From Page to Screen / Vom Buch zum Film. Группа авторов
borders. American productions are now consumed globally and in consequence, the all-inclusive nature of the genre should be achieved with a kaleidoscope of preferences and inclinations in mind. As Brown (2012: 3) describes, one of the main objectives of family films is to reach global audiences by delivering products that blur differences beyond ages and generations to overcome other divisive labels like race, gender, or religion as well. This implies a careful consideration of the acceptability patterns that apply not only in the context of production, but also in a variety of potential contexts of reception worldwide. Consequently, age rating overprotective tendency is also informed by global distribution and commercial expectations overseas.
Both in the origins of the family film and in its most contemporary versions, literary adaptations have been an essential piece to build the backbone of the genre. From Little Women to the Harry Potter saga, The Lord of the Rings, or The Chronicles of Narnia (Brown, 2012) several productions have attempted (sometimes for good, sometimes for ill) to take stories from the page to a screen most families worldwide can comfortably sit in front of. As stated in the introduction, Dahl’s writing has recurrently drawn the attention of film directors and screenwriters, and Matilda, one of his most acclaimed and influential works, could not be an exception.
However, the film is in fact “exceptional” in several ways, including its inception. As it will be argued in upcoming sections, Matilda has indeed passed through the sieve of Hollywood’s apparatus in order to become a more commercial product that triggers the emotions spectators will expect to find in this sort of production. The film was age rated as PG, which basically implies that it should be accessible to unaccompanied children of any age, albeit parents should keep in mind some scenes may trouble younger or more sensitive infants. Consequently, we can see that some of the features and edges of the book outlined in the introduction have been either adapted or smoothed to craft a more palatable film for the audience it intends to reach.
Nevertheless, some aspects that, considering the current state of affairs in this regard may not match the standards of a PG family film, have been included in DeVito’s adaptation of the book. Albeit he eventually crafted a toned-down version of Dahl’s story, this did not prevent Mara Wilson, the protagonist, from feeling a little scared when she first read the script or mothers from leaving the theatre with their children before the film was over during its first screenings (Vilas-Boas, 2016).
This apparent challenge of conventions and assumptions illustrates a tug of war between the studio and the will of Dahl’s relatives. As Swicord (Vilas-Boas, 2016), one of the screenwriters of the film, states in an interview, after the release of movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) or The Witches (1990), Dahl did not want another of his works to be adapted. Some of the changes made in the original stories upset the Welsh author, and he was extremely reluctant to let characters like Matilda “go on screen” (Pirnia, 2015). Any attempt to make an adaptation of Matilda should therefore meet two requirements: maintain the essence of the original and have the approval of the author’s family, something Swicord and Kazan got after working for free on the script for a whole summer (Vilas-Boas, 2016). The film was eventually shot, but this story transcended the category of an anecdote and operated as a constraint that partly shaped the final product. As our subsequent analysis will show, Matilda flouts some generic and rating maxims in order to achieve a delicate balance between commercial aspirations, specific genre features, and a compulsory fidelity to the source funneled through the decisions of the screenwriters, which were in turn strongly determined by the expectations of the author’s next of kin.
The clash between the studio and Dahl’s family regarding the level of faithfulness the film should show helps bring up another controversial concept that has underpinned adaptation studies since its first steps as a nascent discipline: fidelity. Grosso modo, fidelity could be defined as “the extent to which a given aesthetic object – traditionally, in adaptation studies, a film – reflects a faithful understanding of its source – traditionally, a literary text, especially a novel, play or short story” (Johnson, 2017: 87). Rarely has a concept so central in the forge and discussions of a discipline arisen such a heated rejection by many of the scholars working inside its margins. One of the foundations of the criticism against fidelity studies can be found in Bluestone’s pivotal work Novels into Film (1957: 4–5) where he challenges old truisms (like the apparently indispensable replication of the spirit of the text in the motion picture, or the assessment of the quality of the film according to its parallelisms with the book) in order to address adaptation as a process of mutation conducted in a media that follows different narrative patterns than those of literary works.
Subsequent scholars like Naremore and Murray (as cited in Johnson, 2017: 91–92) built on Bluestone’s ideas, seeking to escape the anchor of fidelity to explore new horizons that include points of focus like the roles and influence of the film industry, the commercial apparatus, or the prospective target audience among others. But either as a pervasive point of return or as the elephant asking for more popcorn in our living room, fidelity has hovered over a vast quantity of the research historically conducted on film adaptation. In fact, albeit some scholars consider it a long gone controversy, fidelity is still a topical issue some academic circles have revisited and used as a platform for current research. Relatively recent works such as Kranz’s and Mellerski’s (2008) or MacCabe’s, Murray’s, and Warner’s (2011) compendiums of essays evince this fact, even if contributions advocate for a nuanced approach that welcomes and encompasses several aspects beyond faithfulness.
That said, the present paper does not revolve around the dual construct created by “faithful” or “unfaithful films”. On the contrary, it understands an adaptation as a product in its own right that “replicates but does not repeat” (Casetti, 2004: 83), that mutates and is shaped by the influence exerted by the macro and micro-agents that may be involved in the process: the new media of representation and its constraints, the film industry, the context of production and reception, ideology and culture, directors, screenwriters, or spectators, among others. In like vein, building our analysis on a comparison between the two products does not imply aligning our work with fidelity studies: our purpose is not to present (in)fidelity as something necessarily positive or negative, but rather to analyze modifications both in contextual features, the main topics addressed, and in Matilda’s characterization according to those parameters extensively discussed throughout this theoretical framework.
3 Methodology
In order to explore the impact that factors like the context and genre have had on the film adaptation of Matilda at large and on the characterization of the little girl in particular, the following section will be divided as follows. Firstly, a comparative analysis between the novel and the film will be conducted. In this vein and in the first place, some major changes regarding contextual aspects will be underscored and explained according to the decisions made by the film industry with an eye on generic features and the intended audience. Secondly, several core topics of the novel will be examined so as to determine their relevance and role in the motion picture. “In order of appearance”, the paper will delve into issues like the place of literature and education, adults’ abuses and school mistreatment, and children’s − especially Matilda’s − uprising against the despotic attitudes of their elders.
Finally, similarities and differences in the characterization of Matilda will be pinpointed. It is expected that this step fulfills a twofold purpose: on the one hand, to determine the extent to which context and genre have influenced the final shape of Matilda’s film incarnation. On the other, to explore whether this persona maintains the quirks that made the original Matilda as lovely as she can be hateful depending on the eye of the beholder. In order to explore the latter points on solid grounds, some explanations on the main topics of the book centralized on and triggered by the protagonist will be required.
4 Analysis
4.1 Setting: A trip from the UK to the US
The plot of DeVito’s Matilda is quite faithful to Dahl’s novel and thus, rather similar to the description provided in section 1. The first and probably most obvious difference between the book and