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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ADAPTATION AND VISUAL CULTURE Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood Transforming Children’s Literature into Film Robyn McCallum Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture Series editors Julie Grossman Le Moyne College Syracuse, NY, USA R. Barton Palmer Clemson University Clemson, SC, USA “McCallum’s study will provide children’s literature and culture scholars the criti- cal resources for studying the considerable number and types of adaptations in this area. Drawing from the critical tools found in the burgeoning adaptation field, the study considers the ideological functions, audiences (real and implied), and cul- tural effects of adaptations of children’s stories. Readers familiar with John Stephens and Robyn McCallum’s influential Retelling Stories, Framing Culture can consider this an excellent sequel to that work.” —Mike Cadden, Professor of English and Director of Childhood Studies, Missouri Western State University, USA This new series addresses how adaptation functions as a principal mode of text production in visual culture. What makes the series distinctive is its focus on visual culture as both targets and sources for adaptations, and a vision to include media forms beyond film and television such as video- games, mobile applications, interactive fiction and film, print and nonprint media, and the avant-garde. As such, the series will contribute to an expan- sive understanding of adaptation as a central, but only one, form of a larger phenomenon within visual culture. Adaptations are texts that are not singular but complexly multiple, connecting them to other pervasive plural forms: sequels, series, genres, trilogies, authorial oeuvres, appro- priations, remakes, reboots, cycles and franchises. This series especially welcomes studies that, in some form, treat the connection between adap- tation and these other forms of multiplicity. We also welcome proposals that focus on aspects of theory that are relevant to the importance of adap- tation as connected to various forms of visual culture. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14654 Robyn McCallum Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood Transforming Children’s Literature into Film Robyn McCallum Sydney, Australia Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture ISBN 978-1-137-39540-5 ISBN 978-1-137-39541-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39541-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017958005 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover image © ataves / Stockimo / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom For my boys, Greg, Liam and Sean A cknowledgments I first began thinking about this book after finishing my doctoral thesis in the mid-1990s—almost half a life-time ago! Since then the project has moved back and forth between back burner and hot plate, as other proj- ects, tasks and children intervened or took priority. During that time vari- ous people have been instrumental in helping the project to come to fruition and I am grateful to the many students, colleagues and friends with whom I have discussed many of the books and films included here. I owe a special debt to Dr Victoria Flanagan and Professor John Stephens who have both provided ongoing and unwavering support and friendship throughout the research and writing of this book. Victoria’s resolute and at times passionate encouragement helped to drive me forward, John’s willingness to discuss ideas and impart his wealth of knowledge and exper- tise has helped to shape it, and together their belief in my potential has kept me motivated especially when an end seemed nowhere in sight. I also express the utmost gratitude to my stalwart and loving partner, Greg, who, in addition to enduring many hours of watching a seemingly endless stream of adaptations, has always been here to pick up the pieces and offer support, encouragement and the odd admonishment when it was needed. And finally, last but not least, I am grateful to my sons, Liam and Sean, who having grown up on a staple diet of film adaptations have, ‘out of the mouths of babes’, offered their astute insights about books and films and always been willing to sit down with their mum, help her with technology and watch yet another film. vii c ontents 1 Introduction: ‘Palimpsestuous Intertextuality’ and the Cultural Politics of Childhood 1 2 The Imperial Child and the Romantic Child: Film Adaptation as Cultural Capital 33 3 The Dream Child and the Wild Child: Adapting the Carnivalesque 85 4 ‘Flapping Ribbons of Shaped Space-Time’: Genre Mixing, Intertextuality and Metafiction in Fiction and Film Adaptation 123 5 Angels, Monsters and Childhood: Liminality and the Quotidian Surreal 173 6 Invisible Children: Representing Childhood Across Cultures 211 7 Epilogue 265 Index 269 ix CHAPTER 1 Introduction: ‘Palimpsestuous Intertextuality’ and the Cultural Politics of Childhood Film and television adaptations of literary texts for children play a crucial role in the cultural reproduction and transformation of childhood and youth and hence provide a rich resource for the examination of the trans- mission and adaptation of cultural values and ideologies. Historically, film media has always had a partiality for adaptation of literary sources, espe- cially of canonical or ‘classic’ literary texts and of children’s texts, with some of the earliest film adaptations being of children’s novels (for exam- ple, Cecil Hepworth’s 1903 silent-film version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and five silent versions of Treasure Island between 1908 and 1922—now all presumed lost).1 As Linda Hutcheon, a key commentator in the field of adaptation studies, puts it, ‘there are few stories that have not been lovingly ripped off’ (2006, 177). There are a numerous reasons for this partiality, which this study explores, but an obvious effect is the commodification and capitalisation of texts for young people within the cultural economy. With many recent film adaptations of both ‘classic’ and popular texts attracting large budgets and mass audiences, the genre con- stitutes a substantial economic commodity within film and literary indus- tries, but is also a powerful way of transmitting, sustaining and reshaping the cultural capital that literary texts bring with them. Thus, film adapta- tions of literary texts for children and young people have also played, and continue to play, a crucial role in the culture wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. © The Author(s) 2018 1 R. McCallum, Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood, Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39541-2_1 2 R. MCCALLUM Following Hutcheon, adaptation is to be thought of as a form of ‘rep- etition without replication’ (176). Hutcheon’s coinage, ‘palimpsestuous intertextuality’ (21) captures the ‘multilaminated’ (21) nature of adapta- tions whereby texts are inscribed with the traces and memories, or palimp- sests, of other intersecting texts that resonate through ‘repetition without replication’ (176). This way of understanding adaptation is particularly appropriate to scholarship related to children’s textual culture, given the radically intertextual nature of the primary material and the prevalence of ‘retold’ stories within that material (Stephens and McCallum, 1998; Lefebvre, 2013; Müller, 2013). As a repetition, an adaptation may serve to affirm and reinforce cultural assumptions associated with the pretext and hence ensure its status as cultural capital, that is, as telling a story and embodying values and ideas that a society sees as having cultural worth. Thus, the impulse to tell a story over and over in different media, across different cultures may be an expression of a need to assert basic ideologies and values. However, the differing modes of reader/viewer engagement that visual and literary media enact necessitate that change is inevitable, and any adaptation will reshape and reinterpret its pretext, often in the light of contemporary and local issues and concerns. Adaptation, thus, enacts an ongoing dialogue between literary and film texts, their audi- ences and the discourses around those texts and audiences. Furthermore, film adaptations, especially those aimed at young audiences, can lead to further adaptations with the production of computer games, novelisa- tions and other merchandising. In the case of popular contemporary fic- tion, film adaptations may prolong the shelf life of a novel; adaptations of older texts may in turn renew that shelf life, and lead to further novelisa- tions and adaptations. Adaptation, in other words is not only a business in itself, but also a process that results in a seemingly endless and intricate web of intertextuality. Thus, the study of adaptation is not simply a matter of comparing the book and the film—there are a whole range of other texts and media that mediate and intersect with these texts. For a viewer familiar with the adapted text, adaptation is an ongoing dialogical process in which the familiar text is compared with the text being experienced, but also with a plethora of other texts (Stam, 2000, 63). Further, while viewers familiar with the adapted text will compare the work they already know with the one they are experiencing, an adaptation, like the work it adapts, is always framed in a context—a time, place, society and culture— and ‘can hence reveal as much about the concerns of its own time as those of the original text’ (Cartmell et al., 2000, 4). Four key questions that

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This book features a cutting edge approach to the study of film adaptations of literature for children and young people, and the narratives about childhood those adaptations enact. Historically, film media has always had a partiality for the adaptation of ‘classic’ literary texts for children. A
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