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Week 3 lecture notes: what makes a good adaptation?

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Course
English Literature, Acts of Writing

Institution
University Of Sussex (UoS)

A well-written 1,000 word notes series on adaptations, covering: - what makes a good adaptation - pros and cons of faithful adaptations - what's your favourite adaptation and why? -

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Uploaded on January 8, 2023
Number of pages 4
Written in 2021/2022
Type Class notes
Professor(s) Hope
Contains Week 3

adaptation
literature
song
film
faithful
david copperfield
the shining
mary poppins
the hunger games

Institution
University of Sussex (UoS)
Education Unknown
Course
English Literature, Acts of Writing

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What makes a good adaptation?

My initial response to the question ‘what makes a good adaptation?’ was… more
questions! What is an adaptation? Is it a dutiful replication of the original? Does it use
the original as a blueprint? Or as a springboard to invent something new? My initial
answer… I don’t know! So, I turned to Padlet for inspiration.

Interestingly, the Padlet responses to this question also seemed to focus on themes of
faithfulness and originality, with some individuals believing that a good adaptation
should ‘stay true to its original work’ and others contending that a good adaptation
involves ‘creative deviation’ from the original. Thank you Padlet, for perpetuating my
earlier confusion. I felt that in order to understand what makes a good adaptation, I
first needed to tackle this authenticity-accuracy debate. Is a good adaptation faithful
or original? I need a list of pros and cons!

Faithful adaptations:

Pros Cons
A faithful adaptation demonstrates “A book is a book and a movie is a movie,
respect for its original source, by and whenever the latter merely sets
honouring the fact that the original tells about illustrating the former, it’s a
a story worthy of being heard and failure of adaptation, to say nothing of
tackles themes deserving of attention. imagination.”
If an adaptation doesn’t maintain a If an adaptation is too similar to its
meaningful relationship to its original source material, fans might “leave the
source, then is it even an adaptation? film feeling like they’ve seen the book
almost exactly, as if they didn’t need to
see it at all”.
Similarly, it demonstrates respect for The first Hunger Games film, for
the initial creator, who may feel hurt and example, is often criticized for being
violated if an adaptation strays too far identical to the book; it is practically a
from their work. Stephen King, for cinematic blueprint. Because the film
example, felt the film adaptation of his covers the book’s plot in its entirety, it
novel The Shining was not faithful enough doesn’t have enough time to develop core
to the original. The film neglects themes relationships, such as the Katniss’s
of addiction and recovery, themes relationship with Rue. Because of this,
integral to the book, and in doing so the film seems to lack substance. It is a
angered King. “stenography in light”.
Hardcore fans of the original source Sometimes, faithful adaptations end up
HATE additions, eliminations and edits to feeling soulless. Perhaps this is because
its plot! in trying to closely replicate someone
else’s work, the creator is denied of their

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