UFR LETTRES, LANGUES ET CIVILISATIONS ETRANGERES DEPARTEMENT DES ETUDES DU MONDE ANGLOPHONES Master 2 Recherche 2017-2018 HYPERFILMICITY AND AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION: Dubbing the Live-Action Remakes of Disney Animated Classics. Mémoire présenté par Eugénie Périn Sous la direction de Laurent Mellet Professeur à l’Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès Acknowledgements All my gratitude goes to Laurent Mellet for his guidance, his open spirit and his wise suggestions that were indispensable for the completion of this thesis. I would also like to thank my mother, Mercédès Marion, for her support and for passing onto me her love for cinema. But most importantly for taking me to the movie theatre in December 1997, when I was three years old, to see Le Bossu De Notre Dame, an animated film and French voices that would mark me for life. Table des matières Introduction. ............................................................................................................................................ 3 I. Hypotexts, hypofilms and hyperfilms. ................................................................................................ 11 A) Adaptation and appropritation : the Disneyfication of hypotexts. ........................................... 12 B) Reinterpretive remakes: canonising and using Disney as raw material. ................................... 23 II. Visual and textual references: a Disney memory game. ................................................................... 36 A) Visual references: seeing Disney. .............................................................................................. 39 B) Textual/verbal references: hearing Disney. .............................................................................. 60 III. Translating and re-translating, dubbing and redubbing: creating a French Disney. ........................ 73 A) Dubbing and redubbing the Disney animated films. ................................................................. 75 B) Translating textual/verbal hyperfilmic references, the assertion of a French Disney. ............. 89 Conclusion. .......................................................................................................................................... 110 Appendix. ............................................................................................................................................. 118 Appendix 1: ...................................................................................................................................... 118 Appendix 2: ...................................................................................................................................... 120 Appendix 3: ...................................................................................................................................... 122 Appendix 4 : ..................................................................................................................................... 123 Appendix 5: ...................................................................................................................................... 126 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 131 Filmography ......................................................................................................................................... 136 Introduction. The release of Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent in 2014 marked the beginning of a new trend in Disney films: the remaking of the Disney animated films into their live-action versions. While an animated film is produced by the photographing of gradually changing drawings, a live-action film is the filming of real people, animal or objects. The technical evolutions cinema has known over the sixty years that have passed since the animated films Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book1 were first released have led to the mutations of the said films. Just as adaptation is the phenomenon of evolution and mutation that species undergo over time to be better suited to their environment, these animated films have been (re)adapted to better fit a new cinematic, aesthetic and sociological context, to become the live-action films Maleficent, Cinderella and The Jungle Book.2 It must be reminded that these new films are adapted from animated films that are themselves adaptations of canonical texts of Western literature and culture: Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon and La Belle Au Bois Dormant; The Brothers Grimm’s Aschenputtel (Cinderella) and Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty) and Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book.3 As Julie Sanders observes “Adaptation both appear to require and to perpetuate the existence of a canon, although it may lead to its ongoing reformulation and expansion.” (2015:8) Following Sanders idea, it can be argued that the tales of Perrault, The Brothers Grimm and Kipling have acquired their status of canonical texts through their adaptations into films. In addition, it would appear that Walt Disney’s adaptations of literary canons have in turn become canons themselves. The case of the Walt Disney’s animated films canonisation is particular in the sense that it was the producer’s true intention to revolutionise the world of cinema and to produce motion pictures that would become works of reference. A process of self-canonisation that Dick Tomasovic, in his article “Stratégies d’auto-canonisation: le cas Walt Disney,” explains as follows: “Il s’agirait pour ces visionnaires de comprendre au mieux leur position dans l’histoire des images avec la prétention […] d’y créer un rupture telle que leur œuvre pourrait devenir un nouveau modèle de films, un nouveau point de référence […] soit autant de notions que l’on peut voir généralement rassemblées sous le 1 Sleeping Beauty 1959 dir. Clyde Geronimi; Cinderella 1950 dir.Clyde Geronimi; The Jungle Book 1967 dir.Wolfgang Reitherman. 2 Maleficent 2014 dir.Robert Stromberg; Cinderella 2015 dir.Kenneth Brannagh; The Jungle Book 2016 dir.Jon Favreau 3 Charles Perrault’s La Belle Au Bois Dormant, 1697; The Grimm Brothers’ Dornröschen 1812; Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon, 1697; Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, 1894. 3 terme de ‘canon.’” Walt Disney’s animated short film Steamboat Willie (1928) is a parody of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr.4 but most importantly it is the very first cartoon with fully synchronised sounds and images. Walt Disney did not revolutionise the world of cinema but rather understood the great appeal sound films represented and decided to produce animated films that would correspond to the audience’s expectations. Steamboat Willie encountered great success and marked the norms that would rule animation: the importance of synchronisation of sounds and images. Walt Disney animated films have managed to impose themselves as a film genre: “Non seulement Disney vainquit la concurrence, mais il l’effaça. Dans la conscience des spectateurs il fut accepté comme l’unique modèle possible de l’animation. Dessin annimé et dessin disneyen ne firent qu’un.” (Bendazzi 1991:114 emphasis added) This strategy of self-canonisation, and this will to impose Disney films as a film genre in their own right is particularly evident in view of the name given to the whole of Disney animated films: “Disney Animated Classics.” The term “classic” was attributed by the Disney Studios themselves when distributing the animated films on videos in the 1980’s. Therefore asserting the studios’ agenda of self-canonisation of their works, as The Oxford English Dictionaries give two definitions of the noun “classic”: “a work of art of recognised and established value” and “a thing which is memorable and a very good example of its kind.” The live-action films Maleficent, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book bear great similarities to the animated adaptations of Perrault’s, Kipling’s and the Brothers Grimm’s works, rather than to the literary texts themselves. Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and The Jungle Book represent the main inspirations for the three live-action films studied here, thus transforming the animated films into blueprints. In their narrative structures, their aesthetics and even soundtracks, the animated and live- action Disney productions are highly similar. Such similitudes between different filmic productions aim at linking them together, and obviously state that the live-action films Maleficent, Cinderella and The Jungle Book are remakes of the Disney animated films. To follow Julie Sanders idea on adaptation and canonisation once more, the remakes assert that Disney animated films have become canons, for they are used as raw material for new artistic creations. But remaking the animated films also further demonstrate the studios enterprise of self-canonisation, as it is indeed the Disney Studios themselves that produce the live-action versions of their own animated films. Disney’s animated films are treated as original works the live-action films make references to. They are therefore hypofilms. Whereas the live-action films are referents, and thus constitute hyperfilms. The hyperfilms are structured around similarities but also differences with the hypofilms. The remodelling of previous films offers new interpretations of their message while at the same time keep their memory vivid. In that regard, the process of remaking a film is highly similar to the adaptation process for “an adaptation is not vampiric 4 Steamboat Bill Jr. 1928 dir.Buster