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Deconstructionist’: Adaptation As Writerly Praxis JAFP 7 (1) pp. 65–82 Intellect Limited 2014 Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance Volume 7 Number 1 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jafp.7.1.65_1 Vartan Messier City University of New York desire and the ‘deconstructionist’: Adaptation as writerly praxis abstract Keywords Directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufmann, Adaptation is a semi- Adaptation (2002) fictitious narrative of Kaufman’s effort to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief Spike Jonze (1998) for the screen. Interrelating Barthes critiques of authorship/authority and Charlie Kaufman the readerly/writerly with adaptation theory, this article demonstrates how the film Susan Orlean performs an immanent critique of the process of adaptation by laying bare its practi- The Orchid Thief cal, theoretical, and political implications. I argue that whereas the screenwriter is a Roland Barthes traditionally absent figure in adaptation criticism, his self-reflexive presence in the film hijacks both interpretation and critique by deconstructing the filmic adaptation process through writerly praxis. The critical exploration of the binaries of text and adaptation, reader and writer, fact and fiction, work and theory is made possible by the figuration of Kaufmann who, as a Barthesian reader in the throes of the read- ing and writing processes, writes himself into the story and projects his desires onto the screen, thereby undermining all authoritative claims on the original text and its interpretation. Seul la lecture aime l’œuvre, entretient avec elle un rapport de désir. Lire, c’est désirer l’œuvre. … (Barthes 1966: 78) 65 JAFP_7.1_Messier_65-82.indd 65 3/11/14 8:10:04 AM Vartan Messier 1. Both the screenplay You can’t have a protagonist without desire. It doesn’t make sense! and the film were nominated for the (McKee in Jonze 2002) Oscars and the Césars, Kaufman’s In ‘The death of the author’ (1967) Roland Barthes demythologizes the screenplay won the British BAFTA award concept of an ‘Author-God’ by dismissing the endeavour to confine a text and the Independent within a single ‘theological’ interpretation that can be traced back to an Spirit Awards amongst authorial intention. For Barthes, a text ought to be liberated from any singular others. source or origin such as the author, as it imposes limits on its possible inter- 2. In exchange for artistic pretations. Barthes argues that the text ‘is a space of many dimensions, in freedom, Jonze and Kaufman accepted which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is a more limited original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources budget than if they had allowed for the of culture’ (1967). This ‘multiple writing’, as Barthes calls it, also discredits the production company, notion that the critic is capable of deciphering a text from a privileged herme- Sony, to intervene neutic position. Drawing on Nietzsche, Barthes further explains that the aim in the making of the movie. See Kaufman’s of interpretation is not to ascribe a meaning to a text but rather to reveal its interview, (2005) plurality (Barthes 2002c: 123), a multiplicity that intersects with the plural- in Reverse Shot. ity of the reader (Barthes 2002c: 126). By severing authority from authorship, Regardless of the budget, the film was Barthes privileges multiplicity over singularity and configures reading as a will- nominated for the to-power that affirms ‘a difference of which each text is the return’ (Barthes Academy Awards and like their previous 2002c: 121, emphasis added). Through her desire for the work (oeuvre) as contribution, both well as the labor invested in her reading, the reader does not consume the Jonze and Kaufman text passively, but is actively involved in the becoming of its (re)writing as a won a number of prizes at international film ‘producer of the text’ (Barthes 2002c: 121–22). festivals. In this article, I examine how Adaptation (Jonze, 2002) provides a lavish platform from which to address the decentring ethos of Barthes’ proposi- tion. Written by Charlie Kaufman (and, according to the credits, Donald Kaufman, his fictional twin brother who also appears in the film as a character foil) Adaptation is a semi-fictitious narrative about his effort to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief (1998) for the screen. The film is reportedly based on a true story; following the critical success of Being John Malkovich,1 Kaufman was hired to adapt Orlean’s book. However, he soon realized that because the text lacked narrative structure, it could not be adapted in the form of a traditional story. After numerous failed attempts, he turned the gaze of the camera on himself and wrote a script on his struggle to write