Below is a clip of the film trailer. Does this adaptation exactly fit the description given by Horkheimer and Adorno in the 1940s?
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Horkheimer and Adorno on Bad Adaptations
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno argue that the purpose behind art, films, and in fact all technology in society is just the goal of making money. It its for this reason that filmmakers will adapt a book, play or movie that has been done several times before. The reason for remaking a popular story is not to give the audience what they want, but rather just to make money. One of the examples Horkheimer and Adoeno give is "a Tolstoy novel is garbled in a film script. Having watched the most recent film of Anna Karenina with Jude Law and Keira Knightley I have to agree with Horkheimer and Adorno that the movie cannot be intended to truly capture the novel. Instead, it is merely an ingenious way to make money, telling a story that has remained popular over time.
Below is a clip of the film trailer. Does this adaptation exactly fit the description given by Horkheimer and Adorno in the 1940s?
Below is a clip of the film trailer. Does this adaptation exactly fit the description given by Horkheimer and Adorno in the 1940s?
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Mary,
ReplyDeleteI think that H&A are right about most things having to do w/ US twentieth-century capitalism. What I find odd about the trailer (I haven't seen the film.) is its comparisons to Atonement and Pride & Prejudice. Yep. It's basically re-creating those films (not to mention shades of Moulin Rouge and Dr. Zhivago--way before your time) as H&A say. It seems that we want to see the same film repeatedly. Hmmm.
First of all, Doug, Moulin Rouge is hardly beyond "our time." And the comparison between Omar Sharif and Ewan McGregor seems to suggest that Sharif could have played a Jedi.
ReplyDeleteI think not.
But, criticism.
It seems the retelling of particular stories has two functions. The first, as you noted, Mary, is capital. The consumer does not in fact guide trends in production. Instead, commodities that reinforce particular social structures are generated precisely because they will, as a matter of course, be consumed. This is the second function: Adorno's reaffirmation of certain social structures. Implicit in Anna Karenina is bourgeoisie excess: the problems (love and sex) are problems because the class has nothing else to do. The retelling of upper-class scandal affirms that this inertia is not only acceptable: it is right.