Literature, Film, and Narrative Adaptation
Literature and film, movies and books, are compared to apples and giraffes by contemporary American writer Dennis Lehane. But they can be compared. They grow from roots such as history and cinema. But the question is: how and why do literature and movies feed on each other efficiently? What happens when apples, giraffes, and other exotic animals merge with each other? Thousands of adaptations have been made from historical or literary sources. In this way, ‘litflicks’ is the most recent Internet jargon for literature that becomes a means of creating vibrant moving images. History and epics are processed through historical films in the cinema as a whole. Historians of film usually share an epic story set in dense clusters, including its size, cost, sumptuous costumes, and landscape. A period film, such as The Great Gatsby in 1942 or Zabriskie Point in 1969, differs from a production depicting truth that can be found in the distant past or the present (McCabe, 2006).
Despite the various forms of communication, literature, history, and film have found thousands of solutions and accommodations and established productive relationships. First, there is the nature and tradition of adaptation. Each generation develops and adapts past stories to modern needs and today’s forms of narration. The Greek playwright Aeschylus (525-456 BC) said, “My plays are but slices from the great banquet of Homer’s poems.” But the drama of Aeschylus, morally thinner and more mediocre in its adversary while expressing the quest for ultimate truth, is easier than anything Homer wrote. Since he is not the singer of the song, it glorifies successful communication. As Aeschylus quoted the words of Homer, he continued to repeat the story. Over the decades, stories are told and described again, or a story may be lived by thousands of people for centuries.
Imagine how distilled knowledge and history are. Narrative history is as important as the subject. Therefore, its relationship with nature and history and the type of film are affected by three key points:
Historical Truth, Literacy, and Cultural Authority
In the first place, myth relates to historical truth. Was Homer’s claim about Nestor and Ajax in the Iliad true? There is still no textual evidence, so the question remains open. The Iliad, to date, is not a myth or a history of literature but a work of literature rather than science. Therefore, research into the application of literature before recorded history shows that humanity developed creative writing early.
Secondly, there is a fundamental difference between history and memory. History differs from memory. Documentary evidence, guided by careful critical analysis, allows history to be as close as possible to reality and then to be represented as such. Today, memory is reconstructed through the lens of history. Popular films develop in a modern market environment. They must entertain the feelings of today’s audiences. Anachronism can be used for fun and enjoyment. Memory gives the story life. Thus, the story inevitably varies in the short term, with some notable exceptions.
The third point emphasizes literary literacy as an agency of ideas and reading culture, dominant in the eighteenth century, and contrasts erudition with knowledge. It distinguishes the older importance of literature from a new reality in which references began to dominate by the end of the eighteenth century, including intelligence, ability, and taste. Documentary or crude insertions are not the only issue; there is a much stronger general similarity between literature and history than between their separate forms. So, film narration is much closer to literary narration than it first appears. It is a subtle but significant difference. We can expect that the audience will respond similarly to literature. But can we expect the same response to the story of a film?
Documentary Film and Representations of Reality
There are two exceptions to the general rules for movies and stories: documentary films and raw images. Documentary film is close to documented history. Despite the statement by Washington Post publisher Phil Graham that journalism is “the first rough draft of history,” a documentary may function as journalism or news on location. A documentary, according to traditional wisdom, is “broad, genuine and objective” and refers to documents or relates to truth.
In addition to fiction, one can look deeper and often find, and sometimes perceive, a personal photograph of a doctrine, documentary film, or “real life.” A documentary is supported by something that can be constructed from an objective situation as an individual work, although it may also be associated with social persuasion or propaganda. This is again a problem for documentary and time, but it is not necessarily an advantage. Raw frames are also known as “action shots” and are preserved as historical records or as material that reduces the cost of production. They may be artistic or documentary tools for improving mimesis in film by representing existing traditional or exceptional events and are then used as movie filler. One example is the widely circulated Zapruder film. It was the only movie to show the assassination of President Kennedy and was filmed by amateur cameraman and Dallas clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder on November 22, 1963. This film has been used or discussed in some forty films, including Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, a 1999 episode of HBO’s The Sopranos, and conspiracy documentaries in recent years.
