Embodying Adaptation: Character and the Body

Description

This book explores the impact of the body on the mediation of character in adaptations. Specifically, it thinks about how identity is shaped by the body and how this alters meanings of adaptations. With an increasingly digital world, the importance of the body may be seen as diminishing. However, the book highlights the different political and social meanings the body signifies, which in turn renders character. Through a discussion of adaptations of sexuality, race, and mental difference, the mediation of character is shown to be tied to the physical. The book challenges the hierarchies in place both for the understanding of character, which privileges the actor, and in adaptations, which privileges the original. The discussion of the body, character, and adaptation asserts that the meanings the physical has in its shaping of, and by, character in adaptations reflect the way in which we position our own bodies in the world. Acknowledgements Contents About the Author List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction Works Cited Chapter 2: The Acting Body Typecasting and Adaptation Body as Medium Body as Adaptation Bodily Fidelity Works Cited Chapter 3: Bodily Knowledge Reception and Adaptation Stardom, Performance, and the Body Constructing/Receiving a Character Performance and the Character Adapting Character as Audience Practice Works Cited Chapter 4: Character Infusion Actor Versus Character Creating Character Character as Spectrum Character/Charactor and Adaptations Works Cited Chapter 5: Embodying Identities The Body, Ideology, and Performance Queer Adaptation and the Biopic Race and Adaptation Death Note, Ghost in the Shell, and Advantageous Representation and Spectating Racebending Works Cited Chapter 6: Shaping the Psyche Illness, Identity, and Narrative Constructing Psychological Difference The Body as Symptomatic Repetitions Works Cited Index