Embodying Adaptation: Character and

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
ADAPTATION AND VISUAL CULTURE

Embodying
Adaptation
Character and the Body

Christina Wilkins
Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture

Series Editors
Julie Grossman
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, NY, USA

R. Barton Palmer
Atlanta, GA, USA
This series addresses how adaptation functions as a principal mode of text
production in visual culture. What makes the series distinctive is its focus
on visual culture as both targets and sources for adaptations, and a vision
to include media forms beyond film and television such as videogames,
mobile applications, interactive fiction and film, print and nonprint media,
and the avant-garde. As such, the series will contribute to an expansive
understanding of adaptation as a central, but only one, form of a larger
phenomenon within visual culture. Adaptations are texts that are not sin-
gular but complexly multiple, connecting them to other pervasive plural
forms: sequels, series, genres, trilogies, authorial oeuvres, appropriations,
remakes, reboots, cycles and franchises. This series especially welcomes
studies that, in some form, treat the connection between adaptation and
these other forms of multiplicity. We also welcome proposals that focus on
aspects of theory that are relevant to the importance of adaptation as con-
nected to various forms of visual culture.
 Christina Wilkins

Embodying
Adaptation
Character and the Body
Christina Wilkins
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK

ISSN 2634-629X     ISSN 2634-6303 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
ISBN 978-3-031-08532-1    ISBN 978-3-031-08533-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08533-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
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publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
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Cover illustration: Tommaso Tuzj

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 Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Julie Grossman and Barton Palmer for their brilliant adapta-
tions series of which this adds to. I am indebted to the support of Geoff
Howell, along with my fantastic colleagues and students, for all the insight-
ful discussions that have informed this book.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Works Cited  10

2 The Acting Body 13

Typecasting and Adaptation  17
Body as Medium  25
Body as Adaptation  29
Bodily Fidelity  32
Works Cited  40

3 Bodily Knowledge 43
Reception and Adaptation  44
Stardom, Performance, and the Body  53
Constructing/Receiving a Character  56
Performance and the Character  59
Adapting Character as Audience Practice  65
Works Cited  68

4 Character Infusion 71
Actor Versus Character  73
Creating Character  78
Character as Spectrum  90
Character/Charactor and Adaptations  94
Works Cited 100

vii
viii Contents

5 Embodying Identities103
The Body, Ideology, and Performance 104
Queer Adaptation and the Biopic 111
Race and Adaptation 124
Death Note, Ghost in the Shell, and Advantageous 127
Representation and Spectating Racebending 132
Works Cited 137

6 Shaping the Psyche141

Illness, Identity, and Narrative 143
Constructing Psychological Difference 149
The Body as Symptomatic 154
Repetitions 160
Works Cited 173

Index177
 About the Author

Christina Wilkins has written on adaptations, identity, nostalgia, and

popular culture. She currently lectures at the University of
Birmingham, UK.

ix
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Star-actor-performance relationship 65

Fig. 5.1 Freddie Mercury onstage as shown in Bohemian Rhapsody115
Fig. 5.2 Emma Stone in Battle of the Sexes caught between partners 117
Fig. 5.3 Signposting of queerness in Bohemian Rhapsody118
Fig. 5.4 Taron Egerton in Rocketman and mirror reflections 118
Fig. 5.5 Rami Malek reflected in sunglasses 119
Fig. 5.6 Rami Malek superimposed as Freddie in media 120
Fig. 6.1 Mads Mikkelsen’s face appearing in blood in Hannibal167

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

When we tell stories, or watch or read them, the characters are our guides
through the narrative journey. We follow their footsteps through the path
of the plot; everything is framed by them, including what is important and
the perspective it is seen from. Characters not only colour the narrative
but shape it around themselves. We may conjure up an idea of the charac-
ter, and the story they are involved in, filling in the gaps as we go. As
Thomas Leitch notes, ‘Every story ever told omits certain details’ (53).
The characters may shape how we fill in these details; equally, we may also
fill in the details about the characters themselves. In literary narratives, we
are given a sense of character through description, dialogue, and their
mode of engagement with particular events of the story. This sense often
takes a form, and the character becomes an imagined body in our minds
running through the pages. An imagined body gives the character signifi-
cance, presenting an ideal of character. This ideal is often what causes fric-
tion with adaptations—the body of the actor portraying that character
often does not live up to the imagined body. This is because the reality of
the actor’s body is seen to overwrite the character in some way, becoming
the dominant thing—bringing with it various inter- and extratextual
meanings and significations, thereby reshaping the character.
The importance of the actor’s body, however, may seem like it is being
undermined with the growing use of CGI. A slew of films that feature
CGI characters have been hugely successful in the last decade (including

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
C. Wilkins, Embodying Adaptation, Palgrave Studies in Adaptation
and Visual Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08533-8_1
2 C. WILKINS

The Avengers, Ex Machina, and Beauty and the Beast). This gives rise to
what Lisa Bode calls the ‘synthespian’, an actor working with the synthet-
ics of CGI (6). Will CGI’s use become more prevalent and the need for
the actor’s body disappear? This is doubtful. With a number of these films
featuring CGI, there is still a reliance on the actor’s body to be used in
promoting the film as Bode notes—particularly in interviews where the
process of becoming the character is discussed, and there is a focus on the
human body underneath the layer of CGI. Audiences still want to see the
body responsible for the character.
This is because like characters shaping the understanding of the story,
bodies shape our understanding of the world. Our experience of the world
around us is filtered through the boundaries of our body, which shapes
and is shaped by our environment. Not only our own bodies, crucially, but
the bodies of others form their own stories through a negotiation of their
boundaries and the resultant meanings they generate. Thus, it is unsur-
prising that when it comes to popular cultural narratives, we are invested
in the bodies telling them. It is important to note, however, that the bod-
ies in narratives are not real in the same sense as our everyday experiences,
despite how they may look. They are still as imagined as the literary char-
acter body. The key difference however is the physical fact of the actor
whose form will shape those imaginations of character through the social
and psychological meanings their body connotes. This is further compli-
cated by the understanding of how these bodies are meant to act. Different
perspectives on acting see the body as being a tool to access reality.
Stanislavski, for example, believed acting should be ‘more natural’ than
real life (qtd. in Aronson, 318). It should open some understanding of the
world that was not previously accessible. This, says Aronson, is the differ-
ence between illuminating and imitating reality. Illuminating reality is
what is strived for, which he argues is a form of ‘generating adaptations’—
a crucial idea for this book. These bodies illuminate, adapt, and therefore
reshape our understanding of selves. The importance of reality is touched
upon in other scholarship about film, from early theorists such as Kracauer,
who argues that ‘films come into their own when they record and reveal
physical reality’ (qtd. in Sternagel 414).
This illumination of reality requires the audience to see the actor’s
emotions as truthful, and to see them as not just communicating the char-
acter, but becoming them. Hetzler, in a survey of actors, discusses how
actors approach a role and whether they ‘feel’ the emotions of the charac-
ter or whether they are mediated through the imagined character self. This
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

mediation could manifest as ‘feelings about’ the circumstances in which

the character is in. What he asserted was that there was a clear difference
between feeling and portraying. The illumination of reality wants both
feeling and portraying. It also requires a realist style of acting. The need
for both raises questions over how we separate the body from the perfor-
mance of character. The body becomes multiple: a medium, tool, repre-
sentative, owned, possessed, and mediated. How do we conceive of the
body in these ways, and simultaneously? The notion of multiple bodies has
been discussed by other scholars (including Sobchack and Graver), which
will be touched upon in later chapters. What the multiple bodies here
signify is the many and varied selves a body can contain, which has implica-
tions for understandings of not only the self but the other, too. How do
we portray the other that is not us? Is it a donning, a becoming, a morph-
ing? These questions may allow us to think about the boundaries we have
begun to note. However, when we discuss the performance of the other,
or a character self, what often emerges are questions about whether the
actor is ‘true’ to a character or we discuss the actor themselves in lieu of
the character. Thus, we look for the surface of the performance to critique
it—its external presentation. The performance must merely be believable,
in terms of feeling. Discussions of performance highlight the importance
of the actor (and their body) in understanding the character.
It is important to note the different understandings of the term perfor-
mance here. Within the book, the primary use of performance is that of
the acting performance, which is the movement and manipulation of the
actor’s body in order to represent a character. However, it does also touch
on other, related, notions of performance, including concepts of perfor-
mativity, and borrows at points from performance theory. This is not to
conflate the two, but rather to illuminate further aspects of acting perfor-
mance that intersect with performance more generally. Simon Shepherd
talks about the spectrum of meaning when it comes to the word perfor-
mance. Crucially, Shepherd argues that there are many meanings to the
word performance and the problem that might occur with a universal defi-
nition is the sense of ‘flattening out the landscape in order to produce
something slightly banal’ (x). This can be seen through the way perfor-
mance is defined by film scholars. Lori Landay simply states that perfor-
mance is an ‘action done for someone’ (130). This general definition
moves beyond film and into wider circumstances, edging towards perfor-
mance theory more broadly. It is perhaps then useful to touch upon Peggy
Phelan’s discussion of performance to distinguish between different
4 C. WILKINS

understandings of it here. She argues: ‘[P]erformance in a strict ontologi-

cal sense is nonreproductive’ (148). This refers to performance art, which
becomes singular. Film performance, however, is by its very nature a
reproductive form. Whilst it may be a singular instance of a performance,
it is captured in order to be reproduced multiple times. There may be
actions done for someone (the viewer), but film performance is under-
stood as repeating or repetitive. This is the perspective being taken here—
that of repetition, which again is useful for adaptations given Linda
Hutcheon’s definition of adaptation as ‘repetition without replication’
(7). Performance is both a representation and an adaptation of a character.
The concept of performance is useful for this book because of the way it
clarifies the body: what gestures and movements create a performance of
a character, and how the character in turn shapes that body. It becomes
clear by a reassertion of boundaries—of both the body and the character—
that emerge in performance.
Performance and the body implicate medium through the ways in
which the former is shaped by technology. Many of the discussions of act-
ing, both in this book and more broadly, are indebted or at least coloured
by the legacy of the theatre. Questions, and definitions of acting, are
engaged with in Chap. 2. Here, I want to stress the importance of medium
in shaping both acting and the body. Kaja Silberman argues a similar point
that highlights the importance of the body and medium:

[A]sk whether the art of acting changed in response to the evolution of a

new medium. To anticipate my conclusion: yes, it did; and by extrapolation,
this historical change suggests that a similar shift is now under way. The
recent, but not uncontroversial, focus on the actor’s body and on perfor-
mance theory and practices is in my view part of a more general cultural
response to the increasingly dematerialized body in the electronic age. (559)

This returns us to a point made earlier about CGI—despite fears of the

digital, the actor’s body is still important. The medium the body resides in
also shapes how it is seen and understood. With a shift towards online
platforms for viewing films and other media, there are increasing chances
to situate an actor’s body intertextually (and extratextually). Logging into
Netflix, for example, viewers may be able to search for an actor’s reper-
toire. This overt display of the same body in different roles may shape the
understanding of characters even more forcefully than had been done pre-
viously. Viewers are reminded of roles the actor has played, conjuring a
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

reminiscence of character that could feasibly shape their subsequent

understanding of whatever film they choose to watch from the list in front
of them. Similarly, searching for a film online may throw up results about
the actor themselves, thereby shaping the understanding of the character
through extratextual information about the body portraying it. The digital
age has altered the understanding of bodies through its redefining of
boundaries. The inter- and extratextual meanings of the body have become
more apparent. Arguably, these meanings are more readily visible in adap-
tations which provide an understanding of a character body in the material
being adapted. The gaps between the texts more clearly define the bound-
aries of each by virtue of what is absent and what is present in its place.
This may be a literary to a film adaptation, or film to television adaptation,
or a comic book to film. Each offers a body to be adapted; what seems to
be different is the medium it resides in. Cook and Sexton warn against
this, arguing that ‘the very concept of adaptation might also seem in crisis,
dependent as it is upon distinctions between media’ (363). However, I
want to argue not for a distinction between types of media like film, litera-
ture, and television, but instead a focus on the distinction between bodies
and the meanings they communicate in their adaptation.
Whilst the primary focus in this book may be character and the impor-
tance the body has in communicating and shaping it, the heart of it is
adaptation. It is through adaptation that character may become clearer, in
part due to the role the body has in communicating that character. The
body itself becomes adapted by the character, and character adapted to the
body. The visual of the body itself and its importance—notable through
the sheer volume of film and television adaptations of literary texts—has
been remarked upon by Cartmell and Whelehan, who note that ‘adapta-
tion is, perhaps, the result of an increasingly post-literate (not illiterate)
world in which the visual image dominates’ (Adaptations from Text to
Screen 145). What adaptation is, and what it can do, has been discussed
thoroughly; my aim here is not to address and summarise each of the per-
spectives in the field, but simply to assert that the book responds to a
number of concerns in the field. Namely, concerns raised by Katja Krebs
and Glenn Jellenik. Krebs argues that ‘adaptation studies has yet to excise
its, arguably, over-reliance on the case study at the expense of more
detailed consideration of the conceptual framework within which we read
adaptations’ (207). Similarly, Jellenik argues that the task of the adapta-
tion critic is to ‘move away from local studies and toward a consideration
of the larger operations and implications of the act of adaptation’ (256).
6 C. WILKINS

