ENG 108

The Nature of Narrative, 1

Intertextuality, Adaptation,
Appropriation, and other
forms of Cultural Recycling
Recycling Culture
n How does “Culture” get
recycled?
n Why do it?
n How is Hamlet being recycled?
 how is Hamlet being “reactivated” or
“reanimated” or “recirculated”?
 What sort of recycling is involved in R&G
rdead?
Recycling Culture
How?

 Intertextuality
 Adaptation, Appropriation
 Parody
 Translation and transposition
 Language
 Culture
 Genre
 Other?
Review of intertextuality
 What is it?
 (pretend this is an exam question)
Definition

Intertextuality
 interdependence of texts
 meaning not in isolated texts but in their
interaction
 “interplay”
 (re-)interpretation by the
writer/artist/director and also by the
reader/viewer
Definition
(See Course Reading Package, p. 63)

Intertextuality
 Text as part of a network or web
 Text is not a self-sufficient, closed system
 Text, therefore, as process not product
 That process is ongoing
Definition
according to Michael Riffaterre
(See Course Reading Package, p. 65)

Intertext = the network of texts that may

be related to the text being considered

Intertextuality = the reader’s

perception of that network
Definition
(See Course Reading Package, p. 43)

Intertextuality
 “all texts invoke and rework other texts in
a rich and ever-evolving cultural mosaic”
 Bricolage
 Central to Postmodernity
Intertextuality in Culture
 “almost omnipresent today in modern
popular culture”
 Examples?

 Also true of other areas of culture

Why use intertextuality?
Why use intertextuality?
 To add complexity to a work
 To “contextualize” or place the work in a
cultural context
 To highlight the concept of culture as
ongoing process
 To recycle culture (rework, reuse)
 To highlight issues of inclusion and
exclusion?
 Elite vs. “democratic” or accessible

culture
Why use intertextuality?
 To add “pleasure” to the reading or
viewing experience
 Cf. “pleasure principle” outlined in the

article on Adaptation and Appropriation

Parody
 Definition?
Parody
 Not always satiric or comic
 Parody is important to postmodern
culture
Parody

Definition:
Repetition with critical or ironic difference
(Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody)
Parody
 recycling through repetition
René Magritte
(1898-1967)

Belgian Surrealist
 series of paintings under the general title
"Perspective"
 late 1940s to early 1950s

 based on well-known paintings by the

earlier French artists Jacques Louis David,
François Gérard and Édouard Manet.
Jacques Louis David
Madame Récamier
(unfinished), 1800
René Magritte
Perspective I:
Madame Récamier,
1950
Edouard Manet
Le balcon,
1868
René Magritte
Perspective II:
Le balcon de Manet,
1950
Diego Velásquez
Innocent X, c. 1650
Francis Bacon
Study After
Velazquez's
Portrait of Pope
Innocent X, 1953
The rational body

 Authority
 Centre
 Certainty
 Hierarchy
 Unity
 Coherence
 Control
The irrational,
grotesque body
 Decentring

 Ex-centricity

 Loss

 Fragmentation/chaos

 Disintegration

 Multiplicity

 Excess
Parody
What are the effects of parody? Why use it?
 Makes a statement
 Again, the pleasure principle:
 Aristotle’s Poetics

 Natural delight in mimesis

 Mimesis = imitation or representation in art

(art reflects life; art as a copy)

 with parody, art reflects other art in a

particular way)
Parody
A Double-edged Sword?
 Reinscribes and problematizes at the same
time
 Pays homage to the original while
simultaneously critiquing it
Adaptation and
Appropriation
(from course reading package)
 The forms of Adaptation:
 Transposition (45)
 Commentary (45)
 Analogue (46)

 Adaptations don’t have to fit into only one of these

categories
Adaptation and
Appropriation
(from course reading package)
 The forms of Adaptation:
 Transposition (45)

 “they take the text from one genre and

deliver it to new audiences…”
 “relocating their source texts not just
generically, but in cultural,
geographical, and temporal terms”
Adaptation and
Appropriation
(from course reading package)
 The forms of Adaptation:
 Commentary (45)

 “culturally loaded”
 “adaptations that comment on the
politics of the source text”
Adaptation and
Appropriation
(from course reading package)
 The forms of Adaptation:
 Analogue (46)

 “stand-alone works that nevertheless

deepen when their status as analogue is
revealed”
Adaptation and
Appropriation
 Fidelity, originality argument (47)
 Getting away from a vertical hierarchy
of original text and subservient,
derivative texts that are judged
according to their “faithfulness to an
original”
 Cf. Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation,
2006
Adaptation and
Appropriation
 Definition of Adaptation:
 “a relationship [or interaction] with an
informing sourcetext or original” (49)
 Related terms:
 Version, variation, interpretation, continuation,
transformation, imitation, pastiche, parody,
forgery, travesty, transposition, revaluation,
revision, rewriting, echo (44)
Adaptation and
Appropriation
 Definition of Appropriation:
 “a more decisive journey away from the
informing source into a wholly new
cultural product and domain” (49)
 “sustained reworking of the source text”
(50)
 “wholesale rethinking” (50)
Adaptation and
Appropriation
 Definition of Appropriation:
 Entanglement (56)
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as
entangled with Hamlet
 the two texts overlap in some places,

diverge in others
Recycling culture
Why?
 Consider Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction”
Walter Benjamin,
“The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”

 “We must expect great innovations to

transform the entire technique of the
arts, thereby affecting artistic invention
itself and perhaps even bringing about an
amazing change in our very notion of
art.”
Paul Valery, qtd. in Benjamin
Walter Benjamin,
“The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”

 Most powerful agent of mass or

mechanical reproduction is film.
Walter Benjamin,
“The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”

 “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will

make films … all legends, all mythologies
and all myths, all founders of religion, and
the very religions … await their exposed
resurrection, and the heroes crowd each
other at the gate.”
Abel Gance, 1927 (qtd. in Benjamin)
Walter Benjamin,
“The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”

 “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will

make films … all legends, all mythologies
and all myths, all founders of religion, and
the very religions … await their exposed
resurrection, and the heroes crowd each
other at the gate.”
Abel Gance, 1927 (qtd. in Benjamin)
Walter Benjamin,
“The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”
 “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will
make films …”
 Note the phrasing here
 Not “Shakespeare’s plays will be adapted for
cinema” but Shakespeare will make film
 Do we read this literally?
 Or is “Shakespeare” referring to the text, not
the man?
Walter Benjamin,
“The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”
 “Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will
make films …”
 Cf. idea of text as process not product. As
part of that process, text-as-play becomes
text-as-film

 Kinetic concept of adaptation = “…these texts

rework other texts that often themselves
reworked other texts. The process of
adaptation is constant and ongoing” (47).
Cultural Recycling in Film
 Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew
 10 Things I Hate About You
Cultural Recycling in Film
 Jane Austen, Emma
 Clueless
Cultural Recycling in Film
 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
 Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
 West Side Story
Cultural Recycling in Film
 Shakespeare, Hamlet
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
 play >>> film
Why recycle culture?
Why recycle culture?
 To capitalize on the strength/familiarity of
the original text
 To make the original more accessible to a
broader audience
 See Benjamin’s argument regarding

mass reproduction of art

Why recycle culture?
 To “problematize” the original or make
some sort of critique of it
 To add complexity
 To contextualize (genealogy/influence)
 Other reasons?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead
 What sort of recycling is involved
here?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead
 What sort of recycling is involved
here?
 Adaptation?
 Appropriation?
 Intertextuality?
 Waiting for Godot meets Hamlet?
 Theatre of the Absurd?

 Parody?
 Translation?