Journal of Scandinavian Cinema - Adaptations in Contemporary Scandinavian Screen Cultures, Mar 2021

While Harry Martinson’s epic space poem Aniara (1956) has received little attention outside Sweden over the last half-century, several new adaptations have appeared in recent years, most notably the 2018 science fiction film Aniara. This article explores the reason for this renewed interest and argues that, in addition to ecocritical aspects, it is the interest in human–machine relations that has contributed to the rediscovery. Drawing on Jane Bennett’s notion of thing-power, the article focuses on the spaceship Aniara’s artificial intelligence, Mima. Both in Martinson’s text and the film adaptation, Mima is depicted as a sentient machine that does not show empathy with suffering humans but rather with the suffering of nature, epitomized in crying stones. Analysing the motif of the crying stones in more detail, the article seeks to contribute to the discussion about emotional attachment between humans, technology and nature.

The film Ég man þig (I Remember You) by Óskar Þór Axelsson (2017) is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir from 2010. This article focuses on the film’s depiction of the haunted house, especially on how the empty and mouldy space represents the main characters’ lost future.

The third adaptation of The Unknown Soldier premiered during the celebration of the centennial anniversary of Finland’s independence in 2017. The original novel by Väinö Linna was published in 1954. This article will set the story of the novel briefly in both historical and authorial contexts. Then the discussion concentrates on characteristics of spectatorship and observations about differences between the three film adaptations of the novel, the first directed by Edvin Laine (1955), the second by Rauni Mollberg (1985) and the most recent version, again some 30 years later, directed by Aku Louhimies (2017). Analysis of this film highlights differences from the earlier adaptations as well as additions and shifts in emphasis when compared to the novel, such as the role of the home front and the focus on particular characters, especially corporal Rokka.

This article is concerned with adaptation as a ‘process of in-betweenness’, a movement of connections, in which the ‘original’ work and adaptations are thought of through analogy, i.e. as similarities born from difference. The connections between two American versions of the story of Baby Jane – Henry Farrell’s novel, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1960) and Robert Aldrich’s film of the same title (1962) – and two Finnish versions – a novel by internationally acclaimed author Sofi Oksanen (2005) and a film directed by Katja Gauriloff (2019), both titled Baby Jane – are discussed emphasizing their narratological and thematic analogies. While the American versions focus on the relationship between two ageing sisters, the Finnish versions tell the lesbian love story of two young women living in contemporary Helsinki. In addition, the article comments on some conceptual questions, such as the relationship between appropriation, adaptation, intertextuality and transfictionality.

In this article, the authors outline arguments explaining the lasting success of the Czechoslovak and East German film Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973). Drawing on newer theories of adaptation, the article addresses the following questions: what mutation did the Cinderella narrative undergo and how did it influence the acceptance of the film adaptation in the Czech and Norwegian context? Are there any non-adaptive explanations for changes in the narrative that can be perceived as a ‘random drift’? How is the persistence of this particular adaptation supported in various cultural contexts? Can we speak about cross-cultural indigenization in the case of Three Wishes for Cinderella? The aim is also to explore the factors that contributed to this cultural phenomenon and to map the journey the adaptation underwent, including the role of NRK public TV and the role of the voice-over. Finally, we discuss whether this adaptation is truly a timeless phenomenon.

Editing the volume Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation with Linda Badley and Jaakko Seppälä made evident historical changes in the role of adaptation in Nordic audio-visual culture. An earlier generation of auteurs such as Aki Kaurismäki used adaptation to align themselves with aesthetic and philosophical bodies of texts, what we might call ‘networks of similarity’, following Luis M. García Mainar. In the rise of Nordic noir since the millennium, Nordic cinema and television’s networks of similarity change. The auteurs used adaptation to establish modernist originality of vision. In the current moment, this quality has diminished, and adaptation increasingly figures in broader, more densely cross-referential networks of similarity, of which Nordic noir is arguably an instantiation. These are defined by aesthetic and sociopolitical associations, more so than originality. These associations figure in practitioners’ and textual consumers’ use of response to and replication of the noir texts and their networks in a variety of media. This activity can be understood as a type of branding that aligns with attempts at national and regional branding.

This article analyses the adaptation process from the Danish relationship drama television series ‘Nikolaj and Julie’ (2002–03) to Love Is a Four-Letter Word, the NBC pilot and remake attempt (2015). This comparison is a prime example of autobiographical adaptation, in which the adaptation process can be closely intertwined with a desire to tell autobiographical stories. Using production studies and textual analysis, the article illustrates how Diana Son, the showrunner responsible for adapting the original format into the NBC version, rewrote the original script using a location, themes and characters largely inspired by her personal life and surroundings. The article ultimately argues that in format adaptation, research combining established theoretical frameworks and approaches with the idea of autobiographical adaptation is likely to be a fruitful endeavour in a great many cases.

The Norwegian web series Skam (2015–17) has been remade several times, but the American version Skam Austin (2018–19) has a particular standing as an adaptation because its first season was produced by the original showrunner. The article considers fans’ views of the choices made in the remake and the contextual shifts informing these choices, i.e. their views of the so-called cultural transduction. It argues that the fan discourse around Skam Austin thrives on discussing the transduction in itself, because long-standing fans dominate the discourse and because the show’s depictions of teenage life-worlds are expected to have high realistic ambitions. Comments from fans reveal that much of their enjoyment of Skam Austin resided in expectations about specific ‘remade moments’. Such moments typically express a spirit of social resistance and are, if successful, celebrated as iconic. In the politicized American media climate of the day, ‘remade moments’ that particularly engaged fans focused on representation issues concerning gender and race, such as intersectional identities and awareness about sexual harassment.