Both see the current need in the field to be a broader approach to adapta-
tion rather than a focus on specific texts. Jellenik continues: ‘S/he can set
to charting the ways a text works through other texts—the ways intertexts
weave and dovetail into one another, the specific ways that they all reflect
and drive the cultures that produce and consume them’ (257). Here, I am
moving on from this idea and adapting it more broadly to the central con-
cerns of the book—character and the body. Jellenik’s idea will be used in
the sense that what is being considered is the way one text (the character)
works through another (the body). Similarly, rather than case studies per
se, the book offers broader theoretical frameworks for understanding
adaptation, notably through the framework of the body and character.
The examples given in later Chaps. 5 and 6 are not singular instances, but
clusters of texts that illuminate something about particular cultural
moments and trends through their production and consumption.
The overall argument of this book is twofold: that the adapted body is
a way to understand our place in the world, and that considering the hier-
archical relationship between the actor and the character, and possibly
reconfiguring that, raises useful parallels with the field of adaptation—
namely what seems to be ‘original’ or ‘true’ is to be viewed as more valu-
able. The book here argues that indeed, the body does matter, and perhaps
more so than ever in our increasingly intangible world. However, despite
this, the character cannot be always rendered as second position to it—it
has a body of its own that exists beyond the sum of its parts (perfor-
mance—actor—character) in the filmic text—that shapes both cultural
understandings of bodies and the actors that portray them. In the literary
text, the character is formed as we see from both the technical aspects
(description, narration) and it requires a construction of character—the
same goes with the filmic text too, which takes these separate parts and
creates something more. This is, I have denoted in Chap. 4, termed char-
actor—a fusion of character and actor, which some may see as having simi-
larities to stardom, but I think here, the image of a character recalled is
often this specific fusion. This highlights the role the audience plays in
understanding the character and the adaptation, which the field has
touched upon in more detail recently, but here the focus is on the way the
audience constructs, shapes, and reads the adapted body.
Chapter 2 sets out the groundwork for thinking about specific concerns
across the book, namely the element of the acting body and its relation-
ship to adaptations. Primarily, it argues that the physicality of the body
itself is crucial to understanding the nature of adaptation and how it is
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

received. This is explored in three different areas across the chapter: type-
casting, body as adaptation, and fidelity to the body. The adaptation of
character to a visual media relies on an acting body. We, or audiences, may
assume that the body chosen is the one that is the ‘best fit’ for the charac-
ter. However, this does not take into account the practice of typecasting.
Certain physical traits are relied upon for typecasting which enable a par-
ticular ‘type’ to solidify an understanding of a particular ‘type’ of charac-
ter. Yet, can the same be said for the character we encounter in a literary
text? The element of the physical body complicates our understanding of
character, perhaps threatening its reduction to a type. It therefore begins
to complicate our understanding of what an adaptation can do. The role
of the body as medium further complicates the relationship between per-
formance and adaptation. The body becomes a defined object: ‘[T]he
notion of body as an object … stands in close relationship to the way they
are read by the world’ (Mitchell, 144). This reading by the world encom-
passes both the complex role of typecasting and an awareness of the ‘origi-
nal’ body. Fidelity to the imagined ‘original’ body in literary cases is an
issue raised in audience response to particular adaptations. Physicality thus
becomes central in thinking about adaptation, but also reinforces the
notion of fidelity as subjective given differences between these imagined
physicalities of the ‘original’ character.
Expanding on from Chap. 2, Chap. 3 seeks to explore how the body is
understood by audiences in adaptations. Specifically, it addresses concerns
over star performance and the element of audience knowledge. Reception
has been an ongoing concern in adaptation studies as debates over inten-
tion and understanding have occurred. This is primarily in terms of
whether audiences understand a text is an adaptation and how this impacts
its reception. Scholarship around this has sprung from critics such as Linda
Hutcheon who describes adaptation as our reception of texts as palimp-
sests, thus privileging the subjective experience. Yet, as noted by Cutchins
and Meeks: ‘[U]ntil adaptation studies finds a way to understand adapta-
tions in terms of reception, it will continue to chase its own tail’ (303).
The exploration of the acting body both as form of adaptation (established
in Chap. 2) and impacting audience reception of the adapted text compli-
cates the discussion around reception within the field. Audience under-
standing of the text as adaptation may be in place, but complicated by the
inclusion of a well-known body. Thus star physicality may in some cases
obscure the notion of character or function as a dilution of character. In
this scenario, the performance of the star becomes central to the text,
8 C. WILKINS

rather than the understanding of character. The text operating as adapta-

tion is therefore complicated with the inclusion of star performances,
priming audiences to see a character in a particular way that may not be
present in the text it is adapted from. These ideas will also be explored
through the ways in which the body onscreen channels character, explor-
ing Dyer’s performance signs and Pomerance’s notion of performed per-
formance. This embodying of multiple characters in the latter concept
allows for a consideration of the technicalities of presenting characters
through a particular body known as something else.
Chapter 4 begins by establishing the particular hierarchies in place in
both performance studies and adaptations—particularly the primacy of the
source in adaptations and the technical ability of the actor in performance
studies. This builds on work done by Cartmell and Whelehan in 1999,
which attempted a rethinking of traditional structures in place within the
field of adaptations. From the perspective of this book, the focus is on
character and how the character moulds the acting body and the physical-
ity of that body impacts the text. Discussions and understandings of char-
acter in terms of performance present the actor as inhabiting the character,
wearing it as a mask. It thus becomes something to enter into, to flesh out,
a hollow to be filled. Situating it as such creates an understanding of char-
acter as an adaptation of the actorly body, and therefore in another hierar-
chy. This chapter thinks through a restructuring of such hierarchies,
considering how we could theorise the character inhabiting the actor and
the impact that has on the adaptation. This is aided by a discussion of the
role of medium in presenting character and how character is understood.
This begins to think through a medium-specific approach to character,
positioning it as a textual element. Seeing it as a discrete aspect of an adap-
tation, as we do with recurrent figures such as Sherlock Holmes and
Dracula, gives us a route into an understanding of character as a key to
unlocking avenues of thought within adaptation and performance.
Given the foundations of this approach to adaptations has been estab-
lished, Chaps. 5 and 6 explore clusters of examples that highlight the
inherent tensions in thinking about the actorly body as adaptation. As
noted, rather than singular case studies as is the problem with the field
according to Krebs and Jellenik, these two chapters instead identify key
moments that speak to something in culture, exemplified by distinct
groups of texts. They tell us something about how identity is shaped by
the body, and how those meanings are shifting through their physical rep-
resentation. Krebs thinks about adaptation of identities, positing it as a
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

way to understand something of the identity of the spectator, but one that
is imaginary: ‘[A]daptation of an imagined identity represents identity
within the adapting culture rather than offer a glimpse of the identity of
the imagined other’ (212). This functions as a way to establish under-
standings of the adapted body onscreen and is further complicated by the
use of acting approaches which debate the actor as representing himself or
inhabiting a character. Both of these rely on an understanding of the
reception of the text, which leads on from ideas established here in Chap.
3: how does the audience knowledge impact performance of particular
identities? To think through this in more detail, an examination of queer
performance, biopic, and adaptation functions as the focus of the first half
of the chapter. This takes into account scholarship around queer adapta-
tion and queer performance. How does a queer character challenge the
hierarchies of adaptation and performance? What problems are inherent
within acting queer? The reliance on queer expression through physical
signs and behaviours is crucial and brings the element of the physical into
focus. Giving physical form to adaptations of queer identities may change
our understanding of character; again, the tension comes in audience
knowledge and reception. These discussions of particular examples
(Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Battle of the Sexes) allow for a closer
reading of character in adaptation, and how the multitude of factors affect-
ing the physical body onscreen work to create a particular form of adapta-
tion, complicated by the aspect of the biopic. The second half of the
chapter considers the importance of the physical in representing and shap-
ing understandings of race and identity through a number of texts that
feature whitewashing of Asian characters. This complicates our under-
standing of the body’s adaptability to character.
Whilst Chap. 5 explores the manifestation of a particular identity, Chap.
6 moves beyond and thinks about giving form to an aspect of the self that
can never be truly seen or understood, the psyche. It begins by establish-
ing key perspectives in disability studies and understandings of adaptations
that construct specific identities (following Chap. 5). This allows for an
understanding of the complexities in portraying characters with psychiat-
ric or psychological differences. Drawing together the approaches here,
this chapter first examines a cluster of texts that adapt characters who are
depressed, to consider how the psyche is mediated through the physical
and, equally, how the physical/external both limits and expands the com-
munication of the internal. The second half uses the exploration of a psy-
chopathic character, Hannibal Lecter, to elaborate further on these ideas.
10 C. WILKINS

The character of the psychopath also draws in Pomerance’s notion of per-

formed performance given the common need for the psychopaths in nar-
ratives to hide their ‘true’ nature with a performance of normality. This
dual approach to performance and identity layering presents an interesting
way to think through the physical manifestation of character and how they
can be contained and expressed in a body. This chapter also argues that
these characters function as particularly striking for audiences and thus
mark the actorly body in some way with their trace.
There is a need for tangibility and identification with character that
comes from physicality to an extent. The importance of physicality comes
from audience knowledge, our imagined understandings of these charac-
ters which are either confirmed or deviated from in the actorly body
onscreen. It also allows for a deeper exploration into thinking about how
we construct character in a non-visual sense, and why the element of the
physical is so important in valuing of an adaptation for audiences. The
examples explored across this book show how the change prompted by
adaptation is crucial; it allows us to see these characters in different situa-
tions not necessarily morally but literally, thereby allowing for a different
understanding of the body and its meanings. The change in physicality is
key: the physical aspect cannot be ignored, shaping and being shaped by
the text that is the character. Character, and the body it inhabits, may per-
haps be the most important aspect of an adaptation given audience identi-
fication with them and their ability to shape understanding of identities.

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 1 INTRODUCTION 11

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Companion to Adaptation, ed. Cutchins, D., Krebs, K., and Voigts, E. London:
Routledge. pp.207–217
Landay, Lori. 2012. ‘The Mirror of Performance: Kinaesthetics, Subjectivity, and
the Body in Film, Television, and Virtual Worlds’, Cinema Journal, 51 (3),
pp.129–136
Leitch, Thomas. 2017. ‘Mind the GAPS’ in Adaptation in Visual Culture, ed.
Grossman, J. and Palmer, B. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.53–71
Mitchell, Roanna. 2015. ‘The Body That Fits the Bill: Physical Capital and ‘Crises’
of the Body in Actor Training’, About Performance, 15 (1), pp.137–156
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge
Shepherd, Simon. 2016. The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Silberman, Marc. 1996. ‘The Actor’s Medium: On Stage in and Film’, Modern
Drama, 39 (4), pp.558–565
Sternagel, Jorg. 2012. ‘An Emphasis on Being: Moving Towards a Responsive
Phenomenology of Film(’s) Performance’ in Acting and Performance in
Moving Image Culture, ed. Sternagel, J., Levitt, D., and Mersch, D. pp.413–427.
Bielefeld: Transcript
 CHAPTER 2

The Acting Body

When we look at the screen, regardless of the size it now comes in, our
bodies stand in opposition to those on the other side. We may use our own
body to understand the one rendered as image only; we may desire the
one we see, or feel a connection with it. It is the anchor in the narrative
that channels our interpretation of the text. As such, our encounters with
these onscreen bodies are important: they tell (each of) us how to under-
stand the story through codes and conventions implicated in film. These
may be generic codes or cultural codes; we look to these bodies for a
physical manifestation of signs to understand the text or, rather, the truth
of the text. What is it about? What does it deal with? How is that being
conveyed? The choice of physical bodies onscreen complicates the idea
that it can be universally understood. For instance, there is a response I
feel towards certain actors, an irritation that others do not feel and vice
versa. Thus, the physical body carries a burden of preconceptions based
around outward looks and expression. This is further complicated by the
star system in film, which enables actors to bring with them traces of the
bodies represented before. The body thereby becomes a layered thing or
a site of intertextuality. But regardless of other roles, the body is already
intertextual to the spectator, through our understanding of what individ-
ual outward appearances connote. Our understandings of character are
built through encounters with others who look a certain way, giving us
frameworks of reference. This is not to say that stardom does not affect

