The Mad Gray Flannel Suit

                The differences between Tom Rath and Donald Draper are fairly immense. One is stuck in the war in which he faced many horrors; one is embarrassed by a past that forced an identity change. While Rath struggles to find success in the corporate world, Draper views his corporate world as an escape from all else. Although, Rath and Draper’s personalities clash to an extreme degree I think the qualities in which they share are very interesting. They both have a multiple world syndrome; the war, their job and their home life. They have secrets that they feel they must keep from everyone else, and they both look at life with a sense of cynical realism.

                “You’re born alone and you die alone and this world drops things on you to make you forget it,” Draper’s depressing words reflect not only his own philosophy, but that of Rath, “Things just happen…they happen and they happen again and anybody who tries to make sense out of it goes out of his mind” (96). This sense of naturalism engrained in these characters makes them more similar than any difference can account for. But why are these qualities so important? Why is the absence of Draper’s family’s importance in Mad Men the same as the lack of the corporation in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit? Both these characters seem to reject these ideals respectively, yet how can they still essentially represent the same character?

                I think more importantly than these particular specifics to the story, is the general mood of it. If the mood is carried through from one medium to another, can we deem it an adaptation? The two stories are different in so many ways (time period, setting, corporate life, et cetera) yet they contain so many of the same values. Does mood and memory then carry more weight than the actual story itself? Many of the problems I had with the adaptations of the “Mama” stories came from the fact that the mood changed so dramatically over the different forms. What then is mood? How can it capture so much in so different stories? What is its purpose in stories and the idea of adaptation?

I found the following passage in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit interesting:

"In this strange, polite world high in the sky above Rockefeller Center, maybe nobody ever really got fired. Maybe all Hopkins did was to give a man nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do, until he started to go out of his mind sitting uselessly in his office all day, and resigned. Maybe that was the polite, smooth way to get rid of a man nobody wanted" (138).

In the passage we get a conflation of the heaven/hell dichotomy. What is usually thought of as the ideal place, where one gets paid to sit and do nothing, turns out to be a peculiar kind of torture to Tom, his own private hell. Perhaps this is a further sign of Tom's cynicism, but I think there's something else working in this passage beyond just characterizing his temperament. Wilson provides us in this passage with an empty space situated within the rat-race usually associated with the corporate world. There's a sort of fear inherent in this space that the moment there's no work then there's no worker. Tom might as well have disappeared in this scene, at least in his own thinking, since he momentarily serves no purpose in the community of which he has become a part. This line of thinking is interesting especially since it is usually seen to come from the top: managers worried that workers are not utilizing every moment of their time to perform pertinent work. It is also an inversion of the Marxist concept of surplus-labor in which workers labor beyond the hours they are actually paid for. I'm not quite sure what to make of the implications of the passage yet but I think it would make a good topic for classroom discussion.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

So I haven't finished the book; I have to say, though, that it reminds me a lot of Revolutionary Road. I'm actually writing my paper on that; it was a book first. The plots are similar, although Revolutionary Road does not have as much emphasis on the war. So I actually wondered if that was an adaptation of -- or at least inspired by -- The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. I can't remember for sure if I ever saw the 2 connected in the press.

I felt like, even though Mad Men actually had a similar plot to The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, it had a different tone. It didn't seem quite as depressing, and there were humorous points where we laughed. I'm not sure if that's just because it's TV or not -- the whole change of form thing we've been studying. I did think that the ambiguity about Don Draper's marriage in the 1st episode we watched was a good twist; I didn't think he was married throughout the show, but I did wonder about it. And then at the end, we find out that he was.

the "luxury" of suffering?

