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- Volume 13, Issue 1, 2020
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2020
Volume 13, Issue 1, 2020
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Adaptation, translation and indeterminacy in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up: Towards a third space of representation
More LessAbstractMichelangelo Antonioni’s films are rarely associated with translation and adaptation. Yet, his work consistently explores the very essence of images, their ambiguous relation to reality and the deceptive nature of perception. It is a cinema of uncertainty par excellence, thus of translation; at least, a conception of translation (and adaptation) that does not solely rely on principles of faithfulness, transparency and systematic semiotics. This article thus proposes to look at one of Antonioni’s most compelling films, Blow-Up, through the prism of indeterminacy. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze’s time-image to present the film as a hermeneutic event that opens up a third space of representation, this article examines the indeterminacy at the heart of Blow-Up on two levels. As a film adaptation, it first considers how Antonioni visually translates the indeterminacy of Julio Cortázar’s short story. This preliminary reading then leads to a sustained attempt at exploring Blow-Up’s filmic landscape, with the view to show how the indeterminacy running through Antonioni’s aesthetics becomes itself a form of translation.
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‘These are modern times’: Nostalgia and the adaptation of history in Billy Morrissette’s Scotland, PA
More LessAbstractSet in America in the 1970s, Billy Morrissette’s 2001 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Scotland, PA, waivers between nostalgia and critique. In order to understand the film’s conflicting attitudes towards the era in which it is set and to appreciate how adaptations, generally, often feel ambivalent about their past(s), this essay begins by discussing Scotland, PA’s construction of the 1970s. In an effort to answer Lynne Bradley’s call for ‘a new model’ of modern adaptation, seeing it as ‘a complex double gesture’, the essay discusses how although Scotland, PA appears to illustrate many of the qualities of what Fredric Jameson has called the nostalgia film, this categorization of the adaptation neither accounts for its use of irony nor for the inherently complex nature of nostalgia. Ultimately, Scotland, PA’s ambivalence about history, the essay proposes, encourages us to conceive of the relationship between source/past and adaptation/present as a site of complex, dynamic negotiations rather than a static dichotomy that obliges us to choose between an adaptation’s acceptance or rejection of its forebears.
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Adapting social change: Swedish crime fiction as a medium for system correction
By Mads LarsenAbstractNordic Noir’s progenitor The Man on the Balcony from 1967 critiques social democracy from a Marxist viewpoint. The novel’s 1993 film adaptation, however, reuses the same crime to challenge neo-liberal globalization. From a story perspective, this is a drastic deviation from ideological fidelity. But a systems perspective shows that the adaptation adheres to functional fidelity for crime fiction as a medium for social discourse. By examining how the two works engage their respective eras’ contemporary issues, we see how Nordic Noir has become a mediator of error correction for Sweden as a social system. Adaptations are therefore expected to show greater fidelity to format than to content, which a systems approach can help facilitate. This perspective also suggests that our nation states – as we lose shared arenas for cultural discourse – will adapt less effectively to changes because it becomes harder to agree on what is real and what is fake.
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Getting in touch with our inner sadistic, bloodthirsty child: Adapting Game of Thrones for the adult colouring book market
More LessAbstractAdult colouring books have become a permanent fixture in shops across the globe. These books began as a way of marketing illustrators’ work but have expanded to become part of the media franchising industry. This article will explore the two licensed colouring books created for Game of Thrones and the news media response to them. This response is varied, with much criticism of this kind of licensed product which appears to exist as potentially unimaginative Christmas presents. It will explore how these colouring books act as both an adaptation and how they are an important part of the modern media franchising industry. This kind of product is considered as an important way to keep licensed properties in the public eye, particularly when they are in between television seasons. When it comes to Game of Thrones colouring books there are a number of common themes in news media, such as the idea that colouring such images is not a route to mindfulness, and that these books act as a substitute for the ‘real thing’.
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The ‘insectuous’ brothers: Karel Čapek’s and Jan Švankmajer’s avantgardism(s) and the limits of humanism
More LessAbstractJan Švankmajer’s recent Insect (Hmyz, 2018) is a work of film adaptation which functions as both an homage to Karel (and Josef) Čapek’s problematic avant-gardism and critique of some of the Čapek brothers’ own compromises during the production of their play, From the Life of the Insects (Ze života hmyzu, 1922). In the light of Švankmajer’s homage and critique, the article revisits Čapek’s avant-gardism and seeks to recuperate some of the more radical, and easily overlooked, aspects in Čapek’s work in the early 1920s. It goes on to discuss Švankmajer’s own career of multiple film adaptations, before concluding with a critical evaluation of his latest (and arguably last) Čapek-inspired film, read within the context of Švankmajer’s liberational cinematic project.
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From speakability to hypothetical mise en scène: A Chinese rendition of monologues from Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus from page to stage
By Yichen YangAbstractIn order to develop a deeper understanding of speakability and its connection to the actual practice of stage translation, this study explores the rendition of Salieri’s monologues in the 1986 Beijing production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. The study finds that speakability does not manifest itself in specific stylistic forms; nor would it be determined by the adoption of any particular translation strategy. Rather, its conceptualization could be deeply embedded in the translator’s reading of the given dramatic roles and circumstances. This would make the translated playtext a so-called ‘hypothetical performance text’ incorporated with the translator’s own hypothetical mise en scène. The process of testing speakability through the actor’s verbalization is also one where the translator’s hypothetical mise en scène is evaluated. By tracking the verbal changes made from page to stage, this study shows how the process could be influenced by the negotiation with and between the translational and the theatrical norms governing the different phases of the production, and how a stage translator could make greater contribution to the process.
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Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History, John Wyver (2019)
By Coen HeijesAbstractScreening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History, John Wyver (2019)
London and New York: The Arden Shakespeare, 288 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-35000-658-4, h/bk, £67.50; ISBN 978-1-35000-659-1, e/bk, £64.80
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Adaptations in the Franchise Era, 2001–16, Kyle Meikle (2019)
More LessAbstractAdaptations in the Franchise Era, 2001–16, Kyle Meikle (2019)
New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 181 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-50131-872-6, p/bk, £19.99
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 17 (2024)
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Volume 16 (2023)
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Volume 15 (2022)
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Volume 14 (2021)
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Volume 13 (2020)
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Volume 12 (2019)
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Volume 11 (2018)
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Volume 10 (2017)
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Volume 9 (2016)
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Volume 8 (2015)
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Volume 7 (2013 - 2014)
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Volume 6 (2013)
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Volume 5 (2012)
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Volume 4 (2011)
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Volume 3 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 2 (2009)
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Volume 1 (2007 - 2009)
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Editorial
Authors: Richard Hand and Katja Krebs
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