A blog-post on my new book, published 14 Nov.. 2016
https://uwpress.wisc.edu/blog/
Friday, November 17, 2017
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Adapting Jules Verne for radio: AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
Around the World
in Eighty Days
by Jules Verne, dramatized by Terry James (1991). Dir. Janet Whittaker. Perf. Leslie Phillips, Jim Broadbent, Diana
Quick. BBC Radio 4 Extra, 19-22 Jun.
2017.
After
listening to this colorful dramatization of the Verne classic, I understood the
novel’s debt to classic picaresque adventures such as Don Quixote. Phineas Fogg
(Leslie Phillips) and Passepartout (Yves Aubert) are the Quixote and Sancho
Panza figures, while Princess Aouda (Diana Quick) is Dulcinea. Sergeant Fix (Jim Broadbent) is the classic
fly in the ointment, pursuing Fogg worldwide but failing to arrest him, despite
valiant efforts to obtain a warrant to do so.
In
truth the story of pure hokum, dramatizing late Victorian English attitudes to
other countries with wry humor. Verne
conceived Fogg as a curious middle-aged man of the confirmed bachelor variety,
apparently indifferent to everything and everyone and obsessed with the idea of
arriving in different ports on time. It
does not matter whether he is in India, Hong Kong, or the United States; he
believes that everything can be bought and sold for his benefit. In the modern era he might be perceived as a
classic supporter of the current government.
Leslie Phillips plays him with Rex Harrison-like suavity, but his air of
nonchalance is abruptly disturbed by Aouda’s presence. To his evident astonishment Fogg discovers
that he has amorous feelings for her; and the two finish the adaptation by marrying. So much for the ice-cool Englishman.
Passepartout
is played by Aubert as a rubber-ball like figure, whose capacity to overcome
adversity is apparently limitless. Some
of his adventures are explicitly comic (such as when he joins a group of Chinese
acrobats to make money), but he remains faithful to his “Master” throughout,
even though he finds some of Fogg’s mannerisms distinctly eccentric. A French author looks at the English, and
considers them very strange.
Janet
Whittaker’s production advances through two parallel narratives, delivered
directly to listeners by Passepartout and Fix.
Passepartout keeps a journal; Fix his police officer’s notebook. When these two documents are used as material
to keep the ship’s engine going on the final trip back from New York to
Liverpool, Princess Aouda takes over the narration. The technique of direct address helps us to
understand the characters’ attitudes to what seems a ludicrous
undertaking. Despite Fogg’s
inexhaustible energy, the idea of traveling the world in eighty days seems
preposterous. It is a tribute to the
characters’ resilience that the three narratives gradually alter in tone, as
Passepartout and Fix realize that the feat will be completed, whatever the
cost.
The
four parts are constructed as a series of picaresque episodes linked with
electronic music from Wılfredo Acosta that gives an otherworldly atmosphere to
the production. The attitudes and social
mores might be explicitly Victorian, but the tale is a wish-fulfillment
fantasy, a testament to human ingenuity and to three indomitable spirits.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Adaptation and Nation Conference: Edinburgh, June 2017
I
eagerly looked forward to this one-day conference held at Queen Margaret
University in Edinburgh on 22 June 2017.
I have been working on transnational audiences, and am currently
researching into how the meaning of the disputed term fidelity has become
contested in recent years with the move towards globalized approaches to
adaptation.
Jeremy
Strong (U. of West London)began the event with a lively presentation on French heritage cinema of
the late twentieth century and its influence on the British media. The images
of a prelapsarian world full of country lanes, with the people going home at
sunset after a day on the farm were seductive – so seductive, in fact, that
they formed the basis for well-known commercials such as that promoted by
Stella Artois. Strong also drew
attention to the success of Peter Mayle’s A
Year in Provence, which fueled the British public’s dream of getting away
from it all in France. The television
version, while not a success, is a good example of spectacle television,
designed to promote tourist images of the area.
Strong argued persuasively that this form of cinema was not realistic,
but formed part of a psychogeography dedicated to attracting a large fan
base. This psychogeography was childlike
as well as attractive, fulfilling dreams – perhaps nostalgic, perhaps
aspirational. Cultural specificities
were not significant; these dreams were transnational including familiar
conventions of sunsets, wistful music, countrified people and their animals.
Michael
Lawrence’s (U. of Sussex)piece on the Bollywood version of Wuthering Heights took up the transnational theme. Released in 1966 under the title Dil Diya Dard Liya, it starred Dilip
Kumar, a mainstay of Bollywood, and ran for 169 minutes. The film incorporates familiar melodramatic conventions
of love, marriage, heroism and villainy, interspersed with frequent musical
interludes. The script was built round
Kumar’s star image, with emotions worn on the sleeve. The film was successfully exported to Russia
and other areas but remained unknown to the majority of Western audiences. The links between Bollywood and the local
Turkish industry Yeşilçam are
palpable: the recasting of Western classics according to local conventions; the
use of music to enhance the films’ emotional effect; and the building of the
action round a genuinely local star.
