Hutcheon When Where

As many of you have discussed, in Hutcheon’s focus on Carmen when she dissected the when and where in the context of adaptations helped me to understand the power that context actually has. What I found particularly intriguing was the discussion of racializing/deracializing. Specifically, when Hutcheon discusses the power of the actress (or actor) that they have on the way an adaptation perceives was a point that I had never thought about it. In her text, she talks about casting Beyoncé or Madonna as the role of Carmen, and clearly, these women would cast extremely polar contexts. It reminded me of the previous text about film analysis where they discussed the power that stars bring into movies. As Madeline noted about Sherlock, sometimes it is simply the face of an actress/actor that can attract many viewers, and by that power films, television shows, plays, operas – whatever adaptation of the sort can gain status and significance at a particular time simply because of who is the lead role. What does this say about society? To me, it reveals how we are driven to be mesmerized by the “Hollywood star” still, and how the attraction and sometimes obsession of celebrities can influence us to perceive things in ways we normally wouldn’t (for instance, people saying a really crappy movie is awesome just because some big shot name is in it). Evidently, the role of casting is more imperative to me than I realized, and in the future I look forward to analyzing why directors decide to cast whom they do.