Adaptation Theory Simone Murray

8/11/2019 Adaptation Theory Simone Murray

1/18

M ATERIALIZING A DAPTATION THEORY

THE ADAPTATION INDU STRY

[T]he great innovators of the twentieth century, infilmand novel both, have had so little to do with

each other, have gone their ways alone, always keeping a firm but respectful d istance.

George Bluestone,Nove ls into ilm(63)

would suggest that whatweneed instead isabroader definition ofadaptation andasociology that

takes into account the comm ercial ap paratus, the audience, and the academic culture industry.

James Narem ore, Introduction: Film and the Reign of Adaptation (10)

Eveti a casual observer ofthe field o f adaptatioti studies would perceive that

the

discipline

is

clearly

sufferitig frotn ititellectual dolours. Long regarded as the bastard offspring of literary studies and

filtn theory, adaptation studies has struggled to achieve acadetnic respectability sitice its inception

iti the 1950s. The field's itisistence oti studying screen culture was perceived as threatening by

English departmen ts predicated oti the superiority of literary studies. Sitnultatieously, adaptation

studies' residual attachmetit to print culture alienated it from the burgeoning discipline of filtn

theory, whose adherents proposed jettisoning an indelibly hostile literary studies paradigm in

favor of valorizing film as an art form in its own right. But more worryingly, adaptation stud-

ies is currently experiencing a welter of criticism not only fi-om outside its own ranks, but also

from within. Adaptation scholar James Naremore laments the jejune and moribund nature of

contemporary adaptation studies

( Introduction 1,11).

According to Robert B . Ray, the bulk of

adaptations criticism constitutes a dead end , useless in its stale models and trite suppositions

(39,46).Similarly, Robert Stam prolific scholar behind a recent three-volume series on adapta-

tion for publisher Blackwellasserts that adaptation studies as it currently stands is incho ate,

hamstrung by the inadequate trope of fidelity criticism, whereby screen adaptations are judged

accordingly to their relative faithfulness to print originals( Beyond Fidelity

.76,

62). For

Thom as Leitch, adaptation theory has remained tangential to the thrust of film study, resulting

in a discipline that has been marginalized because it wishes to be

( Twelve

Fallacies 149,

168).'Kam illa Elliott, another recent addition to this chorus of disciplinary lament, regrets the

pervasive sense that adaptation scholars lag behind the critical

times

(4).^Viewed in an optimistic

light, such com ments together suggest that adaptation studies as afields currently bubbling w ith

intellectual ferment, and is ripe for a sea-change in theoretical and methodological paradigms.

Surveyed more pessimistically, remarks such as these suggest a field fiailing to find some cohe-

sion and to revivify its academic prospects. Regardless of which perspective is adopted, there is

a substantial irony evident: as adaptation increasingly comes to comprise the structural logic of

contemporary media and cultural industries, leading adaptation scholars publicly question the

adequacy of the field's established paradigms to comprehend what is taking place. Adaptation

studies appears deeply internally conflicted: the right discipline, at the right time, lumbered with

an obsolete methodology.

Insider critics ofadaptation studies base their disparaging verdicts on the discipline's prod uc-

tion of a seemingly endless stream of comparative case-studies of print and screen versions of

individual texts (Ray39).This methodology of comparative textual analysis underpinned adapta-

tion studies' founding critical textGeorge Bluestone's

Novels

nto

ilm

and has since ossified

into an almost unquestioned methodological orthodoxy within the field. Adaptation critics seek

similarities and contrasts in book-fihn pairings in order to understand the specific characteristics

oft he respective book and film mediums, in what Naremore has termed an obsessive literary

formalism

( Introduction

9). Frustratingly, such studies routinely produce conclusions that

provide in fact no conclusion at all: comparative case-studies overwhelmingly give rise to the


2/18

Materializing Adaptation T heory: The Adaptation Industry/5

Particularly concerning is the fact that such advocates of m ethodological innovation as do ex-

ist within the field frequently hark back to m odels already explored. Stam, under the subheading

Proposals for Adaptation Studies, has recently called for a thoroughgoing comparativestylistics

of the two med ia [i.e. literature and film; emphasis in

original].

This statement insistently recalls

Bluestone 's lengthy exploration of literature and film 's comparative aesthetic and formal character-

istics in the first chapter of his foundational 1957 work (Stam, Introduction 41).Although Stam

elsewhere argues compellingly for the cross-pollination of adaptation studies with developm ents

in post-structuralist and post-colonial literary theory, his emphasis on investigating formal char-

acteristics of literature and film appears m erely to close the circle on nearly 50 years of adaptation

studies research . That this is a widely shared critical tic is evident from surveying the titles of key

books in the field over a five-decade period: the words literature and film (or their cognates

fiction, novel, cinem a, and movies ) are rearranged in endless conjoined variations.

Close attention to the published outputs of adaptation studies further evidences the becalmed

nature of the discipline in highlighting the piecemeal nature of current research. Scanning one's

eye down the contents pages of edited collections or journals in the field reveals a veritable forest

of

italics,

as the titles of individual books and their companion screen versions dom inate entries.

The discipline suffers from a paucity of monograph-length investigations of adaptation theory,

instead confining its intellectual horizons overwhelmingly to the individual case-study or to the

compilation of many such case-studies.' A slight variation on this model is to group together a

number of adaptations of a single author (or single direc tor's)

work.

But this is almost never framed

as an investigation of the role of the celebrity Author as a construct facilitating the making and

marketing of adaptations, so much as an organizing device for harnessing together otherwise

disparate case-studies. Most striking in such surveys of extant research is the exclusive seholarly

interest in what adaptations have been made, and almost neverhow these adaptations came to

be available for painstaking scholarly comparison. Dematerialized, immune to commercialism,

floating free of any cultural institutions, intellectual property regimes, or industry agents that

might have facilitated its creation or indelibly marked its form, the adaptation exists in perfect

quarantine

fi-om

he troubling worlds of commerce, Hollywood, and global corporate mediaa

formalist textual fetish oblivious to the disciplinary incursions of political economy, book history,

or the creative industries.^

Previous Waves of Innovation in daptation Studies

In taking adaptation studies to task for its uncritical adherence to textual analysis as a govern-

ing methodology, 1 am not suggesting that adaptation studies has been devoid of innovation,

only that such prior waves of innovation as have occurred have experimented within severely

confined limits. To provide background and context to this article's argument for an overdue

materializing of adaptation theory, it is useful briefly to survey the major schools of adaptation

studies that have developed since the 1950s and to notewith a nod to adaptations stud ies' own

modus

operandi oth

their diiferences and their marked similarities. Characterizing virtually all

academ ic studies of book-to-screen adaptation is an attack on the model of

fidelity

criticism as an

inadequate schema for appreciating the richness of and motivations driving adaptations (Marcus

xv; McDougal 6; Giddings, Selby, and Wensley xix, 9-10; Cartmell and Whelehan, daptations

