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