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Vol. 07, Issue 11, November 2022 (Category English) IMPACT FACTOR: 8.20 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) 35 AN EXAMINATION OF PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICES IN THE FIELD OF CINEMATIC
ADAPTATION
Sheeraz Ahmad Naik
Research Scholar, Department of English, Bhagwant University, Ajmer, (Rajasthan) Dr. Suresh Kumar, (Supervisor)
Abstract - We must employ various means or techniques in order to convey our message as clearly as possible to a listener or reader whose home tongue differs from our own, particularly when that individual does not even grasp the language. When communicating something written, we must need translators even when we can make ourselves understood via gestures, signs, or noises. Adaptation is one of the tools employed in translation. It is employed frequently because cultural differences between speakers can occasionally lead to misunderstandings that make communication difficult or impossible. This Paper will examine and evaluate the adaptation theory's dilemma.
Keywords: Techniques, Translation, Cultural Differences, Cinematic Adaptation.
1 INTRODUCTION
The word "adaptation" in the dictionary means "to alter," and "to make suitable."
However, adaptation in literary contexts refers to a certain procedure that involves changing the literary genre. One example is adapting great literature, such as books and plays, into motion pictures or musicals (media). Though it is permissible to refer to this genre shift as a revision. At the University of Toronto, Linda Hutcheon holds a prominent position as a professor of English and comparative literature and is a well-known literary authority. The phenomena of adaptation has been defined from three different but connected angles in her book. According to her, adaptation can initially be viewed as "a formal object or result," followed by "a process of creation," and finally "a process of reception." She defines adapting as "an acknowledged transfer of an identifiable other work or works," "a creative and interpretive act of appropriation," or "an protracted inter textual engagement with the adapted work," to put it another way.
An adaptation is thus "a derivation that is not derivative - a work that is second without being secondary," according to this definition. The age-old debate over whether the book was superior to the movie, opera, theme park, or other form of adaptation may finally be answered by the
provocative rethinking of how adaptation works across all media and genres.
Hutcheon describes Theory of adaptation as another important process related to the art of film making and adaptations is that of „appropriation. „Adaptation theorists have made clear distinctions between „adaptations‟ - reworking that stay closer to the source -texts and
„appropriations‟ - reworking that stray far from their source - texts. Julie Sanders while delineating the aspect of
„appropriation‟ makes an interesting distinction between „adaptation‟ and
„appropriation.‟ She claims that although appropriation "has a more definite journey away from the enlightening source-text into an entirely new domain and cultural product” adaptation "signals a relationship with an informing source-text or original." It's crucial to highlight that, despite some critics' negative views on the act of appropriation; it can nevertheless be beneficial in some cases. It is possible to prevent intentional plagiarism in filmmaking and maintain the integrity of the adapted material due of the process of appropriation.
It's important to distinguish between adaptation and localization, which is employed when the target audience speaks a distinct dialect of the same
ACCENT JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS ECOLOGY & ENGINEERING Peer Reviewed and Refereed Journal, ISSN NO. 2456-1037
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Vol. 07, Issue 11, November 2022 (Category English) IMPACT FACTOR: 8.20 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) 36 language, as in Latin America. We do not
literally translate a message when we adapt it. However, this does not imply that we are being dishonest to the original message or that we are not doing a good job of our work when we alter a message or idea, therefore it is necessary in some circumstances. In recent years adaptation studies has established itself as a discipline in its own right, separate from translation studies. The bulk of its activity to date has been restricted to literature and film departments, focusing on questions of textual transfer and adaptation of text to film. It is however, much more interdisciplinary, and is not simply a case of transferring content from one medium to another. This collection further shows exactly what the act of adaptation involves and whether it differs from other acts of textual rewriting. In addition, the 'cultural turn' in translation studies has prompted many scholars to consider adaptation as a form of inter- semiotic translation. But what does this mean, and how can we best theorize it?
What are the semiotic systems that underlie translation and adaptation?
