in response to what you‘ve given, I have none. What is there to say, but thank you, thank you, thank you. vi Vita 2002............................................................ B.A. English, University of Texas B.A. Plan II Honors, University of Texas 2003............................................................ M. S. Education, University of Pennsylvania 2005............................................................ M. A. Literature, University of North Texas Publications ―Fidelity and Period Aesthetics in Comic Adaptation.‖ ImageText 6.1 (2011). ―‗Every word doth almost tell my name‘: Ambiguity, Authority, and Authenticity in Shakespeare‘s Dramatic Letters.‖ Early Modern Literary Studies 15.3 (2011). ―The Ethics of Alterity: Adapting Queerness in Brokeback Mountain.‖ Adaptation 4.2 (2011). ―Michael Ondaatje‘s ‗Well-Told Lie‘: The Ethical Invitation of Historiographic Aesthetics.‖ Prose Studies 30.3 (2008). Instructor’s Manual for The Decisive Writer by Kathryn Raign. With exercises by Paula Mathis. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. ―‗Spellbound by the Image‘: A Reflective Response to Lawrence Durrell‘s Alexandria Quartet.‖ Agora: An Online Graduate Journal 3.1 (2004). Field of Study Major Field: English vii Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................ iv Vita................................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures.................................................................................................................. ix Chapters 1. Between Scylla and Charybdis.................................................................................. 1 2. Adapting from Real to Reel....................................................................................... 35 3. Queer Flesh, Dried Blood, and the Ideology of Audience......................................... 76 4. ―How could that constitute an ending?‖.................................................................... 116 5. Adapting Stubborn Ethics 1: Multiple Perspectives in Beloved................................ 160 6. Adapting Stubborn Ethics 2:...................................................................................... 212 Polychronic Narration and Multivalent Metaphors in The Sweet Hereafter 7. A Future for Fidelity: Additional Questions, Possible Extensions............................ 271 Works Cited..................................................................................................................... 282 List of Figures 1. Ryder breaks the fourth wall...................................................................................... 51 2. Mangold‘s sixties signifiers......................................................................................