my first taste of mad men has led me to wonder which version of 'reality'–that of the tv show, versus that of the world of sloan wilson–is most accurate. or can they co-exist together? i guess what i mean is that the tv show addresses ideological crises that are missing from the novel, like the blatantly misogynistic attitude that men hold for women, and that women hold for themselves. or..."missing" isn't the right word. i think i'm judging man in the gray flannel suit from a modern perspective, and mad men is also "judging" the fifties from a modern perspective, so we both see things that either weren't "seen" in wilson's eyes, or else were seen but were not seen as remarkable.

in fact, in the example of misogyny that i mentioned, betsy's role actually gives her a lot more freedom and equal footing with tom, than i thought was granted to women in general in mad men, with perhaps the exception of megan (though she, of course, is able to procure this only by remaining a single woman). sloan wilson hardly addresses sexism, so from his narrative's viewpoint, it doesn't exist. rather, the injustices he expresses in the world that tom and betsy live in, are fueled by economy and politics, and equally brutalize men and women–or at least, they do for those directly involved in war (tom and maria are the only characters given some real homage for what they suffer during the war).

if betsy suffers, it doesn't seem to matter much to wilson, maybe because she refrains from the pessimism that keeps her spouse from rising above such things, or maybe because wilson doesn't feel that she's suffered. but mad men suggests that there's such a darker level of suffering pressed down beneath the surface of the smiling, well-groomed, deferential woman, and i try to imagine what my life would be like if i were betsy, the good wife, trapped just like her husband, but not allowed to show suffering. for if she did, then wilson could never give the novel a "happy ending," because tom would never be able to get over the luxury of his own suffering.

It's a great time to be female

The 2 episodes of Mad Men we watched, although very entertaining, did not seem to have much in common with flannel man book except for the setting... kind of. The main character in Mad Men and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit was a male with a job and a family, often wore suits, and drank a lot of liquor. Other than that, it seemed like a completely different everything.

In Mad Men, the main character was already the boss and he did not seem to be desperate for a promotion. He WAS a veteran but of a different war. Characters from the book like the doctor, the lawyer, Hopkins, and the nannyish woman never made an appearance. The main character did not seem to question the meaning of everyday life, and his goals seemed to be different than the goals of the flannel man.

HAVING SAID THAT, I feel like I'm looking at it the wrong way and we weren't supposed to watch this with the mindset that it was a direct adaptation of the flannel man book. It seems more like an adaptation of a time period, lifestyle, and culture. If I look at it that way, it seems to be much more accurate. The images in the show were similar to the images I was generating while reading the book. There was a certain dissatisfaction, but each respective medium took a different view of it. Mainly, the flannel man seemed to be way more obsessed with money. The mad man seemed to be more uncertain as to what it was he wanted.

In conclusion, I feel like I missed something and I'm writing about the complete wrong thing because Mad Men and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit do not seem related at all, or maybe just slightly vaguely coincidentally related.

Norman Rockwell(?)

Personally, I love Mad Men. I think it's a great show and I definitely see how it can relate to Gray Flannel. I think when someone mentions the 1950's/early 60's, you mind tends to go to rock-n-roll, poodle skirts, and Happy Days - the quintessential Norman Rockwell painting. Yet this two pieces speak to the discontentment of the middle-class masses.

In both examples there really is a sense of the discontented gap between one's work life and one's home life. Tom Rath wants to have that pulling desire to spend time with his family, but he is rather complacent towards them. At the end of the book, he makes a conscious decision to choose the job that will keep him closer to his family, but as I stated in class, I didn't really buy the ending to the book. I would have been happier to see him accept his unhappiness and move on.

Anyway, I think this disconnect is portrayed elegantly in the Mad Men pilot. When you first see Don Draper, he is in a bar, smoking and drinking, his only care what to pitch at the Lucky Strikes meeting. As the episode goes on, you see that all of the secretaries in the office worship him and he has a convenient "relationship" with a greeting-card designer in the village (while simultaneously flirting with a Jewish department store heiress). I assume from a male perspective, this life would be "the dream." But at the end of the episode, you see the silhouette of a man getting off the train at Ossining, driving up to a picturesque white Colonial house, and Don Draper walks through the door. He goes upstairs to kiss his beautiful wife, and checks on his two children asleep in bed. As the camera pans out, you see mother, father, and children framed in a Norman Rockwell look-alike. Does this count as the ideal model of 50's family life when we have been privy to his disconnected "city behaviors"?

