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Manuel Almagro-Jiménez /
Eva Parra-Membrives (Eds./Hrsg.)
From Page to Screen
Modifi cation and Misrepresentation of
Female Characters in Audiovisual Media
Vom Buch zum Film
Veränderung und Verfälschung weiblicher
Figuren in den audiovisuellen Medien
Popular Fiction Studies 6
From Page to Screen / Vom Buch zum Film
Popular Fiction Studies
edited by Eva Parra-Membrives and Albrecht Classen
volume 6
Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
(Eds. / Hrsg.)
From Page to Screen
Modication and Misrepresentation of Female Characters in
Audiovisual Media
Vom Buch zum Film
Veränderung und Verfälschung
weiblicher Figuren in den audiovisuellen Medien
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Contents
Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
“I WANT MY MONEY BACK”: Some Considerations on the Dialectics of
Texts and Films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PART 1 CHILDREN’S STORIES FOR ADULTS
Lorena Silos Ribas
HEIDI GOES KAWAII: The Evolution of Fräulein Rottenmeier in the
Animated Versions of Johanna Spyri’s Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bruno Echauri Galván / Silvia García Hernández
AN ENGLISH GIRL IN THE STATES. The Impact of Context and Genre on
the Film Adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yiyi López Gándara
GENDER EDUCATION AND INTERMEDIALITY. A Look at the
Reimagining of Secondary Female Characters from Book to Blockbuster . .
PART 2 THE FANTASTIC: FROM THE PAST AND THE FUTURE
Marta Mariño-Mexuto
FROM “WIFE OF MY BOSOM” TO “FEMALE THING”: E. A. Poe’s Ligeia
and Roger Corman’s The Tomb of Ligeia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Miguel Ayerbe-Linares
ÉOWYN VOM BUCH ZUM FILM. Peter Jacksons Verfilmung von Tolkiens
Der Herr der Ringe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Christiane Limbach
GAME OF THRONES & DAS LIED VON EIS UND FEUER. Untersuchung
der Darstellung von Frauen am Beispiel von Missandei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
159
175
191
215
237
261
285
303
315
Pedro Alemany Navarro
VERSIONS OF SELF-SEARCH AND SELF-TRANSCENDENCE IN A
POSTHUMAN PARADIGM: The Case of Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the
Shell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sergio Cobo-Durán/ Irene Raya Bravo
WONDER WOMAN. From Page to Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PART 3 FOR WOMEN WAR IS NEVER OVER
Alberto Lena
MGM’S THREE COMRADES: Frank Borzage, F. Scott Fitzgerald and
Hollywood’s Courageous Weimar Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Manuel Almagro-Jiménez
“WIE OFT?” OR LOVE IN TROUBLED TIMES?: The Cinematographic
Adaptation of A Woman in Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Leopoldo Domínguez
VERFILMUNG VON ERINNERUNGSLITERATUR. Zur Darstellung der
Figur Hanna Schmitz aus Bernhard Schlinks Der Vorleser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PART 4 DEMANDING THEIR OWN VOICE, STATING THEIR OWN NEEDS
Margarita Estévez-Saá
“O JAMESY LET ME UP OUT OF THIS”. Molly Bloom in Joseph Strick’s and
Sean Walsh’s Films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Montserrat Bascoy Lamelas
KATHARINA BLUM: OPFER ODER TÄTER? Die weibliche Hauptfigur in
Heinrich Böll und in Volker Schlöndorff und Margarethe von Trotta . . . . .
Claudia Garnica de Bertona
THE FEMALE BODY AS STAGE FOR VIOLENCE. Elfriede Jelinek’s The
Pianist and its Film Version by Michael Haneke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eva Parra-Membrives
DIE EWIGE SCHULD DER EVA. Frau und Sünde in Petra Hammesfahrs Die
Sünderin und der Netflix-Serie The Sinner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6 Contents
337
357
375
405
PART 5 (MUSIC IS) A WORLD WITHIN ITSELF
Marina Tornero Tarragó
THE PORTRAYAL OF THE BAD GIRL CARMEN. Eternal Hybridity of High
and Low Entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Rocío Cobo-Piñero
FROM CIVIL RIGHTS CHRONICLER TO CHANEL Nº 5. Mainstreaming
Nina Simone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jiří Měsíc
SHEKHINAH IN THE MUSIC VIDEOS OF LEONARD COHEN . . . . . . . . . .
LIST OF AUTHORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7Contents
1 It is well known that Steven Spielberg anticipated the success of the saga. He referred
to the project as posing no challenge and said it would be “like shooting ducks in a
barrel. It’s a slam dunk” (Bridge 2014: 196).
2 The event was covered by the media all over the world. See, for example, Gómez, 2001;
Libedinsky, 2001;
https://edition.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/04/london.premiere.potter/index.
html (Accessed on 5 May 2020); http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1647539.stm
(Accessed on 5 May 2020); https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/sep/11/news.harry
potter. (Accessed on 5 May 2020.)
