The Art of Adaptation

In the McLuhanian read, an adaptation is just the old medium being placed in the new medium wholesale. To an extent, this is true: all adaptations are going to have baggage from their original version. The number of people who declared that they would leave the theater if the sound effects of Wolverine’s claws in the first X-Men movie didn’t match the “snikt” noise used in the comics was mind boggling. Of course, that was stupid. Because “snikt” is a nonsense word and English orthography isn’t 1:1 – if you don’t believe me, just google “ghoti.”

Literary Theory, Written by: Cameron, AnalysisCameron SummersFebruary 23, 2022Adaptation, Translation, Marshall McLuhan, Strange Brew, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, Pride and Prejudice, House of Leaves, Disco Elysium, Hench, Natalie Zina WalschotsComment

Unpacking the Trash Can of Genre: Practical Literary Theory

When you select a genre and decide your going to produce a book, comic, film, or similar within it, you’re essentially taking a whole set of unexamined assumptions and saying that you’re going to abide by them to the exclusion of everything else. This is a mistake.

Analysis, Literary Theory, Written by: CameronCameron SummersNovember 18, 2019genre, hard boiled fiction, OuLiPo, Red Harvest, Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, Disco Elysium, Sherlock holmes, Pride and Prejudice, Ghost in the Shell, Detective fiction, Cyberpunk, Mad MaxComment