3 ,

The Cambridge Companion

2; Ray 45 ; Leitch, Twelve Fallacies 161-62,

Film daptation

16-17,21;

Hutcheon,

heoryxiii,

6-7, In Defence ). Such ritual rejections of fide lity criticism

are fi-equently accompanied by revelation of fidelity critique's m oralistic and sexually loaded

vocabulary, with its accusations of unfaithfijlness, betraya l, straying , debasement, and

the like (Beja 81 ; Narem ore, Introduction 8; Stam, Beyond Fidelity 54, Introduction 3;

Hutcheon, On

the

Art 109,

heory

7,

85 ,

in Defence ). Unquestionably, rejecting the idea of

film adaptation as a necessarily inferior imitation of literary fiction's artistic achievement w as an


3/18

6/MatedalizingAdaptation T heory: The Adaptation Industry

A variation on the outright rejection of fidelity as directorial goal or critical norm involves

taxonom ically classifying adaptations into graded leve ls or m ode s of fidelity, according to

whether the film is a literal, critical, or relatively

fi-ee

adaptation of

the

literary source (Klein

and Parker 9; also Wagner

219-31;

Larsson74 ;Andrew 29-34 ; Cahir 16-17). Certainly this goes

some way toward equalizing the respective status of author and director, according film adap tors

relatively greater creative and artistic agency. But fidelity is an absolute value; once a source text

has been strayed from, the critical measuring-stick of fidelity loses its evaluative rigo r Given

this,comparative gradings of fidelity are closer to Bluestone's outright rejection of the concept

than m ay be apparent at first glance. In reading over several decades of adaptation criticism, the

suspicion grows that, while fidelity models may rem ain prevalent in film and television review-

ing, in broader journalistic discourse, and in everyday evaluations by the film-going public, m

academic circles the ritual slaying of fidelity criticism at the outset of a work has ossified into

a habitual gesture, devoid of any real intellectual challenge.* After all, if no one in academe is

actually advocating the antiquated notion of fidelity, what is there to overturn? It appears more

likely that the standardized routing of fidelity criticism has com e to function as a smokescreen,

lending the guise of methodological and theoretical innovation to studies that routinely reproduce

the set model of comparative textual analysis. In its hermetism, it is as though parallel intellec-

tual streams of film studies, media studies, the history of the book, and cultural theory had not

all vigorously explored the interpretative significance of production, d istribution, reception, and

consumption contexts.

The second significant wave of adaptation studies appeared from the late 1970s with the

importation of principles of narratology from the traditions of Russian formalist literary theory,

structuralism, and Continental semiotics (Cohen; Beja; Ruppert; Klein and Parker; Andrew).

Theorists such as Roland Barthes, Gerard G enette, and Christian M etz were heavily cited in this

stream of adaptation work that lingered, in some cases, well into the 1990s (Giddings, Selby and

Wensley; McFarlane).' The surprise is the tenacity of narratology 's hold over adaptation studies,

given that by the late 1980s post-structuralist distrust of the rule-seeking , pseudo-scientistic pre -

dilections of structuralism had well and truly achieved dominance in the Anglophone academy.

The structuralist-inspired quest to isolate the signifying cod es underpinning both literature and

film had the worthwhile aim of dismantling received academic hierarchies of mediums in which

literature occupied the apex, and the interloper of screen studies was relegated to the lowest criti-

cal echelons (Cohen 3). It moreover recast adaptation as a two-way dynamic, where novelistic

narrative techniques not only influenced film, but certain filmic devices were avidly imitated by

Modernist writers well-versed in an increasingly visual culture (Cohen 2 -10; Beja5

-76;

Andrew

36).But the structuralist school of adaptation confines this inter-relationship of the two med iums

strictly to the level of textual effects. Structuralism's characteristic isolation of textsfi-pmcircuits

of production and consum ption, or from sociologies of media cultures generally, left its method-

ological impress upon adaptation studies. The effect was that, for all the narratological school's

self-declared and partially justifiable revolutionary rhetoric, the movement m anaged to entrench

flirther the p ractice of textual analysis as adaptation studies' default m ethodological setting and

unquestioned academic norm.'

In what this article posits as the third m ajor wave of innovation in adaptation studies, import-

ing of concepts

fi-om

post-structuralism, post-colonialism, feminism, and cultural studies broke

down one part oftheself-isolating critical wall built up around the text, and opened adaptation

studies up to concepts of audience agency. This 1980s and 1990s development, handily dubbed

The Impact of the

Posts

by one of its key proponents, Robert Stam , placed audience pleasure in

intertextual citation

fi-ont

and center ofitscritical concerns

( Introduction

8).Accordingly, fidelity

criticismwasdeemed not only a woefully blunt instrument w ith whichtoexamine adaptations, but

willfiil ^fidelity was in fact the

very

point

adaptations interrogated the political and ideological

underpinnings of their source texts, translating works across cultural, gender, racial, and sexual


4/18

M aterializing Adaptation Theory: The Adaptation Industry/7

of high/pop cultural boundaries, overdue acknow ledgement of extra-literary sources for adaptations

suchaspulpfiction comic books/graphic novels, and computer gam es, and recognition of resistant

or oppositional audience decodings of texts in ways possibly unforeseen by textual producers

(Cartmell andWhelehan, Adaptations,The ambridgeCompanion;H utcheon,^ Theory;Leitch,

Film

Adaptation .

The recognition that audiences appreciate adaptations precisely because ofth e

mass of existing pop-cultural knowledge they bring to them w as decisive in weaning adaptation

studies from its long preoccupation with the nineteenth-century Anglo-American literary canon,

and for introducing an ethnographic dimension into the analysis ofadaptation.

Yet, for all its productive theoretical innovation, this now-dominant third wave ofadaptation

studies has come at a price. Post-structuralism's and cultural stud ies' characteristic disinterest in

conditions of cultural production has created a lopsidedness within adaptation studies between,

on one hand, intense interest in audience consumption practices but, on the other, little counter-

vailing attention to the production contexts,financialstructures, and legal regimes facilitating the

adaptations boom. The blame for this imbalance cannot, however, be entirely sheeted home to

post-structuralism, cultural studies, and their affiliate pos ts.