Containing theoretical chapters and personal accounts of actual adaptations and translations, this is an original contribution to translation and adaptation studies. Although this definition is accurate, it is somewhat incongruous with contemporary theories of media adaptation, which have moved beyond the unidirectional movement of literature to film. As content moves away from notions of a single, stable source, and an identifiable author, and towards an era of transmedia creation by multiple entities and media conglomerates, it is the biological meaning of the word which would appear to have greater relevance to more contemporary notions of adaptation, namely; a process of change or modification by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment or ecological niche, or a part of an organism to its biological function,
either through phenotypic change in an individual or through an evolutionary process effecting change through successive generations.
Texts" have been transformed into many forms by humans for a very long time. Paintings, sculptures, plays, written tales, stained glass windows, and subsequently, stories in the form of novels were all inspired by historical events and oral legends. The tension between literature and film has existed for as long as screen adaptations of literary and theatrical works have, dating back to the invention of cinema. Leo Tolstoy believed that movies were "a direct attack on the methods of literary art," whereas Virginia Woolf believed that movies and literary adaptations in particular, were to blame for the moral decline and vilification of modern society. She invoked the biological adaptation when she referred to movies as
"parasites" and literature as their "prey.
The adaptation theory, which until recently was largely concerned with the translation of the literary into the cinematic, has been influenced by this disciplinary struggle between literature and film. The conventional focus of such research was on the idea of faithfulness and the upholding of a hierarchy that positioned the original text as the primary, touchstone, or "source," and the adaptation as the weaker, derivative text.
As a result, literary adaptations for the screen (as well as other mediums like comic books and animation) are frequently referred to in terms that indicate sacrilege, theft, impurity, dilution, and a failure to maintain the integrity of the source. These writings were frequently evaluated based on the incorrect notion that the adaptation's objective was merely reproduction, as opposed to alternative reasons like inquiry, reinvention, or exploration.
Recent developments in adaptation theory, however, have shifted away from the opposition between literature and film and toward a focus on multidirectional
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Vol. 07, Issue 11, November 2022 (Category English) IMPACT FACTOR: 8.20 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) 37 flows across a transmedia model, putting
less emphasis on what a text loses during the adaptation process and more on what the text gains by adopting a new form or variation. As the user compares the adapted text with not just the original text but also other adaptations and related texts in an ongoing dialogical process, theories of intersexuality have also emerged as a key component of adaptation theory. When content is adapted, it is susceptible to a range of forces and influences that are determined by the characteristics of the original text, the purpose for the adaptation, the medium, the target audience, and the culture. Large novels, for instance, have typically needed to be compressed in order to fit into a two-hour movie format, whilst short stories have needed to be expanded to some extent. If an older text contains out-of-date material, such as racial stereotypes, it may be revised or amended, or it may be placed in a whole different context in order to be more socially or commercially relevant. When a tale is turned into a video game, it might lose some aspects, like rhythm and narrative flow, but it might gain others, like physical interactivity and greater room for a longer, more varied experience.
Successful adaptations change through time, adjusting to new circumstances, moving to new locations, and finally striving to maintain their existence, much like the biological creature that flourishes in its new environment. The mark of a successful adaptation is when it accomplishes repetition without replication; rather than being a simple copy that loses its Benjaminian aura, the adaptation simultaneously invokes and amplifies the user's experience of the original while also assuming unique characteristics of its own. A successful adaptation not only carries the aura with it, but also contributes to its ongoing expansion by striking a balance between "the comfort of ritual and recognition with the joy of
surprise and innovation. The hundred- year history of film looks oddly brief when compared to the nearly five hundred year history of printing press culture and the thousand year histories of manuscript cultures. Nevertheless, despite the relative originality of cinema technology, moving pictures have quickly taken over as our culture's primary means of transmitting narrative. John Harrington explains, film's emergence and development during the course of a single lifetime have contrasted with the centuries-long development of other art forms. It appears obvious that such quick growth has happened as a result of, not in spite of, the contributions of other art forms.
