An Example of True Fidelity with the Source Text A Scanner Darkly

An Example of True Fidelity with the Source Text A Scanner Darkly Up until comparatively recent times, it used to account for a common assumption among critics that, in order for cinematographic adaptations of a particular literary piece to be considered successful, they must be thoroughly consistent with the original literary work’s discursive aspects. This point of view, however, can no longer be considered as such that represents an undeniable truth of True Fidelity with the Source Text: A Scanner Darkly specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The reason for this is quite apparent – the highly dynamic realities of a post of True Fidelity with the Source Text: A Scanner Darkly specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More What it means is that, in order for the film-adaptation of a particular novel to be considered successful, it has to be capable of ensuring a long-term survivability of the contained meme (a literary equivalent of the biological term ‘geneâ€℠¢), regardless of whether the author is being aware of it or not (Dawkins 206). Yet, just as it is being the case with the replication of genes, the reproduction of memes implies that their phenotypical manifestations must be necessarily adjusted to the surrounding social environment. In other words, it is specifically the discursively relevant cinematographic adaptations of literary texts, which can be defined truly successful. The watching of Linklater’s film leaves very few doubts, as to the fact that the director did succeed in ensuring the fidelity of the original novel’s memetic aspects. One of the reasons why it appears to be the case is that, even though that the director had made a deliberate point in altering some dialogues between the featured characters and in adjusting the deployed settings to be more reminiscent of the realities of the 21st century’s living, the main memetic ideas that are being promoted, throughout the film’s entirety, perf ectly correlate with that of the original novel. These ideas can be conceptualized as follows: American drug-subculture is embedded in many individuals on a genetic level, which is why there can be no victory in the morality/religion-fueled ‘war on drugs’, by definition. The governmental officials that most enthusiastically support an ongoing ‘war on drugs’, are in cahoots with drug-traffickers. It is a commonplace practice among police officers to use illegal narcotics on a regular basis. The perception of a surrounding reality, on the part of committed drug-addicts, never ceases being thoroughly distorted, which is why these people should not be subjected to any moral judgments. It is needless to mention, of course, that the majority of psychologically adequate persons would refer to these ideas as being self-evident. However, in order for the cinematographic representation of the earlier mentioned memetic ideas to be capable of generating a commercial income (this is why movies are being produced, in the first place), it needed to be contextually relevant, so that viewers would be able to relate to the conveyed semiotics emotionally.Advertising Looking for critical writing on art and design? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More This is exactly the reason why Linklater’s adaptation features a number of formal deviations from the original novel, which nevertheless do not undermine the extent of this film’s adaptational fidelity. For example, there is a memorable scene in the novel, in which the character of Barris reveals the price of his newly purchased sport-bike, â€Å"I saw it (bike) in the neighbors yard and asked about it and they had four of them so I made an offer of twenty dollars cash and they sold it to me† (Dick 63). Initially, this scene was meant to promote the idea that drug-addicts are being quite incapable of realizing the moral/legal implications of buying stolen goods. After all, the fact that he was only asked for twenty dollars, in exchange for a brand-new bike, did not alarm Barris even slightly. In Linklater’s adaptation, however, Barris brags about having bought this bike for fifty dollars (00.19.51). Nevertheless, this formal inconsistency between Linklate r’s film and Dick’s novel can be well explained, once we recall the fact that the purchasing power of twenty dollars in 1977 was much higher, as compared to what it is being the case nowadays. Therefore, while striving to protect the fidelity of his cinematographic adaptation, Linklater did not have any other choice but to ‘increase’ the price for the stolen bike by thirty dollars. In its turn, this allowed him to ensure that the members of contemporary viewing audiences would regard this particular element of the plot’s unraveling thoroughly plausible. Hence, a certain paradox – even though that, in respect of how he went about incorporating the earlier mentioned scene in