“I WANT MY MONEY BACK”:
Some Considerations on the Dialectics of Texts and
Films
Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
In the year 2001 the premiere of the film adaptation of the first volume of
the Harry Potter saga took place and, as it was to be expected, it became an
event with a great media impact1. TV networks were particularly interested
in recording the expectations of children attending the movie theatres as they
came in to watch for the first time that young man who was the protagonist
of so many magical adventures and who had become for some “the most
important non-religious global cultural icon in history” (Blake, 2002: 91)2. One
boy, specifically, while he was being interviewed before entering the theatre,
said that actually he had already read the novel but that he came to watch the
film because he wanted to know how Harry Potter really was. And, in general,
many of the viewers did enjoy the way in which so much money “was spent on
making Hogwarts castle look real” (Nel, 2002: 172).
Probably this is an attitude that is shared by the readers of other sagas which
have become a great success, first in bookshops and then on the screen. One
can imagine a similar reaction in the case of the fans of such a popular saga as
Twilight, which has enjoyed an enormous success among teenagers (and among
3 Kelly points out that “The Twilight saga is the most successful series of vampire films
and one of the most successful movie franchises in the history of Hollywood” (Kelly,
2016: 25).
4 The greater truthfulness of the image versus the mere suggestion of the word is
defended by Baines in this way: “If a person wanted to get a sense of the power of a
hurricane, one 10-minute film clip would likely communicate it more forcefully than
would 100 pages of text” (Baines, 1996: 2013).
5 Critics in general do not share this point of view. Thus, for example, Schneider, talks of
“lange Geschichte des Unbehagens gegenüber Literaturverfilmungen” (Schneider, 2014:
1), and also of “aus der Perspektive der Literaturwissensschaft fügt die Literaturverfil‐
mung der Literatur ‘Leid’ zu” (Schneider, 2014 :13).
6 Cunnigham (2000: 187) mentions the “carelessness and outright tawdriness of many
Hollywood renditions of major literary works”.
adults, one should add)3. Indeed, not only boys and girls of whatever age react
in this way. Many adults also tend to believe that what they see on the screen
is more faithful, more real, than what you find in the original text, paradoxical
as it might seem4. Because, as Schober writes about True Blood:
So, what is “true” in True Blood? The vampire story focused around Sookie Stackhouse,
Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mystery novels of which this show is a serial
adaptation, the additional HBO material, or the fanfiction and computer games
that extrapolate the transmedial narrative around the core text of the TV series? A
Pragmatist reading of these interacting narratives would argue that they are all “true”,
creating a more or less coherent fictional storyworld aimed at enhancing the illusion
of reality. (Schober, 2019: 41)
There are viewers who often have the impression that a film will offer them a
more real version of a story and, thus, when a book is published and becomes
successful, many of them prefer to wait, albeit anxiously, for the film, since they
also feel that the contemplation of the images is much less demanding than the
effort and the time required by the reading of the quite often some-hundred
pages of a book. This kind of readers and viewers always presuppose that the
adaptation of the book to the screen will not only offer a more real picture of
the story, but that, more particularly, in the process of adaptation there will be
no significant changes. They may like the movie a great deal or not at all, or
feel indifferent, but very rarely will we see them disappointed by the adaptation
they have watched and thinking that it was a waste of money5.
This attitude presents at least two important problems. One has to do with
the question of fidelity to the original, or in other words the degree to which
an adaptation can deviate from the original text and still be “faithful” to it. Or
to say it from the opposite perspective, how can we discern that something has
changed to the point of not being what it originally was?6 The issue may grow
10 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
into a sort of philosophical paradox, eventually impossible to resolve. But to this
we must add the obvious fact that we are dealing with very different cultural
objects. An interesting way of illustrating this can be done by mentioning the
following anecdote concerning Fritz Lang, as recollected by Robert Stam:
A filmic adaptation is automatically different and original due to the change of
medium. Here we can take as our own Fritz Lang’s response to the Producer
Prokosch’s accusation of infidelity to the script: ‘Yes, Jerry, in the script it’s written,
in a film it’s a picture… a motion picture it’s called’. (Stam, 2004: 17)
This leads us straight into the second problem, which refers to the fact that in the
process of adaptation a double dialogue is established. Here we are not dealing
simply with the textual version of another previous text, something that is
common in the sphere of literature, what we conventionally call intertextuality.
Rather, now in this case we would have to speak of intermediality, a general
phenomenon which “assumes that social contexts, as well as literacy processes,
are connected” (Watts Pailliotet et al., 2000: 213), to the point of reaching what
Emig (1983) calls “web of meaning”.
In our case we are dealing with two different media, the textual versus the
visual, which imply different cognitive processes and different methodologies
of experience: it is not the same thing to sit down to read a book (normally
alone) than to sit down to watch a film (normally with a group of people in a
theatre) or a TV series (at home on your sofa, for example). For the individual
having the experience, the context of the two events, that of reading a book or
that of watching a film/TV series, seem very different, although one may have
to be cautious when establishing certain comparisons. Thus, Cardwell points
out the need to “ignore temporal similarities between the experience of reading
and that of viewing” (Cardwell, 2004: 85).
