Reply To: Fanfiction v.s. Adaptation

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#375
Grant Glass
Keymaster

I think adaptation is a term used too frequently as a catch all. Reboots and remakes are often called adaptation, but oftentimes they lack the commentary to be called adaptation.

For me, an adaptation is a retelling in order to comment about the source text, society, writing, race, gender, class, or some other meaningful topic.

All too often a text is made into a movie or changed to just make money or to hang onto some sort of nostalgia. This is what Jameson would call pastiche. For me, a pastiche is not an adaptation.

Appropriation is like adaptation, but it is not a sustained intettextual engagement, it is only a passing one.

Fanfiction is also a catch all term.

Often times Fanfiction does not retell the story, it adds to it. Let’s call this an assemblage fanfiction.

I would call a palimpsest fanfiction one that rewrites the story.

A fanfiction where you insert yourself into the text I would call a avatar fanfiction.

Now, a fanfiction that is able to comment on the original in some meaningful way or say something about society, I would say that then becomes an adaptation.

Does that make sense? I just think these terms are used too generally most of the time, so we have to make them more specific.