his movie, Linklater did deviate from the original text, this did not undermine the overall extent of his adaptation’s fidelity. Quite on the opposite – by ‘increasing’ the price of Barris’s bike, the director was able to increase the exten t of film’s discursive soundness – hence, making it more cognitively ‘digestible’. Nevertheless, the memetic integrity of Linklater’s adaptation is not only being merely maintained by the fact that the director had rightly decided in favor of adjusting the characters’ monologues to be reflective of the realities of a contemporary living in America, but also by his decision to utilize the rotoscoping animation-technique, as a tool for ensuring the film’s expressionist appeal (Ward 60). There seem to have been a number of rational reasons, which prompted Linklater to proceed with taking advantage of this specific technique. First, rotoscoping makes possible for the director (which has a limited production-budget) to significantly enhance the background settings and to incorporate the elements of ‘super-naturalness’ into the otherwise conventional plot. Given the essence of Dick novel’s themes and motifs, Linklaterâ₠¬â„¢s decision to use this technique appears thoroughly justified. One of the reasons for this is that, while addressing life’s challenges, many of the novel’s characters never cease being affected by hallucinations: (Jerry Fabine is trying to wash off (Bob Arctor is perceiving Barris asimaginary bugs in the shower) an insect) Yet, in order for the on-screen hallucinogenic images to be considered emotionally powerful, they must radiate the spirit of Freudian ‘uncanny’, when viewers are being prompted to explore their own image-related unconscious fears and anxieties. This is where the utilization of rotoscoping comes in particularly handy. As Bouldin pointed out, â€Å"The rotoscoped image draws its power from its contagious contact with an original. Through this ‘material connection’ the rotoscoped animated body is able to conjure the uncanny, supplemental presence of an absent body (13). There is even more to it – without the deplo yment of this technique, the director would hardly be able to explore the motif of a ‘scramble-suit’, which does not only reemerge throughout the novel’s entirety, but defines the overall philosophical significance of Dick’s literary masterpiece (Hurwitz 27). Apparently, by having applied rotoscoping to the live-images, captured with the digital camera, Linklater was able to advance the novel’s original idea that, contrary to the assumption that secret agents’ anonymousness increases their chances to apprehend evildoers, it in fact causes them to adopt the existential mode of those they formally oppose. The second major motivation behind the deployment of rotoscoping, on Linklater’s part, appears to have been concerned with both: the director’s strive to remain faithful to the original novel and his proper assessment of Dick novel’s clearly expressionist nature. After all, one of this novel’s major characteristics is the lack of a logical/spatial interconnectedness between the featured events. This could not be otherwise, because Dick had made a deliberate point in narrating his story from the point of view of a person with the history of a long-term drug abuse. There is, however, even more to it – Dick’s novel does not only reflect the author’s personal disillusionment with the lifestyle of a drug-addict, but also his disillusionment with how the representatives of a ‘moral majority’ in America propose the society’s ‘unproductive elements’ should be dealt with. Apparently, the absence of a spatial continuity in the original novel signifies Dick’s frustration with the euro-centric idea of a linear progress; as such, that defines the actual meaning of the surrounding reality’s emanations. What it means is that, in order for the cinematographic adaptation of Dick’s novel to end up thoroughly faithful to the novel’ s original spirit, it also had to be shot in the expressionist manner, concerned with the affiliated directors’ strive to help viewers to experience the depicted reality’s subjective aspects (Gianetti 4). Unfortunately, this could only be accomplished at the expense of undermining the adaptation’s appeal to broader audiences. Yet, being an intellectually honest person, Linklater nevertheless decided in favor of constructing the adapted plot in a manner thoroughly adjusted to the original novel’s clearly defined expressionist spirit of a spatially undermined connectedness between the consequential scenes. As the director noted, â€Å"So much of Hollywood screenwriting and storytelling is all about keeping a highly toned or a sharply structured story. Youre supposed to chip along, one thing into the next, everything important, you know all that by-the-book storytelling. But Ive always been allergic to that; especially in a piece like this thats so fundame ntally a character piece† (Johnson 340). Apparently, it