Chi
Yun Shin’s (Sheffield Hallam U.)work on The Handmaiden
(2016) the Korean reboot of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith
(2002), followed a similar methodological path.
The Korean reboot is much more explicit than the source-text, and
transposes the action from Victorian England to Korea under Japanese colonial
rule. I think the Korean film is more of
a reboot than a remake, as director Park Chan-wook makes no attempt to rework
the novel but provides his own particular riff on the material. Local considerations take priority over
global issues. I’d like to have seen some
discussion of Aisling Walsh’s television adaptation of the Waters novel (2005),
especially the relationship of the neo-Victorian ambiance to Park’s use of
settings, both of which differ significantly from the novel. An article on this subject by Eda İpek Gündüz (Gaziantep U.) will appear in a forthcoming anthology on Value
in Adaptation, forthcoming from McFarland.
Carol
Poole’s (Edge Hill U.) paper on the various versions of War and Peace, including that of
Bondarchuk (1966) and the recent BBC version by Tom Harper (1966). Being pedantic, I’d I have liked a reference
or two to the 1956 version by King Vidotr with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn,
not to mention the famous 1972 television scripted by Jack Pulman with Anthony
Hopkins in the lead. What was perhaps
most evident from Poole’s piece was the elasticity of the source-test; it doesn’t
really matter about fidelity issues as the screenwriters reshape the material
according to culture-specific concerns.
I use the term “culture-specific” rather than “national”: as Poole
persuasively averred, it’s time to approach adaptation from as post-national
standpoint, taking into account the audiences’ inclinations. We all have our favorite adaptations of the
novel, shaped by our ages, background and relationships. Michael Stewart (Queen Margaret U.) argued persuasively that
Alice Munro’s short story “Silence” (2004), transformed into Almodóvar’s Julieta (2016), was in a sense
unadaptable. Following Jeremy Strong’s
argument about the imaginative constructions of Provence, Stewart believed that
Almodóvar enacted his own vision of Canada, a world of darkness and
threat. The source-text provides a
source of inspiration for an idiosyncratic idea of nationhood that tells us
more about the director’s imagination than Munro’s writing. Historical issues – as constructed through
the sets and costumes, for instance – assume a secondary role. Stewart’s piece reminds us to approach each
text on its own merits rather than applying a prearranged framework shaped by
our previous knowledge of adaptation.
The same also applies to Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013): Robert Munro (Queen Margaret U.) argued that the director
emptied the Glasgow setting of any local significance, and thereby prompting us
to reflect on humanity’s relationship to the environment – maybe even the
ecosphere? Perhaps there is further opportunities for the exploration of the
film from an eco-critical angle.
Another
piece by Douglas McNaughton (U. of Brighton) concentrated on Scottish films. McNaughton considered T2: Trainspotting (2017) as an updating of the first film, released
in 1996. The comparison reminded us of
the effect of time on our perceptions: the later version of Trainspotting offered a sentimental view
of the first film, with the once-young protagonists having to cope with the
confines of middle age – a double-edged sword if there ever was one. McNaughton’s piece also confirmed about how
perceptions of adaptations change over time: I remember viewing the premiere of
the first film, when some members of the audience visibly recoiled at some of
the grislier sequences (especially those set in a urinal). Now the roseate glow of nostalgia hangs over
that material, as we look back to a pre-Brexit world whose inhabitants enjoyed
a freedom of self-expression denied to them now.
The
conference also offered a series of reflections on the concept of value. Picking up on Stewart’s piece, Sarah Artt (Edinburgh Napier U.)argued whether there had been any successful adaptations of Jean Rhys’
novels. The answer is very much a matter
of opinion – especially if radio adaptations and/or readings are taken into
account – but Artt’s piece revealed the intrinsic role played by audiences in
the adaptive act. How they react to
particular films tell us a lot about their aesthetic preoccupations, and what
they expect from the idea of “nation” and “nationalism.” They are in perpetual dialogue with the
cinema and television producers and directors looking to make profits on their
investments. Shelley Galpin’s (U. of York)piece on Far
From the Madding Crowd (2015), which she freely admitted was her favorite
adaptation of the novel. Participants
from a different generation begged to differ, preferring John Schlesinger’s
1967 version instead. We could also
bring Nicholas Renton’s 1988 television version into the discussion. What is perhaps more instructive is that
fidelity issues in this discussion are very much shaped by individual
preferences, which are in turn shaped by social background, age and cinematic
experience. Adaptation is not simply
focused on textual issues, but needs to take ethnographical issues into
account. The same also applied to
Victoria Lowe’s (U. of Manchester) discussion of the British New Wave films of the late Fifties
and Sixties. The generic term “British
New Wave” is contested; likewise our opinion of the films produced around that
time and the impact they made on British film history. As Lowe spoke, I kept thinking of the recent BBC
Radio 4 season, also entitled the “British New Wave,” which overlooked the
films’ theatrical origins altogether.
Yet I don’t think such differences are a matter for dispute – they simply
indicate the ways in which perceptions depend on a variety of factors,
personal, industrial as well as cultural.
