Bipartite Analysis of the Hours and its Adaptation through a

Postmodernist Lens: Y2112.020020_Bilal_ZAYOUN

Adaptation theory and criticism:

During the modernist era, creativity was required to be synergized with historical
consciousness, and this condition created an intellectual burden. The rise of cinema happened
to be adjacent to that, and it had to suffer the biased critique from high culture. Also, modernism
rejects technological advancement that is thought to harm creativity and art in general.
Therefore, the film was thought to be nothing more than secondary and vulgarity for the notion
of art, as many critiques thought “According to Cartmell, Corrigan, and Whelehan, certain
critics (e.g., William Hunter) and novelists (e.g., Virginia Woolf) thought films were geared to
the “lowest possible denominator” and watching them made “savages” of the viewers” (
Slethaug 16). Accordingly, any rework of adaptation was considered as unable to grasp the
exact elements of the source written text, and if it conveys the same themes, it might violate
other regulations as Martin Halliwell states:

“The commercial enterprise involved in film making and film’s tendency toward “seamless
worlds, linear narratives, a stable hierarchy of characters, humanist ideology, and tidy
resolutions” went against the view of great artists as isolated and not-for-profit geniuses and
the modernist repertory of “unreliable narrators, psychologically complex characters,
fragmented perceptions, and mythical allusions”(17)

It is a fact that some aspects of modern fiction cannot be mimicked, however, some
adaptations focused on the features that led to the book’s success such as; themes, narrative
action, plot and scene structures, characterization, imagery, and dialogue itself (Sobchack 112).
Those elements are the core of adaptation’s legitimacy and they can be detected through various
questions such as:

(1) To what extent are the details of the settings and plot accurately retained or recreated?
(2) To what extent do the nuance and complexity of the characters survive the adaptation?
(3) To what extent are the themes and ideas of the source communicated in the adaptation?
(4) To what extent has a different historical or cultural context altered the original?
 (5) To what extent has the change in the material or mode of communication (a printed page,
a stage, 35 mm film) changed the meaning of the work for a reader or viewer? (Corrigan 20)

The fidelity of adaptation is measured by the variety of these questions’ answers, e.g. if the
answer of the three first questions is highly positive, the adaptation would be considered as “a
faithful literal interpretation with authorial integrity”, term by Linda Cahir. In addition to the
previous answers, if the last ones were also highly positive, then the adaptation would be named
as “traditional interpretation”. Also, if various elements of the plot are modified, then the film
would be considered a “free adaptation”. Nonetheless, the modernist conceptions about
adaptations, in general, remain biased and it gives absolute priority to the written text regardless
of whether the film exceeds the complexity of the source material or not. The high culture
argues that written art is centered and multiplex in a mode that a mere adaptation can never
reach, and that this superiority is based on cultural conceptions of morality as well.

The postmodern period ignited new perceptions about adaptation and its arrangement, and
it gave new values to both the original and the adaptation, e.g. the intertextuality, decentering,
and dialogism. New concepts highlighted facts about how there can be no faithful adaptation
but a variety of interactions depending on the context, intention, and execution. Therefore, new
concepts, such as the supplement and the surplus-value, have been added to the adaptation
theory to the extent that “The question is no longer to what extent an adapted film is faithful to
its original but how even the smallest surplus unsettles meaning in both the original and
adaptation, inaugurating creative uncertainty and instability and a dialogue between the original
and the adaptation” (Slethaug 34). This new contribution to film adaptation developed the
analysis of the shift from textual to audiovisual to a significant degree, thus, multiple details
have to be taken into consideration during the process, such as; added supplements, surplus
values, plot compression, and segments composition.

The ultimate aim of postmodern adaptation became independent from its complete
faithfulness to literature, since in a postmodern interpretation there is no originality and the
basis of every work is taken from culture, thus, it became focused on the collective meaning
that the dichotomy has to offer. Adaptation is a pleasure of repetition in variation, and the
consumption of such artistic replica should be based on entertainment, appreciation of literature,
and audience attraction.
 About the novel:

The Hours is a Pulitzer Prize winner that was written by Michael Cunningham in 1998. It is
a psychological fiction that presents a day of the life of three protagonists from different periods.
The novel is divided into three segments, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Woolf, and Mrs. Brown.
Virginia Woolf is the only non-fictional heroine beside Clarissa Vaughan and Laura Brown,
and to some degree, her segment is based on real-life events. The novel starts with a prologue
that exclusively depicts the death of Virginia Woolf, so, the novel starts with a prolepsis. The
influence of Virginia Woolf on other segments is present through her novel Mrs. Dalloway, for
instance, Richard often calls Clarissa Mrs. Dalloway since she is preparing a party for a broken
man, and Laura’s only escape from her subjectively depressing reality is the novel she is
constantly reading, Mrs. Dalloway. Therefore, there is a kind of interconnectedness within the
novel. The segments reach the climax of the plot simultaneously and the protagonists from both
Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Brown interact with each other at the end of the novel. The events are
significantly dramatic and they lead to a tragic ending. Hence, the shared themes of the three
segments are melancholy and suicide.

