Screening Gender, Framing Genre: Canadian Literature into Film

293 Pages·2007·21.058 MB·English

by  Peter Dickinson

SCREENING GENDER, FRAMING GENRE:
CANADIAN LITERATURE INTO FILM
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Screening Gender,
Framing Genre
Canadian Literature into Film
Peter Dickinson
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 20
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-4475-4
ISBN-10: 0-8020-4475-1
Printed on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dickinson, Peter, 1968-
Screening gender, framing genre : Canadian literature into film / Peter
Dickinson.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-4475-4
ISBN-10: 0-8020-4475-1
1. Canadian fiction - Film and video adaptations. 2. Sex in motion
pictures. 3. Homosexuality in motion pictures. 4. Motion pictures -
Canada - history. 5. Canadian fiction - 20th century - History and
criticism. I. Title.
PN1995.3.D53 2007 791.43'657 C2006-902647-5
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly
Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
for my parents
who took me to the movies,
for Richard
who taught me how to watch them,
and for my students
who taught me how to read them
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Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Literature and Film, Gender and Genre 3
1 Sex Maidens and Yankee Skunks: A Field Guide to Reading
'Canadian' Movies 17
2 Feminism, Fidelity, and the Female Gothic: The Uncanny Art of Adaptation in
Kamouraska, Surfacing, and Le sourd dans la ville 49
3 Images of the Indigene: History, Visibility, and Ethnographic Romance in Four
Adaptations from the 1990s 77
4 Critically Queenie, or, Trans-Figuring the Prison-House of Gender: Fortune and
Men's Eyes and After 104
5 Space, Time, Auteurity, and the Queer Male Body: Policing the Image in
the Film Adaptations of Robert Lepage 129
6 Ghosts In and Out of the Machine: Sighting/Citing Lesbianism in Susan Swan's
The Wives of Bath and Lea Pool's Lost and Delirious 162
7 Adapting Masculinity: Michael Turner, Bruce McDonald, and Others 186
Filmography 213
Notes 221
Bibliography 247
Illustration Credits 263
Index 265
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List of Figures
I.1 The English Patient 6
1.1 Rachel, Rachel 19
1.2 Deliverez-nous du mal 26
1.3 Les fous de bassan 30
1.4 The Handmaid's Tale 32
2.1 Kamouraska 56
2.2 Surfacing 66
2.3 Surfacing 67
2.4 Le sourd dans la ville 72
2.5 Swann 75
3.1 Black Robe 84
3.2 Shadow of the Wolf 88
3.3 Clearcut 92
3.4 Dance Me Outside 97
3.5 Atanarjuat 100
4.1 Fortune and Men's Eyes 116
4.2 Il' etait une fois dans Vest 117
4.3 Outrageous! 118
4.4 The B-Girlz 121
4.5 Better Than Chocolate 125
4.6 Le sexe des etoiles 127
5.1 Le confessionnal 137
5.2 Le confessionnal 138
5.3 Le confessionnal 139
5.4 Le confessionnal 140
5.5 Le polygraphe 142
5.6 Le polygraphe 144
5.7 Le polygraphe 145
5.8 No 149
5.9 No 150
5.10 Possiable Words 154
5.11 La face cachee de la lune 160
6.1 Salmonberries 167