What
I found most enlightening about the whole seminar is the way in which apparently
disparate cultural products are linked transhistorically as well as
transnationally. It is up to adaptation
scholars to unpick those links that tell us a lot about the way people react to
individual films as well as learning more about how and why such films are
produced. Strictly formal procedures,
such as the relationship between source and target-texts, have been supplanted
in the adaptation studies’ agenda by a concentration on conditions of
production and reception and how they have changed over time and space. There are far more opportunities for
constructive dialogue between adaptation scholars with different research
interests – dialogue that will tell us more about transnational flows.
This
is an exciting time for adaptation studies; and it is a testament to the
quality of the papers delivered at the Edinburgh event that this sense of
excitement throughout the whole day. Thanks are due to the co-organizers of this event, Michael Stewart and Robert Munro, as well as the participants for a memorable event.
Laurence
Raw
28 Jun. 2017
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Spontaneous Speechmaking
As
a veteran attendee of conferences over the last quarter century, I have become
accustomed to a series of familiar rituals.
The speakers gather round a table on the podium or speaking area, and
one by one they deliver their papers, invariably accompanied these days by
PowerPoint presentations of variable quality.
Sometimes the slides bear very little relationship to the arguments
presented; on other occasions presenters copy their entire paper on to the
slides, forcing the audience to wonder why they are speaking at all. We could readily discover what their topic
might be through reading the slides.
Nine
days ago I delivered a piece in Thessaloniki, Greece, on the audience’s role in
adaptation. I planned it roughly
according to a paper I had recently completed on a similar topic. I would begin with an explanation of the
popular appeal of Yeşilçam films in
Sixties and Seventies Turkey, concentrating in particular on the symbiotic
relationship established between performers, producers, and their
audiences. I would then survey the
changes in the Turkish film industry in the Nineties, when Yeşilçam died out and the television serial, or dizi, dominated the ratings on public
service as well as private broadcasting.
I would finish with a survey of attitudes in various countries towards
the diziler, which have proved both
financially as well as popularly successful.
I had spent several hours putting together a PowerPoint presentation
which I hoped would not fall into the kind of methodological traps I have
previously described (https://www.slideshare.net/laurenceraw/literacies-and-transnational-audiemces).
I
was due to speak at 13.30. I went to the
morning sessions, secure in the knowledge that I had prepared my presentation
and could answer questions on it. As the
session unfolded, however, it became increasingly clear that other
presentations were focusing on subjects resembling mine. A Portuguese colleague offered a fascinating
insight into the early days of the local film industry, where the combination of censorship
and capitalism led to an idiosyncratic product very similar in terms of content
and form to Yeşilçam. Another presenter, this time from Greece,
looked at the contemporary reception of Bill Haley’s film Rock Around the Clock (1956), and its potential for generating “moral
panics” (as far as the media were concerned, that is). Precisely the same thing had occurred in the
Turkish film industry, especially when films dealt with family and marital issues.
I
began to write furiously while the other presentations were delivered. I decided to ditch much of what I had
previously prepared and restructure my presentation around the relationship
between industry, performers and audience.
Following Simone Murray’s arguments, I wanted to show how the form of a Yeşilçam drama did not depend so much on
the screenwriter, nor on textual issues such as fidelity, but rather on what
the audiences expected. Hence the
fondness for recycling familiar melodramatic plots centering on good and
evil. I followed that with the piece on
audience reaction to the diziler
outside Turkey, to show how audiences in different territories constructed
different evaluations of the same material, both in informal conversations and
online discussion groups. I ended up by
calling for more systematic studies of the role of audience, especially in a digitized
world where local and global issues were often inseparable.
The
only snag was that I had to present this spontaneously with the minimum of
notes to work from. The traditional
props of the conference speaker – the PowerPoint presentation and the
elaborately worded written lecture – were unavailable to me. As my therapist once memorably said, I had to
“fly by the seat of my pants.”
I
underestimated the resilience of the human spirit in such situations. I talked to the audience as if I was talking
to friends in a teashop, keeping my tone conversational, and returning
periodically to my main themes (adaptation and industry, audience studied) to
aid comprehension. Subconsciously I felt
my head moving from right to left, trying to make sure I looked at every one of
the audience, even though they seemed somewhat blurred (I was wearing my
reading rather than my distance eyeglasses).
As I warmed to my theme, idea after idea came to my mind; I could
readily quote the previous presenters’ work on Portuguese films to suggest
transnationality). Conclusions have
always been my bugbear, but in this presentation the ending appeared perfectly
logical: we need to expand our frame of reference in adaptation studies to
include nonwestern cinemas and their histories.
I
felt good at the end. For someone who experiences problems of self-esteem,
especially with the deterioration in my voice, this was particularly
gratifying. Only the week before the BBC
rang me to make a comment in one of their film programs, but decided not to use
my owing to my croaky voice that was not suitable for the airwaves. Even though the producer denied it fervently,
I understood that he was not telling the truth.
No matter: in Thessaloniki I had dealt with my fears and spoken to the
best of my ability.