(Un)Happy Endings

Reading the end of The Man in the Flannel Jacket completely changed my understanding of the novel and my loyalties to its characters. The novel attempts to resolve issues surrounding capitalism, masculine identity and labor relations, but ends without giving any genuine solutions. Tom does seem to integrate his life during war and his current existence by supporting his son, but this simply uses the post-war prosperity and relies on his well-paid labor rather than human connection. To me, the end of the novel read like a masturbatory male fantasy, where Tom got everything he wanted: a well paying position at a meaningful job, time to spend with his family, approval to use his grandmother's estate, integration with the war and even his wife's quick acceptance of his affair during the war. Although Tom sort of stands up to his boss and owns up to the past, he does it in a safe environment where there is no real fear of failure, and no real bravery in his actions. Tom is a long way from Karkow.

Another thing that did not sit well with me about the ending of the novel was the continued division of home and work life within the novel. Even when Betsy stands to speak at the town meeting regarding the new school, she is addressed as “Mrs. Rath” and joking uses her position as a woman to have the last word in the debate. Although Tom's job may move closer to his home, it never integrates with his home life, continuing the Victorian concept of separate spheres for men and women: Betsy dominates the children and the home, while Tom goes off and does whatever he does at his job. While he does have a genuine home life, unlike his boss, Tom continues to unquestioningly go to work to support his leisure time (and cocktail time) at home, while his wife does the majority of the domestic labor. Far from rebelling against the oppressive system of labor that Tom sees around him, he finds that the real solution is complaining about it to Betsy and honestly opening up about his feelings. While this is a step, it is far from the solution that I was hoping for.

Check it out.

This isn't my blog post for Wednesday, but I thought this link related to class. :)

http://wonderwall.msn.com/movies/Countdown-13-Best-Book-Franchises-9646.gallery?&photoId=37572

I Forgot Mama

Sorry this is so late

The difference between the forms of I Remember Mama (the play and movie) and Kathryn Forbes’s novel is very apparent. The need to add certain features to the film to compensate for it being a film shows the disparity between the two different mediums. The way Uncle Chris and the aunts play such a more significant comedic role suggest that the movie must make-up for the lack of continuity that presents itself in the book form. I think his makes a lot of sense in terms of audience views – people can put down a book at any time, but they do not watch a movie in several different sections. This suggests that the choppiness of her stories lends more to the television format, but who’s to say what this format needs to be. In Pulp Fiction, Tarantino tells the overlapping stories of three different characters. Why is the film world so adverse to discontinuity in their movies that they must correct adaptation to fix that? Is this why people are so concerned with fidelity? Because movies tend to try and compensate for a lack of structure in the novel they are trying to adapt? How has this structure become the standard for modern film?

Another aspect of the transformation in these forms came from a point Lipsitz brought up in his argument about the focus on the modern family. A lot of the focus in the film comes from the need of the filmmakers to present an ‘ideal home’ lifestyle. This focus shows us that the evolution of time affects the evolution of adaptation. A modern adapted piece cannot in represent the same thing as the original because the modern view will take on an entirely different perspective. We’ve discussed time before as a big part of adaptation, but I think it must be focused on much more. So important is the time period to the study of adaptation? Does adaptation not evolve simultaneously with time?

I Remember Mama

I found the TV adaptation of I Remember Mama much less substantial than the book. The issues are much much more trivial in the TV show. The focus is placed on the mother pov instead of katrins. The mother is portrayed as a more self centered individual than in the book. She's a real negative nancy in the tv show. The play seemed to be a more accurate representation of the book. The tone, characters, themes, events, and overall story were followed more closely in the play than in the tv show.

