Anyone can play!

[andrewducker]

Bearing in mind the conversation here:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/1086412.html

[Poll #732724]

Comments

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

the first option kind of doesnt work because at the begining of the act of adaptation there is surely a presumption of success, of getting it kind of right. Unless that they _know_ its going to come out wrong, but the proceed anyway in bad faith, in which case option one would be "if they are cynically intending to do it wrong, they shouldnt do it at all", which no-one could disagree with.

The only other way this statement could parse is if it means something like "adaptations shouldnt be done by people who are delusionally convinced they are getting it right, when they are clearly not". Again, a no-brainer.

I cant belive i've got drawn into this, I must go and wash myself in Henry James. I'm on The Golden Bowl now, his famously convoluted last novel. Its like an amazing workout for the psyche; like having your intellectual sphincter stretched by a particularly impressive instrument. That will be the sound of no-one caring.

[andrewducker]

When a lot people start out with "I'll try to make something that avoids offending people and has a wide appeal without doing anything that might startle the audiene or make them think at all" then they really are effectively saying "We aren't going to make a decent adaptation."

And it's not necessarily about adaptations - an awful lot of TV is like that - designed to play up to people's expectations and feed them something that's just enough off-bland to be worth watching at all.