There
is no real moral to this story, other than to suggest that adaptation studies
bears an intimate relationship to individual psychology. Sometimes you need to adapt yourself to the
exigencies of an unforeseen situation.
The experience can prove stressful, but the results highly beneficial.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Cultural studies in Turkey Twenty Years on: Reminiscences and Reflections
Cultural Studies in Turkey Twenty Years On:
Reminiscences and Reflections
In
the mid-Nineties I worked with the British Council as an educator/ innovator
charged with the introduction of British Studies into university
curricula. This was an initiative
initiated by my then boss, Alan Mountford, to try and promote an understanding
of and an empathy towards Britain, in a fashion similar to that of American
Studies two decades previously. I worked
closely with Susan Bassnett, then the head of the Department of Translation and
Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, to develop a series
of curricula that could be taught both at the Council and local institutions.
The experiment worked extremely well at Hacettepe University, Ankara; and
provoked other initiatives at Ege and Marmara Universities, among others.
As
time passed, so the topic of discussion shifted from British Studies into
cultural studies. I was quite happy with
this development, as I was not at ease with the Fortunes of War scenario of being parachuted into local
institutions with the sole object of “promoting an identification with British
cultural products,” as one British Council mandarin was fond of
suggesting. As well as developing the
Hacettepe program, I became involved in a far bigger initiative – the Ege
University Cultural Studies Seminar, organized annually (later biennially) in
the Departments of English and American Studies at the İzmir university. I do not remember how it came about, but I
had known Gülriz Büken (of the American Studies Association of Turkey) for
several years – and shared an office with her for two years at Bilkent – and
enjoyed good relations with Günseli Sönmez İşçi and Ayşe Lahur Kırtunç of
Ege. Anyway, we got together and planned
the first seminar in 1996, with guest speakers provided by the British Council
and the Cultural Wing of the American Embassy.
The seminar attracted over one hundred participants, and the proceedings
published as Cultural Studies in the UK
and the US.
I
was involved in three further seminars, the last in 1999 when I parted company
with the British Council on Popular
Cultures. By the time I had finished
the event had established itself as a major force in the local calendar of
events devoted to literary/ cultural events.
Debates flourished between what we might term the forces of traditionalism
and those interested in becoming “movers and shakers.” The traditionalists
argued that cultural studies might erode the status of literary curricula, and
thereby endanger the modernist project that had permeated Turkish cultures ever
since the creation of the Republic.
Others claimed that cultural studies was a nothing subject devoted to
the study of ephemeral material such as popular cultures, music and video. I was firmly part of the movers and shakers
group, in the belief that cultural studies could alter the way we think and
reflect on our lives and the texts that represent them. My academia.edu site (https://laurenceraw.academia.edu/research#culturalstudies) is full of
articles setting forth my theoretical position.
I believed in the intercultural approach, where learners were introduced
to the foreign culture and encouraged to compare it with aspects of their own
culture. After sufficient exposure to
the foreign culture, they could acquire what is termed intercultural
competence, putting them in the position of being able to negotiate between
cultures from a privileged position.
This methodology appeared to work, but whether I adopted a similarly
intercultural perspective in my pedagogy is debatable. The British Council representative should
uphold British interests.
Yet
things moved swiftly. In 1995-6 I taught
a Master’s course in Hacettepe, “Introduction to Cultural Studies.” It was a particularly popular year for
learners, with sixteen registered for the course, all but two of them Hacettepe
graduates. That popularity was in many
ways attributable to the efforts of Can Abanazır, a member of the Hacettepe
English department with an abiding interest in the discipline. He was something of a cult figure, invariably
dressed in black, with research interests in science fiction and rock
music. He worked with me at the British
Council, and delighted learners with his easy familiarity and language (Turkish
and English) peppered with swear-words.
That year was a remarkable one; my course was particularly successful in
theoretical and comparative terms. I
split the group into two – one came to the British Council on Thursdays, the
other on Saturdays. The level of
discussion was particularly high – so much so, in fact, that it spilled out
from the classroom into Yeşil Vadi, the kebab restaurant and bar next to the
Council offices.
I
think the reason the classes worked so well had a lot to do with a
learner-centered approach, where learners discussed the material in groups and
subsequently fed into a larger group discussion. This approach was very different from the
more traditional lecture-based pedagogy that dominated their lives at
Hacettepe. That method certainly has its
advantages, especially as a means of transmitting information about a foreign
culture to learners largely unaware of Britain and British ways of life. For a group of graduate learners, however,
the need to hear their voices rather than mind seemed especially significant:
cultural studies is a bottom-up discipline rather than a top-down. Some learners were a little diffident at
first, as if they believed that what they had to say lacked value; as the semesters
unfolded, however, they became more and more confident in themselves. By the 1997 İzmir seminar many of them had
decided to make the trip down to the Aegean coast, and two of them (Sinem
Bingöl and Aykut Uluer) presented a paper on Rudyard Kipling’s family home
Bateman’s (79-85). In the following year
Defne Ersin, Rahşan Giritli, Deniz Örücü, Hanzade Ayas followed suit. It seemed that cultural studies was on the academic
map, with Hacettepe in one of the pole positions.