I was wondering if perhaps TV didn't have an audience for deeper, dramatic, more complicated stories and that's why the tv show seemed like such a pruned generic version of the book. Maybe the producers of the show felt it was necessary to lighten up the book so that the show would appeal to a larger audience.

Mama Could Use Some Maxwell, Please

One thing that interested me about the Mama adaptations was their depiction of an immigrant, working-class mother to what I'm guessing would be a mixture of working class and middle class audiences--since not everyone could read, had a t.v., or access to the stage theater though most people seemed to have access to the movies, at least every now and then. I wonder what effects each medium had on its particular audience. The adaptation that seemed to have clear signs of an ideological underpinning was the television version, which of all the versions was the most different. In it we have a mother, like many other viewing mothers, with one major exception from most of them: she's a first generation immigrant. But she is extremely sympathetic, at least to other housewives and mothers, in her portrayal: a mother constantly working to keep the family functioning as a family while at the same time doubting whether or not her family really appreciates her sacrifices. The other adaptations certainly show the family's dependence on "mama" as well as the continual work she must get done but not a trace of her being under-appreciated. I wonder if this was an addition intended for the typical audience of the television medium, a reminder to the family to appreciate mama or to mama that her family appreciates her. And I also wonder how advertising tapped into this particular portrayal: buy mama a radio to keep her company or an electric iron/vacuum/etc. that cuts her work in half.

What ideological effects did the other adaptations have or intend to have? Were they an attempt to normalize or get people to identify with an immigrant family? A working class family? Or to provide an example that the immigrant family could assimilate to American life? Or that the children of a working class family could rise into the middle class? Or did the adaptations attempt to provide an ideal example of what the typical American family could be in the 1940s and 50s. There are, of course, many possible sociological inquiries with which we could approach the film. I just thought I would highlight a few.

Collectivism and Mama

All of the adaptations of Mama's Bank Account seem to center on the process of idealization that goes hand in hand with memory and the past. All of the different time periods wherein the adaptations occurred were periods of strife and confusion (the depression, WWII, the 50s), and seemed to need a return to “simpler” times for a moral recentering. Mama always stands strong in the middle of her nuclear and extended family, rallying their support to get things done. This collective attitude is essential to the narrative and emotional core of the story. However, the TV show loses this collective attitude, paring the cast down to a reduced nuclear family and a few recurring aunts. This shows an impressive shift in Forbes stories, completely changing the role of family in society.

The TV show's smaller cast and small, single family home illustrate a growing sense of isolation and discontent in America as commercial culture elbowed its way into every facet of life. Without a great number of personalities to navigate and placate, Mama's episodic problems lack the frenetic energy and intelligence of the stories. Mama expresses deep seated frustrations with her life, and rages against her family's ingratitude. Of course, Mama always returns to her appreciative family and solves their problems, but that seems to be part of the unsettling nature of the TV show. Rather than rallying the collective energies in order to resolve issues and ameliorate racial and economic difficulties, problems must be solved by commercial products. In the increasingly affluent but divided post-war society, advertisers sought to replace family and friend networks with brand affinity. Instead of relying on erratic relatives, Mama relies on the comforting regularity of Maxwell House Coffee. In this way, even human warmth is seen through the lens of branded products.

I think that the most important element of this is that the TV show grafts this branding and isolation onto an idealized view of the past. By rooting it in a historical setting and showing the discontent and frustrations of a hardworking ancestor, advertisers justified their products historically. This naturalizes the consumptive, nuclear family and lonely housewife for television viewers in the 50s. Without a view of a different way of living, as offered by the collective family life of earlier representations of Mama, viewers were more likely to seek solace in Maxwell House coffee, rather than just coffee.

