Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood: Transforming Children's Literature into Film

286 Pages·2018·2.81 MB·English

by  Robyn McCallum (auth.)

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
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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