A Theory of Adaption: The Question of Fidelity

As a reader Hutcheon’s Theory of Adaption makes me nervous, and a little indignant. It suggests that ‘fidelity’ to the original is not as important as it is made out to be.  I hate the idea of someone taking a beloved story that I have treasured, and changing it to reflect their own feelings and interpretation. What about what it has meant to me? What about the way it touched me, changed my way of thinking, or embodies my childhood? It doesn't seem right to so freely use a story that was created by someone else, and treasured by so many, for a single person’s creative expression.

This attitude and these fears are what any artists attempting an adaption must struggle with from the fans of an original. Hutcheon brings this up in the last pages of her first chapter. She also brings to light, with some annoyance, the “unproductive nature” of that “morally loaded rhetoric of fidelity and infidelity used in comparing adaptions to “source” texts”.  Most discussions surrounding the quality of an adaption are about how well it stuck to the original. Any significant deviation from the ‘source’ is viewed with a righteous indignation, as if a holy text has been selfishly used by the unenlightened.

Hutcheon brings into question the necessity for fidelity. She explains that adaption is a creative work, and a creative expression separate from the original. The change in medium will change the way in which a story can be told. Each adaption must be viewed as “. . .its own palimpsestic thing”.  It is therefore impractical, and unproductive to judge an adaption solely based on fidelity. While this does not give adapters leave of responsibility to an original, it does give them creative freedom to a new way of expressing a story.

While as a reader adaption makes me nervous,  Hutcheon’s Theory of Adaption makes me excited as a writer. .  I love the idea of an adaption being an artist’s interpretation of a beloved work. I love the idea of a film being able to express “. . .things that could be conveyed also in the language of words;  yet it says them differently”. It is a beautiful way to express the power of a story, by changing the way people look at it.

Questions:

1). If infidelity does not necessarily constitute a bad adaption, exactly what does?

2).How important is it to maintain ‘author’s intent’ in an adaption, whatever the change in storyline?