Adaptation & Inspiration
Gav left a comment on the previous post, but I thought it warranted a full enough reply to become a new post in it’s own right, so if you haven’t read the previous blog, and the associated comment from Gav, you may wish to do so first. Right, here goes…
Do you think that all adaptation is doomed to failure?
No, I don’t think they’re all doomed to failure, but I do think that one of the characteristics of true greatness is that it’s something which could only have been done by a particular person at a particular time. Dickens, Orwell, Tolkien and so on produced great works that really couldn’t have been produced by anyone else at any other time. In that way, greatness isn’t just the product of its author, but of its circumstance too (and that’s why even the most talented have to be lucky to achieve greatness, or be recognised for it).
I also think it’s a defining characteristic of greatness that it explores and uses its medium every bit as well as it explores and uses its content – being not only a great story, for example, but also a great novel; ditto for a great song needing great composition, arrangement, playing, etc, or a great film needing cinematography every bit as great as any profound truth revealed in the words of the script or the portrayals of the actors.
Both of these factors, to my mind, militate against the chances of an adaptation being particularly good. As regards the first point, an adaptation is usually (though not always) out of time and circumstance with the original work, hence it’s unlikely to be able to recapture whatever it was that meant only that person could do that thing at that time; and as regards the second point, adapting means recreating a work in a new medium which, given the connectedness of work and medium, I think is difficult, if not impossible, to do with the same degree of success.
There is a reverse to this, of course - there are many adaptations which are vastly superior to the original, because the original chose its medium poorly and the basic idea is actually better executed in a different way. This can be true of remakes, as well (which I consider to be part of this whole discussion, as a form of adaptation). So it’s not that I think all adaptations are doomed to failure; I think that the quality of the original counts inversely against their chances, it’s adaptations of the best, most popular and most well-known stories that are therefore most likely to fail - sadly it’s just that kind of adaptation which is tried most frequently. I also think that attempting such a thing is slightly pointless, since there’s a better alternative, as I’ll explain in the next part of the question…
By that I mean something that perhaps goes the whole hog of reinventing a character into a different setting - would Sherlock Holmes (as depicted in the stories) as a character translated to a different (i.e. non-Victorian London) setting always offend? What if Holmes stayed the same character but was transposed to a modern setting, facing mysteries of a contemporary nature and armed with modern technology?
I think this is where inspiration becomes a better bet than adaptation. Inspiration is a factor in everything we do, so we needn’t on the one hand be afraid to admit to it, or on the other feel so beholden to our inspirations that we have to emblazen their names and faces the bastard offspring we create. Sherlock Holmes can be - and doubtless has been - successfully translated to a different setting, facing mysteries of a contemporary nature and armed with modern technology, but it’s under a different name completely, with no reason to pretend he’s Sherlock Holmes anymore. I’d actually say the television series House is an example of this. House is clearly inspired by Sherlock Holmes, but it’s not an adaptation of it. Wouldn’t it just be completely tedious if it was actually called Sherlock Holmes, M.D., and leave everyone wondering, ‘er, why have they made him a doctor?’. More of this in the next part of the question…
Is not the problem with some reinventions that they don’t reinvent at all, but sort of smudge stuff around a bit, losing the essential essence of the originals but not adding anything?
Yes. The basic problem with adaptations is that if they lose the essence of the original (i.e., the thing that made it interesting and made someone want to adapt it in the first place) then it begs the question, why adapt it at all? If it keeps the essence, but changes everything else, then I think it’s really a case of working better as inspiration rather than adaptation. Adaptation brings constraints which inspiration doesn’t, and I think ultimately it’s those constraints which flaw most adaptations. Adaptation is about details while inspiration is about basics. When you adapt something, you retain details - sure lots of things change, but details nonetheless remain, even if it’s only a name or a crucial plot point or whatever - and yet on the other hand, in an adaptation, details are precisely the things you’re forced to change, so adaptations sort of slit their own throats in that regard. The details you keep in order to prove it’s an adaptation really only serve to highlight the compromises and misjudged changes made elsewhere. Better to wholeheartedly abandon the detail, I think, identify the basics, and use them as inspiration (and once you do that, of course, you can still use all the details you want, as long as you’re not relying on them to the point of ripping off - House, though not Holmes, has a drug addiction and lives at 221b).
So, in short - my opinion: adaptation’s alright for the evolution of species, it’s a bit wank for films ‘n’ that.
Right, that’s it.
Matt
July 13th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Further example to the above - Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness. Post any more examples you can think of.
July 14th, 2008 at 2:25 am
I bet not many people who have seen the Shawshank Redemption have read the novella (myself included)…
So, what about stories that are repackaged for an audience that might not otherwise have seen/read the original? Would you not think there is any merit in that?
e.g. 10 Things I Hate About You was a fairly decent, unpretentious take on the Taming of the Shrew, I thought, even though it was a poppy teen chick-flick.
I would say it was better off for not being called ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, and I’m positive that a good percentage of the audience never realised it was based on Shakespeare at all, so I guess it falls more into your definition of inspiration rather than straight adaptation.
I do, however, think that adaptations that are done in a very different way to the original - and which are not trying to compete with the original - can be great. I’ve seen a stage adaptation of The Hobbit a few times, done with puppets, and it was fantastic.
Ant
July 14th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Yes, I think there’s certainly merit in it; the aim of bringing a story to audience that might not otherwise be exposed to it is a noble one. I think such adaptations, though, still face the same potential problems as all others - assuming they can overcome those, then there’s no reason they can’t be masterpieces in their own right.
The Shawshank Redemption is an interesting example, since I think short stories (and novellas) are one of the few mediums that are quite compatible with film; much more so than novels, anyway. They’re short, generally have a more straightforward structure, and less events within the story, all of which makes them easy translatable to film - that overcomes the second of the two key problems I outlined in the last post, so I suppose adaptations from short stories have got more chance of success.
10 Things I Hate About You is a good example of my other point, actually, because Shakespeare in turn took almost everything he wrote from other stories. I do see that as a case of such stories being used as inspiration rather than being adapted directly, though, yes, and in some cases, if your aim is to bring the same story to a new audience, I think this remains the better bet.
I agree about adaptations that are very different to the original often being good - I think what happens in these cases is that the emphasis is moved from the story to the performance, so the points I’ve raised don’t really apply in the same way. The performance, not the storytelling, becomes the thing on which those adaptations are judged.
I think I’ll write another post on this shortly!