Political economy, the school of media studies dominant in UK, Canadian, and Australian (if

never US) academe during the 1960s and 1970s was, by the 1980s, engaged in a bitter academ ic

turf-war with cultural studies over the relative merits of material and semiotic frameworks for

analyzing media (Curran). As a result, political economy was too impatient with the new wave's

rejection of economically determinist Marxist cultural models to be inclined to investigate what

reception theory had to offer for political economy's understanding ofadaptation. Furthermore,

political economy's traditional home in the social sciences (especially in politics and sociology

departments) made industrial-scale cultural producers such as newspaper chains and television

networks favored media for exam ination, in preference to the traditiona lly humanities-affiliated

(and specifically literary studies-affiliated) format ofthe book. The content recycling function at

the heart ofadap tation was noted in passing by individual political econom ists ofthe 1970s in

analyses of synerg y within the operations of globalized media conglom erates (Murdock and

Golding). But

as

the waves of consolidation that brought book pub lishing into the fold of corporate

media were at that time mostly still to be felt, novels and short stories were paid only glancing

attention by political economy as the most common source of adapted content. More vigorous

attention has been paid to such content's fi^nchising in

film

newspaper serialization, theme-park,

and spin-off merchandising forms (Wasko,Hollywood UnderstandingDisney, H owHollywood;

Elsaesser; Balides). Neither m acro-oriented political economy nor textual- and audience-focused

cultural studies were therefore predisposed to examine the howandwhy ofadaptation from the

perspective of the authors, agents, publishers, editors, book prize committees, screenwriters,

directors, and producers who actually made adaptations happen.

A final point to make in tracing how the study ofthe contemporary book-to-screen adaptation

industry slipped through the intellectual net ofadaptation studies, cultural studies and political

economy relates to the kind of

texts

chosen for analysis by these respective disciplines. As out-

lined, adaptation studies has traditionally focused greatest attention on the nineteenth-century and

Modernist Ang lophone literary canon (Lupack; Cartmell, Hunter, Kaye, and W helehan). Cultural

studies, for its part, originated in another disciplinary rebellion this time against E nglish literary

studies' adamantine hostility to investigating popular culture as a legitimate topic for academic

inquiry.

As a consequence, cultural studies has always preferred to examine demonstrably popu-

lar genres such as romance novels, pulps, crime fiction, westerns, or comic books whose very

non-literariness badges them as suitable new intellectual ground for cultural studies' relativist

analytical project. The com bined effect of these discip lines' textual orientationisthat the processes

by which contemporary literary fiction is created, published, marketed, evaluated for literary

prizes and adapted for screen are still to receive sustained and detailed academic attention. That

these powerful institutions comprising the contemporary literary adaptation ecosystem with all


5/18

8/Materializing

Adaptation T heory: The Adaptation Industry

The Costs of Textual nalysis as Methodologlcat Orthodoxy

Having sketchedthebackground of extant adaptation studies and noted its methodological lacunae,

I want to proceed to examine in further detail how lack of attention to production contexts has

compromised current understandings of adaptation. From

there,

propose an alternative model that

is

capable of encapsulating the complexity of the adaptation industry and as the current article's

title statesof contributing to a long-overdue

m teri lizing

of adaptation theory.

Adaptation c ritics' comparative ignorance of book industry dynamics has perpetuated a distorted

understanding of adaptation, distilled here to three oft-encountered

myths

or truisms of

adap-

tation studies. The first of theseand by far the most frequently encountered is the claim that

books are the product of individualized, isolated authorial creation, whereas film and television

function as collaborative, industrialized processes (Beja 60-62; McDougal 5; Giddings, Selby,

and Wensley 2; Reynolds 8; Ray 42; Stam, Beyond Fidelity 56, Introduc tion 17; Cahir 72).

As so often when seeking the origins of adaptation studies' methodological rubric, the roots of

this fallacy can be traced directly back to Bluestone (Leitch, Twelve Fallacies 150):

The reputable novel, generally speaking, has been supported by a small, literate audience, has

been produced by an individual writer, and has remained relatively free of rigid censorship. The

film, on the other hand, has been supported by a mass audience, produced co-operatively under

industrial conditions,andrestrictedby aself-imposed Production

Code.

Thesedevelopments have

reinforced ratherthanvitiated the autonomy of each medium, (vi)'

In seeking to debunk this myth of isolated authorial creation, I am not denying that a clear dif-

ference in organizational and financial scale exists between the writing of, for example, a battle

scene in a novel and the filmic realization of its equivalent. The problem arises from the fact that

adaptation critics when they use the terms book or nov el are in truth almost always speaking

of text that

is,

they are invoking an abstract

ide

of an individual au thor's creative work rather

than the m aterial

o ject

of the specific book in which that work is transmitted.'^ As the discipline

known as book history has amply demonstrated since first emerging in 1950s France (curiously

contemporaneous with the appearance of adaptation studies in the Anglophone academy), books

have for centuries depended upon complex circuits of printers, binders, hawkers, publishers,

booksellers, librarians, collectors, and readers for the dissemination of ideas in literate societies

(Damton; Adam s and

Barker).

Thus the bookisdemonstrably as much the product of institutions,

agents, and material forces as is the Hollywood blockbuster. Yet adaptation theorists regularly

emphasize the power of Hollywood's political economy as though books were quasi-virginal

texts untouched by com mercial concerns prior to their screen adaptation (Beja; B luestone; Leitch,

Twelve Fallacies ). This leads to curious and easily disproved assertions that authors have (for

better or worse) been largely able to write wha tever pleased them, without regard for audience or

expense (Ray

42),

as questions of material infrastructure enter only at the point of distribution

(Stam, Beyond Fidelity 56).

Book history has demonstrated that the comm ercial substructures of book culture have existed

since at leasttheGutenberg revolution. But these industrial characteristics have become m assively

more pronounced since book publishers were subsumed by global media conglomerates from

the early 1980s onwards (Miller; Schiffrin; Epstein; Murray, Content S treaming ). Critics of

the contemporary book publishing industry frequently observe that the potential marketability of

authors, and the probability of their work being optioned for adaptation in other media, are key

considerations in the signing of, especially, first-time authors (Engelhardt; McP hee). M oreover,

these considerations all come intophy priorto contracting; thereafterthebookwillalso be exten-

sively costed, edited, designed, proof-read, m arketed, publicized, and distributedtoretail and online

outlets, (hopefully) discussed in the literary pub lic sphere, and read ers' perceptions ofthework


6/18


tion ofthe Romanticized, starving-in-a-garret individual writer

on

one hand, with Hollywood's

mode of industrial production on the other (Bluestone 34).

Further, understanding of the book industry economy fundamentally challenges adaptation

theory 's always implicitand often even explicitclassification of books as niche whereas

film is denominated as a m ass medium (Beja

60-61;

Giddings, Selby, and Wensley 2; Leitch,

Twelve Fallacies

155;

Hutcheon,

Theory5 .

