FROM REVERENCE TO REFERENCE: RETHINKING CONTEMPORARY CROSS-MEDIA ADAPTATION By TANIA DARLINGTON A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2014 © 2014 Tania Darlington To Lorelei Without your faith in me, I would not have made it this far. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project has been a labor of love, but one that truly would not have gotten far past page one without the help of the many people who supported me and pushed me to keep going. I would like to thank Scott Nygren, who started this project with me and shared his limitless patience and insight for most of its duration; I am sorry he cannot be here to see me finish it. I would also like to thank my dissertation supervisor, Barbara Mennel, whose generosity with her time and her feedback have inspired me to be a better writer, student, and teacher. I have also been blessed with wonderful committee members—Kenneth Kidd, Judith Page, and Jack Stenner—whose kindness and flexibility have made this process shockingly painless. Though he hasn't been my teacher or my advisor in many years, I also must thank Aiping Zhang, who has been my champion and source of encouragement for the majority of my academic career. This project also would never have been possible without my mother, Sharlyn Swofford, and my daughter, Lorelei Chamberlain. No matter how much I fretted over my ability to complete this work, both had unwavering faith that I would finish. They supported me through the most difficult challenges, and I am glad I can share this accomplishment with them. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................. 7 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 1 FROM REVERENCE TO REFERENCE ................................................................. 10 The Tradition of Nostalgia ....................................................................................... 10 Fans and Adaptation ............................................................................................... 15 Database Consumption .......................................................................................... 20 A Referential Model of Adaptation .......................................................................... 25 Breadth ............................................................................................................. 25 Attitude ............................................................................................................. 27 Relationships .................................................................................................... 28 Hindsight .......................................................................................................... 30 Currency ........................................................................................................... 30 Boundaries ....................................................................................................... 31 Project Overview ..................................................................................................... 33 2 THE PERSISTENCE OF DARCY: MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS AND JANE AUSTEN FANDOM ................................................................................................. 37 Janeites and Media Fandom ................................................................................... 37 Adjudicating Austen: Fan-Scholars and Scholar-Fans ............................................ 45 Pride, Prejudice, and Predominance ...................................................................... 52 The Darcy Effect ..................................................................................................... 56 Navigating Nostalgia ............................................................................................... 61 Playing with the Austen Universe ..................................................................... 65 Yesterday's Novel and Today's Novel .............................................................. 67 3 "THE GREAT GAME": REFERENTIALITY AS PLAY IN CONTEMPORARY SHERLOCK HOLMES ADAPTATIONS .................................................................. 71 The Question of Ownership .................................................................................... 72 Holmes and Watson for a New Generation ............................................................. 74 The Commercial Adaptations .................................................................................. 77 Fan Adaptations ...................................................................................................... 79 The Referential Holmes .......................................................................................... 85 A Change in Attitude ........................................................................................ 87 A Sherlock for All Seasons ............................................................................... 90 Viewers at Play ................................................................................................. 94 5 Slashing Sherlock ........................................................................................... 100 4 FROM REFERENCE TO REHASH: A TALE OF TWO STAR TREKS ................. 111 What is Star Trek?: Canon, Timeline, and Fanon ................................................. 112 The Commercial Output ................................................................................. 113 Fans and Fan Activity ..................................................................................... 116 Rebooting the Franchise ....................................................................................... 119 Star Trek (2009): New Frontiers ........................................................................... 120 Playing with the Final Frontier ........................................................................ 121 Adapting the Franchise .................................................................................. 123 Romancing the Crew ...................................................................................... 125 The Triumph of Khan ............................................................................................ 126 The Seeds of Wrath ....................................................................................... 127 The Anatomy of a Fan Hit ............................................................................... 132 The Wrath of Fans ................................................................................................ 138 Where Have All the Women Gone? ............................................................... 140 The Whitewashing of Khan Noonien Singh .................................................... 143 The Perils of Fidelity ....................................................................................... 147 5 THE RELEVANCE OF REFERENCE ................................................................... 152 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 156 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 165 6 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DS9 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DWG Derbyshire Writer’s Guild ENT Star Trek: Enterprise P&P Pride and Prejudice P&P0 Pride and Prejudice (1940), Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier P&P1 Pride and Prejudice (1980), Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul P&P2 Pride and Prejudice (1995) Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth SH Sherlock Holmes (2009) SH:GOS Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows ST09 Star Trek (2009) STID Star Trek: Into Darkness TAS Star Trek: The Animated Series TMP Star Trek: The Motion Picture TNG Star Trek: The Next Generation TOS Star Trek: The Original Series VOY Star Trek: Voyager Wrath Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 7 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy FROM REVERENCE TO REFERENCE: RETHINKING CONTEMPORARY CROSS-MEDIA ADAPTATION By Tania Darlington December 2014 Chair: Barbara Caroline Mennel Major: English Adaptation scholars have spent much of the last several decades searching for ways to distance themselves from fidelity criticism and strictly comparative approaches. Nevertheless, the issue of faithfulness to the original tends to underscore much of contemporary adaptation studies and is even enjoying in a new renaissance in critical anthologies such as McCabe, Murray, and Warner's True to the Spirit: Film Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity. Commercial adaptations themselves, conversely, are often taking greater liberties with their source texts, engaging in the kind of referential play that has long marked fan consumption and adaptation. To break away from the privileging of the original, then, adaptation studies would benefit from viewing adapted works through the lens of fans and fandom scholars. This dissertation posits an approach to adaptation studies rooted in Hiroki Azuma's database model of otaku (fan) consumption, which decentralizes the originary work