The Film adaptation calls up the question of how we speak about the filmic adaptation of dramas. The conventional language of adaptation criticism has often been profoundly moralistic, rich in terms that imply that the cinema has somehow done a disservice to literature. Terms like
“infidelity” and “betrayal”, “deformation”,
“violation”, “Bastardization”,
“Vulgarization” and “desecration”
proliferate in adaptation discourse, each word carrying its specific charge of reproach.”Infidelity” carries overturns of Victorian prudishness ; “ Betrayal” evokes ethical perfidy; “Bastardization” means illegitimacy ; “Deformation” implies aesthetic disgust and atrocity; “violation”
calls to mind sexual violence;
“vulgarization “conjures up class degradation; and “Desecration” intimates religious profanity and Blasphemy. The quality of adaptations, rather than on the more interesting issues of (1) the theoretical status of adaptation, and (2) the analytical interest of adaptations. To understand film, it is necessary to understand the way literary expression has been informed, extended, shaped, and limited it. Likewise, twentieth century literary expression reveals the influence of the cinema in its structures and styles, themes and motifs, and philosophical concerns. Studying diverse literary works
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Vol. 07, Issue 11, November 2022 (Category English) IMPACT FACTOR: 8.20 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) 38 from different genres and historical times
and contrasting them with the films based on them will allow us to recognize the parallels and discrepancies between these two mediums and learn about the literary elements present in nearly all filmmaking.
The fundamentals of cinematography are combined with the rules of fiction (short story, novella, novel) and/or drama to create popular film as we know it today.
The demands made on the material by the norms imposed by the art form or by the expectations of an audience concerning that art form frequently result in variations between a novel or play and the movie based on it. By studying the art of film adaptation we are necessarily forced to make peculiarities about the art forms being adapted and doing the adaptations.
The research paper will focus in nearly equal amounts on literature, film, and the nature of adaptation.
2 CONCLUSION
Commercial considerations of adaption practice include the fact that it is safer to purchase the rights to a work than to create original content. While the writing of the adaptation creative endeavor, writers of adaptations rarely announce innovative or bold approaches to their subject matter, tending instead toward caution if not reverence for their "literary source," and couch their intentions in careful words. Filmmakers are not known for providing such blunt commercial reasons for making particular adaptations. Film adaptations are typically well-liked and lucrative: the biggest box office hits frequently involve adaptations; More than 75% of the "Best Picture" prizes given out by the Oscars since their inception in 1927–1928 have gone to movies that are literary adaptations. There is no doubting the fact that both audiences and filmmakers aspire to create unique adaptations of films, despite any obstacles that may stand in their way. For instance, according to Morris Beja, "more than
three-fourths of the wins for "best picture"
have gone to adaptations" since the Academy Awards' debut in 1927. Given that plays and movies were the most widely-watched storytelling mediums in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, it may not be surprising that filmmakers have tried to capitalize on the reactions sparked by novels/plays and have seen in them a source of pre-made material, in the simple sense of tried-and-true plots and characters, without too much concern for how much of the original's popularity is intractably tied to its verbal mode.
REFERENCES
1. Oxford English Dictionary, “adaptation”, accessed Jan 2 2022, http://www.oed.com.
2. Murray, Simone. The Adaptation Industry:
The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation. New York & London:
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https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediathe ory/keywords/adaptation/
3. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation.
London & New York: Routledge, 2006. p. 32 Ibid p. 42-3.
4. Bruhn, Jorgen. Anne Gjelsvik, Eirik Hanssen.
Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions. London & NY: Bloomsbury, 2013.
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5. Linda Hutcheon. A Theory of Adaptation.
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6. Andre Bazin, “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest”, in Film Adaptation. (ed James Naremore) New Jersey: Rutgers, 2008. 23-4.
7. Thomas Leitch, Film Adaptation and its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore/Maryland:
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