But at the same time the transparency that some may presuppose in the
adaptation of a literary text to the screen is further revealed as false when
one learns about the material circumstances of adaptations in general, that is,
the conditions under which they are produced: they can be of all sorts and
encompass a great variety of aspects involved in the production of a film or of a
TV series, beginning with the very basic axiom that “an adaptation must work as
a film and not just as a re-creation of the earlier source” (Neher, 2014: 120). More
specifically, Kline alludes to what he calls the “material paradigm”, illustrating
this idea with the example of the adaptation of a novel by Brett Easton Ellis:
One exception is Mark Fenster’s critique of Less Than Zero, a film adapted from
the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. In his analysis, Fenster argues that the film is a
failed adaptation, despite the commercial success of the novel, because the novel’s
11I want my money back
7 In his discussion of the film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Edwards
points out that the subtle variations “between a film adaptation and its literary
source emerge from motives and economic imperatives specific to the filmmaking
corporation“ (Edwards, 2006: 42).
specific appeals, including its “distanced narrative voice,” were difficult to adapt to
film (32). That difficulty was compounded by the commercial context in which the
film was produced, a context that led the scriptwriter to draw upon “recognizable”
cinematic conventions, including a “realistic narrative frame” in the rewriting of the
screenplay (52). Thus, in this analysis, Fenster opens up new discursive ground in
assessing the effectiveness of a film adaptation, moving beyond a strictly intertextual
comparison between novel and film to explore the extratextual forces operating within
the production process which also shape the film. (Kline, 1996: 74)
To this we might add a couple of, fortunately, not common situations that may
come up in the process of shooting the film/series itself: What to do if one of the
protagonists dies? Or what to do if one of the actors asks for a higher salary that
the producers might find unacceptable? These might seem trivial issues but they
are only apparently so, and they are not hypothetical. The history of cinema and
of television can provide with plenty of examples. Here we can only mention a
couple of them: the death of Oliver Reed, while the shooting of Gladiator was
still on, or the scene in the film Tootsie where the protagonist finds out that
another character had disappeared from the series they are shooting because he
had asked for a raise in his salary.
But in a much more subtle way, and perhaps more invisible, there are other
interferences which go unnoticed for the reader who only knows the film
version but ignores the literary original. At this point we are talking about
the reasons behind the changes in an adaptation which could be motivated by
a political, historical, moral, economic or commercial rationale7. Pérez-Bowie
summarizes the whole issue in this way:
The territory encompassed by the relationship between cinema and literature is so
wide and heterogeneous that is it not limited to the problems derived from the
adaptations of literary texts into films. It extends into many other areas. (Pérez-Bowie,
2004: 277. Our translation)
Thus, more specifically in our volume, we do not deal only with general
ideological issues, but more particularly with questions that have to do with
gender and sexual politics. Because, as Casetti indicates,
12 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
8 It is relevant to mention here the Literature/Film Association Annual Conference,
which takes place since 1989, and which has been cancelled this year due to the
Covid-19 pandemic. See http://litfilm.org (Accessed on 5 May 2020). Elliot (2014) offers
a very interesting analysis of the more relevant publications in this field. See also
Albrecht-Crane, 2010; Bruhn, 2013; and Gradner, 1992.
9 One example of this among many is a study by Olney (2010), where we find an analysis
of film adaptations from the vantage point of postmodernism.
10 This kind of analysis is not infrequent. See here publications with titles similar to our
own: Humbert, 2012; Burns, 1984; Baines, 1996.
11 In this context see the very interesting studies by Raitt, 2012; Weckerle, 2004; and
Wesley, 1999.
the analysis of adaptations should do more than compare the former with the latter
text. It should instead focus in what changes in the passage from one to the other;
that is, the frame within which they are located. (Casetti, 2004: 83)
However, before anything else, we would also like to underline that our volume
is not a contribution to the theory of adaptation. Rather, our purpose is to offer
a collection of practical cases. The different aspects of adaptation have already
been sufficiently theorized in the so-called Adaptation Studies8. Florian in the
introduction to his work says that “Das Phänomen der Literaturverfilmung
ist so alt wie der Film selbst” (Florian, 2008: 1). Likewise, we could say that
there is already a long theoretical tradition that has been inspired by those
adaptations, offering numerous and interesting ways of approaching these
transmedial rewritings9.
In our contribution, as said before, we are more interested in presenting
practical cases of diverse kinds of adaptations,10 in different modalities and with
various sources, although at the same time trying to escape what has been
called the “seemingly endless stream of comparative case-studies of print and
screen versions of individual texts” (Murray, 2008: 4). Indeed, the individual
essays in our volume are linked by a common element, which we intended to
be very specific: the representation and/or misrepresentation of women in the
course of adaptations from the page to the screen. In this sense, ours is not only
a contribution to the analysis of inter- or trans-mediality, but also, from the
specific point of view of criticism, it attempts to encompass an area in which,
in a transversal fashion, cultural studies, film studies and gender and feminist
studies, can find a common ground11.
Indeed, for a long time now women have struggled, under the mantle of the
discourse of feminism or otherwise, for the vindication of their rights, for their
relevance in the history of humankind and, as résumé of it all, for their visibility.