From
such beginnings new initiatives mushroomed.
Uluer, Ersin, Zeynep Özek and Cenk Erdil formed a Cultural Studies Study
Group (CSSG) that met fortnightly at one of their apartments to discuss methods
and matters related to the discipline over food and drink. The fact that I attended such meetings as
well kept the discussion going. Members
of the group toured to local universities; I remember one memorable Saturday
when a minibus took us all to Erciyes University in Kayseri in Central Anatolia. We had to leave at a fiendishly early hour
and enjoyed the pleasure of beer for breakfast.
Meanwhile Bingöl had been fortunate enough to obtain a Chevening
Scholarship from the British Embassy to do a Master’s in British Cultural
Studies as Warwick University.
Sadly
there were forces in the background whose principal aim seemed to be to limit,
if not curtail such initiatives altogether.
I remember one professor saying that the Hacettepe learners “belonged”
to their department, not to me; and it was incumbent on me to observe
established practices rather than instituting anything new. The learners I had worked with had to learn
about Britain, not about socio-political practices. This was a curious statement, especially
since another member of the same department participated in one of the courses
I ran at the British Council and thoroughly enjoyed herself. Such struggles were characteristic of all
cultural studies programs worldwide, especially those introduced into existing department;
they were mostly resolved by the number of learners applying for such courses,
rendering them both financially and academically profitable for the
institutions involved. Sadly for me (and
the learners), the solution at Hacettepe was far less satisfactory. When I left the Council it was suggested to
me in no uncertain terms by the Dean of the Faculty that my talents as a
cultural practitioner might be better used elsewhere.
Nothwithstanding
such reversals I continued to teach cultural studies, and felt extremely flattered
when I was invited to be one of the founding members of the Group for Cultural
Studies in Turkey (renamed the Turkish Cultural Research Group (Türkiye Kültür Araştırmaları). I attended their first conference at Middle
East Technical University (ODTÜ) in 2000, and was impressed by the variety and
scope of the papers presented. On the
other hand there were colleagues who resented my interest in cultural studies
in Turkey; my mere presence as an English person constituted a quasi-colonial
presence, especially when my spoken Turkish was not good enough to participate
effectively in the conference discussions.
One writer went so far as to accuse all foreigners doing cultural
studies in Turkey to be solely interested in their personal reputations. On this view I had attempted to convince the
learners that, as a foreigner, I was “superior” to my Turkish colleagues,
chiefly because of my origins in one of the countries where cultural studies
originated.
Cultural
studies has continued to flourish in many forms, although my personal research
agenda moved away from the discipline towards adaptation studies. The Turkish cultural studies group continues
to flourish, organizing conferences in Turkish as a way of countering the “incongruous”
situation of papers about Turkey presented in English at the Ege seminars
(Pultar 47). Cultural studies programs
flourish at Sabancı and Bilgi Universities in İstanbul, as well as İstanbul Şehir
University. The Ege seminars also
continue, with proceedings appearing soon afterwards, while Hacettepe still
runs its British Studies MA.
I had been to only one of the previous nine Ege
seminars, but was drawn to the topic of the recent event (“Narratives of Trauma”),
because I had recently experienced the trauma of a long illness and wanted to
hear what others had to say on the topic.
The organizers very kindly invited me to give a plenary speech, where I
would speak on the relationship between national and individual traumas, using
Clint Eastwood’s Invictus (2009) as
an example.
Time
had wrought its changes. I still teach,
but now work in a Department of Education with trainee learners wanting to
obtain formal teaching qualifications. I
am nearer sixty than forty, and age has given me a certain cachet. Whether it is deserved or not is not for me
to suggest, but I do have the capacity to look back on my past life and
understand the mistakes I might have made.
The British/ cultural studies initiative of the Nineties was a good one;
its legacy remains at Hacettepe, where learners are taught extremely well with
the emphasis placed on the relationship between source and target
cultures. The emphasis is not so much on
the intercultural but rather on the reflective: what can the study of the
target culture’s practices tell us about ourselves? What really struck me, however, was the
atmosphere at the Ege conference. The
attendees came from a variety of institutions across the country, as well as
foreign guests, for the most part they were willing to listen and discuss the
points raised in the papers without being involved in any disciplinary or other
arguments. There were plenty of
literature professor there, but they accepted without question the principle
that cultural studies might be different from and similar to literature. The post-paper discussions were conducted in
an atmosphere of community with everyone willing to listen to and contemplate
one another’s arguments. Some papers
were obviously better than others, but all the papers were given due
attention. In all my years attending the
cultural studies conference I had never seen participants so willing to forge a
community of purpose where listening assumed as much significance as talking.
Age
has taught me a lot. Close work with my
learner teachers has made me understand the traumas they experience when they
deliver papers. I understand just how
much it took for my Hacettepe MA learners to deliver papers at the Ege event
all those years ago. I also realize the
need for me to support them – not only listening to their work but looking for
the positive aspects all the time.
Emotional support is as important as academic support. In the British
Council years, my offer of emotional support was misinterpreted by other
professors as becoming “too close” to the learners – in other words, treating
them as friends rather than learners.
