Week Two - Questions of Adaptation.

Adapting a narrative from one form of media to another is always going to be a jarring process. Whether one pays strict attention to staying “true” to the original text or simply tries to capture its tone and greater themes while adding and omitting other sections can greatly affect the adaptation’s reception. Obviously different audiences would be looking for varied aspects going into a film reworking a comic book. Indeed, as we learned in class this week, the differing levels of connection to the primary text – i.e. the audience’s prior knowledge of the narrative – going into the film is of paramount importance and can drastically shift the way the film is received. However, these are not the only considerations one must make when adapting a comic to film.

Pascal Lefèrvre, in his article ‘Incompatible Visual Ontologies: the Problematic Adaptation of Drawn Images’, highlights the similarities that make comics such good candidates for film adaptation while also asserting the differing characteristics between the two mediums that can obstruct the process.  

“Films and comics are both media which tell stories by a series of images: the spectator sees people act – while in  a novel the actions must be verbally told. Showing is already narrating in cinema and comics, but while classical cinematic narratives situate the spectator at the centre of the diegetic space, comics on the other hand are rooted in a parodic tradition”                                                                                    (Lefèrvre: 3)

Given that both mediums are intrinsically visual, the notion of adaptation seems logical. However, as Lefèrvre argues, there are rather large problems with this theory. Unlike comics, the cinematic experience places the audience within the film via the use of sensory-deprivation and various other techniques. This gives the viewer the feeling that the film is real: they are engrossed and absorbed by the filmic devices as all other “distractions” are removed. While comic books, by their nature as a silent, printed medium, keep the audience away from such a state. Comics allow for such distractions to come through and displace the reader from the text. Essentially while movies attempt to bring the audience wholly into the narrative, comics keep you out.

Moreover, as we have learned this week in Scott McCloud’s discussion on the existence of “gutters” between the panels of comic books, the very nature of time and space is treated much differently in either medium. The notion of differing compositions between cinema and comics plays an integral role in discerning narrative aspects such as pacing which, while being one of the more subtle filmic techniques, proves to be crucial within both art forms. McCloud’s emphasis on varying panel compositions and their ability to either quicken or hinder the pace by which the reader “reads” each image is of paramount importance when considering adaptation of specific comic “scenes” to film. For example, within Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Moore and Gibbons’ “Watchmen”, the audience is privy an extremely faithful reworking of the famed graphic novel. However, within Nite Owl’s dream sequence (in which Dan and Laurie appear to be on mars and are enveloped by a nuclear explosion) as originally illustrated by Gibbons, the singular page structure is composed of a series of 16 smaller panels which gives the reader a feeling of quick succession, of rapid movement. Due to the fact that there is minimal information to decipher within the images, the reader quickly glosses over them. Snyder’s rendition of the scene is much more fluid and essentially dream-like in its representation, only using under 10 cuts to deliver the scene. The two scenes – while looking remarkably similar – each give a different tone to the sequence.

This ultimately highlights the difficulties evident in adapting a “still” medium to one steeped in movement.

 Works Cited.

• Lefèvre, P. (2007). Incompatible Visual Ontologies? The Problematic Adaptation of Drawn Images. In Ian Gordon, Mark Jacovich, Matthew P. McCallister, Film and Comic Books (pp. 1 - 12). Jackson: University of Mississippi.

• McCloud, Scott (1993); Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art; New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc.
• Moore, A & Gibbons, D (1987); Watchmen; New York: DC comics.