When ana lyzing the weight of financial interests

and industry strategizing brought to bear on the release of new books by bestselling w riters such

as Stephen King or Dan Brownor even high-profile literary authors such as Salman Rushdie,

Ian McEwan, or Annie Proulxit is impossible to deny that the book industry is as thoroughly

complicit

in

m arketing and publicity processes

as

are

its

screen-media equivalents (Gelder; Brown;

Phillips; Squires). The fact that book publishers and film studios increasingly find themselves

affiliate divisions within overarching media conglomerates makes the incorporation ofthe book

into the production, m arketing, and distribution schedules of electronic and digital media all the

more feasible and attractive (Izod; Murray, Content Streaming, Generating Con tent ).

second myth of adaptation studies deriving from critics ' current dematerialized conception of

the process

is

the belief that adaptation 's trajectory is necessarily from the old media ofthe book

to the

new(er)

media of film, television, and digital media. This assumed linearity is manifested

explicitly in the titles of adaptation studies such as Brian McFarlane's

Novel to Fi/m

and Linda

Costanzo Cahir's

Literature into

Film.''' Clearly, this fallacy stem s from a historicist conception of

media development in which m ediums are seen to supersede earlier comm unication technologies

in a process of serial eclipse. Instead, the reality of twentieth-century media environments has

been that newer media do cannibalize the content of older media, but mediums continue to exist

contemporaneously, rearranging themselves into new patterns of usage and mutual dependence.

This complementarity of communications formats was noted in media studies as early as the

work of Marshall McLuhan, and has since been regularly elaborated upon by medium theorists,

notably Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin in their exploration of cross-platform remedia-

tion (McL uhan; B olter and Grusin; Holmes). Given these intellectual trends in the broader field

of communications, adaptation studies' long-held adherence to a one-way model of adaptation

appears intellectually parochial.

Granted, even B luestone devoted a paragraph to the observation that OJust as one line of influ-

ence runs from New York publishing house to Hollywood studio, another line may be observed

running the other way (4). But his discussion notes only the positive impact of film versions on

sales ofthe original novel; he does not extend his observation to examine how film content can

form the basis of new print-form products.'^ W riting over 20 years after Bluestone, critic Morris

Beja similarly dedicated two pages of a monograph-length work to discussing the coexistence of

novelizations and original novels, but he begins this potentially innovative line of inquiry w ith the

tellingly digressive throw-away incidentally (87). As far as the first two waves of adaptations

studies were concerned, the book industry served as handmaiden supplying film-ready content to

the screen industries; it was a relationship between medium s reciprocated only intermittently.

By the time the third wave of adaptation studies emerged in the 1980s, the increasing evidence

of adap tation's print-based afterlife in the form of tie-in editions, novelizations, published

screenplays, making-off'

books,

and compan ion titles had become incontestable. Equipped with

greater sensitivity

to

popular culture as a result of cultural studies and post-structuralist theoretical

models, adaptation scholars began

to

note the proliferation of such book-form

texts,

and even their

circulation simultaneous with screen versions. Again, this belated recognition of adaptation's two-

way (or multi-way) traffic isfiagged

n

the title of an influential anthology: Cartmell and Whelehan's

Adaptations: From

Text to

Screen, Screen toText But such critics' use of these companion texts

istrue to the discipline's generally unacknowledged textual analysis biasto treat them as

convenient add itional sites for semiotic analysis, not to examine how they came to be produced or


7/18

10/Materializing Adaptation Theory: T he Adaptation Industry

The third and final corollary ofadaptation studies' prevailing indifference to the economy of

book adaptation is perhaps not as strongly marked as the first two, given it concerns the more

abstruse concept ofthe rise and fall of literary reputations. Literary prestige has remained a mostly

marginalized topic in adaptation studies, being either already abundantly established in the case

of classic authors whose canonical works are adapted for the screen or, in the case of popular

culture texts such as comic books, amounting to an irrelevant concern according the relativist

rubric of cultural studies (Stam, Introduction 45). Rarely examined is the phenom enon of

contemporary

writers who self-identify as literary authors whose work is being adapted for the

screen, and how circulation of these broadly contemporaneous screen texts triggers inflation or

devaluation of their literary stock s. The stock-exchange metaphor invoked here is deliberate;

as James

F.

English has observed in his analysis of cultural prizes.

heE conomy of Prestige

the

fascination of questions of literary value derives fi om their position at

th

juncture of two philo-

sophically hostile conceptual systems: the aesthetic and the com mercial. The concept of literary

esteem is never entirely reducible to either system operating alone, but is instead powered by its

situation at the clashing tectonic plates

of both

systems. How adaptations factor into this innately

volatile system for accrediting or withholding of literary reputation is a compelling topic m ostly

unexplored in relation to contemporary authors (as opposed to long-canon ical, and more recently

mass-market, authors such as Jane Auste n). The topic's interest stems also from its intermesh-

ing with the broader literary and cultural economy of

agents,

editors, publishers, prize judging

committees, book retailers, and the literary press already mentioned. Focusing critical attention

on literary reputations in the process of being brokered within the adaptation economy provides

a fascinating insight into the workings ofthe adaptation industry, and the shifting alliances and

conflicts that inevitably arise between its nodal agents.

Proposing a New Methodology for daptation Studies

From the foregoing, it will be readily apparent that this article's key aim is to rethink adaptation,

not as an exercise in com parative textual analysis of individual books and their screen versions,

but as a material phenomenon produced by a system of institutional interests and actors. In

short, I am contending that adaptation studies urgently needs to divert its intellectual resources

fi-om a questionable project of aesthetic evaluation, and instead begin to understand adaptation

sociologically.'^ To do so, it is necessary to move out fi-om under the aegis of long-dominant

formalist and textual analysis traditions to investigate what cognate fields of cultural research

might have to offer adaptation studies in terms of alternative m ethodologies. These then need to

be critically assessed for their own analytical blind-spots, as well as for how they might profit-

ably be combined into a hybrid methodology supple enough to comprehend the workings ofthe

contemporary adaptation industry.

