As we saw in class, Robert Stam, basing himself on Gerard Genette, notes: “Hypertextuality . . . refers to the relation between one text, which Genette calls ‘hypertext,’ to an anterior text, or ‘hypotext,’ which the former transforms, modifies, elaborates, or extends.” From Stam’s and Genette’s analysiss one can argue that Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup is a hypertext to Julio Cortázar “The Devil’s Drool,” to use the original title of the Argentine writer’s short story.
However, Blowup has itself become a hypotext which has been re-elaborated in two major Hollywood films: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Brian de Palma’s Blow Out (1981). (Both Coppola and de Palma have made public their debt to Antonioni’s film, though, Blow Out is also influenced by The Conversation). In both cases, Cortázar’s and Antonioni’s photographer has become a sound technician. Perhaps a more important modification is that Coppola and de Palma explicitly present the mysteries found and explored by the sound technicians—Gene Hackman in The Conversation, John Travolta in Blow Out—as illegal government activities. (But, as we will see in class, there may be political connotations already present in Blowup). Thomas Beltzer, despite, in my opinion, misreading Cortázar’s short story, notes correctly that: “The two American versions of the story are a copy of a copy which, of course, all but obliterates the original Cortázar story” (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/35/cortazar.html).
Trailer for The Conversation
Trailer for Blow Out
Another hypertext of Blowup, according to Wikipedia, is the Bollywood comedy Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. In this film, a couple of photographers accidentally capture in film a crime in, appropriately, Antonioni Park. This comedy is itself the hypotext to, of all things, Weekend at Bernie’s! (However, it is one of the highest rated movies in the imdb.com database).
*Above is the poster of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro
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It's interesting to think of how adaptation can continue over and over...each time, possibly, leading further away from the original work. This concept brings to mind Bazin's near closing quote: "All things considered, it is possible to imagine that we are moving toward a reign of the adaptation in which the notion of the unity of the work of art, if not the very notion of the author himself, will be destroyed."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we could delve further into the idea of parent texts/works of art and the valuation of adaptations in that light.
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-matthew winn