Origin Of Cinematic Representation Of Literature (Final)

Hello friends here I am back with continuation  post of adaptations, here I am explaining you the remain points so please stay with me and like and comment for my post bcoz it will help me to improve and more beneficially represent the information to you.

The next points are given below:

7) Adapters are Interpreters and Creators

           Hutcheon states very good points in her book A Theory of Adaptation. She says there are many forms of adaptations and each producer will adapt an original text in his own unique way. Producers can change the story to fit the new genre or put a new twist that will keep the audience interested. Hutcheon explains the elements that should be adapted. For instance, she states that themes are easy to be adapted across the different genres. Characters are easily transported because they are such a big part of the original work. The ending or conclusion of the adaptation can be totally altered.  Changing the ending can really set apart the adaptation making it very distinctive. In the process of adaptation, she says that the adapters take on a big responsibility because they have possession of another author’s story. The adapters have to be “first interpreters and then creators”. 

8) The Story, Theme and Character are the Common Denominators of the Adaptation Theories

          Most theories of adaptation assume that the story is the common denominator, the core of transposition across different genres. It deals with different modes of engagement - narrating, performing and interactive. Besides, theme is the easiest element for framing contexts.  Moreover, character can be transported from one text to another, from one medium to another medium.  Psychological development is a part of the narrative and dramatic arc when character is the focus of adaptation.      

9) Adaptation - a Literary Heresy?

          Hutcheon says that adaptation commits a literary heresy that form (expression) and content (ideas) can be separated. To any media scholar, form and content are inextricably tied together, thus, adaptations provide a major threat and challenge, because to take them seriously suggests that form and content can be somehow taken apart. This raises another difficult question: what is the content of an adaptation? What is it that is actually adapted? One might consider this to be the “spirit” or “tone” of a work. Adapting a work to be faithful to the spirit may justify changes to the letter or structure in the adaptation. According to pragmatic perspective, the content of adaptations is (or should be) the world of the adapted text. 

10) Adaptation and Intertextuality

             There is an issue of intertextuality when the reader is familiar with the original text. There can become a corpus of adaptations.  There are series of adaptations, as Hutcheon mentions, such as Dracula films as well as Jane Austen’s works. These works are “multilaminated” and they are referential to other texts and these references form part of the text’s identity as a node within a network of connected texts. Intertextuality is an inevitable thread in the process of film adaptation.  Intertextuality, a term invented by Julia Kristeva, uses to signify the multiple ways in which a literary text is framed out of the other text, by means of its open or covert citations and allusions, its repetitions, transformations as well as its impressions of the formal and informal characteristics.  In Word, Dialogue, and Novel, Kristeva draws the term ‘intertextuality’ from her discussion of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the polyphonic novel.  Kristeva’s definition of ‘intertextuality’ clearly stresses that any text is in fact ‘intertext’ because it is an intersection of a number of other texts.

11) Adaptation and Readers Engagement

           A final dimension, in adaptations, is the reader’s engagement, their immersion. Readers engage with adaptations with different modes of engagement. Adaptations are frequently “indigenized” into new cultures. As far as the artistic factors are concerned, it should be noted that a piece of literature is a single-track medium because it communicates through words only and film has five tracks namely 1. Theatrical performance, 2.Words, 3.Music, 4.Sound effects and 5. Photographic images. When texts contribute images to imageless works, they permanently change the reader’s experience of the text. For example, in the film Laila Majnu (1976: Harnam Singh Rawail), the male lover has been turned as ‘majnu’ in his childhood.  Actually, this is not correct but it is a deviation.  His real name was Qays and he intensely loved Layla and the intensity of love practically made him mad and, thus, he was called ‘majnun’.  This is witnessed, nowadays, in India and elsewhere. 

12) Art film and Commercial Film

               However, one should make a distinction between an art film and a commercial one; where the director communicates a moral or social message in an art film.  The best example is Shyam Benegal’s film Mandi (1983) clearly portrays the ups and downs in the lives of the Indian dancers.  The film portrays how the dancers become the ‘commodities’ (cheez) of the ‘market’ (mandi).  It is an art film. Normally, the production units are always captivated by the material which is likely to be accepted by the masses.  Such commercial attitude of sowing a few amounts and reaping a vast profit is commonly seen all over the world.  The increasing commercial aspects, sometimes, pave the way for a number of rumours, for example, the individual life of the film artist also becomes a matter of discussion in the leading film magazines. The film is made popular by hook or crook.  Such units have practically no relation with the authenticity of the information, for example, Lai Bhari (2014). While adapting the any piece of art, the director / the producer has to decide whether he wants to create commercial film or art film.   

13) Conclusion

              According to its dictionary meaning, "to adapt" is to adjust, to alter and to make suitable.  This can be done in many number of ways.  It is a repetition also but it is a repetition without replication.  It is an acknowledged transposition of a renowned work, it is a creative and an interpretive act of  appropriation and an intertextual engagement.  Therefore, an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative - a work that is secondary without being secondary. 

                                                       

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