Understanding just what the process of offering support involves is true
“cultural studies” – it has nothing to do with national, ethnic or racial
similarities/ differences, but treating everyone as a human being with similar
emotions. We have to listen rather than
proselytize, be constructive rather than pontificate. Such strategies were alien to the older
professors in the late Nineties, but on the evidence of this year’s conference,
the academic environment has softened significantly.
I
gave my speech, based on the belief that I was going to talk from a personal
perspective informed by academic knowledge.
I talked about my illness and when it taught me about human
behavior. A problem aired is a problem
shared; if you are honest with someone, then they will be honest with you. I shared my frailties, not in the spirit of
asking for sympathy, but because I needed to do so for my own santé. As I spoke, I could feel the audience
empathizing – on at least two occasions they interrupted my speech to
applaud. I was amazed, even though I
tried my best not to show it. My speech
finished, and I was surrounded by learners and educators alike generously
thanking me for what I had done.
What
was this? Was this the same seminar
where I had once been treated as an intellectual pariah, a colonizing presence
preventing my colleagues from understanding their cultures? I left the lecture-hall and surveyed the
foyer where the participants were drinking their tea and coffee and talking to
each other. There was none of the
intellectual grandstanding characteristic of earlier seminars. Learner after learner came up to me and asked
questions; the perceived gap between themselves and their educators (that often
prevents them from communicating) assumed little or no significance for them.
I
suddenly realized – after many years of engagement – what “cultural studies”
actually is. While academic interventions past and present have established
complex agendas for the discipline, the true key to an understanding of “cultures”
and our relationship to them is the ability to listen and reflect. Questions of language might be useful for
communication, but understanding human behavior and human emotions are very
different. A sympathetic atmosphere at a
conference arises from a willingness to accept contradictory opinions and
scrutinize them, not to reject them.
Everyone should be treated fairly, from the youngest learner to the most
superannuated professor. In the late
Nineties this state of accepting others at face value was impossible to
achieve, as some colleagues believed themselves to be threatened by the upstart
cultural studies. Last week at the
conference the environment was, quite simply, unique.
I
had approached this conference with as much trepidation as learners might have
done twenty years ago. With a damaged
voice and a lack of confidence in my powers to communicate over a sustained
period, I wondered whether I could do the speech at all, especially as this was
my first conference out of Ankara (my hometown) for eight months. At the end I experienced a form of elation I’d
seldom previously understood: the subliminal aim of cultural studies had been
revealed to me. It took a long time, but
the knowledge will hopefully stimulate further interventions.
WORKS
CITED
Bingöl, G. Sinem,
and Aykut Uluer. “Reinvention of Rudyard
Kipling and Bateman’s.” The History of Culture: The Culture of
History. Ed. Laurence Raw, Gülriz
Büken, and Günseli Sönmez İşçi. 79-95. Ankara: The British Council, 1998. Print.
Pultar,
Gönül. “Cultural Studies in Turkey: The
State of the art.” Culture Unbound 5 (2013): 43-71.
Friday, March 17, 2017
The Power of Radio: H. G. Wells' THE WAR OF THE WORKDS
Radio drama within the United Kingdom continues to flourish, despite being largely neglected by the mainstream media, both in print sand online Apart from a few paragraphs in weekly radio columns, there is not much to read.
This oversight seems a terrible shame, given that radio drama adaptations can provide critical insights that the visual media can only dream about.
Such was the case with Melissa Murray's dramatization of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, a two-parter broadcast on 4 and 11 March 2017. There were no fancy special effects: instead the Martians' presence was signaled by an ominous-sounding hum forming a backdrop to the action. Director Marc Beeby was far more concerned with the effect of the catastrophe on humanity. Robert Fenton (Blake Ritson) began the adaptation as a confident, well-ınformed scientist determined to root out the aliens and save the country. By the end, he had been reduced into a gibbering wreck, because of the sheer strain of trying - and failing - to accomplish his quest.
Beeby communicated his state of mind through an ingenious process of sonic layering. As he talked about his state of mind in a series of lengthy speeches, we could hear the hum of the Martians, the strangled screams of their human victims, together with the squelching sound of Fenton's boots on the saturated ground.
Thematically speaking the production looked both backwards and fıorwards into history. As the Martians overran a small village - sıgnaled through muffled screams coupled with Fenton's observations to the listeners - we realize that the Victorian world of security and order had collapsed. No one knew what to look forward to in a world dominated by superior beings who treated humanity as food and caught them in large nets before eating them.
Yet Beeby suggested that this was actually the fault of humanity itself. They had happily existed in a colonial world, treating other peoples with as much contempt as the Martians were treating them. Now the British were experiencing their comeuppance as they were the victims of a cannibal-like race of übermenschen. The Nietszchıan reference was palpable. We felt distinctly uncomfortable, as we realized that what the United States has been recently doing, in terms of restricting immigration, is precisely what the British were doing over a century and a half ago. Perhaps the American government ought to watch out in case they suffer a ssimilar fate.