Mama and Race

I reviewed the readings before I saw the movie and I was drawn to the passage that states Mama soothes all of the children in the hospital ward (even the one Black child). I found that interesting as a question of ethnicity and race in "I Remember Mama." When I saw the clip in the film, the first thought that entered my mind was a question of whether or not the children would be in segregated wards (at the time - 1910, or at the time of the filming). The presence of a African-American child plays to the question of race and ethnicity that I think is not as present in the film (as in the stories and play). When Dagmar says that she would like to grow up to be a "black" Norwegian like Uncle Chris, Papa says that he wouldn't mind having one "colored" child. If I remember correctly, this line is omitted from the film, but present in the play. What does this say to the question of ethnic differences of the Norwegian immigrants and other minority groups in the US?

emotional cat scenes and the pastiche

ok, i admit i had really low expectations coming into this movie…especially because kathy prefaced it by saying it was 134 minutes. but i have to say that, while parts of it were cheesy (katrin's attic narrations really could have been axed), it was a better narrative than i expected. although i was disappointed to learn that kathryn forbes' own life was nothing like that which she created in mama's bank account, i thought it made my point in class still ring true: that it doesn't matter if the stories are true, because they are real.

lipsitz spends a lot of time thinking about this "misappropriation," as he calls it–that we recreate the past in order to "see beyond our own experience" (80) in order to make sense of history, see it as a larger dialogue with meaning. it reminded me of an essay of jameson's that we've just read for LCS I, in which he talks about the pastiche, or the nostalgic recreation or amalgamation of histories which is colored by and colors how we judge the past. he even mentions star wars as an example of this, in its grasp of the epic, but the film i remember mama (i distinguish from the tv show) is also an amalgamation of values that are real in essence, if not set in one particular chronology.

then i guess lipsitz becomes afraid that he's too wishy-washy, as he goes on in the next paragraph to add that "commercial mass culture seeks credibility with its audience…by arbitrating the ideological tensions created by disparities between cultural promises and lived experiences" (80). but i like to think that the film (i haven't gotten to the play yet) was more motivated by the wish to pay tribute to these values, whereas in the tv show you can't help feeling the only value they're paying tribute to is that maxwell house is good to the last drop. but i got the sense from the film that the creators had read the book and said "yes! yes, i had such a family," or "i knew such a family" or at least, "i knew such a person." someone felt that what we learn from mama was worth recreating.

or maybe i'm just tired and that scene with uncle chris was surprisingly emotional. also i cried when the cat was dying.

I Remember Mama --

Or not.

Rachael tells me that, according to the readings, this story isn't really true at all -- only that the author had like, one Norwegian relative.

Honestly, I didn't think of it as a memoir at first anyway, because I didn't pay attention to the author of the stories. But after class on Monday, I'd accepted the memoir idea. I said then something like that the story would be true according to its feeling; I actually got that from the author's note at the beginning of another memoir. But now that these stories aren't true, where does that leave that discussion? Because the stories still feel real; we could discuss them like they were.

Memory

The discussion we had in class on Monday about how the image you generate in your head can be affected by adaptations seemed especially relevant after watching the 1989 film version of Parenthood.

Having seen the 2010 television adaptation really affected my viewing experience of last nights film, which was made 20 years prior to the version I initially saw. I had the actors, performances, setting, tone, and story of the television adaptation imprinted in my brain, which made for an emotionally confusing viewing of the 1989 film. When I saw Steve Martin, I thought to myself: "That's not him (the dad character)." I had similar feelings for the other cast members as well. However, in about a half hour or so, I had been reconditioned to accept the actors and their roles, and was no longer picturing the corresponding actors from the television series.

Though these two works were both of the same story, they really weren't all that alike. If the film wasn't called Parenthood, and I were to watch it in a different context, I likely wouldn't have even realized that it was the film from which the TV show was adapted from. Issues of parenthood seems to be a pretty flexible subject.

