Reel Hope: Literature and the Utopian Function of Adaptation
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REEL HOPE: LITERATURE AND THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF ADAPTATION A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Alexander Charles Oliver Hall August, 2013 Dissertation written by Alexander Charles Oliver Hall B.A. Miami University, USA, 2007 M.A. University of Arkansas, USA, 2009 Ph.D. Kent State University, USA, 2013 Approved by ___________________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Willie J. Harrell, Jr. Associate Professor of English ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Babacar M’Baye, Associate Professor of English ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Donald M. Hassler, Professor of English ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Paul Haridakis, Professor of Communication Studies ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Leonne Hudson, Associate Professor of History Accepted by ___________________________________, Chair, Department of English Robert W. Trogdon ___________________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Raymond A. Craig ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF ADAPTATION . 1 I. THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF DISSEMINATION . 20 1. JOSÉ SARAMAGO’S BLINDNESS GETS THE MEIRELLES TREATMENT 2. “HARRISON BERGERON” MEETS CHANDLER TUTTLE IN 2081 3. LINDSAY’S DEXTER COMES TO THE SMALL SCREEN II. THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF REACTIVATION . 70 1. CUARÓN’S THE CHILDREN OF MEN INDICTS IMMIGRATION POLICY 2. ALAN BALL REACTIVATES DEAD UNTIL DARK THROUGH LGBT LENS 3. SAGAL EXPOSES COLD WAR FEARS VIA THE OMEGA MAN III. THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF FRAMING . .. 116 1. LIBMAN AND WILLIAMS BUILD A BRAVE NEW WORLD 2. BRUCE PITTMAN BRINGS “HARRISON BERGERON” TO SHOWTIME 3. JOFFÉ’S INFAMOUS ADAPTATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER CONCLUSION . 156 Notes . .159 Works Cited . .163 iii Introduction: The Utopian Function of Adaptation There exists an intersection between utopian studies and adaptation studies that does not seem to have been explicitly stated in any of the scholarship in either field: the adaptation of texts into filmed productions affords adapters (filmmakers, etc.) the opportunity to emphasize what they see as the utopian dimensions of source texts for potentially critical purposes, which equals a utopian function of adaptation in and of itself. Critics, therefore, can use utopia as a hermeneutic in the analysis of adaptations. In doing so, it may be found that the utopian function of adaptation sometimes forgoes the dominant themes of the source text almost entirely, appropriating the text as a pulpit from which to engage in social critique. In fact, adaptations can stray from their source texts in scores of ways, thereby cultivating utopian potential, and these deviations will often bring about the usual assertions that “the book was better,” largely because the adaptation is not (for it cannot be) the source text. In adaptation studies scholarship, these assertions come from those aptly referred to as fidelity critics because they hold fidelity to the source text in the highest regard, but fidelity criticism has in recent years become to adaptation studies what formalism is to literary studies—passé. More recently, the idea of intertextuality between, for instance, a film adaptation and the novel it adapts, has been privileged in adaptation studies, specifically using a poststructural theoretical approach. Since adaptations cannot be judged by their fidelity to their source texts (which are multilayered and thus offer many different interpretations), we might instead judge them 1 2 by their particular readings of their sources, and how those readings might be valuable as works of art that operate in dialogue with or build upon their sources. Using utopia as an interpretive device—a theoretical model derived from the field of utopian studies—this study contends that the various “readings” of source texts—manifested as adaptations— are influenced by the utopian imaginations of their adapters, a concept drawn from the work of Ernst Bloch.1 Aspects of the empirical world (social or political aspects, for instance) are critiqued via adaptations, and are thus the specific foci of the utopian function of adaptation. Herein, the Blochian utopian dreaming that occurs in art will be identified in several film and television adaptations, which will serve as case studies for the utopian function of adaptation. This utopian function of adaptation, it should be stated, may not even come from the source text per se, but from the very choice to adapt a particular text given the timeliness of its adaptation or