“Perhaps one way to think about unsuccessful adaptations is not in terms of infidelity to a prior text, but in terms of a lack of the creativity and skill to make the text one’s own and thus autonomous.” (Hutcheon, 2006, 21)
The concept of authorship is of a contentious nature, often posing as a subject of debate in the adaptation process. The process we speak of is arguably collaborative in which more than one individual holds a claim of authority over the adaptation. Head-to-head, the author and the auteur compete, facing the subjects of authorship and fidelity. This ‘adaptation’ I speak of is by no means a new style of filmmaking. The critically acclaimed British director, Alfred Hitchcock, adapted his first film in 1925, The Pleasure Garden. But what is adaptation? We’re most interested in adaptation as a process of transforming a pre-existing text into an entirely new medium, in this case, novel to film. An adaptation must not be a complete verbatim copy of the source however, as film scholar, Linda Hutcheon observes “Adaptation is repetition, but repetition without replication.” (2006, 7) We’ll explore a more detailed definition of adaptation later.
My goal is to uncover the importance of authorship and fidelity in the field of adaptation, seeking to understand their usefulness in determining the auteur’s right to hold ownership over pre-existing material. What’s significant about these two factors, is that they are dichotomous and incompatible, yet these components contribute to the same goal. This dissertation is organised into three chapters, each of which outline the major agents of adaptation, allowing us to understand their influence in filmmaking.
Furthermore, I offer a counter-argument that arguably negates the authorship that belongs to both auteur and author, appearing in the form of intertextuality. Intertextuality suggests a relationship between more than one medium: a means in which one author references others. Extensive research has shown that film adaptation is an iterative process, meaning every story or theme is an iteration of previous literature. French essayist Roland Barthes communicates that a text can be interpreted in any chosen way, shaped by the reader’s perspective. Barthes contests, “The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture.” (1967, 3) meaning that any piece of literature ceases to be entirely original, as they’re unequivocally influenced by a range of pre-existing factors. What’s significant about my argument is that it considers ownership not belonging to either author or auteur; the two pillars of this dissertation, in contrast to most studies failing to consider this perspective as an actuality.
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