From Page to Screen / Vom Buch zum Film. Группа авторов
of Clara’s grandmother or Dete, but would, however, fit into the (still) dominant perception of women as individuals subjected to the sphere of emotions, who unnaturally enter the realm of ambition, on the one hand, and authority, on the other hand, traditionally associated with masculinity. This gendered approach still defines contemporary television for children nowadays (see, among other studies, Martin, 2017) and, in spite of the attempts mentioned above, Heidi 3D is not an exception.
Besides this consideration of gendered categories, the evolution of Fräulein Rottenmeier through the centuries also reflects certain developments within the field of pedagogy and education, which have witnessed the displacement of more authoritarian methodologies in favor of approaches that place the child in the center of the learning process, question the use of punishment and obligation and grant children more scope for their own development. Parallel to the evolution of teaching practices, interactions between children and adults also changed drastically throughout the twentieth century, and nowadays attitudes and manners towards children, such as the ones shown by the original Rottenmeier would be frowned upon and condemned by society.
The evolution of this character is thus the result of both historical changes in the realm of education and also of a subtle form of censorship which has shaped audiovisual products for young children in recent years. In accordance with a tacit understanding between society and media, young viewers are meant to believe that the world is an idyllic place in which adults – above all, parents or guardians – would never be unkind to them. In this respect, unlike its hypotext(s), which showed the existence of threatening characters in the private realm, Heidi 3D is yet another example of a process of sugar-coating adult-child relationships in media for children and grants healthy interpersonal relationships the healing power that Spyri had attributed to nature in the 1880s.
Bibliographical References
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AN ENGLISH GIRL IN THE STATES.
The Impact of Context and Genre on the Film Adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda
Bruno Echauri Galván / Silvia García Hernández
1 Introduction
Despite his remarkable forays in adult literature and autobiography with works like Boy, Going Solo, Tales of the Unexpected or Kiss Kiss, Roald Dahl will probably be remembered as one of the most salient authors of children’s literature of the second half of the 20th century. His extensive bibliography includes titles like The Twits, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, The BFG, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among many others. The global success of these stories has not, obviously, gone unnoticed by the film industry, and many of them have been adapted to the screen in the last decades. From Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Margulies, Wolper, Stuart, 1971) to The BFG (Spielberg et al., Spielberg, 2016) through James and the Giant Peach (Burton, Di Novi, Selick, 1996) or Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson et al., Anderson, 2009), Dahl’s work has been recurrently enlivened with varying success. One of the most significant difficulties one must face when braving the endeavor of adapting these books is the complex backstory most of them share. Hidden behind the appearance of innocuous plots and light entertainment, Dahl’s narrative conceals a deep social critique that addresses myriad problems related to children, parenthood, education, and other core aspects of the past and present social fabric. In this regard, Matilda (Dahl, 1988; 2016) is not an exception.
Matilda tells the story of a five-year-old girl. She is extremely intelligent and loves books. She lives with her parents, the Wormwoods, and her brother in England, but she is ignored by them. Her parents only pay her some attention to command her to stop reading and watch TV, which is what they always do, or to tell her that she is an ignorant, a cheat or a liar. At one point, she gets fed up with the situation and decides to teach her father a lesson; from that moment on, whenever he insults or mistreats her, Matilda takes revenge by playing different pranks on Mr. Wormwood, like putting superglue on his hat or hiding a speaking parrot in the chimney to scare him. When she goes to school, she finds another bully adult, the headmistress Miss Trunchbull, who hates children and abuses them verbally and physically. However, Matilda will develop an extraordinary magical power which will help her get rid of the tyrant Trunchbull. This apparently simple and children-oriented plot conceals quite serious topics such as the importance of educational methods, mistreatment, or adults’ totalitarian practices and lack of ethics (Mr. Wormwood’s illegal business with stolen cars being a good case in point), among others, which are quite relevant for the development of the story.
Since its publication in 1988, more than 17 million copies of the book have been sold all over the world. Such literary success and impact inevitably grabbed Hollywood’s attention, and Matilda was finally turned into a film in 1996 under the direction of Danny DeVito. However,