Riffing on the question of the week

What is a film adaptation that you believe is actually better than the original novel-- and why?

I read on social media that an author of a best-selling book won’t watch the movie based on her work because she’s unhappy with the outcome, which makes this week’s question not only timely, but necessary.

I’ve always been bothered by simple comparisons. During a film studies class in college, I asked my professor to define adaptation after a class discussion about movies ruining books. That was decades ago, but to this day, I still remember the slow and careful phrasing of her response. It was as if she were attempting to tango with a porcupine. She used words like “translation” and “interpretation” and no, I was never completely satisfied with the answer. But I left it alone. I wasn’t interested in writing screenplays or making films. My business was novels. And I agree with Stephen King who is quoted as saying, “Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.”

As a writer, I have had some experience with adaptations. My short story, "Althea", is based on a Grateful Dead song. I based other short stories on African myths as a way to reimagine those tales in a modern context. In my short story, "The Long Night", an old woman who swallows the sun in an African myth reappears as a homeless woman in the contemporary fictional town of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana. She becomes Mama Rhett with her shopping cart and layers of skirts, and unwittingly swallows the sun because it smelled good. Here is a piece of that story:

Mama Rhett stood next to a yard can looking down at something in her hand. It was small and round and glowed a soft yellow. Fleur took a step forward. Mama Rhett sniffed it, and then gave it to the ancient yellow dog to sniff. The animal whimpered and backed away. The old woman brought it close to her face, poked out a red tongue, and licked it. Fleur started to yell stop, but before she could get the word out, Mama Rhett popped the small orb into her mouth.

In this case, and those of movies, do you ask yourself which is better or just enjoy the riff? There is no easy answer to this question, but perhaps its beneficial to add some nuance by borrowing from film studies critical theories. The website "Literary Latitude" in their blog post “Adaptation Theory in Film Studies” offer several ways we can solve the apples and oranges problem.

Take my favorite movie of all time, Stephen King’s Misery about an over-invested fan who tortures an author, actually hobbles him, because he killed off her favorite character and won’t bring her back to life.                            

Using the critical theory Fidelity, we ask if the movie stays true to the original text, and the spirit of the book itself. We recognize the film as simply a vehicle through which the book lives. It’s not supposed to stand on its own as art. This is the most traditional view, and the one the casual viewer employs most often. Though there are deviations based on constraints in film, Misery indeed stays true to the spirit of the book.

We can have more discussion, however, by judging the movie through the Intertextuality lens. Here we assess to what extent the book maintains connection to the text it has adapted, similar works of art in its genre, and the culture to which it belongs. One image keeps coming to mind when I think about this lens—a thousand voices in the biggest conference room in the world, everyone debating and talking at once. I can see Kathy Bates, who portrayed Annie Wilkes in the movie, storming into the room wearing her tweed jumper and carrying the infamous sledgehammer all the while embodying societal problems such as isolation, loneliness, and mental illness. After she sets things straight, she leaves only to walk into books by other authors, plays, and tv series like "Castle Rock".

Annie looking askance

The final lens I’ll discuss here is Adaption as Interpretation where the movie stands on its own as a work of art. Rather than strict fidelity to the author’s text, the movie becomes an expression of the filmmaker’s vision. In Misery, the biggest achievement was to cement Annie Wilkes into our social consciousness. I don’t know if it was the filmmaker’s vision, but still, the movie rocked.

It’s not lost on me that I interpreted the question of the week in a way that the author probably didn’t intend. I adapted. I riffed. But it was a good question that finally gave me the answer I was looking for all those years ago in that college classroom. Is the movie better than the book? Well, it depends.