Political conomy of Media

The political economy strand of media analysis originates in the critiques ofthe early-twentieth-

century Frankfiirt School, reviving with an interest in issues of ownership and control of media in

the 1960s and

1970s,

and informing a more recent wave of research around the com mercialization

of digital media. These most recent additions

to th

discipline have demonstrated

th

vital relevance

of materially engaged critique for elucidating developments in the contemporary cultural sphere

(Mosco; Schiller; Wasko,

UnderstandingDisney

How

Hollywood

Doyle). Political economy's

realist, materialist, and interdisciplinary methodology critically illuminates c onten t's key role in

contemporary media industries. Technological convergence around digital platforms has coincided

with increasing convergence of ownership am ong globalized media corporations to create a com-

mercial environment favoring the multipurposing or stream ing of media content to orchestrate

cross-platform

fi-anchises

(Elsaesser; Balides; Murray, Med ia Convergence's, Brand Loyalties ;


8/18

Materializing Adaptation Theory: The Adaptation Industry/11

Cultural Theory

Compelling as

is

political econom y's materialist conceptualization of contemporary m edia indus-

tries,

on its own it provides an inadequate schema for understanding the adaptation industry's role

in brokering cultural value. In contemporary globalized media conglomerates, book publishing

is of relatively minor commercial significance in terms of its contribution to overall corporate

revenues. Yet publishing divisions continue to enjoy a high profile within such conglomerates

as a source of prestige and as ballast for corporate claims to cultural distinction. How is it that

book content is increasingly dematerialized from the book format through digital technology

and adaptation, while at the same time screen producers attempt to leverage books' associations

of cultural prestige and literary distinction across media platforms? Examples of such cinematic

bibliophily m ight include the fetishizing of libraries, illuminated books, parchment maps, quills,

and ink in Time Warner's film adaptations of book favorites arry Potterand The Lord ofthe

Rings

(Murray, A Book ; Jenkins 169-205). On one hand, media industries would appear to

be pursuing a culturally democratizing agenda of making acclaimed literary works available to

demographically broader screen audiences. But, at the same time, such industrial concems allay

audience suspicions of commercial exploitation by constantly reiterating film-m akers' respect for

a content pro perty's prize-winning literary pedigree. Thus cultural hierarchies are, paradoxically,

kept alive by the same industry that pushes audiences to consume near-identical content across

multiple media platforms.

Existing cultural theory models are inadequate to comprehend this nexus of commercial and

cultural values at play in the modem adaptation industry. Most likely, this is attributable to the fact

that critical theory and cultural studies have tended to develop theories o f cultural value in relative

isolation from the material industry contexts that preoccupy political economy. Such disparate

critical foci have given rise to a disjunction between, on one hand, cultural stud ies' orthodoxies

of textual relativism and, on the other, the media industries' avid support of cultural hierarchy

as evidenced in their marketing and publicity strategies emphasizing consumer discrimination

and cultural self-improvement (Collins). Adaptations studies thus requires a methodological and

theoretical apparatus for understanding how audiences both desire cultural relativism while also

looking to the m edia industries for markers of cultural prestige (book p rizes, film and television

awards) to guide consumption and identity-formation.

History of he oo k

The third cognate methodology proposed here, history ofthe book (also termed book history ),

traces

its

own complex disciplinary history from French historical studies, sociology, literary stud-

ies,bibliography, and the history of

ide s to

coalesce

s

an academic discipline fi-om the late-1970s.

Like political economy, book history insists upon the material underpinnings of conceptions of

culture, focusing specifically on the mechan ics of print production, dissemination, and reception.

The field's m ost productive innovation from the perspective of revitalizing adaptation stiidies is

its devising of circuit-based models for concep tualizing the flow of print culture in host societies

(Damton; Adams andBarker).Specifically, these m odels of interlinked

authors, printers,

publishers,

retailers, and the like maintain attention to the industrial and comm ercial substructures ofthe book

trade, but they integrate these concem s with attention also to less tangible intellectual, social, and

cultural currents, demonstrating the interdependence ofthe two spheres. Less compelling for the

current project's purpose is that book historyas its self-designation suggestsoverwhelmingly

confines its attention to pre-twentieth-century print cultures, and has to date generally failed to

embrace the contemporary book industries as part of its natural purview (Murray, Publishing

Studies ).

Thus the three methodologies outlined here could all already hypothetically speakinghave

converged on the issue ofthe contemporary adaptation industry, but have to date mostly failed to

do so for reasons of their own. This anom alous state of affairs cries out to be rectified, especially


9/18

12/Materializing Adaptation Theory: T he Adaptation Industry

Modeling the daptation Industry

The present article's conceptual framework for new model of whath sbeen termed the adapta-

tion industry derivesfromhe aforementioned circuit mode ls prominent

in

book history that chart

the circulation and flow of print communications am ong various book industry stakeh olders.

Substantially m odifying such historically focused m odels to reflect the dynamics of contem porary

English-language book cultures, the new model maps relationships among six key stakeholder

groups : author societies and the construct ofthe celebrity author; literary agents; editors and pub-

lishers; literary prize judg ing committees; screenw riters; andfilm televisionproducers. G ranted,

thisisa resiliently book ish model of adaptation given this article's acknow ledgement elsewhere

that adaptation traffics content across all media formats: film, television, computer gam ing, com-

ics,

theatre, recorded music, animation, toys, and myriad other licensed commodities. But this

focus upon adaptation studie s' traditional book and screen m ediums is defensible given the near-

absence of a production-oriented stream of adaptation research to date. It is hoped that the project

proposed here clears sufficient methodological ground for others to examine in detail the specific

economies of adaptation between other mediumsor even, more ambitiously, to attempttochart

the workings ofthe entire cross-media adaptation industry in macro perspective.

Each ofthe nodal points in the book-screen adaptation economy is connected by the two-way

flow of capital (both commercial and cultural): the author sacrifices a commission payment in

exchange fortheincreased access to publishers provided by a literary agent. Literary agents trade

upon the ir gate-keeping fUnction

to

ensure clients' submissions gain priority attention by com mis-

sioning editors. Publishing houses enhance the status of specific literary prizes in their cover-copy

in exchange for the promotional fillip and exposure of a literary prize win or sho rtlisting. L iterary

prizes and their associated sales deliver proven audiences for film and television adaptations of

prize-winning books, in exchange for wider promotion ofthe prize itself through screen-media

formats. This in tum comm only stokes audience demand for (re)consumption of content in book

form^the only part ofthe current model already touched upon by adaptation critics.

In addition to these exchanges among adjacentstakeholders in the adaptations circuit, there

are complex capital exchanges betweennon adjacentinterests: for exam ple, literary agents de-

rive commission on rights sales to film and television production companies in exchange for the

brand identity of an established author or book property. Publishers engineer bookshop display

for film adaptation posters and ancillary marketing paraphemalia, in exchange for production

stills to incorporate into the cover designs of film or television tie- in ' editions (Bluestone 4;

Giddings, Selby, and Wensley 22 ; Reynolds 10; Naremore, Introduc tion 13). Similarly, suc-

cessful authors can aid in establishing the house identity of their publishe rs, and thereby a ttract

other desirable nam e authors to the press. Equally, authors benefit symbiotically from the im-

primatur of appearing under the colophon of an esteemed publishing house. A detailed mapping

ofth e adaptation industry would need to focus in tum upon each of these nodal agents, but with

a constant emphasis upon the interdependence and tensions inherent in these deeply intertwined

sectoral relationships.