One difference I noticed was the brother and his gambling problems. The details of the main dad's brother are not really translated to the tv series, or at least not for me. Steve Martin's character also seems much more sarcastic, pessimistic, and pathetic in the film version. Pathetic meaning I felt sorry for him a lot. The daughters boyfriend, Tod, also seemed to play a larger role in the movie, although since we only watched the pilot episode, I'd imagine the whole daughter-Tod relationship would be further explored in later episodes.

A similarity I noticed was the dad's dad. This character seemed extremely similar in both the film and the tv show. They acted the same, they talked the same, and they even looked the same.

I think after last nights screening, the film is what is going to stick in my memory when I think of Parenthood. I guess we'll see though, maybe if I watched more episodes my memory wouldn't be so malleable.

Men and Parenthood

Ron Howard’s Parenthood obviously deals with anxieties surrounding parenting in the United States in the past two decades. However, the issue of masculinity stands out in the recent television version. It seems that the new adaptation is tackling growing anxieties about the role of men in society and what masculinity means, whereas the earlier film has strong, secure men. In the 21st century, it seems that the role of masculinity in society is under debate, as evidenced by the recent Atlantic article, “The End of Men.”
Central to the pilot episode of Parenthood is the youngest son discovering a sperm sample in his girlfriend’s freezer. This prompts him to promise to have a child with her, and causes extreme anxiety for him and his male relatives. Clearly, this echoes of emasculation fears and anxiety over virility for the characters in the show. In the film version, a dildo appears but never to threatens the masculinity of the fathers in the movie.
Zeek, the patriarch of the family seems to contain a dangerous and threatening virility that hearkens back to an older conception of manhood. While this is a minor theme in the film version, the television show makes it into a larger drama in the pilot. Even Joel seems to have an ambiguous role in the show, as he usurps the “mother” role for his young daughter while his wife is a driven career woman. Even Adam appears to be confused and frightened by traditional forms of masculinity, carefully protecting his son from his own father’s violence while privately falling into fits of rage.
Despite this, the show never contests the central role men play in raising children. Sarah laments the failure of her former husband as a father, and her children seem to be the biggest trouble makers on the show (perhaps because the lack of a strong father figure). Heteronormative marriage seems to be held up as ideal in raising children on the TV show, but the show still seems anxious about what men are supposed to do.

The Hair Trumps the Face

Besides a few similarities, the Parenthood film and television series are very different. But one similarity struck me: the physical resemblance of Steve Martin (Gill) and Peter Krause (Adam). I don't mean that the resemblance is completely spot on; there are of course differences, one of them being Steve Martin's ageless gray hair. But the similarity I'm referring to is in their face, especially around the eyes and mouth. More specifically, they both have very youthful facial features. I wonder if this was something intentional in the original film--the creators attempting to emphasize the residual child in Gill's character--that the show picked up on and appropriated. I use the word "appropriated" intentionally because in a lot of ways the show makes the subject matter its own and is successful in doing so. But despite the show standing firmly on its own two feet, in the end I enjoyed the film better, perhaps because of a personal bias, a sense of closure, the fact that I grew up with the film, or for an innumerable amount of other reasons, including the sense of calm Steve Martin's hair conjures within me.

modern TV: a chance to do something meaningful?

i agree with meghan that in the film, "things are taken less seriously." it seemed a little counter-intuitive to me that the TV show is more dramatic and explores some darker themes at deeper levels. then again, maybe it's in keeping with our discussion about the development of this new kind of drama on TV–that which uses the length of a season to develop a more complex plot thread, or series of threads, across all of the episodes; you know, shows like lost, heroes, trueblood. in that sense, you can go deeper with a TV show because you have much more time in which to explore concepts than you do with a 2 hour film. in fact, you don't even just have the season to work in–you can have a number of seasons to work out a plot in. you can do anything with such a time frame, so why not use the time to explore to the minutest nuance every aspect of the human struggle? just don't make mohinder turn into an evil scientist and inject himself with the virus that gives you superpowers, because that was personally upsetting.