This theme was played out purely through sound and dialogue: the mounting hysteria of Fenton contrasted with Billy's (Samuel James') insouciance in the face of catastrophe. Billy seemed perfectly willing to embrace dystopia, in the belief that its presence was inevitable and could not be removed.
Although the Martiand eventually departed, they left a world that could never be the same. Deprived of its self-respect, its pride, and even its place-names, it was a place that no one respected. Fenton discovered this to his cost as he returned home to find his wife Margaret (Sanchia McCormack) pottering about their house as if nothing had happened. In true British fashion, she had simply suppressed the past and resolve to live a Voltairean life cultivating her own garden, paying no attention to the outside world.
With no gargantuan special effects and minimal use of music, Beeby's adaptation underlined the power of the human voice to communicate the theme of the novel. This was a psychological/ historical drama rather than science fiction, revealing more about the source-text than I ever could have imagined.
This oversight seems a terrible shame, given that radio drama adaptations can provide critical insights that the visual media can only dream about.
Such was the case with Melissa Murray's dramatization of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, a two-parter broadcast on 4 and 11 March 2017. There were no fancy special effects: instead the Martians' presence was signaled by an ominous-sounding hum forming a backdrop to the action. Director Marc Beeby was far more concerned with the effect of the catastrophe on humanity. Robert Fenton (Blake Ritson) began the adaptation as a confident, well-ınformed scientist determined to root out the aliens and save the country. By the end, he had been reduced into a gibbering wreck, because of the sheer strain of trying - and failing - to accomplish his quest.
Beeby communicated his state of mind through an ingenious process of sonic layering. As he talked about his state of mind in a series of lengthy speeches, we could hear the hum of the Martians, the strangled screams of their human victims, together with the squelching sound of Fenton's boots on the saturated ground.
Thematically speaking the production looked both backwards and fıorwards into history. As the Martians overran a small village - sıgnaled through muffled screams coupled with Fenton's observations to the listeners - we realize that the Victorian world of security and order had collapsed. No one knew what to look forward to in a world dominated by superior beings who treated humanity as food and caught them in large nets before eating them.
Yet Beeby suggested that this was actually the fault of humanity itself. They had happily existed in a colonial world, treating other peoples with as much contempt as the Martians were treating them. Now the British were experiencing their comeuppance as they were the victims of a cannibal-like race of übermenschen. The Nietszchıan reference was palpable. We felt distinctly uncomfortable, as we realized that what the United States has been recently doing, in terms of restricting immigration, is precisely what the British were doing over a century and a half ago. Perhaps the American government ought to watch out in case they suffer a ssimilar fate.
This theme was played out purely through sound and dialogue: the mounting hysteria of Fenton contrasted with Billy's (Samuel James') insouciance in the face of catastrophe. Billy seemed perfectly willing to embrace dystopia, in the belief that its presence was inevitable and could not be removed.
Although the Martiand eventually departed, they left a world that could never be the same. Deprived of its self-respect, its pride, and even its place-names, it was a place that no one respected. Fenton discovered this to his cost as he returned home to find his wife Margaret (Sanchia McCormack) pottering about their house as if nothing had happened. In true British fashion, she had simply suppressed the past and resolve to live a Voltairean life cultivating her own garden, paying no attention to the outside world.
With no gargantuan special effects and minimal use of music, Beeby's adaptation underlined the power of the human voice to communicate the theme of the novel. This was a psychological/ historical drama rather than science fiction, revealing more about the source-text than I ever could have imagined.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
THE GREAT GATSBY = A Study in Undergraduate Adaptation
Two weeks ago I have a paper
via Skype to a conference in Croatia, an experience that gave me the chance to practice
what I preach in pedagogical terms. I
talked about my classes in adaptation studies, their purpose and their stated
outcomes designed to benefit learners and educators alike.
Four days later I resumed my
teaching duties at Başkent. I have been
only one course to teach to allow me time to recover from the series of
illnesses I’ve experienced this winter, including a lung infection, a third recurrence
of my thyroid cancer, two detached retinas and the removal of two rotten teeth.
After that lot, I have to admit that I was apprehensive of entering the
classroom once more. My voice has
improved, but I now have to wear eyeglasses, both for reading and seeing in the
distance. This is the first time I have
ever worn them in my life. I also walk a
little slower to build up muscles in my legs that were wasted during
hospitalization. For the first time ever
I now realize that I’m aging; in two years I will reach my seventh decade.
As I went into the class for
the first time, I was genuinely scared.
I was no longer the loud-voiced, charismatic figure of old, but someone
who needed the learners’ support to make the class work. When I talked about collaboration in my
Croatia talk, I never realized just how important this would be in the
future. Now I could not see the learners’
faces without my distance glasses, and I must have looked a little wizened to
them.
An adaptational process had
taken place, but one that was not of my own or the learners’ making, especially
as I no longer possessed the vocal strength to teach without a portable
microphone. For the first ten minutes of
the first lesson, myself and the learners regarded one another with a kind of
benevolent suspicion; I had taught them before when they were freshmen and
women, but I wasn’t the same person any more.
