- Sep 2020
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rampages.us rampages.us
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Adaptation is a peculiar form of discourse but not an unthinkable one. Let us use it not to fight battles over the essence of the media or the inviolability of individual art works. Let us use it as we use all cultural practices, to understand the world from which it comes and the one toward which it points. The elaboration of these worlds will demand, therefore, historical labor and critical acumen
I think this is really interesting, the idea of looking at an adaptation as a film in itself and holding it up against socio-political context.
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ver-bal and cinematic signs share a common fate: that of being condemned to connota-tion
This whole bit on Semiotics reminded me of something I hated in the film version of Les Miserables. There's this song 'Little Fall of Rain" but the Rain in question is a metaphor for hardships or whatever. The movie chose to interpret this literally as actual rain from the sky, which frustrated me for some reason. Because then the line "'Ponine, you're hurt, there's something wet upon your hair--" doesn't make sense.
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Adaptation would then become a matter of searching two systems of communication for elements of equivalent position in the systems capa-ble of eliciting a signified at a given level of pertinence
It's like translating a text into a different language--there are few perfect translations, and it's more about conveying the idea than translating word for word.
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while the material of literature (graphemes, words, and sentences) may be of a different nature from the materials of cinema (projected light and shad-ows, identifiable sounds and forms, and represented actions), both systems may con-struct in their own way,
This is why adapting theatre musicals to Film is so hard--completely different mediums
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The success of adaptations of this sort rests on the issue of their fertility not their fidelity.
I love this. I wish more creators would realize this--otherwise they're just creating a carbon copy. For instance...I liked Maleficent because it re imagined Sleeping Beauty and made Maleficent sympathetic, and put in a new twist. True Love? Can't be from someone Aurora just met...but from Maleficent who'd been watching over her her whole life as a begrudging mother-like figure...yeah that's the stuff.
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the adaptation hopes to win an audience by the prestige of its borrowed title or subject
This has been Disney lately and all their 'live action' remakes of their earlier films. First it's to renew the copyright to ensure they never reach public domain...and second of all...they're too lazy in all their money to create anything new.
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Medieval paintings featuring biblical iconograÂphy and miracle plays based on Bible stories drew on an exceptional text whose power they borrowed
Religious art is literally just fan art
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