From BookRiot:
It happens every time a new adaptation of a classic, beloved work emerges. Whether on stage, on screen, or streaming; certain fans must let everyone else watching that they do NOT like modern adaptations of classics. These comments can be seen under any announcement about upcoming adaptations, reviews, and even Vogue photo spreads of the film’s stars. (Be still my heart at that Emma 2020 hand-touch picture. Illegal. So hot.)
The classics tend to be dominated by white, western writers. Modern adaptations give us the opportunity to experience treasured stories through the perspectives of artists of different backgrounds. In books, we see retellings, such as Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable. On stage and in film, we’re more likely to see adaptations that include more people of color in the cast, where they might not have been cast previously. Upcoming film The Green Knight is based on the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Arthurian legend and stars Dev Patel. While we still have ways to go with representation, it is refreshing to see storytelling becoming more important than maintaining the status quo.
Recently, I watched National Theatre at Home’s Production of Jane Eyre, which I found incredible and inspiring. Every third comment on the youtube video seemed to be some variant of the not liking modern adaptation variety. This particular production of Jane Eyre was devised by the company. Devised theatre is a different genre of theatre than a standard play. The company works with the source material to deconstruct and tell the story using sound, movement, and space. Along with the help of a movement coordinator and dramaturg, whose job is to interpret historical context and Bronte’s work for the company, Jane Eyre was pieced back together in a lively, heartbreaking way.
. . . .
I had never seen a version of Jane Eyre I had connected with before. Then, there was this stripped down play, minimal set and props, small, diverse company, with dialogue borrowed directly from the book I tried reading several times. Jane Eyre, directed by Sally Cookson, was produced in 2015, yet spoke to me about freedom and heartache in 2020. Was my interpretation wrong? Did I watch it incorrectly? Was Sally Cookson’s Jane Eyre too modern because it was reimagined by 21st century artists? No.
. . . .
The works of William Shakespeare are continually adapted into movies, for the stage, and into picture books and novels. The film version of Romeo and Juliet that I am most familiar with is Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+ Juliet (1996.) It’s vibrant and funny and histrionic. I’m also familiar with the 1968 Romeo and Juliet, with the Zac Efron-looking Romeo.
Some will argue that that 1968 version is better, more accurate, a classic. To me, Luhrmann’s is a classic, of Shakespeare and of filmmaking. I’ve heard people scoff at Luhrmann’s film, calling it a joke, a mockery even. The mid-’90s film scene was all about bawdy teen comedies, grungy action dramas, and charming family films. An “accurate” Romeo and Juliet would have flopped, even with the budding star power of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Even the 1968 film isn’t historically accurate. Historical accuracy isn’t the only aim with adaptations. It’s about updating the material to fit the context of the production.
. . . .
Take Little Women, for example. Louisa May Alcott’s novel has been adapted at least into four feature length films. Katherine Hepburn starred in the 1933 adaptation, which focused heavily on the March family’s sudden financial losses and familial contentment. Depression-era audiences clung to Katherine Hepburn’s Jo. In 1949, audiences would have connected deeply to wartime hardships and the March girls missing their father in the June Allyson–starring adaptation.
Link to the rest at BookRiot
PG usually has no problems with various adaptations of classics in a different setting. He is not often happy when the author’s original view and vision is twisted out of recognition. Casting a woman as Hamlet could be fine if the director and actors showed the slightest understanding of Shakespeare’s play in their performances and staging.
A book or story has become a classic because a significant audience for it has persisted over time in the face of massive changes in the world and, usually, because it involves permanent and lasting human traits, strengths, weaknesses, mistakes, misunderstandings, passions of both transporting and destructive natures that also don’t really change.
Shakespeare was all about connecting with his audiences. PG vaguely remembers from some long-ago college class that performances of Shakespeare’s plays in his time were significantly shorter than they are today. The speeches that draw contemporary actors into lengthy pauses for serious contemplation (on the part of the actor and/or audience) went ripping past an Elizabethan audience with more comedy, action and pathos to appear shortly.
Most of the good modernizations of Shakespeare have been done by those intimately familiar with the process and product of putting on an “authentic” production of the same play. Ian McKellan’s Richard III (film) worked in transposing the misnamed War of the Roses to neofascist Jazz-age Britain precisely because McKellan had done several “authentic” productions of not just R3, but of other Shakespeare historicals. Similarly, Kenneth Branagh’s filmed Hamlet works both because of Branagh’s own experience with authentic productions and its drawing upon the Mark Rylance live production in the 1988-89 season (which was even better). And conversely, there are two other “modernist” adaptations of Hamlet released on film within a decade or so of the Branagh — which I shall not further identify — that archly do not work because the cast, director, and adapter had little or no experience with staging Shakespeare authentically.
All of which goes a long way toward explaining why there are so few worthwhile productions of Lear and The Tempest… filmed or otherwise.
If you’re going to GUT a classic, here’s a thought: create your own characters (yeah, and give up the name recognition), and make them memorable.
Lazy writers.
The classics tend to be dominated by white, western writers.
Eastern authors of different pigmentation produced no classics? Nothing we can cast with whites?
A key question is why is the adaptation changing the original?
As you say, transposing the story to a different setting to highlight how enduring the story is, is actually commendable.
Changing it for “diversity’s” sake or political correctness, not so.
If you don’t trust the original, don’t do it.
This doesn’t apply just to classics: Hollywood has a tradition of licensing stories, mangling them totally out of recognition, and then complaining when the outcome is negative.
Stories are legion.
