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Week 11 Act of Literary Creation

This week we watched Ruby Sparks for the subject of Literary creation and the movie explores that. A young acclaimed writer has been struggling to follow up the success of his first book. He starts writing about a woman in his imagination and she becomes his ideal girlfriend. His creation then comes to life as a living person and he starts to live out his fantasy. I thought this movie was interesting because it explores this idea of how having the perfect person can be a gift and a curse at the same time. Also, it shows how having perfect person in your imagination will still fall short of your standards. Later in the movie he starts to get more attached to Ruby that he cannot fathom being away from her.

We read two articles for this week and they both perfectly relate to subject at hand. The first one by Shelly Cobb is discussing the subject of fidelity in literature and the criticism that it receives. This is explored throughout the article as it relates to adaptation and being true to an original source. Often times a adaptation can be criticized for not being true to the original source and it takes place in public discourse. "The public trial for film adaptations takes place within the public discourse of newspaper, magazine, television, and new media reviews and in academic articles and books that inveigh against the film’s adulterous tendencies, using various terms for being inconstant, disloyal, untrue, false, a cheat, and a betrayal, words that recent scholarship insistently and rightly reject." (Cobb) The article also goes into the same but from a standpoint of how we discuss feminine stand point.

Francesca Coppa writes about fan fiction in the first chapter of her book. She breaks down all elements what makes fan fiction. The first is that it is created by people who are outsiders to the literary world. It also reimagines other stories that already exist but in mind of fan of the original story and it reimagines stories written by that author. It is also inspired by a fandom that exists and is made to cater to that fandom. Finally, it is more speculative fiction about a character or story as opposed to the universe. The one it is not made for nothing since the authors still see a profit in made fan fiction.

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Week 10 Teen Market & YA Literature

This week the topic was Teen films and Young Adult literature. These stories tend to be darker and deal themes coming of age and change. But there is a magic to these stories and there is also romance. We watched the first Twilight movie for this since it a prominent franchise in both YA lit and movies geared towards teenagers. I remember the books being very popular in middle school and the movies being successful but it never caught my interest. I did not care for it but I thought it was interesting to watch. I get why it was popular at the time when it came out. I felt the relationship was hard for me to buy since Edward seemed like he was stalking her so much in the beginning. The vampire battle were entertaining and they were really well done.

We read two article this week and the first one was from The Ringer website and details how adaptations of fantasy novels such as Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings changed Hollywood. These franchises were game changing since it changed the model of how film industry operates now. Studios are looking for whatever property that had a passionate fandom in place which led to the rise of Comic Book movies dominating the entertainment industry. This led to more YA books like Twilight to be made into films with profit in mind.

Another article we read was by Elissa Nelson which focuses on the phenomenon of YA films and their success. The rise in technology played a part in the rise of this genre since it allowed fandoms converge online. The film industry sees these films as the best way to appeal to young teen audience that most likely go to the theatre. "As often happens, Hollywood falls back on familiar strategies, is risk averse, and follows trends of producing similar kinds of successful films until a couple of years after they’re no longer popular (often attributed to the lag between changing tastes and the length of development-to-release production schedules). There’s also an assumption that the youth demographic is the primary, though not sole, audience for the teen film and that films featuring characters who are similar in age to the target market will entice them to go to the box office." (Nelson)

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Week 9 Lolita 1997

So we watched the remake of Lolita which was released in 1997. There were some differences that I noticed but also some similarities with this version. I felt like the Lolita character was sexually interested in Humbert during parts of the movie. It felt she was initiating the sexual tension between the two so I felt that was different from the Stanley Kubrick version. It also less comedic since the first one tried instill humor with Peter Sellers charcter coming in and owning certain scenes. So there was no humor in this version. I still did not like the movie though since I still find the story a bit creepy for me. So although it tried to change some things around to make it modern it was still an uncomfortable watch.

We also did something similar to last time but instead of book covers we looked at movie posters for this film. I noticed that they tried to make it seem like Lolita was more rebellious than the other film. She seemed to have more of a bad girl look in some images. I think some of that had to do with the actress they chose this time around I guess to focus less on beauty and more on personality.