At first sight this struggle may seem, at least in most Western societies, a story
of success, maybe not yet complete and equal for all women, but at least one
13I want my money back
12 Humbert, in his analysis of one of these cases, talks of the “apparently commercially
motivated shift from ordinary but courageous woman to mythical love-empowered
heroine” (2012: 119).
which, in a firm and continued manner, carries with it the promise of, and hope
for, equality for all women.
However, a closer look can reveal that in various fields of culture, both
elitist and popular, the representation of women, even when it apparently aims
at promoting new and greater degrees of visibility, frequently suffers from a
manipulation or a mis-representation which makes the image of women lose
the strength and intention which it initially attempted. This is particularly true
in the case of adaptations of literary texts to visual formats like cinema or
television, when the initial literary message is very often changed because of,
for example, marketing demands which also finally respond to an ideological
stance12. Only in a few instances, and this should also be underlined, do we find
the opposite case (normally in the more recent film productions), where the
literary originals of some characters, apparently indifferent or emasculated, are
turned into guardians and/or apologists of feminine empowerment.
The present volume, thus, in its five different sections that will be glossed in the
next pages, focuses precisely on the way in which, more often than we may be
aware of, both in the fields of elitist and popular culture, the image of women is
degraded, metamorphosed or directly falsified, and, with the exceptions already
mentioned, rarely enhanced in films and TV series, when compared with the
original literary texts on which those representations are based.
1 Children’s Stories for Adults
The first section in our collection deals with the adaptation of children’s
stories. Very often we forget that what we call children’s literature is not
written by children but for children, and that the authors are undoubtedly
adults who cannot help writing and composing their texts from a certain social,
geographical, political, etc., position. That is, a position that is always already
predetermined and that we might consider ultimately as inevitably cultural and
therefore ideological.
To this we must add the fact that the original children’s story can be
manipulated for commercial reasons when we try to turn it into a film that could
be enjoyed by not only children but by a larger audience. A case in point is the
double reading or viewing that could be made of certain animated cartoons or
CGI films based on stories and scripts initially designed to appeal to children
14 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
but which contain a kind of subtext that is meant for the adults who normally
go along with the children to the theatre.
We can clearly see this in the way that at the end of some of these films,
when the list of credits is shown, the viewer is also given a sort of “making
of” with discarded or alternative scenes which, by their comical effect, seem
more intended for the enjoyment of the adult than of the child. The film, as it
were, includes an extra layer of meanings which appeals to the adult viewer and
satisfies his desire for entertainment as he carries out the noble task of caring
parent. In this way, the experience of going to the movies and, most importantly,
the film itself, becomes a cultural event to be enjoyed not only by the children
but by the whole family.
Lorena Silos uses, as the starting point for her essay, the widely accepted
idea that the adaptation of literary texts into films or TV series serves the
very important function of reproducing values and ideologies which may be an
essential part of the social fabric. This reproduction is not always a mechanical
process, since it is often the case that a new version of an old story is used to
reassess that story from the perspective of a new social environment and/or
a new cultural paradigm. Silos uses as case-study the adaptations of Johanna
Spyri’s Heidi, and, after reviewing the long history of adaptations of the literary
original, she concentrates on discussing more particularly one of the main
characters in the story, Fräulein Rottenmeier. By following the evolution in
the way this character has been portrayed in several film adaptations as well
as the animated versions, Silos tries to explain the political as well as social
implications which account for those changes in the representation of this
female figure.
Bruno Echauri also concentrates on the study of a story in which, again,
the protagonist is a young girl. The focus is not, however, as in the previous
case, an adult that is close to the young protagonist but on the child herself,
Mathilda. For Echauri an important element to be considered is the fact that
the author frequently, behind what seems to be a literature written simply
for entertainment, manages to hide a subtext of profound social criticism of
values and circumstances affecting children. The success of the story, as could
be expected, caught the attention of Hollywood’s producers which eventually
turned the book into a film. Echauri analyzes the changes in characterization in
the film version, connecting them with the material aspects of film production,
as well as with the commercial component due to the shift in film genre in the
Hollywood version of the story, in a move which eliminates the elements of
ambivalence in the original text.
15I want my money back
Finally, Yiyi López-Gándara begins by acknowledging how an unexpected
event such as the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has made us all suddenly
but fully aware of the importance of all kinds of learning, which become,
as she says a “kind of hybrid education experience”. In this context, more
precisely, the relevance of films is highlighted for their educational value.
López-Gándara focuses her analysis on the way gender is represented in media
texts at large, and how children can be affected by stereotypical approaches to
gender issues. By focusing both on film versions of children’s stories and the
so-called blockbusters, she describes the reimagining of secondary characters
as an index to the strategies used by producers and filmmakers to reproduce
patriarchal mechanisms in the construction of gender.
2 The Fantastic: From Past to Future
In the literature for children, mentioned in the previous section, the element
of fantasy was frequently found, but in contrast to certain children’s stories
in the so-called fantasy literature we can very often find a vast territory in
which to indulge in all kinds of possibilities which our worldly reality does not
offer, or which it limits with its strict physical and natural laws. Sometimes, this
literature allows us to delve, from the security that the textual distance imposes,
into the investigation of our fears and the things that cause us a conscious or
unconscious horror. At other times, fantasy literature allows us to explore the
limits of that reality which readers and authors inhabit and from which we can
escape thanks to the quality of the fabulous elements in those narratives.