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
C. Wilkins, Embodying Adaptation, Palgrave Studies in Adaptation
and Visual Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08533-8_2
14 C. WILKINS

how we perceive a body onscreen; indeed, our understanding of particular

types of character may come from the aesthetics of a film body.
This tension between what the body is and what it represents becomes
more complex when it comes to adaptations. An adaptation is often seen
as a binary. On the one side is one text, and the other is a different version
of that text in another medium. This, when applied to the body, can raise
tensions. With literary to film texts (or indeed, podcast to television as has
begun to happen recently), there is often an imagined character which is
then transposed onto a real body. For some audiences, this can be an issue
of not ‘matching’. Despite the fact that adaptations are not simply a
matching exercise, the repeated issue of casting being contended in film
adaptations tells us that it is still a problem for audiences. The body still
matters. However, rather than seeing it as a binary, I would like here to
think more about the relationship between the body and the character as
a dialectical one. These texts (body and character) are in conversation with
one another and are informed by a number of intertextual elements that
produce a plethora of meanings. As will be discussed across the whole of
this book, the element of physicality in adaptations allows for a particular
rendering of character that privileges the actor over it. What needs to be
further considered is how the transposition of character happens, and
what this does for the understanding of adapting a text. Primarily, I argue
that the physicality of the body itself is crucial to understanding the nature
of adaptation and how it is received. This chapter specifically will consider
three specific areas in order to illuminate the relationship between adapta-
tion and the body: typecasting, the body as adaptation, and fidelity to
the body.
Firstly, in order to think about the body, we must consider acting and
the element of physicality. When it comes to thinking about acting, there
are multiple routes into it as issue for debate. It is key also to note that the
focus here is on Hollywood acting primarily; whilst this traverses a range
of styles, it most often resorts to naturalism, which says Lovell and Kramer,
‘makes the decisions of the actor invisible’ (5). As such, the foregrounding
of technique is not often understood. Complicating this is also specific
understandings of the actor. From early studies into acting by theorists
such as Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, there is a positioning of
the actor as object. Even more recent thinking, from scholars such as
Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, fall in line with this approach: ‘[B]odies are part of
the mise-en-scène, and, as such, they are objects of the camera. Their rep-
resentation is the result of cognitive resources that activate metonymical
 2 THE ACTING BODY 15

or metaphorical projections’ (184). Here, he sees the body as simply

another part of what we take in when watching a film, rather than as some-
thing distinct. It is by virtue of its being placed in front of a camera that it
changes, altering the method of interaction the spectator has with a body,
or alternatively, as Urios-Aparisi sees it, changing how the body is con-
structed by the audience. This is supported further by Marc Silberman,
who positions it as an aspect of the medium, particularly in comparison to
theatre. The difference between theatre and cinema ‘trigger[s] a transfor-
mation of acting’, with the result that ‘the body is objectified by the cam-
era in the transference to celluloid’ (560–561). This is where the element
of physicality becomes interesting; the positioning of body as object alters
the way in which we understand the mediation of character, our central
concern for this book. We primarily see an object as something acted upon,
or that it is fixed in its meanings. It can only be encountered, rather than
allowed agency. As such, an understanding of the body as object places
limitations both on what can occur and on the possibilities for character to
be communicated.
By contrast, other approaches to acting see the body as tool, or as Oleg
Aronson argues: ‘The actor is a unique being whose body is his or her own
means of expression’ (315). This is in line with theorists of acting such as
Pisk, Stanislavski, and Zinder. These approaches see it as actor first—actor
as channelling and expressing a character through the physicality of their
body—rather than an actor being an object to be projected upon. The
communication or mediation of character then is approached differently,
depending on the view of acting and the control the actor is seen to have
over their body. As mentioned, this alters between mediums and it is
important to address this. A number of studies and theoretical approaches
to acting consider, or rather blur, a theatrical and filmic understanding.
Further, there is a tendency towards speaking of acting performances and
a focus on the element of performance in film that tiptoes a fine line
between the theoretical areas. The distinction between performance, per-
formativity, and acting will be addressed further in Chap. 5 specifically. For
now, the way in which an actor communicates a role with their body will
be denoted as acting. The body, when acting, is repeatedly seen as an
object to be moulded into something representative of a character. Litz
Pisk argued that ‘[The actor] transforms his body into any body’ (9). The
element of transformation here is focused on the physical and evokes the
morphing of an external appearance through altering the way the body is
moved, held, and thus seen. Therefore, we might say that the character is
16 C. WILKINS

something external, akin to a mask worn by the actor. It lies on the surface
of the actor’s body, ready to be interpreted by the audience. However, this
ignores the complexity of the body, particularly the body onscreen.
How we approach the body onscreen is shaped by a number of factors
which predominantly rely on the element of the physical, the tangible.
What effect is produced is distinct from this; our discussion of a character
may include detailed discussions of who they are and why they are behaving
as they do, but this is arguably gleaned from the understanding we form
from witnessing them as a body onscreen. We take in gestures, expression,
the positioning of the body in different contexts, and the body’s interac-
tion with other bodies. We also must consider what the body produces:
the voice, the impact on the environment around it. How we think about
acting may be simplified as a physical representation by a body of another.
Vivian Sobchack thinks about this in detail within her Being on the Screen.
Here she argues that there are ‘as many as four bodies’ of the actor: the
pre-personal, personal, impersonated, and personified bodies (429). Each
is a separate category of understanding of the same body from a different
perspective. What we often see onscreen is the impersonated body, which
she describes as being ‘for display’ and is ‘oppositional within the body’
(436). This, as with much of the scholarship, showcases a clear divide
between the inner and outer. Oppositions here, however, may be blurred
in terms of how they are seen by audiences, which will be discussed further
in Chap. 3. The acting body is something presented, and the character
something represented. Pisk thinks about this further with his definition of
the body: ‘On the physical level the shape of your body is the outer bound-
ary of inner contents’ (9). In some way, therefore, the boundary of the
body is a clear divide between a self and the world. Yet, as we have started
to discuss, the way in which that body is understood in the world moves
beyond those boundaries. It is understood in contexts and in dialogues. As
Strasberg notes, ‘[T]he only thing that counts is what you see’ (qtd. in
Carnicke 185). When it comes to the actor’s body, we are experiencing a
character through the body of another. The actor functions as an adapta-
tion of a character. We will touch upon the separation between actor and
character further in Chap. 4. For now, these ideas are important to illus-
trate the way in which the body is conceived in acting.
Amanda Ruud thinks about the notion of the physical, the experience
of the body, and adaptations more specifically. She highlights the element
of the senses in her writing, noting that adaptation is an ‘embodied and
sensory reflection on experience’ (247). This in part is due to an element
 2 THE ACTING BODY 17

of medium specificity and the changes in the process of adaptation. Here,

it can be used to think about the sensory impact of the physical body.
Whilst we may not be cognizant of every shift in movement or change in
tone in the acting body, it creates an image which is then transposed onto
the actor, and shapes our experience of the character. Meanings and stories
are embodied by the element of the physical; materiality makes emotion
and experience tangible. How else would we communicate our inner
selves and experiences? Experience needs a vessel to be communicated
through—the body functions as object that both moves through time and
contexts and is able to reflect on those as if standing outside the body
momentarily. When these experiences are adapted to an acting body
onscreen, we look for understandable signs that reflect and communicate
that experience. However, as I began by stating, that is not something
universal. Further, those bodies may only be seen as mimicking an experi-
ence if they are not commensurate with the character’s identity, and thus
the physical expectations attached to it. Different bodies bring with them
different meanings and shape individual interpretations. Although there
are some physical elements that are more widely understood in a particular
way, the uniqueness of other aspects of a body can intervene in the projec-
tion of meaning. For example, the way in which understandings of gender
or race are communicated by bodies that do not conform to a standardised
norm. This may be down to the preconceptions I have brought with me
to the body I am watching. When it comes to understanding gender for
example, Shannon Brownlee asserts that ‘the shape of a body may be of
paramount importance in an audience’s interpretation of gender; there,
that the body’s gestures may carry more weight’ (161). How a body looks
onscreen impacts the way it is perceived and interpreted, and the possibili-
ties it has in representing others, which is crucial for thinking about
adaptation.

Typecasting and Adaptation

Given the importance of the body and its interpretation, we cannot ignore
the element of typecasting and the impact this has on understandings of
texts and, specifically, understandings of adaptations. Typecasting creates
an outline of a character that is repeated, reused, and represented by par-
ticular bodies onscreen. Sometimes these outlines become synonymous
with a specific acting body. This is close to the idea of the stereotype,
which will also be touched upon later (and which incorporates literature
18 C. WILKINS

and film). Rather, the focus here is the filmic moulding of bodies into pre-­
conceived types. What they have created is a shorthand for audiences to
understand how to interpret the body onscreen and how it relates to the
story. This is, in part, due to cinema’s reliance on realism. As Siegfried
Kracauer explains: ‘[T]he task of portraying wide areas of actual reality,
social or otherwise … calls for “typage”—the recourse to people who are
part and parcel of that reality and can be considered typical of it’ (99). This
is because, in the ‘real’ world, we resort to using these types in our every-
day lives. Lisa Bode asserts there is a reliance on typecasting beyond the
cinema, arguing that ‘[t]ypecasting—the term for a historically shifting
cluster of interrelated casting practices related to the idea of the individual
as a visual representative of a “type”—precedes the cinema’ (72). Bode’s
awareness of the unfixed nature of typecasting is useful; social conventions
and understandings of identity may dictate what external aspects commu-
nicate a perceived internal ‘self’. Given this relationship between internal
and external, with one representing the other through the visual, the visual
aspect of adaptation cannot be ignored. Typecasting acts as obstacle in the
transposition of one text to another. If a character becomes a typecast one
in the process of adaptation, or is played by a typecast actor, it arguably
brings with it a stricter framework for understanding that character. This
is not to say that there are not types of characters in literature; rather, these
often are bound by stereotype as I will explore later in this chapter. Both
stereotype and typecasting rely on an outline of a character that often
serves a particular function rather than having a fleshed-out backstory or
emotional life. The specifics of these characters—their boundaries and
frameworks—is something worthy of examination, as emerges later in this
discussion and in Chap. 4. However, it is important here to think about
the limitations and background of typecasting in order to assert its link to
the physical. Despite the limitations of it, we have accepted typecasting
and, further, use it to create distinct meanings. As Bode continues in her
discussion, ‘Film, much more than the stage, has a requirement for things
and people to look and sound as we expect them to look and sound,
except where meaning is served by having that expectation subverted’
(72). Typecasting is thus used as a guide for audiences and is seen as some-
thing primarily important to film due to its reliance on realism.
The history of typecasting, however, as Bode references goes beyond
the cinema. Pamela Wojcik presents a good discussion of the shift from
typecasting in other forms towards the cinema and its move to it being
‘inescapable’ (225). This is, she says, because of the way in which the star
 2 THE ACTING BODY 19

system works. The broader history of typecasting is explored by Wojcik,

who uses Stanislavski’s discussion of theatre and type, namely the use of
‘lines of work’. Parts were given based around a number of categories
(age, gender, race) which sometimes had flexibility in them but were
mainly fixed in expectations of what they should look like. Here, we can
start to think about the way in which actors stand in for ideas, rather than
characters. A body onstage, as a type, need only look a certain way—and
when I say look, I mean not just inert but in the movement too, that is,
the experience of watching the body onstage—in order to begin to com-
municate a meaning that engages with the text in a dialogue. It is not fully
fleshed out, but instead is an outline of a type allowing audiences to inter-
pret and adapt it to their own understandings of that type. Bruce Wilshire’s
thoughts echo this: ‘The actor cannot stand on stage without standing in
for a type of humanity. This characterization will occur even though there
is no script and his character is given no name and he says nothing’ (qtd.
in Wojcik 227). Even without a text, a body may be typecast. However,
typecasting can also be built from a text: think of the way we understand
roles with Michael Cera in for example, who always fumbles through a
situation, appears as an underdog, and wins through niceness. We know
what will happen to characters because of events that have taken place with
similar characters before, which then attaches itself to a physicality. When
that physicality is imitated, or seen by audiences as a striking resemblance,
the behaviours and situations from before are marked on the body of the
character in front of us.
But why is typecasting so embedded into the films we watch? Arguably,
there is something comforting about being able to decode a text quickly
through visual signifiers. It also builds into our understanding of the world
around us, giving us a sense that we too can anticipate how someone will
act or respond. When things go against type, we may find it distressing.
People behaving ‘out of character’, for instance, raises questions around
how we see our outward selves and how we impose narratives on others.
The same is true of actors who are typecast. Typecasting is the imposing
of a particular narrative on a particular (well-known) body. When the char-
acter deviates from that, but remains in the typecast body, it produces a
tension in the text. As Wojcik argues: ‘[C]ritics and audiences will fre-
quently view an actor’s efforts to play against type as evidence either of the
actor’s lack of talent—because the actor is unconvincing in the new role—
or as gross commercialism—insofar as the role is assigned to a money-­
making star rather than a better suited but less known actor’ (224).
20 C. WILKINS

