JAMES HAROLD PLEASE CITE PUBLISHED VERSION: PREPUBLICATION VERSION: Do not cite The British Journal of Aesthetics 58.1 (2018): 89-100. The Value of Fidelity in Adaptation When the Coen brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) opens, a title card quotes the opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey: ‘O Muse! / Sing in me, and through me tell the story / Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending, / A wanderer, harried for years on end …’ However, beyond a few general similarities in regard to incident and character (e.g., the protagonist of the film is called ‘Ulysses’ and his wife is ‘Penny’), the two works tell very different stories. The Coen brothers admit that they had never read the Odyssey and they didn’t originally intend their film as a genuine adaptation of Homer’s poem.1 The film tells the story of populism and racism in the American south during the great depression, and prominently features the folk music of that era. One of the themes of the film is the intersection between popular music and politics. While some elements of Homer’s poem can be found in O Brother (both consist of a journey home and a few incidents along the way are alluded to), the film does not much resemble its ostensible source. Wolfgang Peterson’s film Troy (2004), is also announced as an adaptation of one of Homer’s poems: the Iliad (though it also incorporates plot elements from Virgil’s Aeneid). The film mostly follows the sequence of events in Homer’s epic, with omissions (the cast of characters is vastly reduced) and some significant changes and additions (most significantly, a romance between Achilles and Briseas). But the principal events and characters are the same. Thematically, the film emphasizes the vice of pride and the importance of being remembered after one dies. There is a palpable attempt to capture both the plot and the thematic ideas from Homer’s epic poem. And some scenes and events are rendered in ways that closely resemble scenes from the poem. 1 Jonathan Romney, ‘Double Vision,’ The Guardian (May 19, 2000): https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/may/19/culture.features 1 JAMES HAROLD PLEASE CITE PUBLISHED VERSION: PREPUBLICATION VERSION: Do not cite The British Journal of Aesthetics 58.1 (2018): 89-100. It is tempting to say that Peterson’s film is more faithful to Homer’s Iliad than the Coen brothers’ film is to Homer’s Odyssey. But few would dispute that O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a better film than Troy. This raises two related questions. 1. What do we mean when we say that a film is faithful to its source? 2. Is being faithful an aesthetic merit in a film that is an adaptation of some work of literature? My view is that there are several different kinds of answers to the first question, including, importantly, story fidelity and thematic fidelity. In response to the second question, I argue that some kinds of fidelity, especially thematic fidelity, merit aesthetic praise, while others do not. 1. Background Relatively little has been written on the topic of adaptation in Anglophone aesthetics.2 This is surprising. After all, adaptation is a dominant cultural phenomenon – most films are based on pre-existing sources – and one with a long and rich history. Short stores are adapted into plays; plays into films; films into operas; songs into poems; and on and on, backwards and forwards. More important, adaptation poses important and interesting philosophical problems that bear on and interact with some of the most discussed problems in philosophical aesthetics today. There is, however, a large and vibrant literature on the topic of adaptation outside the field of philosophy, with dozens of books, thousands of articles, and at least two 2 Exceptions include: J.E. Gracia, ‘From Horror to Hero: Film Interpretations of Stoker’s Dracula,’ in W. Irwin and J.E. Gracia (eds.), Philosophy and the Interpretation of Pop Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 187-214; Paisley Livingston, ‘On the Appreciation of Cinematic Adaptations,’ Projections 4.2 (2010): 104-127; Henry James Pratt, ‘Making Comics into Film,’ in Aaron Meskin and Roy T. Cook (eds.), The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2012), 147-64; Tamir Zachi and Greg Currie, ‘Macbeth, Throne of Blood, and the Idea of a Reflective Adaptation,’ forthcoming in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Of these, only Livingston’s article, discussed below, offers a general theoretical approach to adaptation. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing me towards Livingston’s essay. 