It is also relevant for our purpose here to mention that brand of fantasy
literature which deals with the investigation of alternative worlds in which the
laws, both cultural and material, of the societies in which we live simply do not
apply. With its sometimes extravagant but always original and creative proposals,
this type of fantasy literature allows us to consider that it might be possible for
alternative worlds to exist, and that the one that we have created is only one among
the many possibilities of which we have no knowledge. It would be something
like taking to it utmost limits the simple question: What if?
Finally, we should mention two varieties of fantasy literature which have
lately become cultural trends. On the one hand, the narratives in which we find
historical recreations which amount to alternative versions of what we may
have learnt in the more conventional history books. On the other hand, there
are those stories which function as maps for all the different versions of possible
dystopian societies. These narratives can fill us with horror in anticipation of
the dark possibilities of social evolution in the not so distant future, while at the
16 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
same time, albeit in passing, they offer the opportunity to reconsider the ways
and mores of contemporary societies, and send implicitly a warning as to the
importance of certain values and their fragility in times of uncertainty,
Marta Mariño-Mexuto analyzes the adaptation of an E.A. Poe’s story, a
well-known writer of fantasy literature, by Roger Corman, an also well-known
and rather versatile filmmaker who had also his own place in the tradition
of horror movies. After a brief review of the history of horror cinema,
Mariño-Mexuto dissects a number of different aspects in Corman’s version
of Poe’s story, and more particularly the differences in the representation of the
female characters, by explaining the social and ideological circumstances of not
only the filmmaker but also of the mentality which Corman believes his target
audience may have. Thus, for example, the intelligence of the female character
in the original story is toned down in the film version in a clear nod not only to
the expectations of the audience in the portrayal of a female character but also
as a way of standing in line with the tradition of horror films as a genre.
Miguel Ayerbe-Linares’s contribution focuses on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The
Lord of the Rings, and specifically on the character of Éowyn, who is portrayed as
one of the female figures who are concerned with their identity and the meaning
of their life. In the third part of The Return of the King two especially significant
scenes take place, but, unfortunately, in the film version the dialogue from those
scenes has hardly been respected. The first of the scenes has been reduced to
Éowyn’s lament for Aragorn’s departure and the awareness that he does not
love her, while in the second scene it is a brief and insignificant exchange of
words. For Ayerbe-Linares, these two scenes are essential to determine who
Éowyn is and who she would like to become, and thus this drastic reduction
is difficult to understand, as it profoundly limits the meaning of this character,
even more so when the film is usually accorded a great value by critics for its
special promotion of female roles.
Christiane Limbach’s essay begins by acknowledging the fact that much has
already been written about the role of women in Game of Thrones, as they
are first portrayed in the original text by George R.R. Martin and as they are
represented in the version which we can watch in the TV series. Thus, for
example, characters like Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and Catelyn
Stark, or their daughters Sansa and Arya Stark, have been frequently analyzed.
For Limbach, however, there are also other female characters of interest, such
as Asha Greyjoy, Brienne of Tarth or Missandei, which should deserve the
attention of the reader, viewer and critic. Her study concentrates specifically on
Missandei, a character that appears for the first time in the third volume of the
series but becomes increasingly more and more important. Limbach’s essay is
17I want my money back
an attempt to thoroughly scrutinize the differences between her representation
in the series in contrast to her appearance in the original text.
Pedro Alemany-Navarro begins his essay by discussing the Ship of Theseus,
the well-known story which from a paradoxical and even metaphysical perspec‐
tive discusses issues of change and identity, and how a given object might remain
being what it is in spite of its being subjected to modifications conditioned
by time and/or space. Alemany-Navarro, following Hobbes, considers the pos‐
sibility of the endless substitution of fragments to the point that a perfect replica
of the original might be achieved. And at this point we are only a step away
from the very contemporary questions raised within the posthuman paradigm
by transhumanist doctrines. Against this background, full of paradoxes and
issues hard to settle once and for all, Alemany-Navarro focuses on a fictional
story, Ghost in the Shell, and its subsequent film versions, in order to speculate
on the mutability of the notion of identity, particularly human identity, and to
consider the way in which subsequent changes in the fragments or pieces of the
human hardware will eventually bring about changes in the way we look upon
the concepts of change and identity which come under scrutiny in the Ship of
Theseus paradox.
In the last contribution of this section, Sergio Cobo-Durán and Irene Raya
Bravo concentrate in their essay on the character of Wonder Woman, an
ambivalent figure which has been widely criticized in her capacity to become
a role model, and who, on the contrary, has been praised as a representation
of the process of the empowerment of women, even to the point of being
adopted as an icon of feminism. Cobo-Durán and Raya Bravo trace the legacy of
Wonder Woman in terms of the social impact which this character has produced
in many different areas of popular culture, from the world of comics to TV
series, not to mention the controversial decision of nominating her as honorary
ambassador to the United Nations, a move that had the opportunity to merge
the world of politics with the politics of gender, but which was criticized by
many as inconsistent, because of its individualism, with women’s long collective
struggle for their rights. In their analysis, Cobo-Durán and Raya Bravo follow
the different stages (comic-books, TV series, and finally its reinvention for the
big screen) in the journey of this superheroine.