One corollary of adapting circuit models from book history is an awareness of the historical

specificity of book industry structures. Any mapping of the contemporaryadaptation industry

thus needs to take account of aspects ofth e book tradesuch as the rise ofthe literary agent and

the growth of online retailingwhich have become ubiquitous only in recent decades. A sug-

gested timeframe for such research m ight therefore becirca1980 to the present. This timeframe

is broad enough to incorporate significant structural changes to the book industry occurring as a

result of corporatization and conglomeration from the early 1980s: the revolutionary impact of

digital technologies on all phases of book production, distribution, and retailing; the eclipse of

the editor by the agent as the au thor's literary mentor and champion; the elevation of book prizes


10/18


11/18

14/Materializing Adaptation T heory: The Adaptation Industry

Hence, myriad resources exist to verify empirically the workings of the contemporary adaptation

industry; that adaptation scholars have, to date, made comparatively little use of such widely

dispersed resources probably speaks of a reluctance to traverse established humanities and social

sciences research protoco ls. But given that adaptation is itself the original interdisciplinary aca-

demic undertaking, such pusillanimous respect for boundaries for their own sake would seem to

have no place in the charting of a new approach for the discipline.

Conclusion: Benefits of

n

Industry centric Adaptation Modet

Belated reformulation of adaptation theory to account for the industrial d imensions of adaptation

in contemporary m edia cultures stands to benefit multiple constituencies. For academic adaptation

studies, such an innovation would shake off the enervating sense of a discipline sunk in the dol-

drums,

and would productively reconnect

the

fieldo cognate areas

in

cultural analysis, hybridizing

its methodology and adding theoretical nuance to its governing m odels. Importantly for scholars

already investedin thediscipline, such cross-pollination would challenge other

streams'

pejorative

verdict upon adaptation studies as a jejune theoretical backw ater. A new adaptation model would

take account of adaptation 's role as the driving force in contemporary m ultiplatform media, and

would seek to replicate this commercial centrality by according adaptation an equi valently central

role in theorizations of twenty-first-century culture.

That adaptation is culturally ubiquitous has long been remarked upon by comm entators (Orr 4;

Naremore, Introduction

15;

Elliott4,6; Hutcheon, O nth eA rt, ^

Theoryxi

2, In Defence ).

Without question it is steadily becom ing more so. Some commentators observe this phenomenon

fi-om the specific perspective of audience and reception research, others from the more generalist

vantage point of participation in mass culture (Larsson 81). More recently, cross-platform

traf-

fic of content has also been analyzed textually in narratological, semiotic, and post-structuralist

terms (Stam, Beyond Fidelity, Introduc tion 11-1 2,28). Missing from this academ ic equation

is a third stream of research that would provide the necessary production-oriented perspective

on adaptation to complement existing approaches. But rather than seeing production-focused

analysis as merely a corrective to existing critical imbalances and thus as an end in itself, the

current project flags how conceptualizing the industrial substructures of adaptation provides

new understandings of why texts take the shape they do and how they influence or respond to

audience evaluation. Hence a focus on production in the digital age provides a new dimension to

adaptation research, but it also calls into question m edia stu dies' traditional tripartite division into

production/text/audience categories. Production m atters; but who is the producer and who is the

audience in an era of infinite digital reproducibility, collective creation, and produ cerly media

practice remains an open question (Bruns).

More specific than these benefits accruing to the scholarly community as a whole are the pay-

offs such a study prom ises for

the

comm only m arginalized discipline of print culture or publishing

studies. Rather than perceiving the book

s

the rapidly obsolescing poor cousin

to

ever-burgeoning

screen media, studying the adaptation industry reveals

the

continuing prominence of book-derived

content in the multimediaage.This is true whether or not print formats serve as audiences ' initial

point of entry into a contentfi-anchise.For even a cursory glance at contemporary mainstream

media culture reveals that audiences introduced to book content in screen-media versions often

subsequently consume the same narratives in their original novel format, orwhere the content

is original to screenaudiences may seek out novelizations, making-of books, or companion

volumes to prolong, enrich, and potentially complicate their content experience. Robert Stam's

briefly elucidated concept of post-celluloid adaptation is apposite here

( Introduction

11).

Although Stam 's use of the term appears to denote the impact upon film culture of technological

developm ents in digital and online med ia, clearly digital content

is

also remediated into resolutely

n logu

formats such

s the

printedbook.Audiences demand, evaluate, and sometimes rewrite


12/18

Mater ia l iz ing Adapta t ion Theory: The Adapta t ion Indus t ry/15

industry part icipants hav e been inadequately served by ho w to guide s that confine them selves

to pragmatic issues of real izing individual adaptat ion projects , without providing an overview of

the adaptat ion process from a cr i t ical, ma cro-orien ted persp ect ive (Seg er) . Fo r cul tural prod ucers

in secon d-t ier or t radi t ional ly per iph ery An glop hon e nat ions, i t is especial ly crucial in cul tural

pol icy and cul tural nat ional ist terms to understand how content passes through (or bypasses)

dom inant U S and UK cul tura l ne tworks to ga in exposure to g lobal Engl i sh- language audiences .

What are the mechanisms by which content is brokered on the global adaptat ion exchange, and

what complex interplays of agents , inst i tut ions, and commerce inflect cul tural evaluat ion aeross

different territories? What specific industry phenomena cause a rise or fall in cultural prestige for

authors, publishers, directors, or s tudios, for what reasons and in the eyes of which audiences?

Do adap tat ion indu stry agents alway s benefi t sym biot ical ly f i-om the mult i -platform circulat ion o f

content , or can a pro perty 's rise to mass-m arket ex posu re in one med ia sector tr igger d evaluat ion

of a property 's cul tural currency in anoth er? After al l , for every reader w ho selects a t ie-in e di t ion

on the basis of the familiar film-still reproduced on the cover, there are others who will actively

seek out the pure r , mo re l i terary pre-adap tat ion cove r design (Ma rshal l A1 ). To wh at extent

are relat ionships within the adaptat ion ecosystem mutual ly sustaining and to what extent do they

evidence sectoral r ivalr ies, commercial confl icts , and long-standing prejudices about the cul tural

status of specif ic mediums? Such issues are endlessly intel lectual ly piquant , and unquest ionably

contemporary in their relevance. Together they represent an exci t ing opportuni ty to t ransform

adaptation studies fi-om an intellectual niche topic into perhaps the unifying discipline at the

epicenter of contemporary communicat ion s tudies .

