Toward Transdisciplinarity and Minor Cinema

192 Pages·2014·1.13 MB·English

Univerzita Karlova v Praze
Filozofická fakulta
Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur
Anglická a americká literatura - filologie

Linda Petříková

Proti adaptaci: za transdisciplinaritu a menšinový film
Against Adaptation: Toward Transdisciplinarity and
Minor Cinema

Dizertační práce

vedoucí práce – Erik S. Roraback, D.Phil.
2014
„Prohlašuji, že jsem dizertační práci napsala samostatně s využitím pouze uvedených a
řádně citovaných pramenů a literatury a že práce nebyla využita v rámci jiného
vysokoškolského studia či k získání jiného nebo stejného titulu.”

V Praze, dne 22. března 2014
…………………………..
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Erik Roraback who has encouraged me to pursue large topics, introduced
me to many great films and patiently read my writing attempts over the years. My thanks
also go to Martin Procházka for his inspiring presence throughout my studies.
Klíčová slova:
Adaptace, Akira Kurosawa, André Bazin, film, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Rancière, Jean-Luc
Godard, Král Lear, literatura, Orson Welles, Půlnoční zvony, Ran, transdisciplinarita

Key Words:
Adaptation, Akira Kurosawa, André Bazin, cinema, Chimes at Midnight, film, Gilles
Deleuze, Jacques Rancière, Jean-Luc Godard, King Lear, literature, Orson Welles, Ran,
transdisciplinarity
Abstrakt
Studium filmové adaptace se v posledních desetiletích pokoušelo vymanit z krize a
oprostit se diskursu zaměřeného na věrnost adaptovanému textu. Cílem této práce je
navrhnout nový, v anglo-americkém kontextu často zanedbávaný úhel pohledu na
problematiku adaptace, který se nabízí v díle francouzských myslitelů Gillese Deleuze a
jeho dvoudílné publikaci o filmu a Jacquese Rancièra, který na Deleuzovy filmové
koncepty navazuje a přehodnocuje je. Aniž by se přímo vyjadřovali k problematice
adaptace, způsob, jakým oba filosofové nahlížejí film, je neoddělitelný od jejich myšlení o
literatuře a ostatních uměleckých forem a médií a poukazuje tak na možný
transdisciplinární přístup k adaptaci, který se tato práce pokouší přiblížit.
Přestože výběr adaptací Shakespearových dramat se může jevit jako
kontraproduktivní vzhledem k tomu, že adaptace jako disciplína se snaží přetrhat své
vazby k literárním oborům, cílem těchto případových studií je odhalit „mezery“ mezi
filmem a literaturou, které se podílejí na vytváření smyslu stejně tak jako vazby a
souvislosti. Král Lear Jean-Luca Godarda, Půlnoční zvony Orsona Wellese a Ran Akiry
Kurosawy jsou příklady filmového umění, které by Deleuze a Guattari označili za
menšinové, protože destabilizuje dominantní a většinové, ať už má formu velkých
filmových studií, Shakespearova jazyka či literárního textu jako takového. Zároveň tyto
filmy představují „antiadaptace“ v tom smyslu, že vzdorují adaptovanému textu stejně jako
s ním navazují dialog.
S pomocí děl Bazina, Deleuze a Rancièra klade tato práce otázky, jejichž
komplexnost je v rámci studia adaptace často přehlížena. Patří mezi ně problematika
mediální specifičnosti, kterou Deleuze spojuje zejména se vztahem mezi uměleckou
formou a myšlením, nebo heterogenita filmového média, kterou Rancière vidí jako hlavní
zdroj „filmových mezer“ (les écarts du cinéma). Skrze Deleuzovo tvrzení, že film je
nelingvistickým materiálem, jeho konceptu falsifikujícího vyprávění, ve kterém se pravda
stává nerozhodnutelnou, Rancièrovo filmové „maření“ příběhů, které rozvádí výrok Jeana
Epsteina, že film je pravdivý a příběh lže, se dostáváme k mezeře nacházející se v samém
jádru adaptační problematiky: mezeře mezi filmem, který převzal od literatury umění
vyprávět, a filmem s jedinečnou schopností zachytit realitu, filmem, který měl kdysi
ambice stát se abstraktním „psaním světlem.“ Na závěr tato práce formuluje nové otázky,
které vycházejí z přehodnocení filmu/adaptace jako časoprostoru pro interakce uměleckých
forem.
Abstract
Over the past decades, the field adaptation studies has been trying to break new
grounds and escape the confines of the predominant fidelity discourse. This thesis wants to
propose new perspectives that have been widely underrepresented, at least in the Anglo-
American context, drawing attention to the great relevance to adaptation of the writings of
French critical thinkers, most notably Gilles Deleuze and his two-volume publication on
cinema and Jacques Rancière and his continuation/reevaluation of Deleuze’s film-related
concepts. Without directly addressing questions of adaptation, the way both philosophers
think about cinema is inseparable from their thinking about literature and indeed about
other arts and media, exemplifying new transdisciplinary approaches to adaptation this
thesis hopes to encourage.
Even though it might seem counterintuitive, considering the efforts of adaptation
studies to cut the roots it has grown within literary departments, I chose three
Shakespearean adaptations for the case studies as I believe that such focus will enable us to
see more clearly the significance of interstices as much as of the links the films form with
the text. Jean-Luc-Godard’s King Lear, Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight and Akira
Kurosawa’s Ran not only represent the kind of cinema that Deleuze and Guattari would
call minor for their destabilizing effect on the dominant, the major, be it big production
companies, Shakespeare’s language, or a literary text in general; they also exemplify what
we could call anti-adaptations in the way they engage with as much as they resist the
adapted text.
With the assistance of the writings of André Bazin, Deleuze, and Rancière and a
selection of relevant films, the thesis addresses some of the key questions the complex
nature of which tends to be underrated within adaptation studies. These include media
