You guys ready for another rant?
Again, this is all text and has no pictures so if you didn't like the last one then skip this one. Also, as before please note that the contents are my opinion and we can all agree to disagree and I don't actually hate anybody(ha ha).
Here goes:
This rant is about adaption.
Or adaptation.
Or whatever.
It means the same thing.
So I get that there are hundreds of thousands of classic stories that everyone and their aunt Mamie in Hollywood want to make their own.
I mean, Jane Austen and Shakespeare and Dickens and Thackeray and Tolstoy have been gone for years and have no lawyers or whatever to take you to court over plagiarism(thank you Public Domain).
But, just because you want to "make something your own" doesn't mean that you flay the original text.
It doesn't mean that you cut out crucial plot points.
It doesn't mean that you "update" characters into something that they were never intended to be in the first place.
If you're going to adapt something know your source material.
I'm going to say that again.
If you're going to adapt something know your (insert appropriate emotional outburst here) source material.
Because guess what? If you haven't, it shows.
Boy, does it ever show.
I get that there is a need for perhaps contemporizing certain beloved stories. Like Shakespeare. The Public Theatre did a beautiful adaption of "Much Ado" in Central Park last year staring Danielle Brooks from "Orange is the New Black"(who was brilliant btw).
The show was set in Georgia in 2020 and was a beautiful reflection of humanity and an ending that was the perfect parting salvo (spoiler: Benedick and Claudio have to leave to go back to war like seconds before their double wedding). It was very clear to me that director Kenny Leon knew not only what the text was saying, but what the subtext was saying and he respected the original author enough to make the production his own without violating the original material.
I also get that there are times when it's just plain fun to mess with history a little bit. The CW network did a series called "Reign" from 2013-17 staring Adelaide Kane that was a romanticized telling of the early life of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Yes, when I say "romanticized", I mean everything from her husbands to the lives of her ladies and everything in between. So. Much. Eye Candy.
And yes, I watched this show.
Because for all it's frothiness I still got the feeling that at least the creator had read through biographies of the protagonist or new her history well enough to give the show backbone.
Examples: Historically, Mary and Francis I had no children, and there is an explanation for that(one I hated, but it was valid); May's second husband was believed to be insane and this was illustrated; Francis I died young and this was illustrated.
Did I agree with this execution of history?
Not necessarily.
But I enjoyed this show.
However, not everyone is Shakespeare.
And not everyone is the CW.
Jane Austen wrote a couple of social satires, for cripe's sake. Some of her comic plots are there to make people think while they are laughing at themselves. Yet, some of the adaptions miss this entirely and try to make the story something that it isn't.
(I will say though, that I appreciate that some screen writers make it clear what exactly Lydia and Wickham are doing and why it's a big deal without sacrificing class and good taste. Thank you Deborah Maggoch.)
If you're going to adapt something, read the original text.
I don't care if it's a short story or a 500 page novel, be familiar with the original before you make it your own.
Writers--authors, journalists, playwrights, screenwriters--all write because we have something to say. Something that can't be vocally expressed as easily as it can in another medium. Something that we feel utterly compelled to say, be it through fiction or non-fiction.
And if I get annoyed when someone tries to over-analyze the sentence "the walls were blue" when all I mean is that "the walls were blue" I can't imagine the acrobatics that authors are doing their graves when someone takes their masterpiece and says "this is dumb, lemme fix it".
Take time to figure out what the author's original intention was.
And when I say "take time", I don't mean 30 seconds.
I don't mean an hour.
Or a day.
I mean actually consider what the purpose of this story is.
Like, psycho-analyze the ever living daylights out of it.
Take a look at the historical context in which the story takes place.
And then look at those characters in historical context and within the actual plot of the story and the intention of the author.
Just because a man or woman shares a bed in a boarding house with a member of the same gender at a time when it was cheaper to rent out half a bed then a whole bed does not automatically put him or her on the LGBTQ+ Spectrum.
Just because a woman is "not one and twenty" and still unmarried does not automatically mean she's a man hater(hello, it was 1811ish!).
Just because a man "finds it difficult to converse with those with whom [he] has little acquaintance." does not automatically make him anti-social, at least not the according to the contemporary definition.
Don't change a character's gender, sexuality, ethnic background or social standing just because.
If it's implied in the text, fine. Recently, BBC adapted Jane Austen's unfinished "Sandition" for a mini-series.
Miss Lambe, a character in Jane Austen's "Sandition", is from the West Indies, which means that she is not Caucasian(the novel describes her as "half-mulatto").
Andrew Davies took that description and ran with it. In the series, Miss Lambe is played by actress Crystal Clarke--who is not a Caucasian actress.
But he did not, say, make her a lesbian to "give her an edge", like another television adaption of a classic did.
On the other hand, in the film "The Imitation Game", the protagonist Alan Turing is historically known for being arrested and punished for being gay.
Was that part of his life was written into the film?
Yes. Yes, it was.
He was not written as straight to please potentially more conservative audience members (although critics didn't like that this specific aspect was 'downplayed'. I could write a whole other post about that, but I won't get into it here.).
If you want to steer away from the darker aspects of a plot, fine, but don't make them darker and edgier in order to update them.
The cable network FX is releasing and adaption of "A Christmas Carol" staring Guy Pearce. And while I've only seen the trailer, it makes me furious.
In the original story, three Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future guide Scrooge on life transforming journey.
Apparently, this was not good enough.
So to update the story Mrs Cratchit is now a witch who summons the Spirits to get back at Scrooge after he--to borrow an antiqued phrase--threatens her virtue.
I'm sorry.
WHAT?!
Where in the text does it say that Scrooge is a pimp(sorry for delicate ears)? Where in the text does it say that there was a darker reason for the Ghosts to visit Scrooge? What twisted soul decided that it was ok to suck all of the goodness out of this classic, stomp on it's heart and feed the ashes to hell-hounds?
Needless to say, I will not be watching this adaption.
And if you choose to use those elements because they are integral to to the plot, do them with class, not as a "shock factor."
Winston Graham's "Poldark" series is one of my favorites. I've read all the books at least twice and seen both the 80s and current television adaptions and love them both!
The series features a scene where two of the protagonists engage in--shall we say activities-one-should-not-get-up-to-especially-if-they-happen-to-be-married-to-other-people?
These...activities are integral to the plot--which sucks--but rather than skip over the scene(which would ruin the plot) or go for the shock factor(tempting, I know), the screenwriter wrote it into the show. And, for lack of a better phrase, she did it with class, and in a way that left me in no doubt how much the respected the original story and it's author.
(but boy, did that scene make me cringe)
A shock factor attempt makes you look desperate, in my humble opinion. Don't do it. Just don't.
If you're a fan of classic stuff and want to make it your own that's great!
I love "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and "10 Things I Hate About You", and "Castle in the Sky" and "The Lion King" and "She's All That" and "A Knight's Tale" and all three versions of "Magnificent Seven" and all but two versions of "Jane Eyre".
I love David Farr's "Heart of Robin Hood" and Nicholas Wright's "His Dark Materials"(still waiting to binge the HBO series) and Reina Hardy's "Glassheart" and "Peter and the Starcatchers"(both the play and the book)
I love Pamela Aiden's Mr Darcy trilogy and "Peter Pan in Scarlet".
(the list is longer but I'll spare you pages of text....)
But the reason I love the above (and more) is because the people who adapted these works loved and respected the originals enough to not only make the story their own, but keep the elements of the story that people originally loved and use them to enhance the new adaption.
So do that.
Don't ruin something just to update it.
Ted Talk over, you can go now.
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