Hello!
Thank you for taking part in our activity today. We had fun. Sorry about the casualties…
Here is the pdf file for our project.
Enjoy!
-Andrew Knorr, Stephanie Moreno, Jacqueline Simpson
Author: jacquelinesimpson
Media Project #1: Stephanie Moreno, Andrew Knorr, Jacqueline Simpson
Weblog Post #2: Jacqueline Simpson
What struck me most about this article was the concept that “descent with modifications is essential” (446). I do not believe in discourse fidelity for the sake of fidelity: I think that adaptations will always be viewed as such when the original is known, and it makes far more sense to consider the adapted work as an original creation even if it has borrowed plot, characters, and themes from another source. Absolute fidelity is not possible, and it is not (as far as I can tell) the purpose of an adapted script. As English teachers who turn to adaptations of texts for use in our classrooms, do we really do so merely as a means of bypassing the text, or as scaffolding students towards a reading of the novel by helping them to visualize the language?
We choose these film adaptations precisely for the visualization, for the departures from what is directly given from the text—in short, we are already making the choice to present something to the class that must, by its very nature, be different on several levels from a reading of the text in its purest form. In recognizing that some stories hold universal appeal (as in the numerous examples of Shakespeare adaptations), why would the acknowledged appeal not lend itself to re-imaginings in forms less obvious than near-faithful reproductions? In the case of Shakespeare, for example, all adaptations will by nature be reinventions as the script moves from theatre to film. In the most basic adaptations, the visual language changes from intended stage directions to the language of films, and this goes beyond fidelity to language and plot. In class we have discussed the need for teaching a meta-language for new forms of text/media/forms of literacy. In watching Ernesto’s presentation today, we considered how the language we are already teaching our students—the language associated with writing in its rhetorical and literary forms—is the same language that students can apply to a critical reading of a piece of visual media, as they analyze the language of an image and the strategies that the author has used. The same strategies that we teach for reading and writing are rarely applied to readings of visuals, and we are missing an opportunity to teach this crucial form of literacy when we present films as being secondary to plays or novels, and as imperfect works that will always be deficient for what they lack (rather than appreciated for what they offer). Not only are specific readings of specific texts limiting in this sense, they are also blind to the concept of how a text such as a play is meant to appear and—more importantly, how it can appear.
Baz Luhrmann’s “William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet” is a film that is taught almost as often as it is criticized. I have not met a single English teacher who has used the film as an independently interesting piece of film—it is only in adjunct to the study of the play, and it is inspected for its differences and similarities to a pointless degree. We are not told to teach film, many of us are not comfortable doing it, and it is perhaps due to this that we can have a narrow consideration of the possibilities of film as a valid literary form, worth studying in the English classroom. Like Copolla’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Luhrmann’s film is deliberately referencing the original and the author of that work while adding in extra-textual details, conjectures, and re-imagined elements. The title suggests fidelity to the original, but it is more of an homage than a direct retelling. In cases of adaptation, the word “inspiration” is too easily misread or ignored.
Bortolotti, G. and Hutcheon, L. (2007). On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse and “Success” — Biologically. New Literary History, 38(3), pp. 443-458.
Seminar Prompt
Andrew Knorr, Stephanie Moreno, Jacqueline Simpson, Christina Relkov
Bortolotti, G. and Hutcheon, L. (2007). On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse and “Success” — Biologically. New Literary History, 38(3), pp. 443-458.
In this discussion, we will summarize and discuss the argument put forth by Bortolli and Hutcheon, considering how this theory relates to our practice as English teachers. We will lead the class through an activity using Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” as a means of diagnosing our own theories of adaptation, namely how and in what ways we feel adaptations should or should not be faithful to the original.
To begin, consider this list of “The 15 Most Successful Book to Movie Adaptations”:
http://filmproductionschools.org/2012/top-15-most-successful-book-to-movie-adaptations/
The Argument: The success of an adaptation should not be defined by how faithful it is to the original
The article we will be presenting on, by Bortolotti and Hutcheon, discusses the idea of similarities between biological adaptation and cultural (or narrative) adaptation. The authors present a homology – that both biological adaptation and cultural adaptation are processes of replication that evolve with changing environments and should not necessarily be judged by their faithfulness to their source. They argue that this perspective can lead to new questions and answers about narrative adaptation theory – including the cultural equivalent of the most basic question asked in biology, why does life exist in so many forms?…Why do the same stories exist in such a startling array of forms?