S imone Mur ray

Monash Univers i ty , Melbourne

N o t e s

' Leitch makesasimilar point aboutthecul-de-sac status of adaptation in relation tofiltnstudies in the opening chapterof

his

Film Adaptation and Its Discontents

stating that until quite recently, adaptation study has stood apart from the main

currents infilmheory (3),elegatedo the gap between tiie study of literature as literature and the study of cinema as

literature (7).

- Suchemarksecho Dudley Andrew'searlierjudgment that discourse about adaptation is frequently the most narrow

and provincial area of film theory. However, Andrew completes his sentence with the more optimistic observation that

adaptation is potentiallyasfar-reachingasyou like a view ofthefield spotential thatthisarticle shares (28).

' Refer Fred H. Marcus, ed..Film andLiterature:Contrasts in Media(Scranton: Chandler, 1971); Geoffrey Wagner,Th

Noveland the Cinema(Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson

UP,

1975); Morris Beja,Filmand Literature:An Intmduction(N

York:

Longman,

1979);

Michael Klein and Gillian Parker,eds..The English Novel

and

the Movies New

York:

Ungar, 1981)

Stuart

Y.

McDougal,Made intoMovies:From Literature to Film NewYork:Holt, 1985);John Orr and Colin

Nicholson,

Cinema

and Fiction: New

Modes

of Adapting.

1950 1990

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh

U P,

1992); Brian McFarlane,Novel

to

Film:

AnIntroductionto theTheoryof Adaptation

(Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); John M. Desmond and Peter Hawkes,

Adaptation:

Studying Film andLiterature

(NewYork:McGraw Hill, 2006).

'' Refer Fred H. Marcus, ed..Film and

Literature:

Contrasts in Media (Scranton: Chandler, 1971); Geoflfrey Wagner,Tlie

Novel andthe Cinema

(Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1975); Morris Beja,

Film and Literature: AnIntroduction

(New

York: Longman , 1979); Keith Cohen,

Filmand Fiction:The DynamicsofExchange

(New Haven and Londo n: Yale UP, 1979);

Michael K lein and G illian Parker, eds..

The

English Novel and

the

Movies(New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981); John Orr and

Colin Nicholson, eds..

Cinema and Fiction: New Modes of Adapting 1950-1990

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1992); Brian

McFarlane,

NoveltoFilm:A nIntroductionto theTheoryof Adaptation

(Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Robert Stam,

Literature

through

Film: Realism Magic and the Art of Adaptation(Maiden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); Robert Stam and Alessandra

Raengo, eds..

Literatureand Film:A Guide toth eTheoryandPracticeof Adaptation

(Maiden: B lackwell, 2005); Robert Stam


13/18

16/Materializing A daptation Theory: Th e Adaptation Industry

specific adaptations as of specific problems adaptations raise (20), Neither of these mono graphs are primarily materialist,

however, in their proposed interventions in the discipline, making both boo ks comp lementary rather than identical to the new

research d irections proposed in the current article,

' Cartmell and Whelehan

(The Cambridge Companion)

have recently called for adaptation studies to pay attention to the

comm ercial considerations [,,,] [of] the film and television indu stries ifi order to better understand the production contexts

out of which adaptations emerge (4,9), But, curiously, they exempt the book publishing industry firom similar scrutiny. For

an extended case-study example of how such an industrially focused research methodology might analyze adaptation, taking

into account both the book and screen industries, refer Murray ( P hantom A daptation s 8),

' Bluestone reiterates this analogy of the novel as raw material later in chapter 1: W hat happens [,,,] when the filmiest

undertakes the adaptation of

a

novel, given the inevitable mu tation, is that he does not convert the novel at all. Wh at he ad apts

is a kind of paraphi aseofthenovel the novel viewed as raw material (62),

' The tenacity of fidelity critique within film reviewing is exemplified by even intemationally respected film critic David

Stratton having recourse to the trope in his recent review of Ryan Murphy's film adaptation (2006) of Augusten Burroughs'

memoirRunning with Scissors(2002): the faithful filming of a book is virtually an impossibility, and the film version h as, of

necessity, to be som ething different. The qu estion to ask seems to be

this:

Is [sic] the film faithful to the sp irit, to the essen ce,

of the book (22),

' Kamilla Elliott also incorporates much semiotic and formalist analysis into her recent study of adaptation, although her

work historicizes interart debates and cross-pollinates this earlier semiotic tradition with analytical techniques derived from

postmodernism and cultural studies (5),

' That cross-media transfer of content need not necessarily presuppose a textual analysis methodology is demonstrated by

a recent wave of research into the material and institutional conditions of rights-trading and cross-promotion between book

publishing and the mediums of theatre, radio, and film in the first decades of the twentieth century (refer Weedon, From

Three-Deckers, Elinor Glyn 's ; Hammond; Adam),

'' There appears to be something about the glacial pace of theoretical innovation in adaptation studies that causes critics to

vent their frustration in enumerated lists of cliches, truisms, or fallacies currently plaguing the field (refer Larsson 70 ;

Leitch, 'Tw elve Fallacies 149; Hutcheon,

A

Theory52-71),

Cited approvingly by Whelehan (6),

Refer, for example, Reynolds (16),

' There are a handful of notable exceptions to this general view em erging from the niche adaptation studies sub-field

of novelizations: e,g, Baetens, The subtitle of Baetens's chapter, Nov elization, the Hidden Continent, aptly captures the

currently hyper-marginalized nature of research into novelizations,

Many critics have similarly noted film adaptations' role in driving increased demand for the original novel: Orr (1); Izod

(97,1 03); Reynolds (4; 10); Whelehan (18) and Hutcheon{ Theory90),

A notable exception to this general rule is John Orr, whose Introduction: Proust, the mo vie observes that (then)

contemporary literary novelists such as Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, John Fowles, Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, and

Angela C arter were having their work adapted for highly accomp lished films (4-5), Orr suggests that, in a feedback effect,

these critically praised film adaptations in tum enhanced the literary reputation of the novelist,

Many critics have noted the role of screen adaptations of Aus ten's works in popularizing and expanding readerships for

her novels (for example, Lupack; Stem; Aragay and Lopez; Troost),

'*Th is would seem to echo Dudley Andrew's statement that it is time for adaptation studies to take a sociological tum

(35), However, in the section of Andrew's much-reproduced chapter that follows his bold opening statement, it becomes

clear that Andrew understands the sociology of adaptation as concemed w ith waves of artistic influence between fiction

and cinema: we need to study the films themselves as acts of discou rse (37), Hence And rew's conception of sociolo gy is

still exclusively textual, bypassing the issues of production, comm erce, and institutional interdependence that this discussion

associates with the term,

The huge growth over the last few years in what could be called the adaptation industry makes this a cultural phenomen on

that cannot be ignored (Reynolds 11),


14/18


^^

This plethora of research resources is in stark contrast to the laborious 1950s methodology Bluestone describes, involving

sourcing the shoo ting-script for a given film, traveling around the US to locate a cinema currently show ing the film, and then

marking up the shooting-script w hile viewing the film to indicate scenes deleted from the film's cinema-release cut. Blueston e

then compared this accurate and reasonably objective record of

the

film version to the original novel as a way of imposing

the shooting-script on the boo k (ix).