Conversely, actors who continue throughout their career playing a par-

ticular type are seen often as lacking the ability to move beyond the frame-
work of that type. Type is at once assumed as natural (because of its link
to the physical body) and something constructed. We see certain bodies
that naturally seem to suit a particular role, and character types that are
constructed through the texts they appear in. Yet, both rely on the other
and are bound by social conventions and attitudes, and are thus unfixed.
It is also pertinent to note the aspect of stereotype involved in type
onscreen. Jorge Schweinitz discusses the history of stereotype and argues
that theatrical approaches to it see it as something fixed. Key also is the
way in which stereotype is positioned by him as the opposite end of a spec-
trum to character. As he sees it: ‘Individual characters only become dis-
cernible over the course of the narrated story; they develop in interaction
with plot events and are endowed with an individual and complex
intellectual-­psychological profile.’ By contrast, ‘At the other end of the
spectrum are figures that appear as schematic constructs recognizable by a
select few pronounced attributes’ (45). This approach to stereotype
encompasses both film and literature and argues for a temporal dimension
to character—the longer we spend with these characters, the more we
understand. Overall, he sees stereotype as a grouping together of particu-
lar people, whereas type is an individuality that is repeated. This is more
akin to distinctions between social and psychological types respectively.
What the foray into stereotypes does for us here is allow for thinking about
a broader understanding of these limitations and definitions. It also
strengthens the understanding of these definitions of identity as ‘cultural
signs’ attributed to a particular image, namely a physical body.
Who can play a romantic lead, or a villain, has altered from the birth of
the cinema. As we move towards a more diverse approach to casting, it
reflects a broader experience. The use of certain bodies in a ‘typed’ char-
acter allows an examination of our cultural codes. Wojcik further thinks
about the understanding of self, or selves, arguing that typecasting is a
‘touchstone for ideologies of identity’ (226). However, later in her exami-
nation of typecasting, she thinks about the distinctions between Hollywood
and non-realist cinema to illustrate a key element of typecasting in popular
film. Rather than tending towards typage, which relies on a representation
of social types, Hollywood film presents characters in ‘psychological and
not social terms’ (232). This alters the interpretation of the story, looking
at the individual response to a situation, rather than seeing the situation as
causing the issues of the character as in typage. When we encounter a type
 2 THE ACTING BODY 21

in Hollywood film, we can guess their disposition and begin to piece

together their inner self.1 It becomes an amalgamation of types that have
gone before, functioning as intertextual web of a type. This understanding
of type colours the interpretation of a text, linking to what Wojcik calls the
‘commercial, mass production instincts’ that type represents (223). Type
here can be shown in parallel to understandings of adaptations. It is, in the
repeated use of a particular type, akin to Hutcheon’s definition of adapta-
tion of ‘repetition without replication’ (173). It repeats elements and
understandings but cannot replicate due to the body of the actor being
different. Whilst it may resemble the bodies of those that have played that
type before, the star system is strong enough to make vital a distinction
between a known face and an unknown. The tendency towards repetition
suggests that characters who are reproduced in a different medium—one
that allows for ‘mass production instincts’—may still be reduced to a basic
understanding. Repetition, although strengthening for the star image,
simultaneously reduces character to a set perspective of what that body is
able to do. Repetition is important to understand character and the body,
and will be explored throughout the book. If a character in an adaptation
is a type, how does this implicate the body mediating it? If type is seen in
Hollywood as Wojcik asserts, in psychological terms, how does that reflect
social attitudes? We could explore this further through looking at how
actors come to be typecast and different forms of typecasting. These issues
will possibly illuminate the restrictions they generate and how it links to
the body. This is key to explore given the focus of this book is on the rela-
tionship between the body and character. If the body is limited, it is lim-
ited in representing character. This has key implications for adaptations;
namely, the way in which the process of adaptation in turn shifts or limits
characterisation.
Firstly, to address the question around how actors come to be typecast.
There is the impact of the studio itself and the casting directors that are
implicated in this process to consider. They pick actors for specific parts,
thereby creating an associated link between that body and the way it is
shown onscreen. This becomes a cycle whereby bodies are chosen because
they echo something of those filling a similar role before. However, it
should be noted that thinking in this specific way sees both the character
and the actor in very broad terms, indicated primarily by assumptions
around physicality. This is not the whole picture; extratextual elements are
implicated, such as star perception, and whether the character is part of an
adaptation. These move beyond the broader concerns of whether the
22 C. WILKINS

acting body can represent the character well and what that means—this in
itself is a thorny question to be dealt with in Chaps. 3 and 4.
Yet, casting directors make certain choices and thus impose restrictions
upon actors. Helena Bonham-Carter is an actor who has been outspoken
on her thoughts on typecasting in Hollywood. Various interviews point
towards her outlining the limitations of typecasting. In a recent podcast
with Louis Theroux, she defined it as being on multiple levels—firstly,
from the studio, then the media, then fans. This, she noted in another
interview (‘Drama Actress Roundtable’), was due to the element of
physicality:

I was very much an ingénue and appeared in a lot of costume dramas. That
was my typecasting. And I remember I came to L.A. in my early 20s, and I
just felt like such a freak because I knew I didn’t have the legs to survive in
L.A. And the parts that were available for women were just so bad. The only
dimension was about your body, and I was very small and my legs weren’t
thin and I just thought, “Jesus”.

This element of typecasting reinforces which bodies are able to repre-

sent certain characters onscreen. This is something that has been occur-
ring since the beginning of the studio system, as Lisa Bode points out:
‘For actors to find employment, they had to shape themselves in advance
into a recognizable exploitable social category and character archetype.
The star system took over this task, molding raw actors into types, experi-
menting with them in different roles and costuming until the audience
seemed to approve a fit’ (74). This is something that has been illustrated
in earlier years of Hollywood, with actors such as Marilyn Monroe being
one of the most famous examples. What Bode shows is the multiple angles
typecasting is approached from, rather than simply just the studio. Actors
are aware of their typecasting, as, like Bonham-Carter notes, it is some-
thing displayed not within the studios but in the media. This is reinforced
by a further layer, the spectator, as Wojcik argues: ‘[T]ypecasting occurs at
many varied levels, and is equally something spectators and fans enact or
impose on actors’ (224). As noted above, the typecasting by fans is linked
not just to the body and its assumed value in culture through a number of
particular markers (age, gender, size, race), but the familiarity with that
body. This is something to be explored more in Chap. 3 through looking
at the element of reception.
 2 THE ACTING BODY 23

Typecasting does not happen in a vacuum. Various external forces shape

it, as we have explored. One of the most enduring ideas about typecasting
is the element of social attitudes impacting it. Interestingly, an area of film
that has begun to showcase this has been superhero films which have
pushed back against the standard ‘hero’ type—a white (American) male—
and shown that social attitudes have sufficiently changed that other bodies
are accepted, and successful, in this role. Yet, that goes against Wojcik’s
ideas of Hollywood typecasting as ‘psychological’ rather than ‘social’
types. As such, it is important to repeatedly return to how an actor is being
typecast. The two—psychological and social types—speak to different
ways of manifesting type. The latter is the immediate external body, the
one shown foremost in extratextual materials, shaping an approach to a
text. We begin to make judgements about what area of society they repre-
sent through physical markers. The former, psychological, relies on wit-
nessing that body in movement—looking for traces of the inner manifest
externally. This may be through gestures, gait, or posture. Arguably, the
case of some of the superhero films pushing against type take the psycho-
logical typing of the hero and merge it with a different social type repre-
sented by an unfamiliar body. What this attempts to do is broaden the
understanding of type, but the fusion of the two elements is still compli-
cated by its reliance on social attitudes.
Perhaps this is why actors that are most often seen playing against type
may be those bodies that are more accepted. By this I mean those bodies
that are understood as the ‘norm’ in Hollywood film—predominantly
white, able-bodied, and of a certain body shape. As such, they are seen in
some ways as being a ‘blank slate’, something commented on by scholars
who explore typecasting and stereotype in roles defined as non-white char-
acters (something returned to in Chap. 5). But is the idea of the accepted
body as able to transcend type always successful? It seems perhaps that
once an actor is sufficiently familiar enough, they can move beyond the
type they have been associated with and bring with them not previous
characters, but a cultural value derived from extratextual elements instead.
Brad Pitt has been one such actor that has played a broader range of roles,
but he is divorced from a particular character and instead stands as a body
ready to fill a role in a recognisable way, which is to say, recognisable in
terms of his aesthetics rather than any psychological connotations. In con-
trast, an actor that is repeatedly typecast is Adam Sandler. An attempt to
break out of this, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (2002), saw
critics and audiences divided over the characterisation. In Anderson’s film,
24 C. WILKINS

Sandler played a man read by many critics as being on the autism spec-
trum. It was a more complex role than his previous characters; perhaps the
move away pushed too far against the type he had been confined by.
Sandler has since returned to type, successfully so—signing a deal with
Netflix2 for multiple films where he repeatedly plays a similar character.
There is a clear desire here from audiences for repetition and an under-
standing of what to expect from an actor. However, there are differences
between certain actors as we see in terms of what audiences will approve
of. This leads us into thinking about the ways in which an actor can be
typecast.
What are the different forms of typecasting? Arguably, there are two,
and they are primarily linked to the psychological element of typing that
Wojcik discusses. The first is a type that is more loosely defined, such as
underdog, nice guy, and tough-but-soft-inside career woman. The second
is character typecasting. By this I mean an actor who has been so strongly
linked to one character in their career that roles turn into reiterations of
that character. This can be regardless of whether the actor themselves
wants to keep playing that type. The first type includes actors such as Jim
Carey and Hugh Grant, who play particular types of people rather than
characters.
The second includes Jennifer Aniston, as she describes in an interview
(‘Drama Actress Roundtable’):

I could not get Rachel Green off of my back for the life of me. I could not
escape ‘Rachel from Friends,’ and it’s on all the time. … The Good Girl was
the first time I got to really shed whatever the Rachel character was, and to
be able to disappear into someone who wasn’t that was such a relief to me.

An audience may link one body to one character, and see subsequent
roles as another version of that character. This can be because of the pro-
lific nature of the text (such as with Friends) or because of the cultural
impact of the text. What this also evidences is the importance of the physi-
cal, as it provides a framework that shapes the character, its understanding,
and communication through a body. Another example may include
Johnny Depp, who, since Pirates of the Caribbean, has been accused of
playing a version of Jack Sparrow. This can result in audiences beginning
to believe that an actor is simply ‘playing themselves’. The understanding
of a body, and a character, thus may come from a limitation to a type. That
type is linked so strongly to physicality thereby sees a body as a medium
 2 THE ACTING BODY 25

defined by particular codes. The body becomes something to interpret, at

the same time as being a site for the production of meanings. The body
therefore could be described as a medium, complicating an understanding
of adaptation, which may allow for a narrower focus on what and how a
text is being adapted. As Roanna Mitchell asserts: the ‘[n]otion of body as
an object … stands in close relationship to the way they are read by the
world’ (144). This reading of the body situates it as another form of text
that can be read, adapted, and adapted to.

Body as Medium
Here it is important to clarify the dual nature of the body as we are cur-
rently discussing—as both medium and text. Text implies a singular
instance, whereas medium the method in which it is being communicated,
with the latter offering specifics of form and coding that govern its inter-
pretation. I would like to approach the body in a dialectic way; the body,
generalised, represents the medium. When we see bodies onscreen, they
are a medium for characters to be communicated. However, when we
watch a particular body for signs in order to interpret, it becomes a text.
Hence, it is at once a dual thing (both medium and text), which will come
up repeatedly in our discussion across this book. The body in its encom-
passing of dichotomous elements operates continually in a dialogue with
itself and the reader.
With the element of the actor, we are asked to consider this relationship
in a more deliberate way. Lisa Akervall helpfully thinks about the relation-
ship between the actor and their medium:

What does it mean for an actor to be a medium, to see and show rather than
to act? What the actor-medium mediates is of course not the interiority of a
character, affects, or emotions. There is no causal nexus between affections
on the inside and a readable expression on the outside—be it the face or the
body or gestures. Affects are no longer part of behaviors, nor are they psy-
chologically motivated; they have even become somewhat independent of
the actor. As spectators we don’t experience any moments of empathy. That
does not mean that we are dealing with Brechtian alienation-effects, how-
ever. The actor-medium doesn’t expose the difference between role and
actor. The actor-medium’s concerns are to see and to show, rather than to
act. What the actor-medium mediates is a certain view, a non-­commonsensical
vision of a situation. The actor-medium is thus literally a kind of medium: an
actor with a specific capacity to mediate, to make something visible and
26 C. WILKINS

maybe even graspable. In the transmissions among characters, actors and

spectators we see the emergence of an experience of becoming visionary. (279)

There is a disconnect here from more method approaches to acting

which often ask actors to think of a situation comparable to the charac-
ter’s, or a moment that will produce a similar engagement with the world
around them, in order to psychologically immerse themselves and thus be
able to outwardly manifest those feelings. Akervall instead sees the body as
a kind of surface where technical elements are displayed in order to com-
municate, rather coldly, information for the audience. This view of the
actor’s body as something that interprets and then displays (‘see and
show’), however, positions the character as something more fluid. The
acting body as medium challenges views of the character as something
owned by the actor or something possessed. It sees it as communicable,
graspable, and able to be shared. This challenges the limits of the body as
Pisk sees it, with the acting body defined by its physicality and ability to
transform ‘into any body’. Transformation implies an inhabitation of
someone else, however momentary, in opposition with the body as
medium which communicates someone else in a more fluid manner.
Transformation is closed. It limits the abilities of the body, once trans-
formed, to move beyond the boundaries of the body it has become in its
specific context. The aspect of transformation in acting has interesting
implications for adaptations which see the character as an impact on the
body. The transformation to or by a character sees it as having fixed and
tangible differences from the actor’s self, which ultimately shape and limit
how that character can be played. Medium, however, implies a kind of
openness that situates the body as something to be communicated
through, beyond boundaries. It is this perspective we will further explore.
If the body is to be conceived of as medium, we may consider what ele-
ments are to be examined as aspects of medium specificity. Arguably, one
is that of its movement, which represents something akin to form.
Expression and gesture structure the output of the body’s meaning; it
provides a shape for us to see and interpret. The reading of this output will
be explored in Chap. 3 when we come to focus on reception. This shape
is something we often understand as character. It enables the body to take
a form through its particular movement. Mary Ann Doane’s definition of
medium is helpful here: it is a ‘material or technical means of aesthetic
expression which harbours both constraints and possibilities, the second
emerging as a consequence of the first’ (130). We may consider expression
 2 THE ACTING BODY 27

and gesture for example to offer constraint, primarily in the very limita-
tions of the body’s capabilities.3 This also, as Doane argues, brings with it
possibilities—which combination of gestures and expression can commu-
nicate what emotions? The aforementioned discussion of body as both
medium and text means here that each different body brings with it
slightly different constraints and possibilities. Here, we begin to open up
avenues for understanding and engaging in dialogue with bodies as texts,
rather than imposing a framework of understanding upon it that may not
be one size fits all.
Thinking further about the role of gesture and expression as an aspect
of medium, we can turn to Carrie Noland for an understanding of what
gestures are:

Gestures are a type of inscription, a parsing of the body into signifying or

operational units; they can thereby be seen to reveal the submission of a
shared human anatomy to a set of bodily practices specific to one culture. At
the same time, gestures clearly belong to the domain of movement; they
provide kinaesthetic sensations that remain in excess of what the gestures
themselves might signify or accomplish within that culture. (2)

Again, we see this divide in understanding of the body: the element of

the physical (what the body can be shaped into) and the element of the
cultural (what that shape means). These culturally specific bodily practices,
as Noland defines, can be seen as an aspect of the medium, a medium
specificity if you will. However, to state this would be to focus more on the
element of the cultural rather than the physical in the limitation of mean-
ing, though the former, as we have noted, has a considerable impact on
the latter. So far, we have thought about the way in which the body medi-
ates, thinking about the physical body as an external manifestation of an
interiority. To think of the limitations through cultural specificity
approaches it as shaped not just in interpretation by this but from its cre-
ation of meaning. That is, the body can only operate in certain ways that
have been outlined as possible and will be understood in a particular way.
The body as medium takes on not just a physical dimension, but a cul-
tural one.
Noland’s description above of gesture positions the bodily possibilities
and the cultural restraints as key elements of the body as medium. We get
both a production and a reading of meaning through the same body. This
is in line with thinking of the body as being multiple, as critics like Sobchack
28 C. WILKINS

posit. As noted earlier, she sees a number of bodies the actor contains and
points to how each one of them is understood by both the actor and the
audience. Graver does similar, situating seven different types of bodies.
One of which is character, which he sees as a distinct body, although fall-
ing more in line with Pisk’s notion of a ‘transformed body’. Graver argues
that as character, the actor’s body ‘inhabits a world of signs’ (222)—signs
that signify character and the character as signified are part of the same
body. The body as medium becomes a complex interplay of physical out-
puts (gestures) which are then interpreted culturally as signs to be read,
and the body comes to be read as signifier of character, rendering it singu-
lar text. Adding to this idea of body as medium and as text comes the ele-
ment of body being read in moments as a signifier. The body, frozen in a
particular moment, becomes mediator of an idea, one that aligns with the
character. The idea is communicated in a gesture, or an expression, as a
sign. The signified is the idea, with the body an image arrested momen-
tarily. I want to clarify here that I am not saying that in order to under-
stand the signification of a character we have to break it down into discrete
elements—character is fluid and complex. However, a character may be
understood in a different way by examining a particular moment for its
meaning. The relevance to our probing of the importance of the physical
lies in how meaning is shaped; as text, it becomes individualised, and as
medium, it is limited by the frameworks we impose on its real, tangible
boundaries.
Silberman offers a way to think further about reading the body as
medium and the blurring of that boundary with that of the body as sign/
signifier through the element of the close up: ‘The screen presence of the
actor’s face in close-up becomes here the medium of representation, a
semantic vacuum or empty signifier that functions as spectacle, fore-
grounding the production of the image’ (562). The isolation of a gesture
or expression perhaps returns us to the notion of the body as object,
something to be looked at rather than identified with. If we read the body
in this way, we surely have to see it as an element of mise en scène, as some
critics do. By doing that, we should consider whether we then strip some-
thing away from our valuing of the body in a text. Further, does it damage
its ability to represent and mimic ourselves? Does it not then render us as
objects if we see it as communicating from a limited spectrum of signs that
are taught and understood as a culture? Our physical understanding of the
body onscreen complicates the notion of character; it is at once object,
actor, and a set of signs to be read and interpreted. How does this
 2 THE ACTING BODY 29

compare to the way in which it is positioned in literature? If we begin to

return to thinking about adaptation, this complicated view of the body
impacts how a character can be conveyed. Perhaps it is the notion of body
as medium that has continued to provide tensions in the reading of adap-
tations, given the focus on medium specificity in the field. Equally, the
differences in communication of the body through the literary text pro-
voke these tensions. The body gives form to an imaginary, but it is not the
same as that imagined character body. Rather, it functions as adaptation of
a body. This ties in nicely with the way in which we can view the acting
body itself as adaptable.

Body as Adaptation
What must also be addressed whilst we are thinking about the element of
the physical, and its possibilities, is the notion of body as something that
can be adapted. This is both adapted to and adapted for. The body as
adapted changes the understanding of what limitations and possibilities it
has. To think more explicitly about this, I am going to examine specific
examples of bodies being adapted. The body as pliable—like Pisk’s notion
of the body as something to be transformed into other bodies—adds
another dimension into our thinking about the body as medium. What
other medium is as pliable? The shaping of the acting body is arguably
always tainted by an understanding of the body as it ‘naturally’ is; how-
ever, this relies on a knowledge of that body before it is transformed,
something discussed further in Chap. 3. The notion of the actor’s ‘natural’
self may be seen as the baseline from which the body can be moulded and
changed physically to suit their character.
Taking on different roles, actors change themselves through their body.
They may contort, affect a particular gesture, and assume an expression.
This much has been discussed; the element of the physical body in mediat-
ing an understood set of signs is crucial in shaping a character and, in turn,
the actor. But how much of this is defined by elements of the body that are
seemingly fixed? These include weight, shape, abilities, or immediate phys-
ical appearance, including age. As we saw with typecasting, the external
provides a shorthand for interpreting the actions and gestures, and the
meaning of a character within the text. I want to briefly think about the
importance of the changing body onscreen in order to further understand
the element of the physical.
30 C. WILKINS

There are various ways the body can change onscreen. One of the most
noticeable is weight; this is reinforced by media coverage of actors’ bodies
as they are filming. Christian Bale is a good example of a body that has
shifted through different weights and shapes over the years to take on
roles. The media obsession with Bale’s (sometimes quickly) shifting body
points to one perspective of the physical. Rather than body as object of
desire, Bale’s body is rendered as spectacle4 (see Vanity Fair below for an
example of this). Due to the psychological aspect of weight change like
his, which often requires a serious impact on lifestyle, it becomes an ardu-
ous task endured for art. Often these changes to the physical body are
presented as an aspect of method acting, or a commitment to a role that
goes above and beyond. Female bodies too have shifted onscreen with
regards to weight, but not to the same extent as Bale. Given the way
famous female bodies are seen in media and onscreen, the scrutiny can be
more intense, and the discourse more critical. Examples of these bodies
include Renée Zellweger (which again prompted an approach of her body
as spectacle due to her weight loss and gain between the Bridget Jones
movies), Lily Collins, Viola Davis, and Charlize Theron. Collins dropped
weight to play an anorexic in To The Bone, Davis gained weight for Ma
Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Theron also gained weight to play a serial killer
in Monster. The latter was also discussed as an example of ‘deglamming’
(see Sharrona Pearl for more on this), whereby the celebrity image is shed.
Arguably a big part of this image revolves around the accepted body shape
for a star.
That these examples of shifting body shapes are seen as notable shows
the valuing of the body as something pliable in acting. Much is said of
commitment to a role through the changing of the body in this way.
Through weight change in particular, the impact of a role pervades the life
of the actor, shaping how they go about their lives, how their bodies move,
and their interactions with the world. Again, the aspect of commitment to
a role is foregrounded in discussions around actors that do this. It is per-
haps the singular example of the pliability of the body. With other physical
changes, they can be contained within the set or managed carefully off set.
These could include hairstyle changes, which can be solved with a wig, or
prosthetics for bodies that are differently shaped to the actor. Similarly, ‘fat
suits’ are available to change the appearance of the body onscreen. There
is something about the actual physical alteration of the body that piques
our interest. Perhaps it is because we see it as more authentic, more realis-
tic—we are not looking for evidence of the prosthetics, but rather
 2 THE ACTING BODY 31

understanding that the body we see onscreen in front of us is to be taken

at face value. That is to say, we are to read its codes plainly, rather than
hunting for a ‘real’ underneath. At that moment in time, Bale’s body play-
ing Dick Cheney is that body. Gwyneth Paltrow’s use of a fat suit in
Shallow Hal played this in reverse: we were familiarised with her body (as
understood in celebrity culture) through the eyes of the protagonist, Hal
(Jack Black). When her ‘real’ body is revealed, there is a moment of ten-
sion for the audience, who ‘know’ that this is not her real body and instead
marvel at the spectacle of the change in appearance. This example plays on
audience knowledge of the ‘real’, whilst reinforcing the values of specific
body types.
To return to the point about authenticity then—the valorising of bod-
ies that have shifted and changed to ‘fit’ a role indicates that we still strive
for the element of realism in acting. We are looking for a mediation of
character through a body that is able to communicate it in an accurate way.
This accuracy is seemingly determined by the cultural implications of the
body’s aesthetics. It is also a view espoused by acting theorists such as Pisk,
who consider the impact of physical change: ‘Change of physical condi-
tion and shape of body “grow” different voices’ (10). By physically (rather
than artificially) changing the body to align with different cultural implica-
tions and different ‘voices’, the body is then able to fulfil that role. Or is
it? In part, our acceptance of the changing body relies on our awareness
that the body that has been changed is one we are familiar with and one
we understand too. It is notably mostly certain stars that are praised for
their bodily changes, usually ones that are more familiar than others. The
more we know that body and the more drastic the change, the bigger the
commitment we assume to a role. Any physical changes, however, are
covered in media as ‘getting into character’. A minor example would be
Brad Pitt having his teeth chipped for Fight Club. Again, this is seen as
commitment to a role. When bodies are changed momentarily, through
prosthetics, the praise is not the same. Think about the infamous response
to Nicole Kidman in The Hours having apparently won the Oscar ‘by a
nose’—a reference to the prosthetic nose she wore as Virginia Woolf—and
this is despite the discomfort actors have spoken of in wearing prosthetics
and the hours spent in make-up. Audiences seek out physical, tangible
changes.
What we must also keep in mind is that it is certain bodies that are
lauded for changing, and positioned as being committed because of this
physical change. Other aspects of physical changes will be dealt with in
32 C. WILKINS

Chap. 5, in considering particular identities and the representation of

them through the body. Lisa Bode thinks about the way in which bodies
place limits on roles. She cites Andre the Giant and Verne Troyer as exam-
ples of limitations (77). Extremes of height also shape expectations.
Transforming height to this extent is difficult onscreen. If we use this to
think about body as medium, we could think that the body is only seen as
pliable if it is of a type that is the ‘norm’ and can be moved beyond.
Otherwise, it is a ‘hiding’ of difference, rather than an ‘adding’ or ‘show-
ing’ of difference. The actors that change their bodies in these examples
are those that conform to a ‘norm’ onscreen, or rather, an accepted body
onscreen. The understanding of the shift in the body to the physicality of
the new character, as we have begun to note, relies on the audience’s
knowledge of the body ‘before’. This will be considered further in the
next chapter.
For now, it is useful to think about the impact of these physical changes
and the limitations of who and what can be altered. There are limitations
to the body, borne out of cultural codes. Equally, should we not say that
the boundaries of the body are limited to the text it resides in? Arguably,
yes. However, these examples above are present in extratextual material
around the films and colour the reception of the physical onscreen through
audience awareness. Further, the notion of the body’s natural state is fixed
through repeated viewings of it in these texts, which conform to a combi-
nation of two of the bodies identified by Graver—the flesh and character.
The two are merged. The body in its pliability shows a use of the body as
adaptation—it is both adapted to and adapted for. It shapes the text
through its physicality, and it is adapted in order to fit the text.
With the concern of authenticity highlighted in some of these bodily
changes, and the way we can conceive of the body as adaptation comes
traces of fidelity debates. Here is where we see the keenest link between
the body and adaptation. If we return to the notion of body as text, and
think about it being adapted to another body, we may use this concern
with authenticity as an indication of the drive towards fidelity in the adap-
tation of the body.