Discussion Questions:
- Overall, in the English classroom, when we choose what to show in classrooms, are we looking merely for whatever video is closest to the original text?
- What is the argument to for using whole movies vs. just clips of movies?
- Should English teachers take on the role of teaching film studies (on their own or in conjunction with texts)?
Next, Consider:
- As adaptations descend from their original in varying degrees, are cries against reinterpretation a reflection of personal aesthetic tastes, or can we view the response as politicized? Are adaptations necessarily anti-canonical, or do they reinforce the canon by achieving relevance for a new audience? And are those who stand in opposition to these reinterpretations too heavily invested in a supposed integrity of the canon?
- As teachers of literature, are we doing the original works a disservice by allowing the deviated forms to be presented as equal to them?
- Do adaptations need to be authorized in order to be valid?
Activity:
Using the synopsis of Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” (and any knowledge of it that you may already have) – in your groups discuss how you would adapt this story to video form. Create a working storyboard, outlining how your adaptation would look, sound, and any other ideas that you think would be crucial to your adaptation. You will be pitching your film/television/webisode adaptation to the rest of the class, so be clear in describing how your adaptation will look.
Following the activity, and after having watched an adaptation of the story as a music video, consider the following points:
- What do you think of the adaptation we just watched?
- What would you have done differently in your own adaptation?
- Are there any other adaptations of this short story out there?
- In adapting the story to new media, are crucial elements lost? What can be gained from this sort of adaptation?
- Would you use something like this in your own classroom?
- What do you think Bortolotti and Hutcheon would have said about this adaptation?
Jacqueline Simpson, Weblog Entry #1
In the reading from July fourth, Messaris (1998) implies that interpreting visual cues and how we make meaning from them is essential in order to critically examine the world around us and, more specifically, the types of images we are presented with by media and popular culture. The act of viewing is not passive, yet visual literacy necessitates an awareness of how, exactly, we interact with visual space. Where “explicit relational indicators” are not present, Messaris implies that students (or all viewers) will not be able to critically assess the images and their responses to them. Alternatively, Frey and Fisher (2004) posit that students are able to make meaning from images that they are presented with, often critically interpreting them without explicit awareness or specific prompts to lead their thinking in response to an image. Without the explicit relational indicators that Messaris has identified, Frey and Fisher observe that students are able to create their own meaning and—as shown by students’ responses to images as writing prompts—they were presenting a critical analysis informed almost entirely by their own experiences and the knowledge they were already bringing into the classroom. In this sense, images support text as much as text supports image.
The positive outcome that Frey and Fisher identified from their study is that popular media allowed students to find a way into classroom literacy by inspiring interest and sparking imagination. Aside from developing writing techniques (largely creative writing techniques—the article does not suggest how or if popular media such as graphic novels and the internet could foster the development of formal writing, although it does suggest that comic books such as an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis can draw students into challenging works of literature), Frey and Fisher noted that students were also becoming “more knowledgeable consumers of ideas and information” (p. 24). By creating the links between words, image, and meaning for themselves, students were interacting with both text and image in a way that was “authentic,” as it brought their own ideas and experiences into examination through the construction of their narratives. While tradition forms of literacy were taught, they were not done so through remedial exercises. As a result, students were engaged in the writing process, and perhaps were more creative in their experimentations with both narrative and language.
The barriers identified by Frey and Fisher—that the content of graphic novels often barred them from the classroom, that there are issues of access—are likely familiar to anyone who has tried to bring forms of media that are not privileged forms or canonical (in the case of written text) into the classroom, and this problem would remain familiar despite research to suggest that students become more engaged when they are interacting with “real world” (rather than “school”) texts. The problem is as much administrative as it is logistical, although simple picture prompts could easily be brought into any classroom. A problem in accessing more texts or resources that engage multiple literacies is that findings such as “students were more engaged” are not quantitative, and traditional methods of teaching writing and reading prevail based on a notion that it produces the desired results (despite quantitative research to the contrary). I think that there is a shift towards recognizing the role visual literacy (as well as other forms of literacy) can play in a traditional classroom setting, and in most cases (by my observation) activities like the ones described in the article are used more frequently than remedial drilling of content. Still, the barriers remain.