Over
150 years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson considered the meaning and function of the
intellectual in The American Scholar. He put forth the idea of the “One Man,” by
which he meant the complete person, or the person who embodies all dimensions
of human potential and actuality – professor, scholar, statesperson, artist. Emerson's intellectual, while enriched by the
past, should not be bound by books. His most important activity is action; to preserve
great ideas of the past, communicate them, and creates new ideas. He is the “world's eye,” communicating his
ideas to the world – not just out of obligation to his society, but out of
obligation to himself. Public action is
part of being the One Man, the whole person.
One
such public intellectual in our contemporary world is the neurologist Oliver
Sacks, who has devoted his long career to discover the ways about how people
think differently, and communicate his findings through a series of
best-selling works such as The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985). His recently-published
autobiography On the Move –
dramatized as a BBC Book of the Week
and available on the IPlayer at the following link (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b062jsmz)
– offers an honest account of his life, proving beyond measure how his medical
and psychological researches contributed significantly to his development as a
person. The title is ambiguous: Sacks
was perpetually “on the move” throughout his life, as he emigrated from the
United Kingdom to the United States, and indulged his passion for motor-cycling
across the country. Yet he was also
mentally “on the move” through his professional researches, as well as his
encounters with individual patients. He
learned how to learn – a process that is often difficult for anyone to acquire –
and subsequently describe that learning process through his books.
In
many ways Sacks’s books, including his autobiography, are classic works of
adaptation studies, proving beyond doubt how our encounters with people (as
well as texts, if we can call a patient a “test”) contribute significantly to
our personality development. We never
remain the same personalities; each encounter changes us in some way. The fact that someone like Sacks has been so
ready to share that process of development through his works proves the truth
of this. Although a brilliant scholar in
his own right, he has retained that humility separating the truly great from
the ordinary; a desire to share his findings, as well as change his views
according to the situation. In
Emersonian terms he has become “the world’s eye” through a combination of
openness, resilience and empathy.
I believe
that anyone involved in the practice as well as the theory of adaptation
studies has the potential to emulate Sacks’s achievement. It’s just a matter of emphasis; rather than
simply concentrating on the minutiae of textual transformation, or restricting
our focus to fan studies (or other aspects of the film studies umbrella), we
should be prepared to acknowledge that the practice of adaptation is
fundamental to our lives. Even when we
watch films, either in the cinema, on television, or online, we can develop the
kind of empathy that helped someone like Sacks gain an insight into human personality. If we can transfer that empathy into our
day-to-day exchanges, in the classroom, in the office or elsewhere, then we are
well on the way to learning something about how human minds work – especially our
own. Adaptation specialists should learn
how to be, as well as to think; to be prepared to climb down from their
scholarly ivory towers and learn how to learn through contact with everyone,
not just fellow adaptation specialists.
Not only will they acquire a greater understanding of human behaviour,
but they will learn how to adapt themselves to different situations; and hence
rehearse what most adapters do when they are faced with the demands of adapting
a text for cinematic or televisual purposes.
Many
of these ideas are not new; I have referred to them in several previous
blog-posts. But I do think that we need
to be able to widen our focus of attention away from the film-media-cinema
nexus and learn from the examples of others in different professions. Sacks understood this lesson well; his book Awakenings was later adapted into a
successful film with Robert de Niro (1990).
If we could understand how his researches into neuroscience gave him a
greater insight into the adaptive process, then perhaps we’d also acquire the
breadth of knowledge that can transform us into public intellectuals as well.