.

.

Jon ze's dizzyingly inventive film might almost serve as an unexpected (and presumably unintentional) manifesto for a

new, industry-focused wave of adaptation studies. This is due to its satirical attention to the intermeshing motivations and

anxieties of screenwriters, authors, agents, directors, actors, producers, and scriptwriting gu rus. Not surprisingly, the film has

already been extensively comm ented upon in recent academic adaptations work (Hutcheon, On the Art

108,

A Theory2,

In Defence ; Stam, Introduction 1-3).

Works i ted

Adam , Jasmin. Quo Vadis Book Culture?: The German Publishing Industry and the Emergence of Film. Paper presented

at The Fourth International Conference on the Book. Emerson College, Boston. 20-22 Oct. 2006

(11

May 2007).

Adams, Thomas R., and Nicolas Barker. A New Model for the Study ofthe Book. A

Potencie

of Life: Boob in

Society.

Ed .

Nicolas Barker. London: British Library, 1993. 5-43.

Andrew, Dudley. Adaptation. [1984]

FilmAdaptation .

Ed James Naremore. London: Athlone, 2000 .28 -37.

Aragay, Mireia, ed.Books in M otion: A daptation

tntertextuality

Authorship.Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005.

Aragay, Mireia, and Gemma Lopez. Infi;i)ectingPride an d Prejudice:Dialogism, Intertextuality, and Adaptation. Books in

Motion : Adaptation In tertextuality Authorship.Ed. Mireia Aragay. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005.

201-19.

Baetens, Jan. From Screen

toText

Novelization, the Hidden Con tinent. H/e

ambridge ompaniontoLiteratureon Screen.

Ed. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan. Cambridge: Cambridge

UP,

2007.226-38.

Balides, Constance. Jurassic Post-Fordism: Tall Tales of Economics in the Theme Park. Screen 41.2 (2000): 139-60.

Beja, Morris.Film and Literature: An Introduction .NewYork Longm-n, 1979.

Bluestone, G eotge.Novels into Film.[1957] Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,2003.

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin.

Remediation :UnderstandingNew Media.

Cambridge: MIT

P,

1999.

Brown, Stephen.

Con suming Books: TheMarketingan d onsumptionof Literature.

London: Routledge, 2006.

Bruns, Axel.

Gatewatching: ollaborative Online NewsProduction .

Digital Formations series. New York: Peter Lang, 2005.

Cahir, Linda Costanzo.

Literatureinto

Film:

Theoryan dPracticalA pproaches.

Jefferson: McFarland, 2006.

Carimell, Deborah, and Imelda Whelehan, eds.Adaptations: From

Text

to Screen. Screen to

Text

London and New York:

Routledge, 1999.

, eds.

Th e ambridgeCompanion toLiteratureon Screen.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.

Cartmell, Deborah, l.Q. Hunter, Heidi Kaye, and Imelda Whelehan, eds.Classics in Film and Fiction.Film/Fiction series.


15/18


16/18


Mackenzie, Janet,

ed.At the Typeface: Selections rom the

Newsletter

ofthe VictorianSociety of Editors.

Melbourne: Society

of E ditors (Victoria), 2005.

Marcus, Fred H., ed.

Film and Literature:Contrastsin

Media.Scranton: Chandler, 1971.

Marshall, Jeannie. Judging Books by their Covers: Film Fans Split on Movie Tie-ins.

National Post

[Canada] 4 Jan.

2003:

A l.

Mayer, Robert, ed.

Eighteenth-Century Fictionon Screen.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

McDougal, StuartY.

Made into Movies: FromLiteratureto Film.

New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985.

McFariane, Brian.

NoveltoFilm: AnIntroductionto theTheoryof Adaptation.

Oxford: Clarendon. 1996.

McLuhan, Marshall.

Understanding

Media:

The Extensionsof Man.

[1964] Routledge Classics. London: Routledge, 200 1.

McPhee, Hilary.

Other People sWords.

Sydney: Picador, 200 1.

Miller, Mark Crispin. The Crushing Power of

Big

Publishing . TTieAfaton 17M ar. 1997: 11-18.

Moseo, Vincent.

ThePolitical Economy of Com munication:Rethinkingand

Renewal. London: Sage, 1996.

Murdock, Graham, and Peter Golding . Capitalism, Commu nication and Class Relations .

Mass Communicationand Society.

Ed. James Curran, Michael Gurevitch, and Janet W oollacott. London: Arnold, 1977.12-43.

Murray, Simone. Media Convergence's Third Wave: Content Streaming. Convergence: TheJournal of Research into New

MediaTechnologies

9.1 (Spring 2003): 8-18.

. A Book that Will be Read as Long as Films are Seen: Book -to-Sereen Literary Adap tations and the Content

Economy. Proceedings of The Book Conference 2003 /

InternationalJournal ofthe

Book vol. 1, Melbourne:

Common Ground,2003:329-35.

. Brand Loyalties: Rethinking Content within Global Corporate Media.

Media, Culture Society 21.3

(2005):

415-35.

. Content Streaming.

PaperEmpires: AHistory ofthe BookinA ustratia,Volume3 -1946-2005.

Ed. Craig Mtinro,

Robyn Sheahan-Bright, and John Curtain. Brisbane: U of Queensland P, 2006. 126-31.

. Publishing S tudies: Critically Mapping R esearch in Search of a Discipline.

Publishing Research Quarterly

22.4

Winter 2007:3-2 5.

. Generating Content: Book Publishing as a Component Media Industry.

Making Books: Studies in Contemporary

AustralianPublishing.

Ed. David Carter and Anne Galligan. Brisbane: U of Queensland P,2007 . 51-67.

. Phantom Adaptations:

Eucalyptus,

theAdaptation Industry and the Film that Never W as.

Adaptation: The Journal

ofLiteratureonScreenStudies

(2008, in press).

Naremore, James, ed.

FilmAdaptation.

London: Athlone, 2000.

. Introduction: Film and the Reign of Adap tation. FilmAdaptation.Ed. James Naremore. London: Athlone, 2000.

1-16.

Qrr, John. Introduction: Proust, the mo vie.

Cinemaand Fiction: New Modes ofAdapting 1950-1990.

Ed. John Orr and


17/18


18/18

Adaptation Theory Simone Murray

Documents

Transcript of Adaptation Theory Simone Murray