Film Adaptations Syllabus
How Different Mediums Translate to Film
Board games to film. Songs to film. Literature to film. Fan fiction to film. Short stories to film.
Comics to film. Plays to film. Video games to film. Television to film.
Course Information
TOPICS IN CINEMA & CULTURE: FILM ADAPTATIONS
CINE:3750
FALL 2018
Course Description
What precisely is a “film adaptation?” In this course, we will seek to answer this question by examining how and why Hollywood adapts stories and intellectual properties from other mediums. This exploration will include units on how Hollywood has adapted music, board games, novels, short stories, plays, fan fiction, comics, television programs, and video games into film productions. Within these units, a recurring topic will be the economic benefits and consequences of Hollywood tapping into pre-established fan communities with these adaptations. To what extent does Hollywood owe fans of an adaptation a sense of fidelity to the original? And what are the economic and critical risks of failing to deliver on audience expectations?
The course will use these debates to build towards a discussion of how the term “adaptation” has become further muddied in recent years. For example, since the late aughts companies such as Marvel have developed interconnected universes that span films, comic books, video games, and television programs. Because of the on-going dialogue that connects these different mediums, it is becoming difficult to determine where a given “source material” ends and “adaptation” begins.
Media include The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Dark Shadows (1966), Yellow Submarine (1968), Clue (1985), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1985), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Super Mario Bros. (1993), Clueless (1995), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Firefly (2002), Bride & Prejudice (2004), Serenity (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Dark Shadows (2012), Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), and Black Panther (2018). Readings on these media and the issues they raise will include, but will not be limited to, scholarship by Linda Hutcheon and James Naremore to Thomas Leitch and Liam Burke. All materials will be provided online in .pdf format.
Assignments for the course will include the regular maintenance of a blog that students will use to respond to peers, answer instructor prompts, and write on media objects they have discovered. Other assignments will include a take-home exam, a final research project with three drafts, and the required attendance of class media screenings. The course will focus on developing student research skills through modules on different stages of the research process. These will comprise of discussions related to how to formulate productive research questions, how to locate relevant scholarly texts, and how to quote and cite scholars in an efficient and accurate manner.
Course Schedule
Week 1: Cinema Adapts Music:
Tuesday, August 21:
Course introduction.
Week 1 Screening, Wednesday, August 22:
Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968, 85 min.)
Thursday, August 23:
Weekly Blog Due
Ian Inglis, “Music into Movies: The Film of the Song,” pp. 312-329
Linda Hutcheon, “From Page to Stage to Screen: The Age of Adaptation,” pp. 39-52
Week 2: Cinema Adapts Board Games:
Tuesday, August 28:
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Introduction and Chapters 1-7
Linda Hutcheon, “Beginning to Theorize Adaptation: What? Who? Why? How? Where? When?,” pp. 1-32
Week 2 Screening, Wednesday, August 29:
Clue (Jonathan Lynn, 1985, 94 min.)
Thursday, August 30:
Weekly Blog Due
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapters 8-14
Thomas Leitch, “Postliterary Adaptation,” pp. 257-279
Week 3: Cinema Adapts Classic Literature – Part I:
Tuesday, September 4:
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapters 15-21
Thomas Leitch, “Between Adaptation and Allusion,” pp. 93-126
Week 3 Screening, Wednesday, September 5:
Pride and Prejudice (Robert Z. Leonard, 1940, 118 min.)
Pride and Prejudice (1995, excerpts)
Thursday, September 6:
Weekly Blog Due
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapters 22-28
Shelley Cobb, “Film Authorship and Adaptation,” pp. 105-121
Week 4: Cinema Adapts Classic Literature – Part II:
Tuesday, September 11:
Richard Hand, “Adaptation and Modernism,” pp. 52-69
Week 4 Screening, Wednesday, September 12:
Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005, 129 min.)
Thursday, September 13:
Weekly Blog Due
Anđelka Raguž, “'Till This Moment I Never Knew Myself': Adapting Pride and Prejudice,” pp. 349- 359
Lisa Hopkins, “Shakespeare to Austen on Screen,” pp. 241-255
Week 5: Cinema Adapts Classic Literature – Part III:
Tuesday, September 18
André Bazin, “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest”
James Naremore, “Film and the Reign of Adaptation,” pp. 1-13
Begin Bridget Jones's Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001, 97 min.)
Week 5 Screening, Wednesday, September 19:
Finish Bridget Jones's Diary
Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995, 97 min.)
Thursday, September 20:
Weekly Blog Due
Elsa Solender, “Recreating Jane Austen’s World on Film”
Suzanne Ferriss, “Emma Becomes Clueless”
Week 6: Cinema Adapts Classic Literature – Part IV:
Tuesday, September 25:
Simone Murray, “The Business of Adaptation: Reading the Market,” pp. 122-139
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” pp. 1-24
Week 6 Screening, Wednesday, September 26:
Bride & Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha, 2004, 122 min.)