2 JAMES HAROLD PLEASE CITE PUBLISHED VERSION: PREPUBLICATION VERSION: Do not cite The British Journal of Aesthetics 58.1 (2018): 89-100. academic journals dedicated to the field of ‘Adaptation Studies’: Adaptation: The Journal of Literature on Screen Studies, and Film/Literature Quarterly.3 Those working in Adaptation Studies seem to come primarily from English departments, but also from film, theater, and other arts programs. This extensive literature, furthermore, is almost uniformly opposed to the use of fidelity as a critical criterion. By fidelity is meant the critical question of in to what degree the film captures the significant aspects of the original work. The consensus in the adaptation literature is that we should dispose of the concept of fidelity. Here are some representative remarks: ‘Unquestionably the most frequent and most tiresome discussion of adaptation (and of film and literature relations as well) concerns fidelity and transformation’4 ‘… the field is still haunted by the notion that adaptations ought to be faithful to their ostensible sourcetexts’5 ‘In fact, one might reasonably have assumed that the “fidelity” factor no longer needed to be addressed in writing about film and literature. By this I mean not only fidelity as criterion but also the very notion that this battle needs to be refought.’6 The standard view, voiced by each of these authors, is that it has long been established that fidelity is both a bad criterion and a harmful one. Fidelity is thought to be harmful because it crowds out other, more fruitful lines of inquiry. Further, fidelity is often associated with another troublesome assumption that has plagued the academic study of film since its beginning: the privileging of the written word (particularly ‘high’ literature) over pictorial storytelling (of which films have often seemed like the lowest form). The 3 My colleague Sally Sutherland first introduced me to the field of Adaptation Studies, and I am greatly indebted to her for introducing me to this literature. 4 Dudley Andrew, ‘Adaptation,’ in James Naremore (ed.), Film Adaptation (Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 31. 5 Thomas Leitch, ‘Adaptation Studies at a Crossroads,’ Adaptation 1.1 (2008): 64. 6 Brian McFarlane, ‘It Wasn’t Like that in the Book,’ in James M. Welsh and Peter Lev (eds.), The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2007), p. 15. 3 JAMES HAROLD PLEASE CITE PUBLISHED VERSION: PREPUBLICATION VERSION: Do not cite The British Journal of Aesthetics 58.1 (2018): 89-100. exasperation comes from the sense that ordinary people, critics, and academics – who should know better! – nonetheless persist in talking about fidelity. In his paper, ‘On the Appreciation of Cinematic Adaptations,’ Paisley Livingston offers a strong defense of the fidelity criterion against these sorts of objections. He begins by defining cinematic adaptations: … I propose that a cinematic adaptation is a film intentionally and overtly based on at least one, specific anterior work … For a work to be an adaptation, many of the distinguishing and characteristic features of this source, such as the title, setting, main characters, and central elements of the plot, must be expressly adopted and imitated in the new work. As adaptations are distinct from mere copies or reproductions, they must also be intentionally made to diverge from the source in crucial respects …7 His argument for fidelity builds on this definition. The argument, in outline, is: (1) to appreciate an adaptation qua adaptation requires a comparison between the adaptation and its source; and (2) an adaptation, according to the definition, must include some intentional adoption of elements of the source; so, (3) ‘if a given adaptation is to be appreciated as a successful instance of adaptation, we should ask in what sense it has (and has not) remained faithful to the source.’8 The idea is that adaptations are intentionally related to their sources; so, critical studies of adaptations must compare the two, asking in what senses and to what extent the adaptation is faithful to the source. Livingston’s argument establishes that fidelity is a necessary, and cogent, critical approach to understanding and appreciating adaptations as such. However, we should note two important features of his view that require further discussion. First, Livingston does not attempt to argue that fidelity is (or even usually or normally is) a merit in adaptations. On 7 Livingston (op. cit.), 105. 8 Livingston (op. cit.), 112. 4 JAMES HAROLD PLEASE CITE PUBLISHED VERSION: PREPUBLICATION VERSION: Do not cite The British Journal of Aesthetics 58.1 (2018): 89-100. his view, in some cases, fidelity improves a work; in others, it harms it. Livingston discusses in some detail one of the latter cases, Roman Polanski’s 1979 film Tess, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Ubervilles. In his film, Polanski departs from the source material in the way it depicts Tess’ discovery that her letter to Angel Clare has not been read. Livingston writes: ‘While this aspect of Polanski’s film does not exemplify perfect fidelity to the source – Polanski in fact diverges from and surpasses Hardy here – it does exemplify the pertinence of source/adaptation comparisons …’9 According to Livingston, fidelity is always relevant as a critical criterion, but it is not always desirable.