was specifically Linklater’s acute understanding of the discursive significance of the original novel’s expressionist aesthetics, which prompted him to go about ensuring his adaptation’s faithfulness by the mean of exposing viewers to the perceptually subjectualized developments of the plot. Therefore, there is nothing utterly surprising about the fact that there are a number of unmistakably expressionist editing-related overtones in Linklater’s adaptation. For example, the actual meaning of conversations that take place between the characters can rarely be grasped outside of what accounts for the film’s overall motif of existential frustration and social alienation. The same can be said about the significance of contextually disconnected images from hidden survey-cameras, to which viewers are being periodically exposed. These images are supposed to strengthen the sensation of a spatia l disorientation, on the part of viewers, so that their psychological state, while at the theater (or in front of a TV-screen), would be more attuned to the theme of identity-loss, explored in the original novel. A clearly dissonant musical score, used in Linklater’s adaptation, also contributes to the establishment of a proper perceptual mood in viewers rather substantially. Nevertheless, it is specifically the director’s deployment of the earlier mentioned rotoscoping technique, which contributes to the strengthening of this adaptation’s expressionist overtones more than anything else does – hence, increasing the extent of the concerned cinematographic piece’s fidelity to the original novel. The reason for this is quite apparent – there is a dreamlike quality to the motioned images on the screen, because they are being continually altered in a barely noticeable, yet persistent manner (Freedman 41). Finally, Linklater’s utilization o f rotoscoping helped to create prerequisites for his adaptation to be fully consistent with the process of Americans growing progressively secularized. As of late, the pace of this process has gained a particularly powerful momentum, due to the recent discoveries in the field of neurology that remove last remaining doubts, as to the fact that there is no such a thing as ‘soul’, which can exist outside of one’s body. After all, it nowadays does not represent much of a secret to just about every intellectually advanced individual that the workings of one’s psyche are defined by the essence of chemo-electric reactions inside of his or her brain. For as long as there are no obstacles on the way of chemo-electric reactions’ normal flow, the functioning of people’s consciousness allows them to experience the three-dimensional sensation of ‘self’ (when awake). However, even a slight mechanical damage to the cortex area of one’s b rain can produce a dramatic impact on the sense of his or her self-identity – often without affecting the integrity of the concerned individual’s ability to address cognitive tasks. Hence, the actual significance of the scene in Linlater’s adaptation, where Bruce (Arctor) realizes that there are tiny blue flowers (the source of substance D) growing amidst corn-plants at the New Path’s agricultural plantation – despite the fact that the institution’s other inmates do not seem to acknowledge these flowers’ presence. Because it has been mentioned earlier by the film’s secondary characters that, in order to be admitted to the New Path, former drug-addicts are being usually required to undergo a lobotomy (which could have explained their inability to see blue flowers), viewers are left with no choice but to wonder whether, despite Bruce’s newly acquired identity of a ‘human vegetable’, he is in fact continues to act as a police informer. Simultaneously, this prompts viewers to disregard the metaphysical/religious ideas as to what can be considered the actual roots of one’s consciousness, which in turn makes them more adapted to the highly secularized realities of post-modernity. The earlier provided line of argumentation, in regards to the discussed subject matter, leaves few doubts as to the fact that Linklater’s adaptation is not being only faithful to the original novel, but also to the currently ongoing process of Westerners getting rid of progress-impending prejudices, in regards to what the representatives of the Homo Sapiens species really are. Therefore, it will not be much of an exaggeration to suggest that the earlier outlined memetic ideas, contained in Dick’s novel, will indeed be able to survive into the future – hence, guaranteeing a ‘literary immortality’ to the author. This is because, in full accordance with the provisions of Hutcheo n’s theory, Linklater did a perfectly good job, while ensuring the fidelity of his cinematographic adaptation of the original A Scanner Darkly. A Scanner Darkly. Ex. Prod. Richard Linklater. Burbank, CA.: Warner Independent Films. 2006. DVD. 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