Bodily Fidelity
In order to think through this approach to the body, it is necessary to
establish a few assumptions. Firstly, that the body matters. We have
explored so far the way in which the visual codes of the body communicate
 2 THE ACTING BODY 33

different ideas that are culturally dependent. The fact that bodies that are
changed to adapt to other ones are lauded tells us about our valuation of
the body as an expressive, pliable, medium. In representing a character
onscreen, a body communicates through the physical. As we have estab-
lished, different bodies function as texts to be interpreted through the
signs of the physical. This interpretation is dependent on the aesthetics.
Secondly, in order for a character to be read as intended, surely, the body
needs to be similar to the one outlined in literature or in the text it is
adapting. If it is not, the meanings will be lost. However, thinking along
these lines may lead simply to replication, rather than repetition.
Complicating matters further is the fact that meanings are dependent on
the moment; a body may communicate one meaning in a particular era
that has changed in another. Yet, arguably, there are ideas about what bod-
ies are able to play what roles, and as such, this changes the parameters of
how to adapt a text to a body onscreen. This has been more easily com-
municated by fans in the last decade in particular with the advent of social
media. When an actor is perceived as a ‘bad fit’ for a role, there is backlash.
Scarlett Johansson is one such case; in one example, she was cast to play a
trans character and was heavily criticised for the choice, causing her to
back out of the role.5 When actors are perceived as being a ‘bad fit’ for a
role, what is primarily being said is that their body is not right. It is not
defined by the same cultural codes as the character they wish to portray;
there is an element of fidelity to the criticisms there. How the body of the
character is constructed in literature is key: it is a slippery thing, but one
bound by certain narrative conventions that result in a shared understand-
ing of how it is physically represented. For example, hair/eye colour, race,
body shape, and age may be described. These are aspects we attach shared
social meanings to. With other descriptions, however, these are not as
fixed and may alter dependent on the reader themselves. What this results
in is an understanding of the ‘essence’ of character that must be faithfully
represented. Arguably rather than fidelity to the text, as is often discussed
in adaptation studies—the problem here revolves around a notion of fidel-
ity to a/the body. The body of the character may be imagined or con-
structed culturally through an understanding provided in a text, but often,
a deviation from those frameworks of understanding is seen as tantamount
to crossing the line of culturally accepted practices.
I do not intend here to go into the depths of fidelity criticism nor make
an argument for it. Instead, I am rather brazenly reappropriating it to
consider how we understand character and the body. How that body
34 C. WILKINS

adapts to, or is adapted by, a character (a hierarchy we will consider in

Chap. 4) is of concern here. That fidelity criticism evokes strong disavow-
als is evident from a survey of the field. Glenn Jellenik argues that fidelity
is still dependent on ‘subjective, evaluative, and critically problematic
terms such as “essence” and “spirit”’ (183)—this vague terminology is
difficult to apply to the body’s adaptation of character. Further, David
T. Johnson in discussing it argues that fidelity is rejected for two reasons:
(a) it reflects a comparative model (which is not helpful) and (b) evaluates
aesthetic worth based on adherence to the source (89). If we use these
ideas to think about the body as text being adapted, then we must agree
that the comparative model and the aesthetics are two things heavily relied
on in the evaluations of the adapted body. In order for it to be seemed a
‘fit’, the body needs to communicate something of the character through
the medium it is working with—that is, the particular make up of the flesh
and its appearance. It necessarily drives a comparison with the character’s
body that has been adapted. The understanding of character here is com-
plicated by several factors.
The primary adaptations discussed in scholarship are those from litera-
ture to film, as has been recognised in the field. However, there are other
places the character can emerge from. Film to television adaptations is
something I have written on previously, which brings with it a physical
body as guide for the character. Further, there is an argument to be made
for the biopics that have pervaded Hollywood in recent years (Rocketman,
Battle of the Sexes, Bohemian Rhapsody). These adapt a real-life body to an
actor’s and strive for complete fidelity to the body in order to immerse
people within the story (as we discuss in Chap. 5). Part of the appeal of
these films is seeing actors momentarily transform into a familiar body.
Thus what a character ‘is’ or what it should be is not as clear cut. Every
script, novel, videogame, comic book, television show, and film presents
an interpretation of what the character should be through the body cho-
sen and how it is displayed onscreen.
Thus, arguing for a complete fidelity to a body is flawed. Recent adher-
ents for fidelity criticism, such as David T. Johnson noted above, could
provide a way to think about the body usefully (see ‘Adaptation and
Fidelity’). David Kranz and Colin MacCabe both argue for it as a model
for adaptation studies—Kranz argues we should be comparative and
MacCabe that we should be evaluative. If this were the case, we could use
a comparative model to understand differences in the bodies in order to
see what Leitch calls the ‘gaps’ (see ‘Mind the Gaps’). An interrogation of
 2 THE ACTING BODY 35

this helps illuminate anxieties and positionings of the body in the respec-
tive texts. An evaluative approach could see a merging of the two texts in
order to further expand the understanding of character. What should also
be pointed out here is that this is looking at the physicality of the body,
rather than the way in which it is being mediated. I am aware there are
acting approaches that require or desire a fidelity to the experience of the
character by living and experiencing similar situations. However, firstly,
this will only be a version of their experience rather than the same thing
which is impossible, and secondly the focus here is on how these physicali-
ties are interacted with, which necessarily focuses on the external. The
aspect of psychological states will be addressed in Chap. 6.
With fidelity criticism comes the notion of the original, something dis-
cussed by scholars including Rainer Emig. He points out a number of
inconsistencies in the thinking around the idea of originality, some of
which are useful here (‘Adaptation and the Concept of the Original’). The
idea of an ‘original’ character from which to adapt sees the character as
something fixed and unchanging. Yet, this is not how bodies are—bodies
themselves are constantly shifting and changing. The supposition of an
original body freezes it within a text, not allowing for thinking beyond the
text. This runs counter to what the actor’s body does, says Kracauer:
‘[H]is presence in a film points beyond the film. He affects the audience
not just because of his fitness for this or that role but for being, or seeming
to be, a particular kind of person. … The Hollywood star imposes the
screen image of his physique, the real or stylized one, and all that this
physique implies and connotes on every role he creates’ (qtd. in Wojcik
231). Can an acting body therefore represent a character if we see it as
something fixed?6 Is character fixed through words or through the physi-
cality outlined? Sharon Carnicke and Cynthia Baron think through this
relationship between the imagined character and the physical, but propose
a clear view of how it is shaped. They note: ‘[S]creen performances …
represent the material embodiment of scores or scripts that serve as exact
blueprints or open points of reference’ (7). Seeing a script as an ‘exact
blueprint’ or rather understanding performance in this way positions the
body onscreen as a fixed translation shaped by the words on a page. If it is
fixed through words, it is arguably prey to interpretation. Unless the phys-
ical description is extremely cold and calculated, often literary characters
are sketched rather than clearly outlined. Their interpretation from the
reader is what fleshes them out, as will be discussed in detail in Chap. 4.
36 C. WILKINS

When these imagined bodies are pointed to as the ‘original’, there is a

disconnect. It is too subjective.
Emig cites Linda Hutcheon to think about some of the conflicts of the
original. Says Hutcheon: adaptation is ‘always a double process of inter-
preting and then creating something new’ (qtd. in Emig 31). We could
argue here that this process of adaptation is precisely what happens in the
actor’s body. Because the idea of the original character can never be fully
grasped,7 each performance of a character is an interpretation, a channel-
ling, which results in a new creation, a new character. However, with an
adaptation, this is not what is seen—the character in the adaptation is
often positioned as one version of it. It bears traces, and similarities, and is
compared to the character in the text being adapted. Emig continues on
from Hutcheon’s point, arguing that adaptation ‘reminds the work of art
of its object status—since adaptation relies on a source that it adapts’ (32).
Ultimately he says, fidelity criticism escapes this by denying the adaptation
and reasserting the importance of the ‘original’. If we are to use fidelity
criticism for thinking about how the character is transposed from one
body to another (both imagined and real body), then we must conclude
that it will always be a flawed operation. The very process of adaptation
requires, as Hutcheon notes, an interpretation; particularly in the aspect of
the acting body, which channels and interprets a character through the
physical. By doing so, adaptation necessarily alters the character and the
idea of the original becomes an aspiration only. Thus, the notion of origi-
nality with the body cannot be the key approach for thinking about char-
acter here. However, the question of fidelity can be explored further
through thinking about the body as text.
We have already discussed the idea of body as medium and as text. In
the mode of fidelity, the body as text to be adapted is useful. This is because
of the complications of medium specificity in both fidelity and adaptation.
When it comes to thinking about adaptation, there is an allowance given
for the ways different mediums present texts. This often reduces it to, as
Jellenik notes, the reliance on an interpretation of an ‘essence’ or ‘spirit’ of
a text. If we expand this to thinking about the body, is there an implicit
sense of the ‘essence’ of a body that we look for in an adapted body?
Further, how can this ‘essence’ be outlined in different forms? In the liter-
ary form, an essence would be specifically conjured by words—the lan-
guage and style used to describe and frame the character. As Brownlee
notes, ‘[W]ord is precise but visual culture is chaotic and multifarious’
(163). Brownlee’s approach is one of many perspectives on the properties
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therefore, decided to have Yehonala and the Empress Consort
assassinated on the road, and to that end gave orders that they
should be escorted by the Chief Regent’s personal bodyguard. Had
it not been for Jung Lu, who got wind of the plot, the Dowagers
would assuredly never have reached the capital alive. Acting with the
promptitude which Yehonala inspired, he deserted the funeral
cortège by night with a considerable following of his own men, and
hastened on to the protection of the Empresses, overtaking them
before they reached Ku-pei K’ou, at the end of the pass from the
plains into Mongolia, which was the spot where the assassination
was to have taken place.
Heavy rains had fallen just after the departure of the procession
from Jehol. The roads became impassable, and the Empresses were
compelled to seek shelter in the Long Mountain gorge, where no sort
of accommodation had been provided. The cortège was then ten
miles in their rear. Yehonala, mindful ever of the proprieties, sent
back several men of her escort with a dutiful enquiry, in the name of
her colleague and herself, as to the safety of the Imperial coffin. The
reply, in the form of an Edict by Prince Yi and his Co-Regents,
reported that the catafalque had reached the first resting place in
safety; whereupon Yehonala, asserting as of right the prerogatives of
supreme authority, donated to the bearers a thousand taels from her
Privy Purse in recognition of their arduous services. Prince Yi,
knowing full well that his own danger was increasing every hour, and
would continue so long as the Empresses remained free to work
against him, nevertheless played bravely the part prescribed for him,
conforming in the grand manner to the traditions of his position. He
forwarded a Memorial to the Empresses, humbly thanking them for
their solicitude for the Emperor’s remains. Yehonala, in reply, praised
him for his faithful devotion to duty. Thus, on the road to Death, they
played at Etiquette. Both these documents are filed in the Dynastic
records and afford remarkable evidence of the supreme importance
which Chinese and Manchus alike attach to forms and the written
word even at the most critical moments. Similar instances could be
cited at the height of the Boxer chaos.
 The rains having ceased, the Empresses were able to proceed on
their journey, and having come safely through the hill passes under
Jung Lu’s protection, they were free from further danger of ambush.
They reached Peking on the 29th of the 9th Moon, three full days’
journey ahead of the procession. Immediately upon their arrival a
secret Council was held, at which were present the Emperor’s
brothers, together with the Ministers and Imperial clansmen known to
be loyal to their cause. Long and anxiously did they confer. Although
the Empress Mother was in possession of the seal of legitimate
succession, there was no known precedent for so drastic a step as
the summary, and possibly violent, arrest of high officers of State
convoying the Imperial coffin. Such a course, it was felt, would be
regarded as disrespectful to the late Emperor and an inauspicious
opening to the new reign. The consensus of opinion was, therefore,
on the side of slow and cautious measures, and it was decided thus
to proceed, conforming to all the outward observances of dynastic
tradition. The coffin once arrived, the first step would be to deprive
the Regents of their usurped authority; the rest would follow.
The cortège was due to arrive at the north-west gate of the city on
the morning of the 2nd of the 10th Moon, and on the previous
evening Prince Kung posted a large force of troops at this point to
prevent any attempt at a coup de main by Tsai Yüan’s followers. The
boy Emperor, accompanied by the Empresses Dowager, came out to
meet the coffin as it approached the city, and with him were the late
Emperor’s brothers and a great following of officials. As the
catafalque passed through the gate, the Imperial party knelt and
performed the prescribed acts of reverence. Before the coffin came
the Imperial insignia, and behind it a large body of Manchu cavalry.
Prince Yi and his Co-Regents, having performed their duty in
bringing the coffin safely to the city, next proceeded, as required by
custom, to make formal report in person to the young Emperor, upon
fulfilment of their charge. For this purpose they were received in a
large marquee erected just inside the city gate. Both Empresses
were present, together with the late Emperor’s brothers and the
Grand Secretaries Kuei Liang and Chou Tsu-p’ei.
 Yehonala, calmly assuming, as was her wont, the principal rôle
and all attributes of authority, opened the proceedings by informing
Prince Yi that the Empress Consort and she herself were grateful to
him and to his colleagues for the services which they had rendered
as Regents and Grand Councillors, of which duties they were now
relieved. Prince Yi, putting a bold face on it, replied that he himself
was Chief Regent, legally appointed, that the Empresses had no
power to divest him of authority properly conferred by the late
Emperor, and that, during the minority of the new Emperor, neither
she herself nor any other person was entitled to attend audience
without his express permission.
“We shall see about that,” said Yehonala, and forthwith gave
orders to the attendant guards to place the three Regents under
arrest. The Imperial party then hastened to the Palace to be ready to
meet the coffin upon its arrival at the main entrance to the Forbidden
City, for, however acute the crisis, the dead take precedence of the
living in China. The deposed Regents quietly followed. All hope of
escape or resistance was out of the question, for the streets were
lined with troops faithful to Yehonala’s cause. Her triumph was
complete, essentially a triumph of mind over matter. It was her first
taste of the pomp and circumstance of supreme power.
Forthwith the Empresses proceeded to regularise their position by
issuing the following Decree, which bore the Great Seal of “Lawfully
transmitted authority”:—