About the film:

The Hours is an Oscar winner that was released in 2002 by the director Stephen Daldry. It is
an adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel, and the parallel protagonists of the novel were
cast by Nicol Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore.

Adaptation legitimacy: five-question criteria:

The change of the mode from a novel to a film has brought a compression to the text,
therefore, the inconsequent events had been removed through the casting; e.g. Clarissa noticing
a famous actor. Clarissa has a flashback about her romance with Richard. Clarissa invites
Walter Hardy to the party. Virginia dreams before waking up and greeting Leonard. The deleted
events were numerous but insignificant and they did not affect the cause and effect chain, thus,
the main themes were unaffected by the shift. The details were preserved to some satisfying
degree, but some changes were noticeable, e.g. Clarissa kissed Richard in the mouth before
leaving his apartment (knowing that he has AIDS and it could be fatal for him) but she did not
in the novel. Also, the film’s script did not show nor mention Walter Hardy. And some scenes
had been added e.g. Clarissa had a mental breakdown in front of Louis at her home. The settings
of the novel were perfectly preserved, and the details about them were highly accurate, e.g.
architecture, vehicles, clothing, dialect, behavior. And due to the respect of these elements, the
cultural and historical context seems identical to the source text. The main ideas that the source
text is trying to convey are homosexual relationships, the defiance of social norms, suicide, and
depression. They are firmly established in the film, and they maintained the same effect if not
a stronger one. The director manipulated the plot to fit for a possible and fruitful adaptation,
therefore, it is safe to say the film is considered as a “free adaptation”.

Postmodern examination:

The long going quarrel between literature and the film industry significantly faded after the
emergence of the postmodern movement. This shift was a result of the German philosophy
getting criticized by the French philosophy, and the latter started to be the basis of
postmodernism. The argument is that the perception of originality has been changed, thus, the
superiority of literature over film was overlooked. T.S. Eliot stated that “No poet, no artist of
any art, has his complete meaning alone” (Eliot 27), and it signifies that any artistic product
contains fragments of previous ones (intertextuality), therefore, it is indebted to “knowledge of
the past and the immediate cultural context.” (Slethaug 13). This perception brings an approach
of decentralization that breaks down the authority of literature over the film industry, and it
contributes to the emergence of new outlooks about the transition to an adaptation, e.g.
historical and cultural context, effects of the surplus-value and supplements on the collective
meaning of both the book and the film.

Besides the generalized enfold of intertextuality, the main connection constitutes three
components; historical events (Virginia Woolf’s life, Mrs. Dalloway, and tragic death), the
Hours (the novel), the Hours (the movie). The role of Mrs. Woolf’s segment is to reinforce the
themes it shares with other segments since it is based on real events, thus, it depicts the reality
of depression and suicidal thoughts. The film is not dependent on the narrator since it can project
the non-dialogic scenes in a visual mode, and this is due to artistic and medium reasons. Added
elements such as; Clarissa’s kiss to an AIDS patient signify that he necessitates affection more
than nursing, and this change’s sole role is to stir the hearts of the audience and to depict how
close Clarissa and Richard are without projecting flashbacks about their young romance.
Without a doubt, the surplus values and the supplements created a novel tenderness for a
Pulitzer winner without contaminating the main themes. The firm establishment of
homosexuality in the film reinforces the unorthodoxy of the characters’ mindset, and this
orthodoxy is more notable when it is projected visually. It is a fact that the actors cannot fit for
the exact descriptions of the novel’s characters, and if it somehow does, the signified of the
descriptions differs for every reader. In spite of that, the optical cultural properties seem to be
ideally present in the film regardless of the novel’s incomplete provided data, e.g. Laura Brown
looks and acts exactly like an American housewife from the fifties.

The number and the order of the segments are adjusted to provide artistic cinematography
transitions, and this new shift between segments strengthened the connection between the three
protagonists which is one of the main aims of Cunningham’s novel. The novel and the film, as
a dichotomy, created a new superior meaning that satisfies the audience and glorifies the
original text.

Subjective judgment:

The adaptation was released at the onset of the twenty-one century. At that time, the film
industry had reached a remarkable peak, knowing that, the acting performance lived to that
merit, and an elite impersonation had been produced. Also, the soundtracks established an
identical atmosphere and reinforced the narrative development to a sublime degree. The main
ideas behind the book were safely transitioned if not invigorated. Eliminating some characters
and scenes was a bit unsatisfactory, still, the movie made the same pleasurable impression.
Judging from a postmodern perspective, the movie scores an above outstanding rating as an
adaptation, and watching it alongside examining the novel was a delightful experience.
 Bibliography:

Slethaug, Gordon. Adaptation Theory and Criticism: Postmodern Literature and Cinema in

the USA. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. Print.

Sobchack, Vivian C. In Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film

Adaptation. Eds. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Print.

Corrigan, Timothy. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. Ed. 1999. Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Print.

Eliot. T.S. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies. Eds. Robert Con

Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman. Print.