Since this movie was a remake, the article we read by Thomas Leitch was about movie remakes. He argues that remakes are more unique than they are given credit for due how they relate to the previous narratives they are connected with. “Although we might describe any story as parasitic on its models, remakes are parasitic on their original films in a uniquely legalistic way. Since most remakes attempt to supersede their originals [...], remakes typically threaten the economic viability of their originals without compensating the producers of the original in any way." (Leitch)

I think what was interesting is how different it is to make a sequel as opposed to the remake. Remakes are more difficult since they can't rely on nostalgia of the original movie since some people never saw that version. Sequels are easier since people are more likely to be familiar with the first film and want to follow the characters into another story.

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Week 8 Lolita 1962

This week was all about discussing the movie Lolita which was a Stanley Kubrick adaptation of a book by Vladimir Nobokov. A literatue professor moves to the U.S and rents a room at a widows house. He mainly chooses to stay since he is obsessed with her daughter who is a teenager. It is this central storyline that made me dislike this film because I did find it to be creepy. A scene that stood was him getting angry over her wanting to act in a play because she would be talking to other boys. Even holding out from telling Lolita about her mother's death because he now has her all to himself. The main character was unlikable, selfish, vain, and controlling. Throughout the movie, you are waiting for him to get consequences for these actions but it never happens. We did something in class that was interesting and that is we looked at different book covers for the original book and some of them were disturbing. Some of them had a cool style but other seemed very sexually explicit in which the young girl was displayed.

We read a couple of articles related to this movie and the first one focused on the original book and what it was about and what it meant. The article by Trilling argues that the book was meant to be shocking and suceeded in doing so.

"In a tone which is calculatedly not serious, it makes a prolonged assault on one of our unquestioned and unquestionably sexual prohibitions, the sexual inviolability of girls of a certain age (and compounds the impiousness with what amounts to incest)." (Trilling)

We read another article that was this idea of the male gaze in film. During this time most movies were made by men so women were represented thorugh the eyes of what they see or want to see. So women were given depth and stories were often sexualized and reduced to their looks. This is just a product of the patriarchal society that existed for a long time in America. This allows male viewers to see themselves in the heroes who are also male and enjoy the pleasure of seeing a beatiful woman. Some of this still exists today but women now have agency display themselves on their own terms making it more empowering.

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Week 7 The unDead Author

This week we discussed the subject of authors and fascination around them and their work. We read two articles for this subject. The first one was by Roland Barthes called Death of the Author. Author is one of many voices in written literature but it is the most essential. It is important to know who the author is since much of their writing comes from a unique perspective. The author tends become a reflection of their work since it is belief to repreesnt that person's view of the world and their values. Also, the author is small part of the culture that influences text and that some authors are not as original as some may think. So any writng is open to interpretation regardless of who the author is.

" a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of;" (Barthes).

Another article we read was by Michael Foucault and it discussed what is an author. The author and the text have a deep relationship since it points to the author itself. There are also authors who come in many forms and different walks of life so they are all not constructed the same way. This allows for their to be perspectives rarely heard in writing.

For this week, we watch The Sweet Hereafter and it was a Canadian Drama about a small town dealing with tragedy after a school bus crash kills numerous children. A lawyer from the outside comes in to try get the town on board with a lawsuit against bus company but only divides the town since everyone is not on board. I really liked this movie and thought it was well made movie with great acting and great direction. The movie has a non-linear structure that still made the story interesting and gave the characters more depth. An example would be seeing the main character also deal with his daughter who is drug addict while also pursuing this lawsuit. This may have been the best film I have thus far in class.

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Week 6 Fairytales and Dark Romance

For this weeks class, we talked a lot about fairy tales and the ones that have a dark twist on them. We had watched The Company of the Wolves which was a british gothic horror movie. Although for me, I did not find the movie to scare me all that much. There were some creepy moments. I thought it was interesting that the movie is also kind of a take on the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale and Angela Carter's story. The scene when the wolf emerged from the guy ealry in the movie that almost killed Rosaleen was a standout. It was scary and gory scene that set the tone for what the movie is gonna be.

We read an article that was an analysis on the way the movie adapted by Angela Carter. What made the story stand out was that it was more of female centric tale when much horror fiction focused on male protagonists. Something the article adresses is the role of adaptation and how it affects the way we view stories. Since there is so much type of adaptations in media, we have new ways of consumung stories. This following passge stood out to me:

"Yet recent developments in adaptation studies open up new ways of reading the text/s. Rather than a process from ‘original’ to inferior copy, adaptation is now considered as a complex and nuanced process of translation, reimagining or appropriation. Foregrounding the fidelity of an adaptation usually serves to valorize literature above film or television or at least to award status to the ‘original’. Now that adaptation traffic of all kinds is acknowledged (from stage show to TV show, from comics to movies, from historical events to fictionalizations, from film to film remake) the very notion of the ‘original’ is in question."