“Last year the coasts of our Empire were disturbed and our
capital was in danger, misfortunes entirely due to the
mismanagement of affairs by the Princes and Ministers to
whom they had been entrusted. Prince Yi (Tsai Yüan) in
particular and his colleagues failed to deal satisfactorily with
the peace negotiations, and sought to lessen their
responsibility by their treacherous arrest of the British
emissaries, thus involving China in charges of bad faith. In
consequence of these their acts, the Summer Palace was
eventually sacked by the British and French troops and the
Emperor was forced, greatly against his will, to seek refuge in
Jehol.
“Later, the Ministers of the newly established Tsungli Yamên
were able to arrange matters satisfactorily, and peace was
restored to the capital. Thereupon His late Majesty repeatedly
summoned the Grand Council to decide upon a date for his
return to Peking, but Tsai Yüan, Su Shun and Tuan Hua
conspired together, and, by making him believe that England
and France were not sincere in regard to peace, were able to
prevent his return and thus to oppose the will of the people.
“Subsequently His Majesty’s health suffered severely from
the cold climate of Jehol and from his arduous labours and
anxiety, so that he died on the 17th of the 7th Moon. Our
sorrow was even as a burning fire, and when we consider
how wickedly deceitful has been the conduct of Tsai Yüan and
his colleagues, we feel that the whole Empire must unite in
their condemnation. On ascending the Throne, it was our
intention to punish them, but we kept in mind the fact that to
them the Emperor had given his valedictory instructions, and
we therefore forbore, whilst observing carefully their
behaviour. Who could possibly have foretold their misdeeds?
“On the 11th of the 8th Moon, a Memorial was presented to
us by the Censor Tung Yüan-ch’un, at an audience of the
eight Grand Councillors, in which it was asked that the
Empresses Dowager should for the time being, and during
our minority, administer the Government, that one or two of
the Princes should advise them and that a high official should
be appointed as tutor to ourselves. These suggestions met
with our entire approval. It is true that there exists no
precedent in the history of our Dynasty for an Empress
Dowager to act as Regent, but the interests of the State are
our first concern, and it is surely wiser to act in accordance
with the exigencies of the time than to insist upon a
scrupulous observance of precedent.[7]
 “We therefore authorised Tsai Yüan to issue a Decree
concurring in the Censor’s proposals; but he and his
colleagues adopted an insolent tone towards us and forgot
the reverence due to our person. While pretending to comply
with our wishes, they issued a Decree quite different from that
which we had ordered, and promulgated it in our name. What
was their object? They professed to have no idea of usurping
our authority, but what else was their action but usurpation?
“Undoubtedly they took advantage of our extreme youth
and of the Empresses’ lack of experience in statecraft, their
object being to hoodwink us. But how could they hope to
hoodwink the entire nation? Their behaviour displays
monstrous ingratitude for His late Majesty’s favours, and any
further leniency on our part would be a just cause of offence
to the memory of the departed sovereign, and an insult to the
intelligence of the Chinese people. Tsai Yüan, Su Shun and
Tuan Hua are hereby removed from their posts. Ching Shou,
Mu Yin, Kuang Tu-han and Chiao Yu-ying are removed from
the Grand Council. Let Prince Kung, in consultation with the
Grand Secretaries, the six Boards and the nine Ministries
consider, and report to us as to the proper punishment to be
inflicted upon them, in proportion to their respective offences.
As regards the manner in which the Empresses shall
administer the Government as Regents, let this also be
discussed and a Memorial submitted in reference to future
procedure.”

The Empresses duly performed the proper obeisances to the

Imperial coffin at the eastern gate of the Palace, escorting it thence
to its temporary resting place in the central Throne Hall.
In the security of Peking, and confident of the devotion of the
troops, Yehonala now proceeded to act more boldly. She issued a
second Decree in her own name and that of the Empress Consort,
ordering that the three principal conspirators be handed over to the
Imperial Clansmen’s Court for the determination of a severe penalty.
Pending the investigation, which was to be carried out under the
Presidency of Prince Kung, they were to be stripped of all their titles
and rank. The vindictive autocrat of the years to come speaks for the
first time in this Edict.

“Their audacity in questioning our right to give audience to

Prince Kung this morning shows a degree of wickedness
inconceivable, and convicts them of the darkest designs. The
punishment so far meted out to them is totally inadequate to
the depth of their guilt.”

Against Su Shun, in particular, the Empress’s wrath burned

fiercely. His wife had insulted her in the days of her disgrace at
Jehol, and Yehonala had ever a good memory for insults. Next
morning she issued the following Decree for his especial benefit:—

“Because of Su Shun’s high treason, his wanton usurpation

of authority, his acceptance of bribes and generally
unspeakable wickedness, we commanded that he be
degraded and arrested by the Imperial Clansmen’s Court. But
on receipt of the Decree, Su Shun dared to make use of
blasphemous language in regard to ourselves, forgetful of the
inviolable relation between Sovereign and subject. Our hair
stands on end with horror at such abominable treason.
Moreover he has dared to allow his wife and family to
accompany him, when on duty accompanying the Imperial
coffin from Jehol, which is a most disgraceful violation of all
precedent.[8] The whole of his property, both at Peking and at
Jehol, is therefore confiscated, and no mercy shall be shown
him.”

As Su Shun’s property was worth several millions sterling at the

lowest estimate, the Empress Dowager thus acquired at one stroke
the sinews of war and a substantial nucleus for that treasure hoard
which henceforward was to be one of the main objects of her
ambition, and a chief source of her power. During the present
Dynasty there is a record of one official wealthier than Su Shun,
namely Ho Sh’en, a Grand Secretary under Ch’ien Lung, whose
property was similarly confiscated by that Emperor’s successor.
But Yehonala’s lust of vengeance was not yet appeased. Her next
Decree, issued on the following day, gives evidence of that
acquisitive faculty, that tendency to accumulate property and to
safeguard it with housewifely thrift, which distinguished her to the
end:—

“Su Shun was erecting for himself a Palace at Jehol, which

is not yet completed. Doubtless he has vast stores of treasure
there. Doubtless also he has buried large sums of gold and
silver somewhere in the vicinity of his Jehol residence, in
anticipation of the possible discovery of his crimes. Let all his
property in Jehol be carefully inventoried, when a Decree will
be issued as to its disposal. Let all his property be carefully
searched for treasure, to be handed over when found. Any
attempt at concealment by the Jehol authorities will entail
upon them the same punishment as that which is to be
inflicted upon Su Shun.”

On the 6th of the 10th Moon, Prince Kung and the Imperial
Commission sent in their report on the quite perfunctory enquiry into
the charges against Tsai Yüan and the other conspirators. In the
following Decree the offenders were finally disposed of:—

“The Memorial of our Imperial Commission recommends

that, in accordance with the law applying to cases of high
treason, the punishment of dismemberment and the lingering
death be inflicted upon Tsai Yüan, Tuan Hua and Su Shun.
Our Decrees have already been issued describing their
abominable plot and their usurpation of the Regency.
“On the day of His late Majesty’s death, these three traitors
claimed to have been appointed a Council of Regency, but, as
a matter of fact, His late Majesty, just before his death, had
commanded them to appoint us his successor, without giving
them any orders whatsoever as to their being Regents. This
title they proceeded to arrogate to themselves, even daring to
issue orders in that capacity and without the formality of our
Decree. Moreover they disobeyed the personal and express
orders given them by the Empresses Dowager. When the
Censor Tung Yüan-ch’un petitioned that the Empresses
should assume the government, they not only dared to alter
the Decree which we issued in reply, but they openly asserted
at audience their claim to be our Regents and their refusal to
obey the Empresses. If, said they, they chose to permit the
Empresses to see Memorials, this was more than their duty
required. In fact, their insubordination and violent rudeness
found expression in a hundred ways. In forbidding us to give
audience to our uncles and to the Grand Secretaries, they
evidently meant to set us at variance with our kindred. The
above remarks apply equally to all three traitors.
“As to Su Shun, he insolently dared to seat himself upon
the Imperial Throne. He would enter the Palace precincts
unbidden, and whether on duty or not. He went so far as to
use the Imperial porcelain and furniture for his own purposes,
even refusing to hand over certain articles that we required for
ourselves. He actually demanded an audience with the
Empresses separately, and his words, when addressing them,
indicated a cunning desire to set one Empress against the
other, and to sow seeds of discord. These remarks apply to
the individual guilt of Su Shun.
“Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, and Her Sacred
Majesty the Empress Dowager, our mother, duly informed the
Commission of Enquiry of these facts, and they have to-day
given audience to all the Princes and Ministers to enquire of
them whether the guilt of these three traitors admits of any
extenuating circumstances. It is unanimously determined that
the law allows of no leniency being shown to such flagrant
treason and wickedness as theirs. When we reflect that three
members of our Imperial kindred have thus rendered
themselves liable to a common felon’s death in the public
 square, our eyes are filled with tears. But all these their
misdeeds, in usurping the Regency, have involved our
tutelary deities in the direst peril, and it is not only to
ourselves but to our illustrious ancestors that they must
answer for their damnable treason. No doubt they thought
that, come what may, they were sure of pardon, because of
their having received the mandate of His late Majesty, but
they forgot that the mandate which they have claimed was
never legally issued, and if we were now to pardon them we
should render the law of no effect for all time and prove
unfaithful to the trust reposed in us by our late father. The
punishment of dismemberment and the lingering death, which
the Commission recommends, is indeed the proper
punishment for their crimes, but the House-law of our Dynasty
permits of leniency being shown, to a certain extent, to
members of the Imperial Family. Therefore, although, strictly
speaking, their crimes allow of no indulgence, we decide that
they shall not suffer the penalty of public disgrace. In token of
our leniency, Tsai Yüan and Tuan Hua are hereby permitted to
commit suicide, and Prince Su and Mien Sen are ordered to
proceed forthwith to the ‘Empty Chamber,’[9] and command
the immediate fulfilment of this order. It is not from any feeling
of friendliness towards these traitors that we allow this, but
simply to preserve the dignity of our Imperial family.
“As to Su Shun, his treasonable guilt far exceeds that of his
accomplices, and he fully deserves the punishment of
dismemberment and the slicing process, if only that the law
may be vindicated and public indignation satisfied. But we
cannot make up our mind to impose this extreme penalty and
therefore, in our clemency, we sentence him to immediate
decapitation, commanding Prince Jui and Tsai Liang to
superintend his execution, as a warning to all traitors and
rebels.”

Note.—The hereditary Princedoms of Yi and Cheng which were

forfeited by the conspiring Princes after the death of Hsien-Feng, in
1861, were restored by the Empresses Regent to commemorate
their thanksgiving at the suppression of the Taiping rebellion and the
recapture of Nanking (1864). In an Edict on the subject, Tzŭ Hsi
recalled the fact that the original patent of the Princedom of Yi was
given to a son of the Emperor K’ang-Hsi in 1723 and was to endure,
according to the word of that Monarch, until “the T’ai Mountain
dwindles to the size of a grindstone, and the Yellow River shrinks to
the width of a girdle.” After referring to the main features of the Tsai
Yüan conspiracy and the guilt of the traitors, Tzŭ Hsi proceeded “We
permitted these Princes to commit suicide because they were
ungrateful to ourselves, and had brought disrepute on the good
name of their ancestors. If these are now conscious of their
descendants’ misdeeds, while they wander beside the Nine Springs,
[10] how great must be the anguish of their souls! At the time we
were advised by our Princes and Ministers of State, to put an end for
ever to these Princely titles, and we did so in order to appease
widespread indignation. Since then, however, we have often thought
sorrowfully of the achievements of these Princely families during the
early reigns of our Dynasty, and now the triumph of our arms at
Nanking provides us with a fitting occasion and excuse to rehabilitate
these Princedoms, so that the good name of their founders may
remain unblemished. We therefore hereby restore both titles as
Princes of the blood with all the estates and dependencies
appertaining thereto, and we command that the genealogical trees of
these two Houses be once more placed upon our Dynastic records
in their due order, it being always understood that the usurping
Princes Tuan Hua and Tsai Yüan, together with their descendants in
the direct line for two generations, are expressly excluded from
participation in these restored privileges. Original patents of the
Princes of Yi and Cheng are hereby restored, together with their
titles, to the Dukes Cheng Chih and Tsai Tun. And take heed now
both of you Princes, lest you fall away from the ancient virtue of your
Houses! See to it that you long continue to enjoy our favour by
adding fresh lustre to your ancestral good name!”
The intention was undoubtedly well meant, but the Houses of Yi
and Cheng continued to incur the displeasure of the gods. The next
Prince Yi but one, was permitted to commit suicide in 1900, for
alleged complicity in the Boxer rising, but it is significant that his
name was not on any Black List drawn up by the foreign Powers,
and that his death was due to his having incurred the displeasure of
the Old Buddha at a time when her nerves were not particularly
good, and when she was therefore liable to hasty decisions. As to
the House of Cheng, the holder of the title in 1900 committed suicide
on the day when the Allies entered the city, a disappointed patriot of
the best Manchu model.
Tzŭ Hsi’s wrath against Su Shun found further vent three years
after his death in a Decree which debarred his sons and
descendants from ever holding public office, this punishment being
inflicted on the ground that he had allowed personal spite to
influence him, when consulted by the Emperor Hsien-Feng regarding
the penalty to be inflicted on an offending rival.
 IV
THE FIRST REGENCY

