Victorian Literature, Hollywood International, and Postcolonial Film
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2011 Framing empire: Victorian literature, Hollywood international, and postcolonial film adaptation Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hollyfield, Jerod Ra'Del, "Framing empire: Victorian literature, Hollywood international, and postcolonial film adaptation" (2011). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2326. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2326 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. FRAMING EMPIRE: VICTORIAN LITERATURE, HOLLYWOOD INTERNATIONAL, AND POSTCOLONIAL FILM ADAPTATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Jerod Ra‘Del Hollyfield B.S., University of Tennessee, 2005 M.A., University of Tennessee, 2007 May 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe my deepest gratitude to my director, Professor Pallavi Rastogi, as well as the other members of my dissertation committee, Professors Carl Freedman, John May, and Sharon Aronofsky Weltman. Without their suggestions, directions, and wealth of knowledge, this dissertation would not have been possible. I am also grateful to English department graduate secretary Rhonda Amis, who has been central to the completion of this project with her knowledge of university protocol, invaluable advice, and excellent conversation. In addition, I would like to thank the graduate school‘s dissertation editor, Susanna Dixon, for her editorial feedback. Since an undertaking as involved as a dissertation takes years to come to fruition, I would also like to thank Professors Charles Maland, Urmila Seshagiri, Christine Holmlund, Misty Anderson, and William Larsen at the University of Tennessee who first gave me the confidence to both develop this project and to pursue further graduate study in English and film. Finally, I thank my parents, Cynthia and Jerry Hollyfield, for their unwavering support before, during, and beyond my past six years of graduate study. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................ii ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION: ACCENTED SLANTS, HOLLYWOOD GENRES: AN INTERFIDELITY APPROACH TO ADAPTATION THEORY............................................................................................1 1. COLONIAL DISCOURSE, GEORGE STEVENS‘S GUNGA DIN, AND THE HOLLYWOOD STUDIO SYSTEM.................................................................................22 2. HYBRID EMPIRES: HOLLYWOOD CONVENTION AND THE SETTLER COLONY IN GUY MADDIN‘S DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY........49 3. DEFINING NEVERLAND: P. J. HOGAN, J. M. BARRIE, AND PETER PAN AS ALLEGORY OF EMPIRE................................................................................................87 4. IMPERIAL VANITIES: MIRA NAIR, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, AND ANGLO-INDIAN CULTURAL COMMODITY IN VANITY FAIR.....................119 5. EPIC MULTITUDES: POSTCOLONIAL GENRE POLITICS IN SHEKHAR KAPUR‘S THE FOUR FEATHERS. ..........................................................149 6. THREE-WORLDS THEORY CHUTNEY: OLIVER TWIST AS GLOBAL ORPHAN IN TIM GREENE‘S BOY CALLED TWIST...................................................183 CONCLUSION: FROM RESISTANCE TO REAPPROPRIATION IN OLIVER TWIST, Q&A, AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.........................................................206 NOTES.............................................................................................................................231 REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................237 VITA................................................................................................................................252 iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines how adaptations of Victorian literature made in Hollywood by postcolonial filmmakers contend with the legacy of British imperialism and Hollywood‘s role as a multinational corporate entity. Highlighting the increased number of postcolonial filmmakers adapting Victorian literature in Hollywood, the project demonstrates how film adaptation has become a strategy for, in the words of Salman Rushdie, ―writing back‖ to imperial powers. Placing such adaptations of Victorian literature within the tradition of postcolonial rewritings of classic British texts, I bridge fidelity criticism, the auteur theory, and contrapuntal readings of source texts with studies of political economy in order to position Hollywood cinema as a location of past and present imperialisms. The first chapter examines George Stevens‘s Gunga Din, emphasizing how the film demonstrates a break in the American valorization of British culture. I then trace the global dominance of Hollywood film conventions through my discussion of Guy Maddin‘s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary. The next chapters engage with how three postcolonial adaptations address the legacies of the British Empire and Hollywood. Analyzing P. J. Hogan‘s Peter Pan, Mira Nair‘s Vanity Fair, and Shekhar Kapur‘s The Four Feathers, the chapters discuss how the filmmakers maintain fidelity to source texts to imbue the narratives with the perspectives of their nations of origin. The final chapters discuss two reworkings of Oliver Twist—Tim Greene‘s Boy Called Twist (2004) and Danny Boyle‘s Slumdog Millionaire (2008) to demonstrate the influence of positionality on adaptation as Hollywood International embarks on a globalized business model that controls representations of postcolonial nations. iv INTRODUCTION: ACCENTED SLANTS, HOLLYWOOD GENRES: AN INTERFIDELITY APPROACH TO ADAPTATION THEORY In the wake of British decolonization, Hollywood has seen an influx of filmmakers from former colonized territories forging successful Hollywood careers after achieving notoriety in their homelands, including: Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, Gavin Hood, Neil Jordan, Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong, George Miller, Baz Luhrmann, Jane Campion, John Woo, and Kar Wai Wong. Considering the political thrust of career- cementing films such as Australian Weir‘s meditation on urban aboriginals in The Last Wave (1977) and New Zealander Campion‘s sexualized allegories Sweetie (1989) and The Piano (1993), such postcolonial filmmakers who made the transition to Hollywood find themselves in a unique position to address not only the lingering influence of European colonialism on their nations of origin but also to negotiate the transnational corporate imperialism through their participation in and often subversive use of Hollywood filmmaking. For such filmmakers, maintaining the political sensibilities during the transition from national cinema to Hollywood allowed them to extend their postcolonial critique to an international scale. However, while such filmmakers have retained their auteur status in Hollywood, several have opted to undertake film adaptations of British literature over the past two decades, frequently choosing the Victorian literature of Britain‘s imperial century as their source texts as a way to integrate the perspectives of their homelands into works that stereotype or ignore the presence of the colonized in a manner similar to a wide array of postcolonial texts such as Jean Rhys‘s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Tayeb Salih‘s Season of Migration to the North (1966), J.M Coetzee‘s Foe (1986), and Peter Carey‘s Jack Maggs (1997) that in the words of Salman Rushdie ―write back‖ to the imperial centre. In 1 addition, such postcolonial filmmakers rewrite and reappropriate Empire literature within an industry that represents the cultural arm of the transnational corporate Empire central to contemporary imperialism. As a result, these adaptations deserve scrutiny as useful texts in understanding how postcolonial nations contend with the legacy of colonialism while firmly rooted in the imperial tendencies of global capitalism. This project discusses how postcolonial filmmakers adapting Victorian novels for Hollywood studios contend with the legacies of British colonialism while addressing Hollywood‘s cultural and economic influence in the globalized world. Through my work, I seek to highlight the importance of such adaptations to the fields of postcolonial, film, and Victorian studies. In addition, I hope to fill the gaps in previous critical work on the relationship between postcolonial studies and film adaptations of Victorian novels largely because, aside from brief mentions in texts such as Linda Hutcheon‘s A Theory of Adaptation (2006) and appearances on director filmographies in works on national and diasporic cinemas, such adaptations have either been relatively ignored by the academic community or, in the case of films like Peter Jackson‘s Joseph Conrad-inspired 2005 remake of King Kong, not considered adaptations at all. While contemporary trends in international