Beyond Adaptation

Some film and novel revisions go so far beyond adaptation that they demand a new designation. This critical collection explores movies, plays, essays, comics and video games that supersede adaptation to radically transform their original sources. Fifteen essays investigate a variety of texts that rework everything from literary classics to popular children’s books, demonstrating how these new, stand-alone creations critically engage their sources and contexts. Particular attention is paid to parody, intertextuality, and fairy-tale transformations in the examination of these works, which occupy a unique narrative and creative space.

Phyllis Frus is an associate professor of English and chair of the English department at Hawai‘i Pacific University.
Christy Williams is an instructor of English at Hawai‘i Pacific University and a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawai‘i. She lives in Honolulu.

Edited by Phyllis Frus and Christy Williams
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 226
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4223-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5578-2
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments      vii
Introduction: Making the Case for Transformation      1

1. Borrowing a Melody: Jane Campion’s The Piano and Intertextuality
PHYLLIS FRUS      19
2. Adaptation, The Orchid Thief, and the Subversion of Hollywood Conventions
DEVIN HARNER      31
3. Historical Figures Transformed: Free Enterprise and I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
MARNI GAUTHIER      42
4. Post-Colonial Transformation: The Rejection of English in Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi
ANNE M. REEF      56
5. Transforming Great Expectations: Dickens, Cuarón, and the Bildungsroman
ANTJE S. ANDERSON      69
6. A Fuller Statement of the Case: Mary Reilly and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
LAURIE F. LEACH      83
7. Transforming Shakespeare: Neil Gaiman and The Sandman
JULIA ROUND      95
8. On the Trail of the Butterfly: D. H. Hwang and Transformation
DEBORAH L. ROSS      111
9. Wicked and Wonderful Witches: Narrative and Gender Negotiations from The Wizard of Oz to Wicked
ALISSA BURGER      123
10. “Wonderland’s become quite strange”: From Lewis Carroll’s Alice to American McGee’s Alice
CATHLENA MARTIN      133
11. Stories to Live By: Re-Framing Storytelling in the Arabian Nights Miniseries
JENNIFER ORME      144
12. Mulan: Disney’s Hybrid Heroine
LAN DONG      156
13. Mass-Marketing “Beauty”: How a Feminist Heroine Became an Insipid Disney Princess
MARC DIPAOLO      168
14. Four Times Upon a Time: “Snow White” Retold
STELLA BOLAKI      181
15. Mermaid Tales on Screen: Splash, The Little Mermaid, and Aquamarine
CHRISTY WILLIAMS      194

About the Contributors      207
Index      211

“intriguing…an energetic, bold, well-documented survey…recommended”—Choice.