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Introduction: Adapting to Adaptations
Brian Attebery
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Introduction • 395
All well and good, but what if the adaptation is inferior on its own terms,
as an aesthetic object and as an act of expression? We need a theory of bad
adaptation, which I am by no means qualified to formulate, but I'll make a few
suggestions here.
There are movies far worse than The Hobbit or Mary Poppins, and some
of them come from good source material. In the field of fantasy, for instance,
there is the Sci-Fi Channel (as it was then called) and its inept production of
Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, about which Le Guin has written
with fine wit and anger. Even worse was a movie that did not even dare call
itself The Dark Is Rising, though it was originally billed as an adaptation of
Susan Cooper's classic novel, but rather ended up being called The Seeker.
Both Le Guin and Cooper expected changes to their work. Le Guin
had had good luck with a 1979 PBS dramatization of her novel The Lathe of
Heaven, and Cooper, who co-wrote the play and film Foxfire based on Eliot
Wigginton's compilations of Appalachian folk tradition, was well aware of the
artistic choices that must be made in translating ideas from one medium and
genre to another. But the product in these cases was simply bad. The televised
Legend of Earthsea was a great disappointment to fans of the book, although a
few viewers who had not read it found value in the special effects and some of
the acting. Seeker was a critical and commercial flop. In both cases the adap
tors presumed to lecture the writers on what they really intended:
"Miss Le Guin [sic] was not involved in the development of the material
or the making of the film, but we've been very, very honest to the books,"
explains director Rob Lieberman. "We've tried to capture all the levels of
spiritualism, emotional content and metaphorical messages. Throughout the
whole piece, I saw it as having a great duality of spirituality versus paganism
and wizardry, male and female duality. The final moments of the film culmi
nate in the union of all that and represent two different belief systems in this
world, and that's what Ursula intended to make a statement about. The only
thing that saves this Earthsea universe is the union of those two beliefs." (Sci
Fi Dec 2004, quoted in Le Guin)
In other words, we know what Le Guin meant to do. We have kindly remedied
her mistakes.
In the case of The Seeker, I can only guess that the screenwriter and direc
tor sat down together and made a list of everything people loved about The
Dark Is Rising:
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396 • Introduction
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Introduction • 397
at the Opera and to The Wizard of Oz and co-wrote the 1942 1 Married a
Witch. For original songs, we have a newly teamed pair of songwriters named
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann; they haven't yet produced such great
songs as "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear," and "The Reluctant Cannibal," but
let's give the young guys a chance. Most importantly, Mary Poppins is played
by Beatrice Lillie. Lillie was a comedienne who combined broad humor with
a serious, slightly offended demeanor. Her looks were odd: sharp nose, long
chin, button eyes—very much like Mary Shepard's illustrations of the Poppins
books, in fact. She excelled at sending up sentimental culture: look on the web
for audio or video recordings of her performance of "There Are Fairies at the
Bottom of My Garden." Sung in what she called her "mezzanine soprano,"
the Victorian song, a favorite of her mother's, becomes a riotous and rather
bawdy send-up of everything twee and precious. Most importantly, she was P.
L. Travers's own choice for the role. The old gal did know what she was doing.
My version would not have made as much money as the Disney film, but
it might well have been a classic work of fantasy and a fit companion piece
to the original book, rather than a barrier to entry. Ultimately what we ask of
adaptation is that it invite audiences to look beyond the text at hand toward
other versions, other crystallizations. Every reading of a text is, after all, an
interpretation—a translation. Adaptation opens the way for further adapta
tion; if some members of the audience try their own transformations, the world
is made richer, as when John Milton wrote his famous piece of Bible fan-fic,
"Paradise Lost."
We start the issue off with Neil Gaiman's Guest of Honor address, accom
panied by Peter Straub's moving introduction. The published title of the talk
was "The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography," although it
isn't really about that at all, except where it is. It's about the power of stories
and the uses of genre and ultimately about the fact that, as Gaiman says, read
ers and writers are collaborators and co-creators, no matter what the genre or
the medium.
Kij Johnson did not give a speech, so in order to suggest her contributions
to the Conference and to the various genres she employs, I subsequently posed
ten questions and she kindly agreed to answer them. Our email conversation
is reproduced here, following ICFA President Sydney Duncan's introduction
to Johnson's reading. Constance Penley's scholar's address was primarily a tour
of her recent collaborative Melrose Place project that can't be reproduced here.
Instead, we offer a transcript of the fascinating and wide-ranging conversa
tion that took place earlier between Penley and Karen Hellekson, along with
Hellekson's introduction to the luncheon address.
Anca Rosu's essay "Food Fantasies in George R. R. Martin" concerns a
text that is multiply immersed in issues of adaptation. Each of the installments
in Martin's saga is in some ways an adaptation of those that preceded it: each
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398 ■ Introduction
Works Cited
Le Guin, Ursula K. "Earthsea Miniseries: A Reply to Some Statements Made
by the Film-Makers of the Earthsea Miniseries Before it was Shown."
Ursula K. Le Gum's Website 13 Nov 2004. Web. 12 Feb 2014.
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