University of Wales

Contemporary Women’s Novels and their Film Adaptations
(The Color Purple, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and The Piano – A Comparison)

by: Inken Beatrice Marianne Schaefer

Contents
 

Introduction ... 2

Chapter 1: The Color Purple ... 9

Chapter 2: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit ... 32

Chapter 3: The Piano ... 57

Conclusion: ... 73

Endnotes: ... 75

Bibliography ... 81

Introduction:

Throughout the last century, until now, several famous books that proved to be popular with their readers were converted into another more modern medium - the film. Whilst technology becomes more and more advanced, the whole film industry grows to become increasingly fashionable with the masses. Not only the film content itself captures its audience. Film is closely related to the media, which represents the world with an insight into the Hollywood business. Stars, scandals and gossip try to capture the potential consumer and advertisements attempt to manipulate the buyer. The whole film machinery reaches dimensions that books alone can never achieve. Given that books can only reach the reader’s ocular sense, the film itself appeals to the watcher’s visual senses. Film creates emotion not only through words but also through pictures and music. Yet, the reader is confronted with one talent that the watcher is missing: fantasy and inspiration of the mind.
Examples like the classic novels of Jane Austen show that producers repeatedly use literature as the basis for a successful film adaptation. Austen’s Emmaⁱ has been produced twice in 1996, as a blockbuster movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and as a television production starring Kate Beckinsale¹. The popularity of the story allows it to be repeatedly produced. However, these are only few examples of classic literature transformed on the screen. Literature has been used already before the age of film as scripts for animated adaptations. Shakespeare himself funded the ‘Globe Theatre’, which opened in 1599 and is even now famous for its plays and literature adaptations². As in the 16th century, present time entertainment aims for amusing the audience. Nonetheless, current films are primarily valued by their income rather than quality. Some parts of the film industry and especially Hollywood use literature as a model for movie scripts with the aim to produce a high grossing blockbuster rather than creating a piece of art. The commercialising of film and television forces the production to be successful for a wider audience.
In order to analyse the selected novels and their film adaptations it is necessary to understand the development of the film machinery throughout history and to look at theoretical aspects concerning film theory. Whilst inventions and progress from various countries have influenced the film industry, it is America that has founded and shaped the business until now. James Monaco divides the age of film into seven different eras³. He starts with a ‘Prehistory’, which acknowledges the inventions in media that lead to the interest of development in this area until 1895. ‘The Birth of Film’ marks the period from 1896 until 1915. Searle Kochberg summarises this era as follows: “During the first twenty years of its life, the film industry increased in scale from a cottage-scale enterprise to an established, popular mass medium”⁴. ‘Silent Film, the Births of Radio and Sound Film’ (1926-1930) is the title of the second period, which included the foundation of major film companies like United Artists and Columbia Pictures in America, UFA in Germany and, informally, the BBC in Great Britain. ‘The Great Age of Hollywood and Radio’ (1931-1945) confirmed the dominance of American filmmaking. Particularly, Hollywood became the symbol and Capital of international film production. The period from 1946 until 1960 is termed ‘The Growth of Television’. Film and television were very much influenced by the progress of technology, presenting the producers with a variety of new possibilities.
Yet, the new machinery also influenced publishers. With the introduction of paperbacks, books became cheaper and more easily available. In 1949, for the first time, there were more paperbacks sold than hard covers. ‘The Media World’ (1961- 1980) was the period of time that established the status of media. The industry boomed by expanding its areas and introducing more and more inventions such as cable and satellite TV. The last phase of development is ‘The Digital World’, the era from 1981 up to the present. Not only the film industry but also several other areas, such as publishing, production or communication, developed within the last twenty years to unthinkable proportions. Inventions like the DVDⁱⁱ, CD-ROMⁱⁱⁱ and digital television make the whole industry more competitive than it ever was before. The customer has become spoilt by choice; advertisement and commerce try to influence the masses into consuming their products. However, this growth is not over and it is likely that it never will be.

[...]

i To avoid confusion, this essay will refer to the books by underlining the title and mark the films by putting the name in italics. Nonetheless, underlined titles can also refer to both, film and novel.
ii Digital Versatile Disc: A high-density compact disk for storing large amounts of data, especially high-resolution audio-visual material.
iii Compact Disc Read-Only Memory: A compact disk that functions as read-only memory (see: www.dictionary.com for details).

1 http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8563/film/
2 http://shakespeare.eb.com/shakespeare/esa/660005.html
3 Monaco, James: How to Read a Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 570-601.
4 Kochberg, Searle: “Cinema as Institution”, in: Nelmes, Jill: An Introduction to Film Studies (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 17.