linda hutcheon talks about an adaptation as "always framed in a context–a time and a place, a society and a culture; it does not exist in a vacuum" (142). these two version of parenthood are a perfect example of that, not only in the concepts explored in each, but in the modes of exploration. the 1989 film seems retroactively quaint in its (for all the scandals it contends with) idealistic upper-middle class suburbia world with problems that are all solved in two hours and nine minutes. the modern TV show, and the modern audience, seem to expect more–more grit, more drama, more challenge to find resolution. example: the child with asperger's instead of the child who is just "upset." with every pun intended against original television, modern TV, even while operating in its own (albeit more sophisticated) conventions, is not so black and white.

Parenthood

After watching the movie version of Parenthood I wanted to reflect on the concept of form. As we talked about in class television programs have a lot of time to develop their characters. They can introduce them and allow their relationships to develop overtime instead of solving their problems immediately. In this way I almost feel like TV shows are more like novels than films ever are. By having a lot of time to progress we can understand things more thoroughly.

This seems like it could be the reason people tend to respect novels more than movies. They have more time to explore relationship and get deeper into things than film can in an hour and a half. It also makes it important to seriously consider the difference between forms and why it should be difficult to compare pieces with different forms.

Even the case of the two different versions of Parenthood brings up these discrepancies. While they share much of the same characters and much of the same themes, they are very much their own pieces. The TV version develops slowly and gives itself time to get to know the characters, while the film starts and finishes things immediately. This begs the question, what really makes adaptation? Is it the same name and the same story? But even if these are the same the forms are different the time period is different and the setting. If all these are different why does story matter so much for adaptation rather than other elements of literature and film?

Parenthood

Awesome, I can use the blog. :)

Anyway -- don't hate me, but the first time I watched Parenthood on TV, I didn't like it. I thought it was melodramatic. But maybe I just needed to see the pilot, because I liked it yesterday. It's interesting to know that it was a movie first; I didn't know that. Or wait -- does it have completely different characters (or at least actors)? Because I think I have seen part of it. It's interesting that the director felt the need to come back to it. Also interesting because he's dealing with current issues on the TV show -- like autism and sperm donation -- that might not have been as relevant when the movie was made. Maybe that was why he came back to it.

Talking about TV yesterday made me think about soap operas, and how they're so far from having a story that's encapsulated in one episode. I mean, they wear the same clothes for like a week. And have the same storylines for months. And while a lot of it is crazy stuff like baby switching, Days of Our Lives is dealing with autism right now. Yeah. So maybe TV is trying to stay current that way; blogs + the guy in my TV guide are of the opinion that TV is more cutting-edge than film. But doesn't it all play to the masses?

--Meghan.


OK, so watching the movie, the plot was similar. But I noticed that things seemed to be taken less seriously, and this kind of plays into what I said above. I think the TV show was really kind of taking a stand on the issues, while the movie was more about being comedic.

The Adaptation of Parenthood

I think one of the most interesting aspects of adaptation is editing. When re-telling an old story, what do you take out? What gets left in? As I haven't seen the movie yet, I went onto the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) website and read a little about the film. I also watched the original trailer. In the pilot, Amber's boyfriend is only seen in the opening minutes, as Sara drags her daughter away from him. I have seen a few more episodes and do not remember him returning. He seems to be a more integral aspect of the film version, even being included in the family photo of the trailer. What was the choice made in terms of that characters appearance (or lack thereof)? As Ron Howard and his team were involved in both the film and the television series, what was their motivation to edit this character?

here you go: product placement in 30 Rock

The Violent Inevitability of Adaptation

Adaptation presents multiple forms of adaptation and evolution in all of their ugly, violent, bodily glory. The stream of consciousness voice over from Charlie Kaufman shows his distraction from the task at hand, usually thinking about muffins, sex or feeling bad about himself instead of writing. In some ways, this illustrates all of the small, practical things that go into producing a work of art, be it a film or a novel. When one only sees the finished product, especially a high production film, it's easy to forget the random events that lead to the final product. Adaptation aptly compares this process to natural selection, showing the viewer how a final script is the random “evolution” of any number of ideas.

