Before I start, can I just say that I\u2019m amazed that I didn\u2019t know Richard Dawkins coined the term \u201cmeme\u201d? My life is forever changed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I\u2019ve chosen to post a blog about \u201cOn the origin of adaptations\u201d because I\u2019m really interested in film adaptations and movies in general. I was a Film Studies minor during my undergrad (the one where you study movies, not the one where you make them). This minor wasn\u2019t due to any special talent or deep knowledge of film; mostly I just wanted to sit around watching and talking about movies. So. I am now going to proceed to sit in front of my laptop and type about movies.<\/p>\n
\u00a0While I was initially a bit baffled by the idea of \u201chomology\u201d between biological and film adaptation, after reading through the article I find value in the comparison. I like that the article points out that \u201cbiology does not judge adaptations in terms of fidelity to the \u2018original\u2019; indeed, that is not the point at all\u201d (445). While film adaptations are often panned for going \u201coff the script\u201d of the source material, biological adaptation necessitates this kind of change. Perhaps, like biological adaptations, film adaptations should attempt to improve upon the originating material and adapt to changing social and cultural environments. This is summed up quite nicely in the article\u2019s simple formula: \u201cnarrative idea + cultural environment = adaptation\u201d (448). Math!<\/p>\n
\u00a0The article touches on an issue that I fondly call the Shakespeare Exception, in that Shakespeare is celebrated as high culture despite containing certain elements of style and subject matter which, when they appear in any work not written by Shakespeare, are disdainfully labeled low culture. In the article, the Shakespearean Exception is that we don\u2019t criticize Shakespeare for straying from the source material he used to write Romeo and Juliet<\/i>, whereas we so often critical of more modern adaptations that do the same thing. (To learn more about the source material for Romeo and Juliet<\/i>, you can watch this <\/a>awesome video by Young Adult fiction author John Green.) Another example of the Shakespearean Exception that I rather obsessively must mention is that of the pun. \u00a0Shakespeare\u2019s plays are packed with line after line of shameless and wonderful puns, yet when I make an especially punny joke involving the words duty <\/i>and doody<\/i>, I am not celebrated for my brilliant Shakespearean wit (as I rightfully should be).<\/p>\n \u00a0Before I sign off, I feel the need to bring up an issue not dealt with much in the article that complicates the idea of adaptation, and that is the fact that adaptation is not always a strictly book-to-film process. In these mad times of ours, we have board games, action figures, and TV series being made into films. We also have films being adapted into books, comics, and other media. Indeed, adaptation is a messy and unpredictable thing: just as Twelfth Night <\/i>became She\u2019s the Man<\/i>, the dinosaur became the chicken.<\/p>\n Work Cited<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0Bortolotti, G. and Hutcheon, L. (2007). On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse and \u201cSuccess\u201d \u2014 Biologically. New Literary History, 38(3), pp. 443-458.<\/p>\n – Allison<\/p>\n Blog post #1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before I start, can I just say that I\u2019m amazed that I didn\u2019t know Richard Dawkins coined the term \u201cmeme\u201d? My life is forever changed. \u00a0I\u2019ve chosen to post a blog about \u201cOn the origin of adaptations\u201d because I\u2019m really interested in film adaptations and movies in general. I was a Film Studies minor during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564422,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adaptations","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}