From Page to Screen / Vom Buch zum Film. Группа авторов
The disconnection between Jane and the other female characters is best exemplified in the film by the non-existent relationship between her and her mother. Indeed, Mrs Banks epitomises the absent mother figure, such a common trope in Disney films (Worthington, 2009). Interestingly enough, she is the only character in the film who does have meaningful connections with other women: her attendants, Ellen and Mrs Brill, and her group of suffragist friends. However, while the relationship with the former is not sufficiently developed, her relationship with the suffragettes is only shown via her absence, both from the film and her family life, as she is always busy tending to her political duties. Disney’s reimagining of this character from loving and caring mother to suffragette is problematic at best and, although several explanations (including personal, historical and narrative ones) have been provided to explain Disney’s long tradition of absent mothers (Åmström, 2017: 1–5), none of them accounts for the explicit political overtones added in the film. In the book, Mrs Banks is not only present at several points but also performs typically motherly functions, in accordance with Edwardian standards: she is in charge of arranging childcare (Travers, 2018: 4–7, 159); scolds the children (Travers, 2018: 7, 65, 66, 158–159); shows concern for their wellbeing (Travers, 2018: 66); makes the decisions regarding the children’s outings (Travers, 2018: 81–82); soothes and comforts the babies (Travers, 2018: 111–113); and deals with the overall running of the house and knows where things are (Travers, 2018: 13, 153, 158).
In the film, however, she is downgraded and ridiculed, portrayed as not only absent, but useless: her hiring of previous nannies has been a series of “unqualified disasters” and Mr Banks’s comment that choosing a nanny requires “insight, balance, judgement and an ability to read character” (Disney, Stevenson, 1964: 16:42) implies that Mrs Banks has none; she is too sentimental and lacks authority; she tries to avoid the very serious meeting between Mr Banks and Mary Poppins and has to be urged by Mr Banks to stay; her interventions tend to be reduced to talking about her activism (when her husband is not present) or to compliment or agree with her husband (when he is present); she is always about to leave for some rally or demonstration, especially at times when she is needed to perform motherly functions (she tries to avoid staying with the kids when Bert brings them back home and asks him – a stranger to her – to take care of them); at times it seems that she is not even useful to the suffragist cause, or that her role in it is rather petty (while her friends are in prison, her role is reduced to singing and supporting from a distance).
So, the reimagining of this secondary female character from caring mother to absent mother and vociferous suffragette further accentuates the distance between the book and the film. The political and ideological stance adopted by the film through this very conscious and unnecessary reconfiguration of the character becomes clear as feminist ideas are made to clash with the standards of parenthood that the film, purportedly about American values and family reconciliation (Lawson, 2013: 244), upholds. In this regard, Mrs Banks’s use of her “Votes for women” band as the tail of the children’s kite at the end of the film symbolises her abandonment of the feminist cause and her embracing of true, wholesome motherhood.
As has been shown, the poetics of care and non-patriarchal femininity that pervades the book is redacted and substituted for by the all-too-cheerful adventures of a “superwoman” of sorts (Mary Poppins) that take place in an otherwise man’s world. The feminine world of the book is replaced by a masculine one in which the men do things and the women are either absent, their role is insignificant or dependent upon male figures, or they are, as in the case of Mary Poppins herself, perfect according to patriarchal standards.
