The gideon trilogy adaptation as a narrative tool in creative practice: reflections on the nature of adaptation and a comparison

SECTION TWO: CRITICAL COMMENTARY

INTRODUCTION

In reflecting on the development of The Gideon Trilogy (Buckley-Archer 2006, 2007, 2009) and on the evolution of my own writing process during an uneven transition from scriptwriter to novelist, I address two discrete but related fields of enquiry. The first interrogates the nature of the dynamic between writer, medium and narrative in the screenplay and the novel, and compares differing approaches to point of view, characterisation and dialogue in these two forms. The second line of enquiry discusses using adaptation as a developmental tool to progress a narrative.

Restricting my comments, in the main, to the novel and the screenplay, my arguments straddle the fields of adaptation studies and literary theory and make frequent recourse to commentators on creative writing practice. I position my discussion, in the first instance, within the framework of adaptation theory. Chapter One reviews in broad terms the historical relationship between film and the novel and references the work of George Bluestone (1957) and Keith Cohen (1979), inter alia. I also discuss evolving approaches to the analysis of adaptations including Brian McFarlane’s systematic comparison of source texts and their adaptations in order to determine what can and what cannot be translated directly from one medium to another (1996). Perhaps of most relevance to my enquiry, however, is the work of a new wave of adaptation scholars (in particular, Imelda Whelehan (1999), Kamilla Elliott (2009) and Linda Hutcheon (2006) who, frustrated with the dominance of questions related to authenticity and fidelity to the origin text, seek to construct a broader and more dynamic definition of adaptation studies which includes a recognition of the status of the adaptation as a work in its own right. As Linda Hutcheon comments, “in most concepts of translation, the source text is granted an axiomatic primacy and authority, and the rhetoric of comparison has most often been that of faithfulness and equivalence.” (16) This stance resonates with my own concerns as a creative writer who is engaged in using adaptation as a resource to develop narratives rather than a process whose primary objective is to ‘translate’ the source text into a different medium, and whose criteria for success traditionally depend on fidelity to the source material.

Adaptations of classic texts are likely to be reverential to the source, often closer to hommage than interpretation, and the inevitable stripping away of elements of the origin text mean that adaptation is often considered a destructive process. Given, however, that true equivalence is an impossible ideal (in both language and media) an alternative view is that the ‘translation’ can add to as well as subtract from the source text. Contemporary debates in the field of adaptation theory call for an openness to and an engagement with that which is added. Imelda Whelehan, among others, argues for a broader focus in adaptation studies both in terms of the medium and the intentions of the adapter, a focus which moves beyond questions of authenticity and fidelity in the traditional novel-to-screenplay model. Whelehan asks: “[but] what of the graphic narrative, such as Batman, made film? Or the film which generates a novel? Or the novelist who attempts the methods of a director on the page?” (Whelehan 4)

If this theoretical standpoint grants equality to source and adapted texts, it also implies that a different balance be accorded to the functions of adapter-as-translator and adapter-as-interpreter. Although this represents a shift in the focus of adaptation theory, practising adapters would certainly find nothing unusual in such a notion. Adaptations, like origin texts, have always had their own cultural, social and political agendas. Sally Potter’s 1992 adaptation of Orlando, for example, exults in the playfulness and visual richness of Virginia Woolf’s text but also invests the themes of sexual ambiguity and the woman’s place in history with her own edgier political intentions. Chris Weitz’s 2007 screen adaptation of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (1995), entitled The Golden Compass, underplayed the author’s well-known antagonism towards the church, presumably nervous about offending the sensibilities of America’s religious right. Anthony Minghella, reflecting on his own screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Talented Mr Ripley (2000), comments that “

adaptation is, finally, sharing one’s inner cinema with an audience. This is how it felt to me, this is what I thought I was reading. […] But as Italo Calvino said of storytelling, the tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it. The screenplay, obliged to work in its own right, is both an argument with the source material and a commentary on it.” (Minghella ix)

Chapters Two and Three continue to investigate the writer-medium-narrative dynamic but here the discussion moves from adaptation theory to a discussion of, respectively, point of view (focalisation) and dialogue and character in prose fiction and screenworks. Included within this discussion is a series of analyses of novel-to-screen / screen-to-novel adaptations taken from two children’s/ family texts. The first is Melvin Burgess’ novelisation (Burgess 2001) of Lee Hall’s screenplay (Hall 2000), Billy Elliot; the second is Frank Cottrell Boyce’s screen adaptation² of his own novel, Framed (Cottrell Boyce 2005). The principal purpose of these analyses is to establish difference and congruence in narrative techniques for novels and screenplays.

Chapter Four addresses a second line of enquiry: can adaptation be used as a developmental tool (as opposed to being an end in itself)? Commenting on a series of ‘sequential’ adaptations (short story, short screenplay, radio drama) of my fictional narrative, Pearls in The Tate, I outline why I chose to develop prose and script versions of the same story in tandem as opposed to adapting a completed text. I go on to discuss ‘parallel’ adaptation as a creative technique using The Gideon Trilogy as a test case.

Building on the outcomes of the analyses in previous chapters, I argue that not only does each medium bring with it its own constraints and freedoms (and in consequence teaches its own lessons about how narrative works) but it also tends to mould the narrative in particular ways which can offer to the writer different perspectives and new narrative avenues to follow. By creating two parallel narratives, one in prose, one in script form, I argue that each version could potentially inform the other, aspiring to become, to borrow Minghella’s phrase, both an argument with its ‘source material’ and a commentary on it. Since neither ‘source text’ is complete nor dominant, each ‘adaptation’ remains indefinitely open to modification and development.

The final section of the commentary assesses the outcomes of interrogating the writer-medium-narrative dynamic, drawing conclusions about difference and congruence with regard to the novel and the screenplay.