Although the collapse of the Tsai Yüan conspiracy, and the stern
justice administered to its leaders, rendered Yehonala’s position
secure and made her de facto ruler of the Empire (for her colleague
was, politically speaking, a negligible quantity, or nearly so), she was
extremely careful, during the first years of the Regency, to avoid all
conspicuous assumption of power and to keep herself and her
ambitions in the background, while she omitted no opportunity of
improving her knowledge of the art of government and of gaining the
support of China’s leading officials. For this reason all the Decrees of
this period are issued in the name of the Emperor, and Tzŭ Hsi’s
assumption of authority was even less conspicuous than during her
period of retirement at the Summer Palace after the conclusion of
Kuang-Hsü’s minority. The first Regency (1861-1873) may be
described as Tzŭ Hsi’s tentative period of rule, in which she tasted
the sweets, while avoiding the appearance, of power. During the
second Regency (1875-1889), while her name appeared only
occasionally as the author of Imperial Decrees, she was careful to
keep in her hands all official appointments, the granting of rewards
and punishments and other matters of internal politics calculated to
increase her personal popularity and prestige with the mandarinate.
The “curtain was not suspended” during Kuang-Hsü’s minority, as he
was the nominee of the Empresses, whereas the Emperor T’ung-
Chih held his mandate direct from the late Emperor, his father. It was
not until the final Regency (1898-1908), which was not a Regency at
all in the strict sense of the word but an usurpation of the Imperial
prerogative during the lifetime of the sovereign, that, assured of the
strength of her position, she gave full rein to her love of power and,
with something of the contempt which springs from long familiarity,
took unto herself all the outward and visible signs of Imperial
authority, holding audience daily in the Great Hall of the Palace,
seated on the Dragon Throne, with the puppet Emperor relegated to
a position of inferiority, recognised and acclaimed as the Old
Buddha, the sole and undisputed ruler of the Empire.
At the outset of her career, she appears to have realised that the
idea of female rulers had never been popular with the Chinese
people; that even the Empress Wu of the eighth century, the greatest
woman in Chinese history, was regarded as a usurper. She was
aware that the Empress Lü (whose character, as described by
historians, was not unlike her own), to whom was due the
consolidation of power that marked the rise of the Han Dynasty,
enjoys but scant respect from posterity. On the other hand, she knew
—for the study of history was her pastime—that the Empresses
Dowagers of the past had often wielded supreme power in the State,
principles and precedents notwithstanding, and their example she
determined to follow. Upon the taking off of the three chief
conspirators, the Censors and Ministers urged her to deal in similar
drastic fashion with their aiders and abettors, and Prince Kung was
anxious, if not for revenge, at least for precautions being taken
against those who had had the ear of the late Emperor during the
last months of his reign. But Yehonala showed statesmanlike
forbearance: early in life she realised that a few victims are better
than many, and that lives spared often mean whole families of
friends. After cashiering Prince Yi’s remaining colleagues of the
Grand Council, she dealt leniently with other offenders. When, for
instance, Chen Tu-en, President of the Board of Civil Appointments,
was impeached on the ground that it was he who had first persuaded
the Emperor to flee to Jehol against her advice, and that, after the
Emperor’s death, he alone of all the high officials at the capital had
been summoned to Jehol by the usurping Regents, she contented
herself with removing him from office, though his guilt was clearly
proved. Another official, a Minister of the Household, who had
endeavoured to further the aims of the conspirators, by dissuading
Hsien-Feng from returning to Peking in the spring of 1861, on the
plea that an insurrection was impending, was also cashiered. But
there was nothing in the nature of a general proscription, in spite of
the pecuniary and other advantages which usually commend
retaliation to the party in power at Peking. In an able Decree, Tzŭ Hsi
let it be understood that she wished to punish a few only, and those
chiefly pour encourager les autres. It was always a characteristic of
hers that, when her ends were safely secured, she adopted a policy
of watchful leniency: moderata durant. In this instance she was fully
aware of the fact that Tsai Yüan and his colleagues would never
have had the opportunities, nor the courage, to conspire for the
Regency had they not been assured of the sympathy and support of
many of the higher officials, but she preferred to let the iron hand
rest in its velvet glove unless openly thwarted. She would have no
proscriptions, no wreaking of private grudges and revenges. It was
this characteristic of hers that, as will be seen in another place,
obtained for her, amongst the people of Peking in particular, a
reputation for almost quixotic gentleness, a reputation which we find
expressed in frequent references to the “Benign Countenance,” or
“Benevolent Mother,” and which undoubtedly represented certain
genuine impulses in her complex nature. So, having crushed the
conspiracy, she contented herself with exhorting all concerned to
“attend henceforth strictly to their duty, avoiding those sycophantic
and evil tendencies which had brought Chen Tu-en and Huang
Tsung-ban to their disgrace.” In another Decree she emphasised the
principle that sins of omission are not much less grave than overt
acts, roundly censuring the Princes and Ministers of her Government
for having failed to denounce the conspirators at once, and charging
them with cowardice. It was fear and nothing else, she said, that had
prevented them from revealing the truth; and then, with one of those
naïve touches which makes Chinese Edicts a perpetual feast, she
added that, should there be any further plots of usurpers, she would
expect to be informed of their proceedings without delay. Above all,
she bade the Imperial Clan take warning by the fate of the three
conspirators, and intimated that any further attempts of this kind
would be far more severely dealt with.
One of the first steps of the Regency was to determine the title of
the new reign. The usurping Princes had selected the characters
“Chi-Hsiang,” meaning “well-omened happiness,” but to Yehonala’s
scholarly taste and fine sense of fitness, the title seemed ill-chosen
and redundant, and as she wished to obliterate all memory of the
usurpers’ régime, she chose in its place the characters “T’ung-Chih,”
meaning “all-pervading tranquillity,” probably with one eye on the
suppression of the rebellion and the other on the chances of peace
in the Forbidden City. As far as all good augury for the Emperor
himself was concerned, one title was, as events proved, no more
likely to be effective than the other.
On the same day as the proclamation of the new reign was made
by Edict, the Empresses Dowager issued a Decree explaining, and
ostensibly deprecating, the high honour thrust upon them.

“Our assumption of the Regency was utterly contrary to our

wishes, but we have complied with the urgent request of our
Princes and Ministers, because we realise that it is essential
that there should be a higher authority to whom they may
refer. So soon as ever the Emperor shall have completed his
education, we shall take no further part in the Government,
which will then naturally revert to the system prescribed by all
dynastic tradition. Our sincere reluctance in assuming the
direction of affairs must be manifest to all. Our officials are
expected loyally to assist us in the arduous task which we
have undertaken.”
 Exterior of the Ch’ien Ch’ing Palace.

Photo, Ogawa, Tokio.

Following upon this, a Decree was issued in the name of the

Emperor, which represented the boy as thanking their Majesties the
Regents and promising that, so soon as he came of age, he would
endeavour, by dutiful ministrations, to prove his gratitude.
For the procedure of Government it was then arranged that the
Empresses should daily hold joint audiences in the side Hall of the
main Palace. At these, and at all except the great Court ceremonies,
the Emperor’s great-uncle and four brothers were excused from
performing the “kotow,” the Emperor’s respect for the senior
generation being thus indirectly exhibited.
Upon their acceptance of the Regency, honorific titles were
conferred upon both Empresses. Each character in these titles
represents a grant from the public funds of 100,000 taels per annum
(say, at that time, £20,000). Thus the Empress Consort became
known by the title of Tzŭ An (Motherly and Restful) while Yehonala
became Tzŭ Hsi (Motherly and Auspicious), one being the Empress
of the Eastern, and the other of the Western Palace. At various
subsequent periods, further honorific characters, in pairs, were
added unto them, so that, on her seventieth birthday, Tzŭ Hsi was
the proud possessor of sixteen. On that occasion she modestly and
virtuously refused the four additional characters with which the
Emperor Kuang-Hsü (not unprompted) desired to honour her. Tzŭ An
lived to receive ten in all; both ladies received two on their thirtieth
birthdays, two on the Emperor T’ung-Chih’s accession, two just
before his death in recognition of their “ministrations” during his
attack of small-pox, and two on their fortieth birthdays. Tzŭ Hsi
received two more on her fiftieth birthday, two on Kuang-Hsü’s
marriage, and two on her sixtieth birthday. Tzŭ Hsi’s complete official
designation at the end of her life was not easy to remember. It ran,
“Tzŭ-Hsi-Tuan-yu-K’ang-yi-Chao-yu-Chuang-ch’eng-Shou-kung-
Ch’in-hsien-Ch’ung-hsi-Huang Tai-hou,” which, being translated,
means “The Empress Dowager, motherly, auspicious, orthodox,
heaven-blessed, prosperous, all-nourishing, brightly manifest, calm,
sedate, perfect, long-lived, respectful, reverend, worshipful,
illustrious and exalted.”
At the beginning of the Regency it suited Yehonala to conciliate
and humour Prince Kung. In conjunction with her colleague, she
therefore bestowed upon him the titles of “I-Cheng Wang,” or Prince
Adviser to the Government, and by special Decree she made the title
of “Ch’in Wang,” or Prince of the Blood (which had been bestowed
upon him by the late Emperor), hereditary in his family for ever.[11]
Prince Kung begged to be excused from accepting the former
honour, whereupon ensued a solemn parade of refusal on the part of
the Empresses, one of whom, as events proved, certainly wanted no
adviser. Eventually, after much deprecation, Their Majesties gave
way as regards the hereditary title, but on the understanding that the
offer would be renewed at a more fitting season. Yehonala who, in
her better moments of grateful memory, could scarcely forget the
brave part which Prince Kung had played for her at Jehol, made
amends by adopting his daughter as a Princess Imperial, granting
her the use of the Yellow palanquin. The influence of this Princess
over Tzŭ Hsi, especially towards the end, was great, and it was
strikingly displayed in 1900 on behalf of Prince Tuan and the Boxer
leaders.
Ignorant at the outset of many things in the procedure of
Government routine, feeling her way through the labyrinth of party
politics and foreign affairs, afraid of her own youth and inexperience,
it was but natural that Tzŭ Hsi should have recourse to the ripe
wisdom of the late Emperor’s brother and be guided by his opinion.
But as time went on, as her knowledge of affairs broadened and
deepened, her autocratic instincts gradually asserted themselves in
an increasing impatience of advice and restraint. As, by the study of
history and the light of her own intelligence, she gained confidence in
the handling of State business and men, the guidance which had
previously been welcome became distasteful, and eventually
assumed the character of interference. Despotic by nature, Tzŭ Hsi
was not the woman to tolerate interference in any matter where her
own mind was made up, and Prince Kung, on his side, was of a
disposition little less proud and independent than her own. When the
young Yehonala began to evince a disposition to dispense with his
advice, he was therefore not inclined to conceal his displeasure, and
relations speedily became strained. As Tzŭ Hsi was at no pains to
hide her resentment, he gradually came to adopt a policy of
instigating her colleague, the Empress of the East, to a more
independent attitude, a line of action which could not fail to produce
ill-feeling and friction in the Palace. In the appointment of officials,
also, which is the chief object and privilege of power in China, he
was in the habit of promoting and protecting his own nominees
without reference to Yehonala, by direct communications to the
provinces. Eye-witnesses of the events of the period have recorded
their impression that his attitude towards both Empresses at the
commencement of the Regency was somewhat overbearing; that he
was inclined to presume upon the importance of his own position
and services, and that on one occasion at audience, he even
presumed to inform the Empresses that they owed their position to
himself, a remark which Tzŭ Hsi was not likely to forget or forgive.
At the audiences of the Grand Council, it was the custom for the
two Empresses to sit on a raised daïs, each on her separate Throne,
immediately in front of which was suspended a yellow silk curtain;
they were therefore invisible to the Councillors, who were received
separately and in the order of their seniority, Prince Kung coming
first in his capacity as “adviser to the Government.” Beside their
Majesties on the daïs stood their attendant eunuchs; they were in the
habit of peeping through the folds of the curtain, keeping a careful
eye upon the demeanour of the officials in audience, with a view to
noting any signs of disrespect or breach of etiquette. Strictly
speaking, no official, however high his rank, might enter the Throne
room unless summoned by the chief eunuch in attendance, but
Prince Kung considered himself superior to such rules, and would
enter unannounced. Other breaches of etiquette he committed
which, as Her Majesty’s knowledge of affairs increased, were
carefully noted against him; for instance, he would raise his voice
when replying to their Majesties’ instructions (which were always
given by Tzŭ Hsi), and on one occasion, he even ventured to ask
that Tzŭ Hsi should repeat something she had just said, and which
he pretended not to have understood. His attitude, in short (say the
chroniclers), implied an assumption of equality which the proud spirit
of the young Empress would not brook. Living outside the Palace as
he did, having free intercourse with Chinese and foreign officials on
all sides, he was naturally in a position to intrigue against her, did he
so desire. Tzŭ Hsi, on the other hand, was likely to imagine and
exaggerate intrigues, since nearly all her information came from the
eunuchs and would therefore naturally assume alarming proportions.
There is little doubt that she gradually came to believe in the
possibility of Prince Kung working against her authority, and she
therefore set herself to prove to him that his position and
prerogatives depended entirely upon her good will.
She continued watching her opportunity and patiently biding her
time until the occasion presented itself in the fourth year of the
Regency (April, 1865). In a moment of absent-mindedness or
bravado, Prince Kung ventured to rise from his knees during an
audience, thus violating a fundamental rule of etiquette originally
instituted to guard the Sovereign against any sudden attack. The
eunuchs promptly informed their Majesties, whereupon Tzŭ Hsi
called loudly for help, exclaiming that the Prince was plotting some
evil treachery against the persons of the Regents. The Guards
rushed in, and Prince Kung was ordered to leave the presence at
once. His departure was speedily followed by the issue of an
Imperial Decree, stating that he had endeavoured to usurp the
authority of the Throne and persistently overrated his own
importance to the State. He was accordingly dismissed from his
position as adviser to the Government, relieved of his duties on the
Grand Council and other high offices in the Palace; even his
appointment as head of the Foreign Office, or Tsungli Yamên, was
cancelled. “He had shown himself unworthy of their Majesties’
confidence,” said the Edict, “and had displayed gross nepotism in the
appointment of high officials: his rebellious and usurping tendencies
must be sternly checked.”
A month later, however, Tzŭ Hsi, realising that her own position
was not unassailable, and that her treatment of this powerful Prince
had created much unfavourable comment at Court and in the
provinces, saved her face and the situation simultaneously, by
issuing a Decree in the name of herself and her colleague, which
she described as a Decree of explanation. In this document she took
no small credit to herself for strength of character and virtue in
dealing severely with her near kinsmen in the interests of the State,
and pointed to the fact that any undue encouragement of the