3 For Women War is Never Over
In a conventional and simplistic view, it would seem that women are not directly
affected by war, because war, traditionally, as we are used to seeing in novels,
movies and history books, is something that only men experience. It is men
18 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
who are part of the armies, who go to fight other men, who wait in terror in
the trenches for the assault of the enemy, or leave them to kill their equally
terrified enemies, or ride their horses in the mad frenzy of a cavalry charge,
or are shot down from their planes during a bombardment by an anti-aircraft
battery manned also by other men. If we think of the many stories of war in
any format that we have been told, and with very few exceptions such as the
presence of women in the Red Army in World War II, we will only remember
the presence of men and their heroic deeds, their cowardice, misery, bravery,
etc., alone or in a group with other men.
But, undoubtedly, this is a version that clearly falsifies the reality of things.
Because if History is, so to speak, a huge canvas, what is shown in those stories
is only a part of that canvas, and, in that sense, it is true that there are no women
in that section of the image. But if only we shift our gaze a little towards the
margins of the canvas, or towards less illuminated parts of the canvas, then
we will begin to perceive that indeed women have been there all along, and
that the problem was not that they were not there but that we were simply
incapable of seeing them. Or even worse, we didn’t want to see them. Or even
worse than that, we weren’t allowed to see them. Frequently, the writing of
History works the way science does, with a strategy of trial and error, so that
we could also say that History, at least serious History, is a story that far from
attempting to write and define once and for all what happened in the past, it
struggles to rewrite itself, precisely because of its bad conscience, that is, because
it is (unconsciously) aware that its writing generates dark areas, because telling
implies being silent, because emitting is omitting. Inevitably.
And when those dark areas are illuminated then we can see how women also
have a close relationship with war. The women who in modern times occupy
the factories and maintain the machinery of war in substitution of the men
who had to march to the front, and the women who also participate, in one
way or another, in the various aspects of war, an activity that does not restrict
itself to the battlefield or the fight at the decisive moment. And also, like other
segments of the population, the women who are frequently collateral victims
of the consequences of war, both because they have to suffer the shortage of
resources in the rearguard and/or because they are often victims themselves
of the violence that any war generates, not the least of that violence being the
more than frequent possibility of ending up as a plunder of war, in the usual
form of a sexual assault, or as a trophy within the reach of a victorious soldier.
In this section of our collection we include three essays which only by chance
happen to coincide in their focus and in the chronological order of their analysis:
the situation of women in the period from the end of the First World War to
19I want my money back
the end of World War II. The first of these essays, by Alberto Lena, deals with
the film version of a novel written by Erich Maria Remarque (Drei Kameraden,
1938) and its film version, Three Comrades, a Hollywood production directed
by Frank Borzage in 1938. Initially planned as a woman’s drama, the film veers
its course to become an indictment of the political situation and the violence
which could be witnessed in Germany after, and because of, the First World
War. Lena describes how, in the process of adaptation, the film becomes first
an exploration of the social and economic context in which Adolf Hitler rose to
power, and then also a vehicle for the representation of a German woman as a
heroic subject.
Manuel Almagro-Jiménez concentrates his analysis on a climactic moment
in the history of Germany, only a few years after Hitler’s rise to power. The
fall of Berlin in 1945 at the hands of the Red Army led to the “inevitable” rape
of around one hundred thousand women in that city. An anonymous woman
captured the story of a number of them, registering their painful experience
in her diary without any form of embellishment. The publication of that diary
in 1959 was initially met with the rejection of a German society that refused
to accept the reality of those facts. The later filmic adaptation could have
vindicated the denouncement of the original text, but only served to aggravate
the situation, as the tragic experiences of those women were buried under the
typical language of melodrama. Almagro-Jiménez analyzes the film version of
the diary in detail and highlights the additions found in that version creating a
clearly melodramatic tone; at the same time Almagro-Jiménez draws attention to
issues that are present in the diary but do not acquire sufficient relevance in the
film, perpetuating the silencing of the true nature of these women’s experiences.
The last essay in this section, by Leopoldo Domínguez, concentrates on
certain events that took place in the post-war period in Germany, and more
specifically after the German reunification, also known as “Wende” (change).
By means of the so-called memory literature, there took place an important
re-evaluation of the most recent past, concerning issues such as victimhood and
aggression, especially during the period of National Socialism. Domínguez by
focusing on a specific text, Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser, describes how this
type of literature brings out repressed stories or traumas from the collective
past for the first time. In contrasting the original novel with the film version,
Domínguez discusses the difficulties involved in the adaptation of the novel and
how in the film some of the most relevant issues are simply left out, as there is
a preference for leading its narration towards the construction of a love story
of sorts.