a screenplay about a book he perceived could not be adapted into a film. Under increas- ing pressure from his agent and the studio executives who had hired him, Kaufman delivered his self-reflexive script, thinking that it would have a nega- tive impact on his career as a screenwriter. Ironically, it had the adverse effect; the producers abandoned the original project and decided to follow through with Kaufman’s screenplay instead.2 The end result is a film constructed as a series of fragmentary scenes that interweaves the arch-narrative of Kaufman’s struggle with repeated visualizations of his various screenplays attempts, self- reflexive snapshots revealing his own insecurities as a writer and an individ- ual, and meta-commentaries on the writing process as a tool for critique and interpretation. Frank P. Tomasulo aptly observes that the title of the film refers to, at one level, the cinematic adaptation process, and at another, the ways in which a person or a species matures and adapts to his environment (2008: 169). Because of this double emphasis, Adaptation recalibrates how we perceive the role of the screenplay and the screenwriter in the adaptation process. On the one hand, as Jack Boozer notes, the screenplay plays a central role in the process; even if it undergoes multiple revisions and rewrites as exemplified in 66 JAFP_7.1_Messier_65-82.indd 66 3/11/14 8:10:05 AM Desire and the ‘Deconstructionist’ Adaptation, it ‘remains the essential and creative bible of the film’s construc- 3. For an informative overview, I refer the tion’ (2008: 4). On the other, whereas the screenwriter is a traditionally reader to Elliott’s overlooked figure in adaptation criticism, this article demonstrates how his Rethinking the Novel/ figurative, intertextual presence as a reader and writer of texts enacts an Film Debate (2003), Brian McFarlane’s immanent critique of the poetics and politics of adaptation. Echoing Barthes’ Novel to Film: An approach to reading, Adaptation reveals the ways in which the pluralities of Introduction to the both text and reader are actualized through the process of adapting a written Theory of Adaptation (1996), the introductory text into a cinematic narrative. essays by Dudley Andrew, James Naremore, and Robert Ray in Film Adaptation the loVer’s infidelity: AdAptAtion as asseMblage (2000), the impressive Writing in the early 1960s, André Bazin famously claimed, ‘the film-maker three consecutive collections of essays has everything to gain from fidelity’ (2004: 65) and that consequently, ‘a good edited by Robert adaptation should result in a restoration of the essence of the letter and the Stam and Alessandra spirit’ (Bazin 2004: 67). Conversely, more recent scholarship on film adapta- Raengo, Literature and Film (2004), Literature 3 tion has argued that approaching adaptations from this unilateral perspec- through Film (2005), tive of fidelity inevitably leads to an impasse; it essentializes both literature and The Companion to Literature and and film by relying heavily on pre-paradigmatic, hermeneutic approaches Film (2004), and based on authority and authorial intention and overlooks the complex and Imelda Whelehan’s multifaceted character of both mediums. Barthes and other poststructuralists Adaptations: from Text to Screen, Screen to have aimed to decentralize such fixed and stable concepts by demonstrating Text (1999). that through cultural dissemination, texts are subjected to a shifting herme- 4. In Anti-Oedipus (1983), neutic as their perceived meanings vary according to the contexts in which Deleuze and Guattari they are received and their respective audiences. Accordingly, Dudley Andrew vehemently criticize configures cinematic adaptations as a variation of Barthesian écriture, which the Oedipal model of subjectivity based on affirms difference rather than similarity. In step with the idea of difference the configuration of and multiplicity underlined earlier, Barthes concept of the writerly text is that desire as ‘lack’; rather, they argue that desire which accounts for the active role of the reader in the production and plural- is a productive force, ity of meanings (2002c: 122). Consequently, the view of cinematic adaptation capable of producing as a process of differentiation highlights the ways in which reading becomes its own conditions of reality. a writerly process, wherein the film director and/or screenwriter effectively rewrites the text. Because the parameter of fidelity relies on values of same-ness or similar- ity that are fixed and unchanging, it is unproductive and degenerative. In the amorous discourse favoured by Barthes, fidelity is sterile: it is incapable of satiating the Lover’s desire for the Other (the text) who embodies a perpetual difference (2002a). By approaching adaptation as an intertextual
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