We delved into the genre of gothic fairytales and dark romance which made The Company of the Wolves a perfect watch. The elements shared in these genres are very provacative and feature imagery that can be disturbing. Gothic fairytales are darker and more supernatural than norman fairytales and violence is more stylized and there is more excess. Dark romance is similar but features more female centered stories with more agency and desires.

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Week 5 Fairytales and Gender

This week was focused on fairytales and how they blend into different genres. The movie we watched this week was Snow White and The Huntsman. This was a more modern reimagining of the original Snow White fairytale. It is supposed to feature more action scenes and give it more of a female empowerment type vibe. The opening of the movie involves a big action sequence involving an army of knights fighting against another army. I thought the movie was interesting to watch but it was not I would want to watch again. I thought it was an interesting way to modernize a fairy tale since this one had more of dark tone compared to the Disney version.

The movie provided a good basis for our focus on fairytales since it is one of the most famous ones ever. We read an article about Disney and its relationships with fairytales. It also looks at the impact on how we view fairytales in general since they have done numerous adaptations of them. Some of these fairytales such as Snow White had dark origins in the original storyline and they wanted to make adaptations that would be more uplifting especially since their Snow White version was released during the Great Depression. This formula would be used for a lot of their fairytale adaptations in the decades to come. Disney films have to represent an ideal fantasy of happiness beig sold to kids as some would say. They are more american versions of these stories that originated in Europe yet still retain elements of the original stories. This passage makes a good point about this:

"In this way Disney fairy tales are not all that different in their moral undertones from their literary predecessors. Yet they are cast aside as Americanized and saccharine, carrying no real relation to everyday life, unlike their counterparts." (Mollet)

We also read different versions of Sleeping Beauty for this and we discussed all the different fairytales we thought about and enjoyed for ourselves. I brought up The Nighmare Before Christmas as a favorite since I watch it for every holiday season.

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Week 4 Bodies, Youth, and Supernatural

This week we discussed supernatural films and the use of excess as a way of visual medium. We read two articles about this subject this week. The first one was by Linda Williams. The article discusses movies that meant to provoke the audience in a wat that grosses you out and uses the human body for that same purpose. The genres that specifically use this provacation the most are horror, melodrama, and pornography. These types of movies makes the audience respond in a that is physical than emotional. The passage below articulates this idea really well in my opinion:

"Visually, each of these ecstatic excesses could be said to share a quality of uncontrollable convul- sion or spasm-of the body "beside itself" with sexual pleasure, fear and terror, or overpowering sadness. Aurally, excess is marked by recourse not to the coded articulations of language but to inar- ticulate cries of pleasure in porn, screams of fear in horror, sobs of anguish in melodra" (Williams).

The second article we read was by by Jes Battis and it was about American youth and how it is portrayed in the media. For many youth, early adolescence is a time discovery and it can bring out a lot feelings that can positive or negative. There is a ton of youth geared towards teenagers where they get to see themselves as heroes and go on a journey so unreal hence the supernatural. These stories can be about self-discovery and identity which a journey in of itself. These stories tackle dark themes, such as, death, mental health, violence and abuse.

"Fantasy literature allows teens to explore a spectrum of gender diversity; however, through its reliance on myth and metaphor, it also elides the biological and political contexts that such transitions always inflame. Theprotagonist of Lynn Flewelling’s The Bone Doll’s Twin (2004), for instance, is able to magically transition from male to female without bodily modification, surgical intervention, or any other form of genderQueer representation (that is, living visually as another gender without physical alteration, or living between genders without self-identifying as transgender)."

We watched Let the Right One In for this week and it was Seedish Teen Romance movie about a boy who falls in love with a girl who is secretly a vampire. I personally did not care for this movie. I've never been a big vampire movie guy and this one did not help. I did like the past where Oksar gets revenge on his bullies since they have been the source of hard feelings for him in the movie. Overall, I did not think it was bad. I am also not curious to see the remake.

