Film Adaptations
Session Coordinator: Rick Iadonisi
Dept. of Writing, Grand Valley State University
107 Lake Superior Hall
Allendale, MI 49401
Iadonisr@gvsu.edu

 

An Arab and a Northman: The Politics of Adaptation & The Power of the Gaze in The 13th Warrior

The familiar terrorist story arc that pervades many contemporary American films in which Arabs and Muslims are portrayed has served to consolidate imperialist and orientalist ideologies within popular culture. While 1999's The 13th Warrior cannot wholly disengage itself from the influence of these ideologies, the film does what movies like Executive Decision does not: create a space in which the voice and gaze of an Arab Muslim serve as the point of entry for the film's audience. Yet is the gaze being returned or simply redirected? Is the film subverting dominant representative tropes of Muslims and Islam or refashioning them? The blatant orientalist rendering of Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan in Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, upon which the film is partly based, gives way to a more powerful and positive figure on screen. I will suggest that recent movements to be more "politically correct" with respect to cinematic representation of Muslims may be at work in The 13th Warrior; however, I will argue that the film is not completely successful in subverting Hollywood stereotypes of the Muslim figure because the "Arab" is situtated firmly in the past.

Ericka Hoagland
Purdue University
ehoagla2@purdue.edu

 

Everything New is Old Again: The Politics of Adaptation in You've Got Mail

1998's You've Got Mail's Hollywood pedigree is impressive: in and of itself, and also as a remake two prior films, an adaptation, in a sense, of itself. First, pairing Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks as star-crossed lovers, entangled in a plot of spirited romantic comedy, the film seems to be a sort of Sleepless in Seattle for the digital age. Whereas in the earlier film Ryan and Hanks first connect via national phone-in radio, here they communicate in an over-30 chat site on AOL. Second, the film is a remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 The Shop Around the Corner, starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as co-workers in a Budapest department store who are unwitting penpal lovers. Fredric Jameson's concepts of postmodern 'nostalgia' and 'historicism' allow us to see that You've Got Mail plays out at the level of film-making the predilection evinced by Ryan's Annie Reed in Sleepless in Seattle: a retreat from the problems of the contemporary real in a idealized raid upon the past as this is captured in classic Hollywood cinema. The sense of the inevitability of a 'happy ending' generated by the (self)-references camouflage the non-resolution of the characters' essential conflicts.

Aimée Morrison
University of Alberta
ahm@ualberta.ca

 

Julie Taymor's Titus: Shakespeare in Black and White

Titus, Julie Taymor's 1999 film adaptation of Shakespeare's revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus, subtly yet forcefully brings race and racism to the foreground and insists that the audience acknowledge the centrality of these issues in Shakespeare's text. Moreover, since her film emphasizes the relevancy of the work to contemporary times, Taymor also reflects, via Shakespeare, on race relations today through the superimposition of the modern world and imagery over the ancient Roman world of Shakespeare's play. A work of rich complexity and artistry, Titus merits consideration both in relation to Shakespeare's play and oeuvre and as a distinct work with the capacity to engender useful and necessary discussions on race. This paper attempts to analyze, with particular attention to the added "bookends" that frame Shakespeare's text as well as one small but significant alteration in the film, how Taymor successfully draws the audience's attention to the issues of race and violence and how, in doing this, she makes evident the relevancy of Shakespeare for audiences today. Moreover, I will also attempt to explore how whiteness functions in the film to problematize Taymor's spoken intentions in commenting on contemporary race relations.

Christa Baiada
City University of Nw York
Cbaiada@gc.cuny.edu

 

It's All in the Game [Show]: Reaganism and The Running Man

In Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era (Rutgers UP, 1994), Susan Jeffords sees the hard bodied actors of the 1980s as a "collective symbol" of the power of Reaganism to reconstruct a national identity deemed weakened as a result of the Carter administration. While Stephen King's 1982 novel The Running Man presents the main character Ben Richards as Everyman, Paul Michael Glaser's 1987 film adaptation opts to make Ben (Arnold Schwarzenegger) a "hard body." Thus, the sterile family man, the fearful soft body of the book, is reconfigured as a loner whose virility, courage, and toughness are unquestioned. A more revealing political commentary is evident in the change in the main character's occupation from a menial worker in an atomics plant to renegade police captain. With this change, the film converts Richards into a "jack-booted Nazi," only to give him the opportunity to reject the big government that employs him and proceed to uncover government corruption and return that big government to the people. Through the lens of Jeffords' work, the ending of each work is also significant. In the novel, Richards dies when he flies a commandeered jet into the Games Building, the center of authority; in the film, Richards takes charge of a small force and successfully storms the building, leading to an inescapable conclusion: the soft body can cause chaos and destruction, while only the hard body possesses the wherewithal to bring about change and restore order.

Rick Iadonisi
Grand Valley State University
iadonisr@gvsu.edu