32
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
studies as scholars have repeatedly claimed. 1 While the tendency to make
value judgments based on how “truthful” an adaptation is to its original
persists in fan communities, adaptation studies have long deconstructed
unidirectional and hierarchical models of adaptation practices. 2 Furthermore, the field of adaptation studies has opened up to a variety of media
and multidirectional adaptation processes beyond the field of novel-to-film
adaptations. The theoretical reconceptualization of adaptation studies has
been spurred on, among other things, by an increasing cultural development
towards what Henry Jenkins calls “convergence culture,” coinciding with
a scholarly interest in the participatory nature of popular culture and of
a supposedly democratic “grassroots” creativity. 3 In the Information Age,
adaptation is no longer regarded as the exception but represents instead the
rule as to how media products and stories emerge, proliferate, and interact
with each other. Cultural production is increasingly understood along the
lines of self-organizing network dynamics instead of as linear and more or
less stable (translation) processes with clear-cut creator-recipient dualisms.
As people are more willing to interact with, share, and engage in a culture
of circulating media content, aesthetic, legal, economic, and social questions
have arisen that require new ways of thinking about culture through an
array of disciplinary perspectives to explore new models of interdisciplinary
collaboration. What has become visible with regard to a so-called Web 2.0
culture with its heightened focus on participation and remediation, however,
has always been a constitutive factor in cultural production. I therefore
suggest conceptualizing adaptation more distinctly in terms of the network
model in order to account for the relational, processual, and recursive nature
of adaptation. As an alternative to unidirectional analytical models which
assume binary dualisms of “source medium” and adaptation or of producer
and recipient, the network accounts for the inherently complex, non-linear,
and decentralized dynamics of culture that operate along the lines of shifting
and contingent connections between human and non-human actors.
1 Kamilla Elliott, “Theorizing Adaptation/Adapting Theories.” In Bruhn, Jørgen, Anne Gjelsvik,
and Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, eds. Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions (London,
New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 19-45; Simone Murray, The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural
Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2011), 8.
2 Cf. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006); Thomas Leitch,
Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of Christ (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Thomas Leitch, “Review Article. Adaptation Studies
at a Crossroads,” Adaptation 1.1 (2008): 65–68; Robert Stam, Literature through Film: Realism,
Magic, and the Art of Adaptation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005).
3 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University
Press, 2006).
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
studies as scholars have repeatedly claimed. 1 While the tendency to make
value judgments based on how “truthful” an adaptation is to its original
persists in fan communities, adaptation studies have long deconstructed
unidirectional and hierarchical models of adaptation practices. 2 Furthermore, the field of adaptation studies has opened up to a variety of media
and multidirectional adaptation processes beyond the field of novel-to-film
adaptations. The theoretical reconceptualization of adaptation studies has
been spurred on, among other things, by an increasing cultural development
towards what Henry Jenkins calls “convergence culture,” coinciding with
a scholarly interest in the participatory nature of popular culture and of
a supposedly democratic “grassroots” creativity. 3 In the Information Age,
adaptation is no longer regarded as the exception but represents instead the
rule as to how media products and stories emerge, proliferate, and interact
with each other. Cultural production is increasingly understood along the
lines of self-organizing network dynamics instead of as linear and more or
less stable (translation) processes with clear-cut creator-recipient dualisms.
As people are more willing to interact with, share, and engage in a culture
of circulating media content, aesthetic, legal, economic, and social questions
have arisen that require new ways of thinking about culture through an
array of disciplinary perspectives to explore new models of interdisciplinary
collaboration. What has become visible with regard to a so-called Web 2.0
culture with its heightened focus on participation and remediation, however,
has always been a constitutive factor in cultural production. I therefore
suggest conceptualizing adaptation more distinctly in terms of the network
model in order to account for the relational, processual, and recursive nature
of adaptation. As an alternative to unidirectional analytical models which
assume binary dualisms of “source medium” and adaptation or of producer
and recipient, the network accounts for the inherently complex, non-linear,
and decentralized dynamics of culture that operate along the lines of shifting
and contingent connections between human and non-human actors.
1 Kamilla Elliott, “Theorizing Adaptation/Adapting Theories.” In Bruhn, Jørgen, Anne Gjelsvik,
and Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, eds. Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions (London,
New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 19-45; Simone Murray, The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural
Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2011), 8.
2 Cf. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006); Thomas Leitch,
Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of Christ (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Thomas Leitch, “Review Article. Adaptation Studies
at a Crossroads,” Adaptation 1.1 (2008): 65–68; Robert Stam, Literature through Film: Realism,
Magic, and the Art of Adaptation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005).
3 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University
Press, 2006).