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PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: Screen Adaptations: Tracing Theories and Trajectories from the Cinema to Streaming Platforms

Maximilian Stobbe

Kommentar

As a field in which to practice working with the toolkit of cultural studies, screen adaptations offer a uniquely rich nexus – not least due to their enduring ubiquity and popularity, but also because they intersect with numerous different dimensions of cultural production. An in-depth look at any screen adaptation invites an engagement not only with the final audiovisual product, but also with questions of its medium specificity, its cultural capital, its imagined audience, its historical context, its position among other related adaptations, and its degree of “fidelity” – a highly contested notion in and of itself. Is there such a thing as a faithful adaptation? How are source texts transformed in their move from one medium to another? And on a broader scale: How has the practice of screen adaptation itself transformed in recent times? Are social media and platforms such as Netflix responsible for, as Harper Bullard (2023) puts it, “chang[ing] the world of book adaptation”? Before delving thoroughly into these and related questions, this seminar will start by familiarizing students with influential approaches to the study of adaptation by theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, Sarah Cardwell, and Eckart Voigts. We will then move through a selection of adaptations with different textual constellations, comprising media transfers such as: Booker prize novel to (heritage) film, children’s book to film, short story to short film, canonical novella to Netflix series, and graphic novel to Netflix series. The curriculum will explore, but is not limited to: The Remains of the Day (1993 film based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel), Coraline (2009 film based on Neil Gaiman’s 2002 children’s book), The Sense of an Ending (2017 film based on Julian Barnes’s 2011 novel), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020 Netflix miniseries based on Henry James’s 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw), season 1 of Heartstopper (2022 Netflix adaptation of Alice Oseman’s 2016 graphic novel), and the 2023 Netflix collection of short films The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (based on a number of Roald Dahl short stories from the 1970s). In class, we will also try to identify at least one other recent adaptation that the majority of students would like to examine later in the semester.

An organizational note: Many of the adaptations we will focus on are found on Netflix; students are therefore advised to ensure access to it to adequately participate in this course. Given the sizeable number of texts and adaptations we will consider, students are also encouraged to read and watch as much of the abovementioned material as possible before the third week of the semester.

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