Films adapted from books are a recognized genre popular among moviegoers and sometimes, one that draws controversial responses among literary fans. Cinema started adapting literature onto the screen by bringing canonical works read by educated and predominantly middle-class individuals to the mass public in the early 1900s. The direct comparison between the two media was described as a “fitful relationship between novel and film: overtly compatible, secretly hostile” (Bluestone, 1956, p.173) and the evaluation of an adaptation’s “faithfulness” to its source literature has been deemed binary. In its place, Robert Stam introduced the dialogic approach to analysing adaptations’ transtextual process. Hutcheon (2006) added that adaptations are both process and product that undergo “transposition” and “creative adaptation” (p. 16). Acknowledging the multiple influences that contribute to adapted films, Barthes described them as “stereophonic” pluralistic products with citations and references” (1977, as cited in Hutcheon, 2006, p.9). The discourse turned to medium specificity theory, which demands that “films must relinquish the narrative disciplines borrowed from literature… and discover its own structural modes” (Deren, 2004, as cited in Corrigan, 2007, p.39). Film lovers continue to ask what makes a good adaptation? What marks quality and how important is “faithfulness”? This presentation shares the aims and response to the course, Print to Screen: Analysing Film Adaptation, a critique and writing elective for non-film studies undergraduates. In the course, students explore the motivations, filmmakers’ signature style and socio-cultural factors that plausibly contributed to choices made behind adaptations of fairy tales, non-fiction, comics and short stories.

Authors:
Susan Lee, National University of Singapore, Singapore

About the Presenter(s)
Susan Lee is a Lecturer in the Centre for English Language Communication in National University of Singapore. She enjoys learning as much as facilitating the conversations in her classrooms. Her interests include hiking, traveling, reading and films

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