specificity, which Deleuze links primarily to the relations art forms can enter in with
thought, or film’s essential heterogeneity, which Rancière identifies as one of the main
sources of the “gaps of cinema.” From Deleuze’s assertion of film as non-linguistic
material, to his concept of falsifying narration in which truth becomes undecidable, to
Rancière’s cinematic ‘thwarting’, an elaboration on Jean Epstein’s statement that cinema is
true and a story is a lie, we arrive at a gap that lies at the core of adaptation: the interstice
between the cinema that has taken over the art of narrative from literature, and the cinema
that has the unique ability to record reality and that once had the ambition of becoming an
abstract ‘writing with light.’ The thesis finally re-poses some crucial questions in light of
the reevaluation of film/adaptation as the time-space for inter-art relations.
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1
2. Re-Thinking Adaptation ....................................................................................................... 6
2.1 Forgetting Shakespeare ............................................................................................... 18
2.2 Minor Cinema and Politics of Adaptation ................................................................... 27
2.3 Thought Versus Media Specificity .............................................................................. 37
2.4 Film Via Painting ........................................................................................................ 44
3. From Bazin to Rancière ...................................................................................................... 53
3.1 For An Inclusive Art Form and Against Authorship ................................................... 53
3.2 Deleuze: Cinema that Wants Everything .................................................................... 58
3.2.1 Enough of Trees, or Adaptation as a Rhizome ....................................................... 62
3.2.2 The Undecidability of Truth ................................................................................... 64
3.3 “Piglets cannot be piglets and words at the same time,” or Rancière and Cinema’s
Gaps ................................................................................................................................... 72
3.3.1 From False to Real: Godard’s Contempt ................................................................ 82
3.3.2 Cinema’s Novelistic Tradition ................................................................................ 90
4. Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear ............................................................................................ 97
4.1 Image of Thought ...................................................................................................... 103
4.2 Welcome, Mr. Shakespeare ....................................................................................... 113
4.3 Never Know, Only See .............................................................................................. 116
5. Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight / Campanadas a medianoche / Falstaff ................. 121
5.1 The Wellesean Quest for Truth ................................................................................. 128
5.2 The Body, the Gaze, and Silence ............................................................................... 131
6. Akira Kurosawa’s Ran ..................................................................................................... 137
6.2 Vertical Horror .......................................................................................................... 147
6.3 Lear’s Question ......................................................................................................... 149
6.3 Look with Thine Ears ................................................................................................ 153
7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 157
1
1. Introduction
Following the discussions on the topic of literary adaptation to film has been
fascinating and frustrating at the same time in recent years. The discipline itself, or rather a
sub-discipline since it most often forms a part of the curriculum within literary
departments, is relatively young and turbulent, still in search of a systematic theoretical
approach as well as an established place among other academic disciplines. Not
surprisingly, most scholars dedicating their research to this interdisciplinary endeavor will
open their articles and books by voicing the discontents over the state of adaptation studies
in general. The discontent is rooted both in the prejudices against the relatively new
medium of cinema, prejudices that question film’s value vis-à-vis the literary canon, and in
the problematic nature of combating such hostility with no established adaptation theory at
hand. The ambition of this thesis is not to offer such a theory or even to point toward a
possible theory, but to uncover new points of resonance between literature and cinema as
well as other arts, paving new ways to escape the old adaptation discourse, which keeps
hampering the study of the relations among arts, and opening up new avenues toward a
more transdisciplinary platform.
There have been numerous publications attacking the notion of fidelity to adapted
source as outlived and dubious, but it is surprising how many studies in the field still
remain caught within the discourse of binary oppositions between literature and film. And
even when such discourse is challenged, adaptation studies seldom venture outside of the
boundaries of mainstream cinema. Over the past several years, there have been some
notable scholarly works advancing the discipline by being able to escape both traps, such