The film also makes a convincing argument against fidelity in adaptation. Kaufman is presented with, ostensibly, an “unadaptable” text. This mirrors some of the assumptions about adaptation as a form that we have discussed in Leitch's article, namely, that works of art are tied to their medium and can't be translated into new symbolic forms. The film presents a solution to this “problem:” adaptations are not derivative works, but artistic expressions of their own. Just like natural selection, the process of adaptation inevitably creates something new, perhaps better suited to its environment. As Susan Orlean says in the movie, “change is not a choice.” Adaptation as a process will always create a new product, no matter how faithful it is to the original text.

Adaptation also muddles up the boundaries of textual adaptation. Charlie and Donald discover that Orlean's book is also a partial fabrication rather than a faithful reproduction of real events. Orlean is shown to “adapt” her experiences in Florida into a marketable best seller that portrays Laroche as a lovable freak, while glossing over her relationship with him. Furthermore, we see Charlie trying to adapt his own experience adapting Orlean's book into a film script, blurring the lines between product and production even further. Ultimately, the film seems to suggest that adaptation—literary and evolutionary—is simply unavoidable and continually recreates the world around us.

I found something I thought was very interesting in Hutcheon’s book that I would like to share with the class. It is located in Chapter 1, under a section entitled Adaptation as Product. In the last paragraph of this section Hutcheon recounts some history behind Sydney Lumet’s film Dog Day Afternoon. Based on an actual bank robbery in the early 1970s that was covered live on TV as well as a Life magazine article that spawned its screenplay, the successful and critically acclaimed movie went on to heavily influence how the actual bank robber, John Wojtowicz, remembered the event. In other words, Wojtowicz could only make reference to the film in order to describe what actually happened to him. Hutcheon concludes: …the film became, for him, as much the text to be adapted as was the lived event preserved in either his memory or the media coverage (18). I find this fascinating: that the visuals and narrative of a film can, in effect, replace an actual event it was based on, even for those actually there. I think this truly shows one of the most interesting (and frightening) capabilities of adaptation. How does/could it be used as an instrument of power? Can film resignify historical events for political, cultural, or economic motives? Obviously, this doesn’t happen in all situations since we constantly hear complaints about the historical accuracy of films based on true events—the most recent film that pops into my mind involved in this debate is The Hurt Locker which instigated some complaints from EOD veterans about how they were being depicted in it. But as again Hutcheon points out with Dog Day Afternoon, such resignfication can happen. What are the conditions, though, that allow it to happen? Are they discernable? Does Susan Orleans now remember her book through the lens of Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of it? Just some food for thought.

Adaptation

Adaptation has always seemed pretty lifeless and normal to me. It's something I rarely think about. This movie portrayed adaptation as failure, success, tragedy, etc... The whole spectrum of emotions was applied to the process of adaptation, which was something I had never considered.

I generally don't like Nicholas Cage. Except maybe for comedic value in Con Air when he has a mullet and southern accent. That was pretty good. He plays a lot of tough guy roles though, and that bothers me because I have a hard time believing he is a tough guy. To me, he never seems to fit those kinds of roles. Sooo when I watched the trailer for Adaptation, and it had TWO Nicholas Cages, I was worried. In the end however, I was surprised to realize that I had enjoyed the movie. I think Nicholas Cage had more fitting roles in this movie, or at least roles that were more believable. Or maybe double negative equals positive, sooo the 2 Nicholas Cages cancelled each other out.

Anyways, I just joined the class and I wasn't sure if there guidelines we were supposed to adhere to when writing in this blog, so I apologize if this was not the kind of stuff we were supposed to post.