the intent to adapt with socially or culturally critical ulterior motives. Before we can fully unravel the nature of the utopian function of adaptation, however, we must establish working understandings of both utopian studies and adaptation studies. Beginning with utopian studies is appropriate, because the driving force behind utopian studies is ubiquitous—the utopian impulse. The utopian impulse is associated with Lyman Tower Sargent’s conception of “utopianism,” which he argues “is a universal human phenomenon” (“Three Faces” 3). This phenomenon is predicated on the idea that “the overwhelming majority of people—probably it is even possible to say all—are, at some time dissatisfied and consider how their lives might be improved” (Sargent, “Three Faces” 3). Sargent gives the following examples: “If we are hungry, we dream of a full 3 stomach. If we are sexually frustrated, we dream of sexual fulfillment. If we are frustrated by something in our society, we dream of a society in which it is corrected” (“Three Faces” 3-4). This idea of “dreaming” is associated with what Sargent calls “social dreaming,” which is his very definition of utopianism: “the dreams and nightmares that concern the ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually envision a radically different society than the one in which the dreamers live” (“Three Faces” 3). Sargent’s concept of utopia, however, is informed at least in part by the work of Ernst Bloch, who, in The Principle of Hope, posits the idea of “the wishful element in the expectant emotions,” which “activates and galvanizes us towards the goal of a better life” (76). From this element, according to Bloch, “daydreams are formed. They always come from a feeling of something lacking and they want to stop it, they are all dreams of a better life” (76). Fredric Jameson, moreover, asserts that Bloch “sees [utopia’s] in-forming presence at work everywhere” (56), suggesting not only the need for individuals to engage in social dreaming, but also utopia’s “in-forming presence” in “all the objects of culture” (56). The “presence” to which Jameson refers is of hope, or “the permanent tension of human reality towards a radical transformation of itself and everything about it, towards a Utopian transfiguration of its own existence as well as of its social context” (58), and, for Jameson, “[t]o maintain that everything is a ‘figure of Hope’ is to offer an analytical tool for detecting the presence of some Utopian content even within the most degraded and degrading type of commercial product” (58). More than simply an interpretive device for locating utopian energy in cultural production, however, “utopian expression became a major element of the oppositional projects of the 4 [post-WWII] decades” (Moylan, Scraps 68). In fact, this reappearance of utopia fostered the revivals of utopian literature, intentional societies, and utopian social theory so that “utopian dreaming, now allied with concrete agency, looked through and beyond the structural logic and limits of hegemonic exploitation and interpellation” (Moylan, Scraps 68-69). These revivals would equal what Tom Moylan calls a “political renaissance” (Scraps 69), alongside of which the field of utopian studies could develop. Moylan points to sessions on utopian literature at the annual Modern Language Association conference as early as 1949, a wide range of publications appearing on utopia during the 1950s and beyond, and university courses on the subject offered in the 1950s and 1960s as having helped facilitate the founding of the Society for Utopian Studies in 1975, whose journal Utopian Studies was launched in 1990 and continues to be the central publication of the field. Utopian expression continues as a framework for opposition in cultural production; whether explicitly or as part of what Jameson would call the political unconscious2 of the artist, cultural products are rife with figures of hope either within the products themselves or implicit in their very production. In order to demonstrate that this is true, the chapters that follow will comprise a series of case studies. These case studies will look specifically at a series of literary adaptations. Before we can move to an in-depth discussion of the utopian function of adaptation, however, we must examine the current state of the field of adaptation studies, which has been developing for more than fifty years. As above, the former paradigm of fidelity criticism has shifted to one of poststructural intertextuality. However, even within this new poststructural paradigm, critics must address the fidelity issue, largely because 5 adaptation studies has its roots in fidelity criticism, a natural theoretical lens through which to view adaptation considering that its study grew “out of English literature departments,