Thursday, September 27:
Weekly Blog Due
Sohinee Roy, “Bride and Prejudice and the Problems of Representing Postcolonial India in a Neoliberal World,” pp. 984-1002
Linda Hutcheon, “In Defense of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production”
Week 7: Cinema Adapts Classic Literature – Part V:
Tuesday, October 2:
Thomas Leitch, “Adaptation and Intertextuality, or, What isn’t an Adaptation, and What Does it Matter?,” pp. 87-104
Week 7 Screening, Wednesday, October 3:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Burr Steers, 2016, 108 min.)
Thursday, October 4:
Weekly Blog Due
Creative Exercise Presentations
Marie Mulvey-Roberts, “Mashing up Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the Limits of Adaptation,” pp. 17-37
Week 8: Cinema Adapts Fan Fic:
Tuesday, October 9:
Veerle Van Steenhuyse, “Jane Austen Fan Fiction and the Situated Fantext,” pp. 1-21
E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey, excerpts
Week 8 Screening, Wednesday, October 10:
Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015, 125 min.)
Thursday, October 11:
Weekly Blog Due
Kyle Meikle, “Pornographic Adaptation: Parody, Fan Fiction and the Limits of Genre,” pp. 123-140
“Sigmund Freud and the Origins of Psychoanalysis,” pp. 1-10
Week 9: Cinema Adapts the Play:
Tuesday, October 16:
David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross
Week 9 Screening, Wednesday, October 17:
Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992, 100 min.)
Thursday, October 18:
Weekly Blog Due
Gavin Rodney McGibbon, Seeing Double: The Process of Script Adaptation Between Theatre and Film, pp. 15-79
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," pp. 1-26
Week 10: Cinema Adapts Comics:
Tuesday, October 23 and Wednesday, October 24:
Blog Feedback Meetings
Week 10 Screening, Wednesday, October 24:
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018, 134 min.)
Thursday, October 25:
Weekly Blog Due
Black Panther, excerpts
Shihab Rattansi, “Is Black Panther Co-opting African Struggles Against Oppression?”
Liam Burke, The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre, pp. 84-168
Week 11: Cinema Adapts Short Stories:
Tuesday, October 30:
Take-Home Exam Due Electronically by 3pm
The Sleeping Cardinal (Leslie S. Hiscott, 1931, excerpts)
Week 11 Screening, Wednesday, October 31:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Alfred L. Werker, 1939, 85 min.)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, “The Final Problem” (Alan Grint, 1985, 51 min.)
Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie, 2009, excerpts)
Thursday, November 1:
Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Final Problem”
Sameer Chopra, “Sherlock Holmes on Screen: the Aesthetics and Politics of Adapting the 'Great Detective' in a Hyper-mediatised Age,” pp. 175-185
Week 12: Cinema Adapts Television – Part I:
Tuesday, November 6:
Research Workshop – Bring Draft of Bibliography
Week 12 Screening, Wednesday, November 7:
Dark Shadows (1966-71, excerpts)
Dark Shadows (Tim Burton, 2012, 113 min.)
Thursday, November 8:
Catherine Spooner, “'Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Collinwood Again': Vampire Adaptation and Reincarnation Romance in Dark Shadows,” pp. 205-222
Week 13: Cinema Adapts Television – Part II:
Tuesday, November 13:
Final Paper Draft #1 Due to Peers
Firefly (2002-03, excerpts)
Week 13 Screening, Wednesday, November 14:
Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005, 119 min.)
Thursday, November 15:
Final Paper Roundtable
J.P. Telotte, “Serenity, Cinematisation and the Perils of Adaptation,” pp. 67-80
Week 14: Cinema Adapts Video Games:
Tuesday, November 27 and Wednesday, November 28:
Final Paper Draft #2 Due at Mandatory, Pre-Arranged Meeting with Instructor
Week 14 Screening, Wednesday, November 28:
Super Mario Bros. (Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, 1993, 104 min.)
Thursday, November 29:
Stuart Knott, “Early Videogame Adaptations,” pp. 66-81
Luke Winkie, “Two Fans' Obsessive Quest to Redeem the Super Mario Bros. Movie”
J.D. Connor, “The Persistence of Fidelity: Adaptation Theory Today”
Week 15: Conclusion:
Tuesday, December 4:
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, excerpts
Final Paper Roundtable
Thursday, December 6:
Final Paper Roundtable (Cont.)
Final Exam Week:
Final Paper due to instructor mailbox in E210 by Friday, December 14th at 4:30pm.
Note on Syllabus
The above gives a general sense of course requirements, media screenings, and assigned readings. Please contact joshua-kierstead@uiowa.edu for a .pdf version that includes grade breakdowns and in-depth assignment descriptions.