20 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
4 Demanding Their Own Voice, Stating Their Own Needs
In the previous section, we have discussed the violence that women can suffer
because of war. Fortunately for women, and for everyone, war is not something
that is always and continuously present in a society, at war with another country,
for example. But this does not mean that, even in those periods in which a given
society is not immersed in a conventional war, there is not a violence that has
its origin in economic, cultural, religious or ideological conditions and values,
and that finally ends up being reflected in the life of women, and somehow sets
limits to their existence in various ways.
In an attempt to face this situation, on numerous occasions the voices of
many women have been raised, in an organized way or not, to stand up to
what we could call the structural violence that can be observed in the way all
kinds of relationships are established, for example between men and women.
But appealing only to the purely biological element would prove to be a rather
reductionist analysis, since it cannot be denied also that this structural violence
is a compound, as said before, of all sorts of other variables, such as race,
ethnicity, social class or religious education.
And here we are not referring to the social practices in ancestral and
past societies, something that the progress inspired by Western societies has
supposedly overcome: we are also talking about the circumstances in the
Western societies of today, in which progress suffers from an unfinished agenda.
Thus, it is clear that in order to accomplish the promise of freedom implicit
in the narrative of progress, women have to start by discovering a voice of
their own with which to express not the needs of others but their own needs,
a voice that will also make it possible for women to become aware of their
own situation. This leads to a process, again here and now, of deconstruction of
the given, particularly the masculine world, that is, a revelation of its already
cultural character; a world that has been created, constructed, but which is not
necessarily definitive and, in that sense, perfectly susceptible to change and
even substitution for another model of relationships.
In the first essay of this section Margarita Estévez-Saá deals with one of
the most powerful and complex representations of a woman in fiction, Molly
Bloom, the female protagonist in Ulysses, by James Joyce. To the initial difficulty
of taking a novel like this one to the screen it must be added the controversy
concerning the approppriateness and faithfulness of Joyce’s portrayal of the
psychology of a woman. Estévez-Saá reviews the opposing views in this respect,
and then goes on to provide a detailed analysis of the way in which the character
of Molly Bloom has been staged on two occasions, tracing the differences
21I want my money back
between the two film versions to distinct aspects like, among others, the diverse
performances of the female protagonist in both films, or the contrasting target
audiences intended by both filmakers or the different moments in the history
of Ireland in which the filmings took place.
In her essay Monserrat Bascoy discusses Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina
Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann, a novel by Heinrich
Böll which was published in 1974. With this text the author achieved a
significant amount of success which soon caught the attention of the German
film industry, and, therefore, was brought to the screen shortly afterwards under
the direction of Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. In his work Böll
denounces how the notion of “freedom of the press” can be abused, and the social
violence that can be generated and supported by such abuse. Bascoy argues
that both the original text and the film version can be considered typical of a
period in German recent history when cinema and literature began to position
themselves politically, an attitude for which both Böll and Schlöndorff ended
up as victims of attacks by the press, even though the film has been frequently
criticized for not knowing how to transmit the strength and force of the female
protagonist.
Claudia Garnica’s essay is an analysis contrasting similarities and differences
between Elfriede Jelinek’s novel, The Pianist, and its film version by Michael
Haneke. After placing Jelinek’s novel in the context of other novels by the
Austrian writer, Garnica goes on to dissect the basic frame of reference in the
novel so that the reader of her essay can fully grasp the play of coincidences and
dissonances between the novel and the film. Although Haneke does a great job
translating faithfully the words on the page into images on the screen, there are
moment in which he deviates from that rule of absolute faithfulness. Garnica’s
contention is that those deviations are choices that Haneke consciously make,
and, in that sense, they are clearly intentional on the part of the filmmaker, and
respond to variations through which the director can emphasize certain relevant
topics in the text.
The last essay in this section, by Eva Parra-Membrives, deals with the Netflix
series The Sinner, which has frequently been critically praised not only for the
originality of the plot, but for using the structure of the detective novel to
denounce various aspects of an American middle-class life based on falsehood
and deception. The series is a version of a novel by Petra Hammesfahr, a
German novelist not really interested in the American way of life, but rather, as
Parra-Membrives argues, in denouncing the universality of the social repression
of female sexuality, a much more subtle type of violence, which leads women
to reject sexual desire and thus perpetuate a conventional view of the idea of
22 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
sin. According to Parra-Membrives, by narrowing the case presented down to a
very specific context, and ignoring the nonfulfillment of desire as the ultimate
source of violence, the series trivializes the sexual repression that women have
always suffered and contributes to silencing the important denouncement in
Hammesfahr’s text.
5 (Music is) a World Within Itself
Finally, in this volume, we include three essays that dissect aspects of the
presence of women or the feminine from three very different perspectives. We
have chosen for this section the title “(Music is) a world within itself”, one which
the knowledgeable reader will have easily identified as part of the first verse
of a song by Stevie Wonder (“Sir Duke”), for it is true that music is, like other
areas of culture, a world within itself, with its own language and its own codes,
its frames of reference of all kinds, which provide almost infinite intertextual
games, and local and not so local genealogies and traditions.
But at the same time, and this is the question we want to raise here, music
is not oblivious to the avatars and influences of ideological tendencies of all
kinds affecting all areas of culture and also, naturally, the field of music. This
is particularly true when we look at the representation of the female figure in
popular music songs, but also in music considered more elitist, such as opera.
