Definition of the remake

Film or television remake = a film or television series based on an earlier film or television series.

Linda Hutcheon considers the remake to be a sub-type of adaptation (‘remakes are invariably adaptations because of changes in context’), but a sub-type of adaptation which does not involve ‘a shift of medium or mode of engagement’. Remakes are also a form of intertextuality.

If the original film is an adaptation to begin with, then we are dealing with a triangular or triadic relationship (literary source – original film – remake), but many times the original film is not an adaptation, in which case we are dealing with what Constantine Verevis calls in his book Film Remakes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2006) a diadic relationship (original film – remake).

The Japanese film Ringu = based on the novel Ring by Kôji Suzuki, who collaborated in an advisory capacity to the script development of both the Japanese adaptation and the American remake.

Rather than being a re-adaptation of the novel, the Hollywood film reworks the Japanese film, but the films are products of two different horror traditions.

The narrative in both films focuses on a female journalist (Reiko in the Japanese version, Rachel in the Hollywood remake) who investigates unsolved cases of people dying seven days after watching a mysterious videotape.

There is a rich tradition in Japanese culture of ghost stories centred around a vengeful female spirit, and the Japanese film situates itself within this tradition.

An additional theme in the films – the fear of technology (technophobia) as the videotape is the means through which the horrific female character manages to make the transition from one realm to another.

Body horror – Sadako/Samara’s physical appearance – the long black hair hiding her facial features, the dripping white clothes, the removed nails, the swollen feet etc. – different details emphasised in the Japanese version and the Hollywood remake.

Sadako/Samara crossing the boundary between the supernatural and the natural world in the two versions (the Japanese original and the US remake) – differences in setting: despite the time of day being similar, the Japanese interior is darker, more sparsely decorated and feels cramped, while in the American version, the interior is more spacious, thus allowing for more possibilities of evasion, encouraging the viewer to hope for an escape for the male protagonist under attack (especially since the interior shots are cross-cut with shots of Rachel (Naomi Watts) rushing to Noah’s apartment); the sequence in its two different treatments relies on different cultural notions of suspense and horror

Landmarks in the history of adaptation studies:

1950s-1970s –hierarchical view of the relationship between film and literature and predominantly negative view of adaptation; fidelity the main category of the adaptation discourse

1970s – institutionalisation of film studies, typology of adaptation (Wagner - transposition, commentary, analogy) and fidelity challenged

1980s – emphasis on intertextuality and adaptation viewed as a cultural practice; the reader empowered and active

1990s – fidelity further problematised; revival of a narratological approach but also new connections with translation theory

2000s – emphasis on intertextual dialogism, contextual readings and a return of the author as textual agency

2010s - Kamilla Elliott – call for methodological hybridity – formal analysis coupled with a cultural/contextual approach

Journals – Literature/Film Quarterly, Adaptation

Medium specificity

The medium specificity thesis is a theoretical argument with a long tradition. Therefore, there are many understandings and uses of the idea of medium specificity.

One version of the medium specificity thesis is a type of discourse that analyses the possibilities (or strengths, affordances) and the limitations (or constraints) of each medium. This can also be done comparatively, by differentiating the defining characteristics of one medium from the characteristics (formal properties) of other media (for example, the discussion around the differences between film and theatre, or the distinction made by G.E. Lessing between temporal and spatial arts, poetry vs. painting).

Another version of the medium specificity thesis (the version that Noël Carroll in Theorizing the Moving Image is especially critical of) uses medium specificity as a criterion of evaluation of different artworks (meaning that a work realised in a particular medium is considered successful/effective if it uses medium specific techniques, and is criticised if it uses modes of expression that are considered to be non-specific). This is also a version that emphasises medium purity, the idea that each medium should rely on (or should mostly use) those means of expression that are specific to it and not try to imitate other media or borrow from other media.

One problem with this is that if, for instance, we take the example of film, scholars and filmmakers have had different ideas of what constituted the specific/essential qualities of the medium. The Soviet school of montage (S. Eisenstein amongst others) places emphasis on editing as a medium specific tool and believes that the other elements of filmmaking should be subordinated to the use of montage, whilst a scholar such as A. Bazin claimed that photographic realism is what defines the medium of film and therefore emphasised the importance of the long take and the depth of field. For the structuralist filmmakers of the 1960s and the 1970s (Hollis Frampton, Michael Snow etc.), what mattered most was the materiality of film (the celluloid strip or the film stock which could be scratched or tampered with in various ways) and the film projection. Of course, this notion of the film’s materiality has been complicated by the fact that most filmmakers nowadays are no longer using analogue film but have switched to digital film.

Criticism of the medium specificity thesis

Media should not be restricted to what they ‘do best’. Media practitioners should be allowed to use the full range of capability of a medium, without limiting themselves to what might be considered the essential or unique qualities of that particular medium, the characteristics that differentiate it from other media.

In other words, to quote V.F.Perkins (Film as Film), a technical resource should not be treated as ‘an artistic obligation’. The main concern should be how to convey particular meanings in an expressive and imaginative way, and not rigidly apply certain techniques or force certain stylistic choices.

In an age where there is increased dialogue between different media, a concern with medium purity can be very limiting.

According to Noël Carroll, the relation between the different media is not one in which there is a strict division of labour; the media do not need to ‘specialise’ in certain effects.

BlueBeard

Plot Summery

A literary folktale published by Charles Perrault in Paris, 1697. Perrault’s version incorporates morals and themes written to appeal to the late-17th century Parisian aristocracy of his time:

Class hierarchy (the superiority of wealth and nobility)

Status and marital relationships (dependent on a man’s wealth)

Strict gender roles and subsequent power dynamics

Expectations, obedience, secrecy, curiosity and consequence in marriage

“Happily ever after” ending

Catherine Breillat is a feminist director famous for her distinctively personal films on sexuality, gender hierarchies, and sibling rivalry.

Approaches the story from the subjective experience of the adolescent sisters and focuses on the exploration of female childhood curiosity and its consequences

Breillat’s realist approach makes the question of fidelity to Perrault’s fairytale very questionable. Major characters and situations are mostly the same, but the context,

structural presentation, character developments and ending are certainly not.

In Breillat’s starkly realist version, nobody wins

Breillat unveils and emphasizes the complexity of reality, people, and their motives. Breillat shows that while gender and class hierarchies exist, women are not always passive, blameless damsels and that class mobility does exist

Role reversal and gender twists

Bluebeard is a cold-hearted monster in Perrault’s version, but Breillat depicts him as misunderstood, somewhat insecure, and nurturing in a way. Marie-Catherine actually likes the blue beard. It is she that is seen as calculating, manipulative, demanding, and confident.

Breillat adds much more of a religious context in her adaptation, with the references quite literally placed from the beginning through the end.

Sisterhood

Focus is on the relationship between both set of sisters: the fictional Marie Catherine and Anne and the narrators Catherine and Marie-Anne

Perrault’s Bluebeard is framed within Breillat’s larger narrative of the two adolescent sisters, illustrating the parallels between the two storylines and the relationship between the two sisters

In the climax, the real world and fictional world overlap to essentially indicate foreshadowing and that the two younger sisters are one in the same. The central sibling rivalry functions to show us binary-oppositions—the two pairs of sisters, “both caught in an ambivalent love-hate relationship… homeliness and beauty, pragmatism and romanticism, realism and fantasy.” (Wheatley: 2009)