An update on updates

[trinityvixen]

Last Friday's poll results are pretty much what I expected.

It is hard to generalize about adaptations and updates, and yet? We all recognize the good from the bad when we see it. You know what I mean. You can look at something like Twelfth Night and go, "Okay, so the period costume has changed. It's still not going to be She's the Man." Well, I mean you would if you weren't my sister (let's just not even go there).

But why is that, even? She's the Man stars no worse a cast than, say, Clueless (back when Alicia Silverstone was just the chick from the Aerosmith videos). What makes a modern Shakespeare update so awful but a modern Austen update so palatable? Perhaps it's the problem of language in Shakespeare--without it, his plots seem awful thin, definitely bawdy, and often unpalatable to modern audiences (the production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that we saw really drove home how hatably unforgiveable Oberon's actions are to me, for instance). With the language, it's harder to move the story into a present time. If it's not comfortably clothed in clearly dated costumes, that language won't fly.

I like how y'all preference the people involved over authorial approval when it comes to adaptations, though. I actually really do. Because there are just always going to be some authors who pick fights and have major hate-ons for anyone who tries to adapt their "genius" (ahem, Alan Moore anyone?); whose works aren't even as good as what was made of them (Michael Crichton, I am looking at you, you global-warming-denying motherfucker); or who are stubborn and refuse to see any good in anything made of their work (I know a lot of shit has been made out of her stuff, but Ursula Leguin seems particularly fussy to me). I agree with you folks: the people doing the legwork on a thing are more important and integral to the success (or failure) of an adaptation than the original author.

Plus, it makes for great fun speculating WTF about certain casting choices, directing choices, settings etc. Like trying to figure out what the fuck Edward Norton is going to do as Bruce Banner. Buh-uh?

Comments

[trakkie.livejournal.com]

This will probably make you lose all respect for me (if you even had any left) but I LOVE She's The Man. I think it's a clever update of Twelfth Night, and I think the way it explores the stereotypes teens have about their opposing genders is genius.

I think the best way to deal with modern updates is to not look for a modern update to be a literal translation of the text into our present day cultural narrative, but rather a loose translation that keeps the spirit of the original work. That's why I think She's The Man works as an update of Twelfth Night - it still has that great, farcical feeling that the original play captures - while O, the modern day adaptation of Othello didn't - Iago's motivations don't make sense when transplanted to a modern day setting.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I definitely agree with you about the quality of update relating to the adaptation of themes to modern sensibilities. Perhaps that's why Austen works better when updated than Shakespeare--her work is more concerned with understandable, everyday human folly as opposed to the exceptional circumstances that usually rule the events of the average Shakespeare play.

But I just can't cave on She's the Man. Someday, I'll have a more informed opinion of it by actually being made to watch the whole thing, but I think the dislike will be hard to dislodge.

[ahab99.livejournal.com]

Is Le Guin picky? I know she wrote about that SciFi adaptation where all her people of color were bleached, but that didn't seem too outrageous to me.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

She's pretty much washed her hands of any adaptation of her works that I've heard. She had more to say against the Miyazaki Jr. adaptation, but not having read the books that was based on, I can't comment. Perhaps she's been particularly disappointed in the adaptations she's gotten, but she has never said a good word about any that I've heard. It seems persnickety.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

To be fair, every single one of those adaptations (I haven't seen the Miyazaki one) has SUCKED BALLS and she's gotten really screwed over by them.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The Miyazaki one wasn't that great either. Perhaps I am just giving her a harder time because she is a useless female.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Well she got really screwed over by Sci-Fi because they wound up owning the rights to the first three books for the next however many years, meaning that's the only adaptation of that work that will exist for a while. I can understand why it's upsetting.

Oh, and I would very much argue that plays make the best movie adaptations.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It depends on the play, just like anything else. Because plays often work with limitations not faced in cinema, yes, many make the transition to film fairly well. Then there are some that suffer for a lack of intimacy like you have when you go to the theater. Happens.