4 Jurassic Park
Based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel of the same title, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (Kennedy, Molen, Spielberg, 1993) was written for the screen by Crichton and David Koepp and produced by Universal Pictures. It is one of the very few pre-2000 films ranking in the top fifty highest-grossing films of all time1 and has been described as “a feminist masterpiece” (Fisher, 2014: 206) on account of the active and powerful roles played by its only two female characters, Dr Ellie Sattler and Lex Murphy. Indeed, the reimagining of these characters is one of the most complex transitions to take place in a 20th-century book-based family feature, as both downgrading and upgrading strategies are at work. As in the case of Mary Poppins, there are plot simplifications, some of which are due to technical reasons, as it would be difficult to fit all the adventures that take place in a four-hundred-odd-page book into one single family feature. Some others are not so easy to account for. For example, the novel initially recreates a rather feminised atmosphere, with a series of female characters playing essential roles in smaller background plots: Dr Roberta Carter and the midwife Elena Morales, used to introduce the narrative framework of raptors’ attacks outside the island; Tina Bowman, the girl who tells the doctors about the bird-like creature that bit her – a main feature of the dinosaurs both in the book and in the film; Alice Levin, the technician who identifies Tina’s drawing as that of a dinosaur, contesting Dr Stone’s interpretation; and Dr Ellie Sattler, whose role is rather important in the first half of the book. With the exception of Tina (who is the basis for a much less significant character in the 1997 sequel) and Ellie (who is also key in the 1993 production), these female characters do not appear in the film. In this way, the initially feminised atmosphere of the book is substituted for by a masculine narrative framework in the film that places the focus on the men working in the park and the men working in the mine. This is, nevertheless, counteracted in the film by its complex treatment of Ellie and Lex.
As stated above, Ellie plays a central role in the first half of the book. Furthermore, her relevance in the story is not relational: she is introduced as a paleobotanist whose relation to male characters is exclusively professional. In fact, male characters who patronise or objectify her are disparaged: Bob Morris, the lawyer from the Environmental Protection Office who “gapes” at her (Crichton, 1990: 38); Donald Gennaro, the lawyer who makes the sexist assumption that Dr Sattler is a man (Crichton, 1990: 73) and then shows an interest in her (Crichton, 1990: 195); Dr Ian Malcolm, the mathematician who makes a patently inappropriate comment about her looks (Crichton, 1990: 83); and Tim, John Hammond’s grandson, who is distracted by her legs (Crichton, 1991: 108,109). Also, Ellie is introduced as a strong and independent character (Crichton, 1990: 38), and she is shown to be a hard-working, intelligent and valued professional working side by side with Dr Alan Grant (Crichton, 1990: 48, 55, 61–62, 66, 72–73, 97, 99, 102, 183), knowledgeable about her field and articulate (Crichton, 1990: 38–39, 48, 50–51, 52, 100, 139, 180–183), and inquisitive (Crichton, 1990: 51, 132, 133, 135, 194). However, as the novel progresses, the character is reduced, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to very few interventions and a caring role (Crichton, 1990: 267–268, 279, 281, 351–352, 360); she becomes less knowledgeable (Crichton, 1990: 233); her suggestion to follow the compys in the middle of the storm seems careless (Crichton, 1990: 235); her skills are reduced to being able to decipher crackly messages on the radiophone (Crichton, 1990: 252); it is emphasised that she is Alan’s student (Crichton, 1990: 271), which contrasts the academic and professional status she is given in the first half of the novel; although she is good at distracting the raptors (Crichton, 1990: 369–370, 372–374, 375), she ends up being tricked by them (Crichton, 1990: 385–386); and she is ignored by Tim (Crichton, 1990: 428). In sum, in spite of very few epiphanic moments, such as her guessing of where the raptors’ nest is (Crichton, 1990: 431), she becomes dispensable in the second half of the book.
In the film, Ellie undergoes some downgrading. For example, her relevance for the story is made to depend on her romantic relationship with Alan. This is an important aspect of the film’s hidden agenda precisely because their romantic relationship is not even the focus of the main plot: it is, as in the case of other hinted heterosexual romances (Mary Poppins, Jumanji) a given that serves as the backdrop of the main storyline. Moreover, this romantic relationship is made explicit from the very first scene (in which Ellie puts a bandana around Alan’s neck and he subtly feels her bum) and at several points throughout the film, from beginning (Ellie is shown to be very keen to have children and insists on making Alan more receptive to the idea; there is a slight rivalry between Alan and Ian as the latter flirts with her) to end (the way Ellie looks at Alan next to the children in the helicopter).