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Theory
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Adaptation and Narrative
Theory:
Are Adaptations Relevant? If it isn't Written, is it a Narrative?
Another concern many critics
have with film or stage adaptations is the perceived impossibility
of there being a narrative. In his 1977 essay, "The structural
analysis of narratives", theorist Roland Barthes asserts
that narratives are everywhere and are in everything that is done.
He claims that narratives can be found in "fiction, cinema,
history, painting, and so forth" (Whelehan,
9). His theory entails," the separation of narratives
into functional units of form and content. The units, "are
then further divided [as either] distributional (functional) or
integrational (or indices) -the former can be extracted as the
'story' in terms of actions, causes and effects and the latter
refers to psychological states, attributes of character, descriptions
of locations and so forth" (Whelehan,
10).
1939 movie, it is to catch her dog Toto who escapes from the clutches of
mean
Mrs. Gulch (the Wicked
Witch of the West) who wants to terminate Toto for digging up
her garden; and the effect is Dorothy
ending up in Oz, looking for a way to get back home. Integrational
units would include character traits, costumes, setting, and of
course the change from black and white to colour in the Kansas and
Oz scenes. The chronological order of the events in both the book
and the film, and the fact that there is the question of whether
or not Oz is a dream is irrelevant in terms of the structure of
the narrative since according to Barthes, narratives are everywhere
as long as there is a beginning, middle and an end.
Josette Blackwood
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