Then the atmosphere changed: I asked the learners to do a warm-up
activity prior to their studying Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, and they set about constructing a role-play with
relish. Dividing themselves into small
groups of four – without my asking them to – they found copies of the text on
their smartphones and began to discuss what to do.
I was quite simply blown
away. I had taught this group for their
entire first year, and they had been noticeably reluctant to do any role-play
or dramatic activities, or to engage in independent work through group
interaction. Now they were happily
chattering away amongst one another, apparently oblivious to my presence. I could circulate round the classroom and
speak to them in a quiet voice (I can’t speak any other way without a
microphone), offering suggestions when called for. It was as if they had understood my physical
limitations while trying to provide spaces for me to communicate. The preparation for the role-play went on and
on – for thirty minutes at least – before they all announced that they were
ready to perform.
I watched as they improvised
various situations, using their coats, books and bags for various dramatic
purposes. This was truly theater based
on the “two planks and a passion” principle, where no props are required except
the most basic elements, and enthusiasm helps us forget the performance’s
shortcomings. To say they were
enthusiastic is an understatement; they went about their tasks with relish,
while the learners in the audience offered moral support through laughter and
by taking photographs and/or films on their smartphones. The class-time sped by, and by the end the
learners were filing out of the room chattering eagerly amongst themselves,
while I was left in a state of euphoria, wondering what on earth I had just
experienced.
My language might be slightly
hyperbolic, but the experience was quite unlike anything I had known before in
a lengthy teaching career. The learners
had quite literally looked after me, by making sure I was sufficiently
entertained by their role-plays while ensuring that I did not have to talk too
much. We talk blithely of “learner-centered”
teaching, but for me this class had been a classic example of “flipping” –
turning the lesson over to the leaners = with minimum educator input. I realized just how much learners could
construct classes on their own, and in the process acquire an enhanced
understanding of the power of negotiation and collaboration.
The same phenomenon has
resurfaced in the last two classes with the same group. Today they decided to draw pictures of scenes
from Gatsby, and use the experience
to construct their own dramas depicting the brittle relationship between Tom
and Daisy Buchanan, which for them had distinct echoes of the soap-operas that
dominate local television.
How can we assess this kind of
learning? I constantly read articles about
the standardization of education, with assessment procedures dominated by
figures and league tables. I make no
apologies for being quixotic, but I believe what we have done in class promotes
the kind of engagement, learning, and adaptation that no exam-based program
could provide. So there.
Laurence
Raw
9
Mar. 2017
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Questions of/ about Adaptation
Long experience of participation on the conference circuit
has given me a jaundiced view if question-and-answer sessions. The chair throws
out an invitation, which either attracts a deafening silence, or encourages
certain colleagues to grandstand in an attempt to prove their superior
knowledge of a topic and thereby humiliate the speaker. Alternatively the discussion can turn to
issues only incidentally related to the basis subject, requiring a firm
intervention by the chair to drag the proceedibgs back on course.
I am not implying that all panels take this form, but I
often get disappointed at conferences with the number of squandered learning
opportunities.
When I experience an “aha” moment during conference
questions, it is something ro celebrate.
Yesterday I gave a talk to the Adaptation Studies conference in Osijek,
Croatia. My long illness - which interrupted my work as well ad the flow of
blog-posts - prevented me dron traveling there, so I recorded the talk whixh
was subsequently transferred to YouRube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Kl9ytdrD8. The participants watched it yesterday and
asked me questions via Skype.
I was more than a little apprehensive. What if the Skype did
not work properly, and how could I cope with the effects of my eye operation,
where I could not identify people in this middle distance? When the session
began, my fears were confirmed: I could make out only a few of the
participants’ faces.
I decided to practise what I preach and listen very
carefully. I also resolved to ask questions if I could so as to find out a
little more about Adaptation Studies in another region.
The outcome was unexpectedly revelatory. I talked about some
of my other activities - for example, a dramatization of Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM
where some learners dressed up as the farm animals and devised their own animal
languages. As I explained, this form of adaptation was designed to increase
communicational abilities by showing how we don’t necessarily need the sane
discursive and linguistic forms to understand one another.
When I asked the participants what they had sone in their
classes, the responses were astonishing.
They had produced versions of MEMENTO and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, using a
variety of domestic materials and linguistic varieties.
As I listened, i understood the value of questioning as a
means of discovering examples of classroom practice that colleagues might not
want to discuss in more formal contexts.
Tone is important: the questioner does not want to score intellectual
points but genuinely wants to learn more, just like the participants who have
just listened to the presentation. It's a marter of mutual respect; the more we
listen to each other and ask genuine questions, the more rewarding the
conference experience.
This occasion represented something of a comeback for me.
After nearly five months of frustration, it was gratifying to climb back onto
the academic roller-coaster, even if I am not yet fully fit. The Osijek conference
confirmed for me the importance of empathy - listening and questioning with
humility.
For giving me this opportunity I am heartily grateful to
everyone associated with the Osijek event.
Hopefully I’ll be fit if the university decides to organize something
sinilar.
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