Add to this the authorship component, that is, the question of whether we
are dealing with a male author or a with female author, which allows us to add
another level of analysis, concerning the way in which the female artist presents
herself to the public, that is to say, the way in which her image is marketed.
Let us not forget that in popular music there is a double product that is put on
the market: the music itself, the songs, but also the figure, the image, of the
artist. And the synergy that occurs between these two “products” can generate
all kinds of variations and a great amount of interpretative possibilities from the
field of cultural studies in general, or from a feminist perspective in particular.
Marina Tornero Tarragó’s essay is an attempt to chart the different ways in
which the figure of Carmen, originally from the eponymous novel by Prosper
Merimée, has become an important symbol of the representation of a certain
kind of woman. Of course, as Tornero Tarragó describes, this is a rather tricky
issue, beginning with the stereotypical setting which pervades the original work
of Merimée, and coming down through the cultural history of the nineteenth-
and twentieth-century, and into the latest versions of this character already in
the twenty-first century. After a survey of the main types of representations of
this female character, Tornero Tarragó focuses on its, until now, latest version,
23I want my money back
that of Beyoncé’s take on this iconic woman and, as some sort of turn of the
screw for the coming together of high and low cultures, her participation in the
campaign “The Joy of Pepsi”.
Beyoncé is not the only popular singer that has participated in an advertising
campaign for some commercial firm. As Rocío Cobo-Piñero shows in her study
of Nina Simone, the Afro-American jazz singer also found herself involved in
such a commercial event, although this time not as a real presence but through
one of her songs, which eventually became the song by which most people
know Simone. As Cobo argues, the use of this song implied the reconstruction of
Simone’s image in a fashion that had very little to do with the image which the
singer has struggled all her life to project, that of the Civil Rights campaigner
and of the artist that underlines her political commitment in relation to a number
of important issues in the society of her time. For Cobo-Piñero, the chronicle
of the Civil Rights Movement that one can discern seems to end up eclipsed by
the apparent glamour of a commercial advertising a very expensive perfume,
Chanel Nº 5.
In the last essay of this collection, Jiří Měsíc analyses the way in which
musical videos should be considered an intrinsic element in our critical approach
to the musical work of Leonard Cohen. Given the vast production of songs by
the Canadian singer and poet, Měsíc provides a rather extensive chronological
survey of the different periods of such production and the way it has been
given a visual representation. But apart from describing the evolution of that
relationship between the song and the musical video, Měsíc is also interested in
establishing a connecting link that runs through the work of Cohen, which is
also present in the visual versions of it. Měsíc refers to this link as the Shekhinah,
a term which he takes from Judaism to refer to some sort of feminine aspect of
G-d. Having identified this feminine presence, Měsíc uses it as a kind of leitmotif
that runs through the whole work of Cohen and which sheds a new light on
heretofore apparently trivial or worldly themes.
And now one for the road: this volume arises from friendship, from the
relationship between two friends who periodically meet to share their ideas
about the movies or series they watch, or the novels they read, making mutual
recommendations for their entertainment, their fun, and frequently to illustrate
their classes. And all this while sharing a cup of coffee. This volume is, therefore,
an invitation to this hypothetical hypocrite lecteur to bring up a chair and join
the conversation, with or without a cup of coffee, to consider and perhaps also
share the opinions and ideas of the authors collected in this volume. It is a
welcome to a friendly dialogue, especially in times of turmoil like those we live
24 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
in as we write this. It is also an invitation to that kind of relationship that allows
us to share the best of ourselves.
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26 Manuel Almagro-Jiménez / Eva Parra-Membrives
PART 1
CHILDREN’S STORIES FOR ADULTS
1 Kawaii, a term that means ‘cute’ in modern Japanese and that in the last few decades has
defined numerous pop-cultural products imported from Japan, is used here to refer to
the process of softening that is experienced by several of the characters in Heidi when
transferred to animated television series.
HEIDI GOES KAWAII1:
The Evolution of Fräulein Rottenmeier in the
Animated Versions of Johanna Spyri’s Novels
Lorena Silos Ribas
At its best an adaptation on screen can
re-envision a well-worn narrative for a new
audience inhabiting a very different cultural
environment
(Cartmell/ Whelehan, 2010: 23)
1 Introduction
Film and television adaptations of literary texts play a crucial role in the
reproduction of socio-cultural values and ideologies, and they also provide a rich
resource for examining how such values and ideological agendas are transmitted
generation after generation (see McCallum, 2018). Indeed, as Stam points out
(2000: 57), “the greater the lapse in time, the less reverence toward the source
text”, and the more likely it is that the latter will be reinterpreted through the
values of the present. Thus, adaptations may not only perpetuate cultural values
and assumptions related to the original text, but also offer a means by which
to re-interpret that text in a new sociocultural environment and reveal both
the concerns of the original and those of contemporary audiences. Nonetheless,
despite all alterations, an adaptation can be considered to remain faithful as
long as it maintains the main ideas and values conveyed in the original adapted
product (Stam, Raengo, 2005: 6), with which it is in permanent conversation.