Pretty much this. Updating Sherlock Holmes so that Watson is keeping a blog about his adventures with Sherlock works if you’re clearly transporting the story to the 21st century. And, it was plausible Sherlock fans would enjoy seeing how Sherlock’s mad detective skillz would work in the age of Twitter and forensics.
Cultural adaptations aren’t a problem, either. I think my folks enjoyed “Bride and Prejudice,” the Indian adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.” It strikes me that particular Austen story lends itself very well to Bollywood. There’s dancing in it, even!
But turning Javert into a black guy in 18whenever is just needlessly distracting, which happened in the latest version on PBS. My mother actually called me when she saw this, she wanted to know if it was even historically plausible for Javert to be black. The question killed the immersion for her.
Whereas, everyone was pretty chill about Commander Sisko playing Javert to defeat the Maquis leader. Adapt Les Miserables to the 24th century, and you can change the characters as you will. Keep the original setting, and you just annoy and confuse everyone. Guy Ritchie has a version of King Arthur that somehow has Djimon Hounsou and a Chinese guy in it. I let it go; the colossal oliphaunts were the first clue that the England in the story wasn’t the real one. Then the Chinese guy teaches Arthur kung fu, so obviously …
I’m waiting for the next Little Women where Wilfred Brimley is cast as Jo. We can experience the treasured story from a different perspective.
How about ROBIN HOOD PRINCE OF THIEVES?
Morgan Freeman and big explosions.
Like any Moor would be caught dead in Richard’s England. Which is how he would be found most likely.
Fairs, fair, it was a fantasy set in a parallel universe wasn’t it? The basic premise of stealing from the rich to give to the poor pushes all Robin Hood stories into the SFF field (the “giving to the poor” bit that is, if you are going to steal targeting the rich was generally a good proposition even in the mundane world). For that matter Morgan Freeman as a “Moor” is pushing it a bit given that he should have looked like he was Arab or Berber, maybe with a bit of Spanish thrown in.
Not all Robin Hood stories are F&SF.
MEN IN TIGHTS was pure farce. 😉
(And I rather liked ROBIN AND MARIAN.)
I’ll give you Robin and Marion – if only because I fell in love with Audrey Hepburn when I was very young – but I stand by my view of Prince of Thieves. The best Robin Hood film was the one starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains and this definitely was alternative history in an alternative English landscape.
I just picked that one up.
I’ll be checking it out soon.
I also picked up the Tyrone Power ZORRO.
I’ve seen them both on analog TV but I want them in HD.
As to the Hepburns, both were great, but I favor Katherine a bit more. Just on BRINGING UP BABY.
We need more madcap comedies.
I believe the approved term is screwball comedy . I will admit that I have a taste for these black and white comedies from before I was born, especially when directed by the likes of Howard Hawkes.
I fear though that I’ve drawn you so far away from the topic of the OP that this may count as derailing the discussion. Enjoy your new movies.
Jamie,
Regarding Commander Sisko, we don’t even need to be chill as the federation was always a utopian fantasy world in which skin colour simply didn’t matter (unlike our real world of race prejudice and identity politics). If you bought into Star Trek you had no problem with Kirk kissing Uhura because colour didn’t matter and Kirk would kiss anything that was female and approximately human. Of course, the original audience may have been shocked and today some feminists (and I think the US Army) would question kissing someone in the direct line of command. This though may be a present day objection, the future may be more free and easy and willing to accept that people can actually freely consent even when the power levels are not exactly balanced.
I agree with pretty much everything you say about adaptations. I think that you can rarely just change one character’s ethnicity and try to keep everything else true to the original (the same goes for sex, and if you say “but Ripley” that wasn’t an adaptation). As the setting is not the Federation we know that this one change would impact all the character’s relationships and distort the whole story. Colour blind casting can work in some plays, possibly because of the inherent artificiality of theatre. If Idris Elba walks on the stage as Lear – in a production where the other actors are white – it actually does not seem to matter that he is nothing like his daughters. However, I doubt that this would work in something more modern, say casting Lupita Nyong as Maggie in “Cat on A Hot Tin Roof”, unless the audience were totally ignorant of American history?
Like you mother I have no idea whether it is historically plausible for Javert to be black. The French had the reputation of having been more laid back about racial matters, but this comparison was normally to the US South in the time of Jim Crow, so may not mean a great deal. I feel it is improbable that a black Javert would have been free to emulate that character’s maniacal pursuit but this could be just my ignorance and prejudice coming into play. Can an adaptation work if it contradicts the audience’s expectations even if those expectations are wrong? Should it try to anyway?
A little thought experiment: you are watching a movie adaptation of a novel set on a Royal Navy ship in the Caribbean somewhere off the coast of Haiti, say in 1805. The crew are doing sailorly things as the officers talk and you note that about 10% of the crew are black. Does this throw you out of the movie? A visiting Royal Navy Post Captain is piped aboard. In the original novel he is not described but can be presumed to be white. In the movie he is played by Idris Elba*. Does this end your suspension of disbelief? A Star Trek fan whose only knowledge of the RN came via Trek – or a real citizen of the Federation – would probably not be troubled but my guess is the majority of the audience would assume that this was diverse casting taken a step to far. Does the fact that it could have happened justify the filmmakers attack on their audience’s expectations given that the film’s aim is entertainment – and profit -not enlightenment?
And I realise that it is part of the SFF genre so some allowances can be made, but Guy Richie’s King Arthur is such a pile of s**t that it shouldn’t be mentioned in polite conversation.
* sorry but he’s my default example black actor if Denzil or Morgan are too old for the role