Authorship, Copyright, and Fidelity to Source Texts
The originality of the composer and composition, style and property rights, and cultural production became important factors in acceptance and consumption. That is, until the early 1800s, a new sense of individualism developed. The term and concept were not commonly used in English before then. Therefore, writing became associated with the “independent” writer. The writer was rightly proud that the work could be sold rather than depending on sponsorship. Augustan poet and translator Alexander Pope (1688-1794) is one of the first Anglo-American examples. He achieved an enormous net profit of £10,000 from translating Homer and boasted that he could “live and thrive / Indebted to no prince or peer alive.”
Plagiarism prevailed. Ancient Greek and Roman writers who stole from someone else’s labor within elite culture were regarded as lacking personal and creative integrity. After Johann Gutenberg’s printing developments, legal concepts such as patents arose—a monarchy or other authority granted benefits through patents, usually to a stationery company or union. The first Anglo-American copyright law, the Statute of Anne of 1710 in Great Britain, provided copyright guarantees. This new development became the basis for the first Copyright Act of 1790 in the United States (Higham, 2001).
Copyright and authorship influenced a thriving culture of adaptation. Adaptation as a departure from an original concept of creation and application is written into the historical record. The initial value of this cultural term developed alongside socio-economic changes. The word derives from the Latin roots meaning “to fit” or “to connect.” Its secondary meaning later developed into the idea of modifying, fragmenting, or completely reinventing a work, gaining a new social and commercial meaning in the capitalist world.
Adaptation, Media History, and Cultural Continuity
A final introductory note: this article concerns the adaptation of history and literature into film, the history of cinema culture, and the issue of adaptation. How do we present the culture and language of the past while emphasizing the concerns involved in cultural translation?
Unlike other careers or practices, culture transitions from generation to generation. As culture develops, it must be reproduced. “There is no independent inertia of culture.” In the classical sense, the history of culture, secular humanism, and culture is unique to Aristotle’s approach. My premise is based on the assumption that human knowledge develops through the close connection between mind, environment, soul, and body. The Platonic “forms” above, archetypes in the divine mind that exist regardless of our visual world, guide what we need to build as human beings rather than simply giving higher power to people’s needs. Humanity is its own producer (“Review of The Triumph of Love,” 2004).
Adaptation is an ancient form of media art and leisure craft. Updated over the centuries and retold in different forms in the press, it has created a legacy of useful information and contributes to the well-being of those to whom it is transmitted. With the emergence of these forms, the relationship between literature and cinema shows how written words can help us connect with the visual image.
Reference:
Scott McCabe, “Reconciling Violence and a life in Literature: An Interview with Dennis Lehane,” The Writer’s Chronicle 39.1 (2006): 8–13. Lehane wrote Mystic River (2001), basis of the movie of the same name (2003) directed by Clint Eastwood. Full quote, p. 9 (when Lehane was asked how film influenced him): “We’re all products of pop culture. Hard to escape it. Film and books, though, are as different as apples and giraffes, but what I learned most from film is the concept of perpetual motion. Keep the story evolving.”
See, for instance, GA, “Review of The Triumph of Love,” Time Out London 1781 (October 6–13, 2004), https://www.timeout.com/film/ reviews/81472/the_triumph_of_love.html (accessed Sept. 14, 2010): “It sounds like some boring corseted litflick.” Also see the amazon.com Listmania! list “LitFLicks: Movies For People Who Like Books,” https://www.amazon.com/LitFLicks-Movies-People-Like-Books/lm/GPF2P0Z0Z7U (accessed Oct. 29, 2010).
Judicious, critical.” distinction neatly made by John Higham, “Historiography, American,” in The Oxford Companion to United States History, ed. Paul Boyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
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