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Week 3 Queering Comics

This week we discussed the level of queerness that is not often pointed that are in comic books. We listened to a podcast where the two hosts discussed the queer representation in comic books such as X-men, Fantastic Four, and many other comic books. They discuss how certain storylines in superhero can be relatable to queer audiences due to certain allegories. They explain how the Fantastic Four characters how their origin story is very queer like in a way. The Thing is a character who is intimidating on the outside but vulnerable on the inside because of he had an identity crisis. This is a storyline that can be relatable to any LGBTQ audience. This could also be applied to the X-Men and how they were treated in society as different from normal people.

We also read an article written by Darieck Scott and Ramzi Fawaz, who was one of guest on the podcast. This article expands on this subject by providing more information and context. There has always been a relationship between queerness and comic books since the very beginning going back decades. They even include references to sexual politics and Wonder Woman was an example of that as well. The X-Men also an example of how the storylines of the characters drew parallels to the LGBTQ experience for some queer readers specifically Storm.

"Hence, we can find in reading this image and the palimpsest of many readings that layer it from 1973 on, or in a holographic X-Men cover and the affective aspirations of its teenage viewer, paradigms of comic book fandom—a young boy buys a comic book and falls in love with superheroes—and an illustration of how that paradigm, by usual accounts masculinist, covertly raced along the lines of white supremacy (i.e., baseline human is white), and imbued with a nostalgia conducive to any number of wicked conservative politics, is far queererthan it may appear" (Scott and Fawaz)

In class, we discussed queer representation in class and how it used in movies and film. We watched a video essay about the different types of queer representation. My takeaway was that these portrayals felt more coded than overt because it did not want to alienate non-LGBTQ audiences and I think that can be problematic. Overall, it led to a great discussion in class about it.

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Week 2 The Old is New Again

For the second week, we studied comic book adaptations and watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We also read a couple articles related to the subject for the week. The first one was about the history of the Captain America comic book series and what they have represented over the years. At times, they have have reflected the political climate of the time of its release. In the article, it points out that there was a series during the 80s where the Cold War was incorperated during this run Captain America comic books. So basically this series of comics charts American history and comic book history too. These quotes reflect this theory:

"My own survey of the Captain America comic books found several distinct embodiements of the character, relfecting different conceptions of American culture. For example, depsite beginning as a jingoistic pro-war hero, Cap became a liberal crusader in the late 1960s, teaming up with the Falcon, the nations first African American superhero to fight against corruption within the American establishment. In the 1980s, he reflected the Cold War morality and consumerism of the Reagan era."

The second article by Claire Parody was about the role of adaptation in franchising and the entertainment industry. This article is very relevant since franchises and cross media content dominate much of the entertainment industry. This article analyzes and details the advantages of storytelling through a franchise such as being able to stretch out stories across different platforms. So the MCU would be a great example.

We also watched Captain America Winter Soldier for this week. I have seen it before but not in a long time so watching again with a new perspective was interesting. I know I already liked this movie but now I see that this was where Marvel was starting to experiment with their movies rather than doing the typical superhero formula of good guy vs villain. There isn't one scene that stood out but the storyline of the villains being people he with who are against him made it different. It political thriller vibes as well considering they were also hiding info.

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Week 1 Adaptation intro

Going into the first week of this class, I was interested in what kind of material we would be diving into. I watched the movie that we were assigned to watch and that was The Tale of a Vampire. I didn't know whether I liked it or not but I know had no urge to watch it again. I have never been a big fan of anything related to vampires. At times, it was pretty slow at times and I lost interest during some points. I did like some of the acting especially the main actress in the movie. I thought her character kept me engaged through much of the film. We also read an article that to me gives a good glimpse into what this class will be about. We read Impure Cinema by Cartman and Wheelman and it discusses the theories and studies of adaptations by scholars. It is an article that adaptations are more than just taking something from one medium and translating it to another.

"At its best adaptation can re-envision a well-worn narrative for a new audience inhabiting a very different cultural environment , and their relationship to the 'origin' may itself change enormously. An adaptation may be an act of criticism and reparation simultaneously; a text may well have outlived its usefulnees or become too tired for contemporary tastes- an anecdotal example springs to mind. "

I thought about some of my favorite adaptations and I could only think of Harry Potter as the first to come to mind for me. I love comic books films so the entire MCU and some DC movies would be included. Finally, one of my favorite films is Malcolm X which was an adaptation of his autobiography.