For those of you studying film...

[dreamdead]

Since it’s never too early to be thinking about these things… I'll apologize in advance for the academicness of this thread

One of the things that occurred when Northern Illinois University was searching for their next Film and Literature instructor was that the interviewing faculty asked interviewees to name their 5 ideal film/lit pairings. Of course, such a question is naturally going to come up in these types of formal sessions, but my question to you all would be how far off the beaten path would you go in naming your picks? How much would you stick with the traditional sampling of fare like Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now or King Lear/Ran, and how much would you mix it up with a sexier pick or two?

While most departments are aware that film is no longer relegated to mere issues of textual fidelity, so that we’re not limited to only doing the traditional fare, how willing would you be to adventure out with a list of only one traditional pick, so that the other pairings reflected more of a thematic or symbolic adaptation rather than direct adaptation?

In the film/lit class that I audited, the professor taught The Big Sleep and The Big Lebowski together, which is a pairing that in retrospect seems obvious. When he wanted us to think beyond mere fidelity, he assigned Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis and Vanilla Sky in order to get us thinking about matters of intrigue, the spatiality of a city, and overt use of psychoanalysis. For myself, I regard the pairing that I concocted of Ian McEwan's Atonement and The Usual Suspects as brilliant since they're both a study of the unreliable narrator and how stories can consciously manipulate, but would you feel that such a non-traditional pairing would negatively challenge interested universities?

[Raiders]

It's a delicate balance I would think. I imagine no serious film schooler is going to scoff at the idea of drawing less-than-immediately-obvious comparisons between two texts, but you don't want to start grasping at abstract links maybe only you are going to find relevant or interesting.

I would think it would be best to develop a theme first, then find associated works within that theme, making the connection obvious to the students and maybe allowing you, or the professor, to open it up ahead of time to suggestions from the class on what films/texts they might think fits in with the chosen theme.

[Grouchy]

I'm not sure I fully understand the proposal because in the case of The Big Lebowski, it's a conscious parody of the original text. Atonement (which I haven't read) and Usual Suspects seem like they're only connected by a theme or a narrative device.

I think, like Raiders, that it's probably a good idea to find a theme or narrative device first, teach it, and then find a book and a film that use it in the same way.

[Izzy Black]

I would say it is all about how well you can make an argument for your selections. If you can explain the nuanced and complex reasons two unconventionally related picks have to each other, I would imagine you would get more respect rather than less. It's more about the critical analysis.

[monolith94]

Frankly, I think that that's a terrible question. Film is its own animal, and I don't think that film courses should be taught with any reliance on literary history at all.

[monolith94]

That said, I can't resist:

1. Shakespeare's the Tempest in relation to Jarman's and Greenaway's adaptations.
2. Orwell's 1984 and Gilliam's Brazil
3. Fielding's Tom Jones and the famous adaptation, particularly great because the original novel is so self-referential.

[lovejuice]

my favorite adaptation ever is a thai movie based on perhaps the most famous/controversial thai novel, the judgement.

back to the topic, i am very partial toward cross-genre adaptation, so i might go with pride and prejudice/bride and prejudice which does cross more than genre, but also time and space. same go with dangerous liaisons/claire's knee.

[Qrazy]

Frankly, I think that that's a terrible question. Film is its own animal, and I don't think that film courses should be taught with any reliance on literary history at all.

That's being a bit closed off don't you think? Perhaps you mean that film ought to try to distance itself from literature, which I agree with. Historically however it hasn't and as a result there's a wealth of literary comparisons which can and perhaps ought to be made in order to shed greater light on many works.

[dreamdead]

Frankly, I think that that's a terrible question. Film is its own animal, and I don't think that film courses should be taught with any reliance on literary history at all.

While there are times that I concur with this opinion, it's a bit myopic since it is best to remember that Film positions at the university level are incredibly scarce. While reasonably respected, NIU is not going to be mistaken for the bedrock of film studies, and we had about 115 applicants for the one opening. Just think how many students finish the dissertation and then realize that no one cares about this field unless it's congruent with other discipline such as textual literature. Film and literature as a sub-discipline of English helps mitigate some of those burdens, since it still allows for us to work ourselves back into literary job searches as well.

Plus, quite simply, there's something quite rewarding about assessing a certain historical period in culture and studying both the literary and the cinematic tendencies of it, which a more narrow lens cannot adequate cover.


I would say it is all about how well you can make an argument for your selections. If you can explain the nuanced and complex reasons two unconventionally related picks have to each other, I would imagine you would get more respect rather than less. It's more about the critical analysis.

That is essentially how I felt, but nonetheless desired outside support. While the interviewee should certainly ground their film knowledge in a wider trajectory of Film and Literature as a whole, which thus means paying tribute to the older adaptations like Ran or Apocalypse Now, it would seem that also offering a more unconventional set of choices would highlight the fact that you don't view the sub-discipline in a nearsighted manner but are instead aware of the more recent shifts in the field that suggest that thematic or symbolic adaptations can resonate just as powerfully as the traditional adaptations.


I'm not sure I fully understand the proposal because in the case of The Big Lebowski, it's a conscious parody of the original text. Atonement (which I haven't read) and Usual Suspects seem like they're only connected by a theme or a narrative device.

I think, like Raiders, that it's probably a good idea to find a theme or narrative device first, teach it, and then find a book and a film that use it in the same way.

Yes, Atonement and Usual Suspects are only linked at the level of a thematic or narrative device. Yet each suggests something compelling about what level at which we're supposed to accept the spoken/written word. While Singer's film might be written off as a kind of sophist rhetorical game, there is an under-layer to McEwan's text (which the film version fails at conveying) about the impossibility of recovering such multi-perspectived subjectivity. As a result, both fool the reader/viewer, but each works toward a different ideological design. These kind of thematic links are, to me anyway, more fruitful in analyzing than the more traditional and overt adaptations...

[monolith94]

While reasonably respected, NIU is not going to be mistaken for the bedrock of film studies, and we had about 115 applicants for the one opening.


This is not what I wanted to hear. :eek:

[balmakboor]

This is not what I wanted to hear. :eek:

Did you expect anything different?

[DavidSeven]

If I were a student, and as someone who is generally interested in different styles of education, I would be much more interested in discussing the relationship between Atonement (novel)/The Usual Suspects than the more conventional match-ups you cited.

I mean, I did Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now in Intro English Lit and found it to be a fairly banal exercise back then (though I was thrilled to be writing about film in a required English course). A course titled "Film and Literature" seems to operate at a higher level and should present comparisons and contrasts that are more challenging to the student. How does Shakespeare's structure compare/contrast to the structure of modern film tragedies that aren't adapted directly from his work? How do literature religious/Greek heroes compare/contrast to the hero journeys seen in the likes of The Matrix, Star Wars, and I am Legend? I think these are more interesting topics for student and teacher because the links are harder to find, but they're not substantially different from how Kurosawa adapts King Lear. I really like the questions of structure and device that your Atonement/The Usual Suspects pairing is likely to raise, and I really think it will encourage students to think of the form of literature and film in a much broader sense.

As a possible selling point to school administrators for the less traditional approach: less plagiarism. There's going to much less pre-done material available on an Atonement/Usual Suspects comparison than Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. I'd imagine it would be very easy to lift an entire paper on the latter by using Google. Don't know if that helps, but there you go.

[thefourthwall]

Not to deviate too much, but are there other film grad students/professors here that would be interested in submitting a panel for a conference?

[Raiders]

Not to deviate too much, but are there other film grad students/professors here that would be interested in submitting a panel for a conference?

Film grad student? Or any grad student?

[thefourthwall]

Here's the cfp--could be anyone I think. It's nearby to where dreamdead and I are going to school, so we were thinking about putting together a panel that had something to do with "The City in Film and Lit" or something like that.

http://www.wheaton.edu/english/activities/conf.htm

[SirNewt]

I like the idea of selecting an array connecting devices, such as things that share narrative devices, themes, cultural impact, style, etc. even some fairly thin ones. If you, however, are expected to explain at length or right an essay you may want something weightier than a single narrative mechanic. I think pairing like Bicycle Thieves and Ulysses, for example has many dimension to mine.

Maybe try just writing down the pairs you're thinking of and then just see how long you can easily write about the comparison. If your really struggling maybe just move on.

EDIT: gotta disagree with Monolith here though. I think it's a great question, as long as the intention of the question actually isn't to get you to draw a comparison like Heart of Darkness to Apocalypse Now.

Drawing meaningful connections between mediums is powerful. Modernist poetry for example flowered along side abstract art at the start of the last century because they shared not necessarily themes but creative intentions.

[lovejuice]

slightly off topic, but my favorite recent adaptation is prince caspian. not because it's that good -- it's quite enjoyable -- but this is a rare movie in which any change from the original source hits the right note. i love all the extras from the appearance of the witch to especially the final showdown/battle.

too bad the first movie sucks so much this one seems to go critically under radar.