Aging, Adaptation, and the Curious Cases of Benjamin Button
2014; Salisbury University; Volume: 42; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoOf the life of Benjamin his twelfth and twenty-first year I intend to say little. Suffice to record that they were years of (21)'F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story Curious Case of Benjamin Button (1922) is told by an anonymous first-person narrator who recounts the life of Benjamin from his birth in Baltimore in 1860 to his death in the late 1920s. Benjamin's case is curious because he ages in reverse, this conceit apparendy inspired by Mark Twain's comment that is a pity that the best part of life comes at the beginning, and the worst part at the end (qtd. in Gery 495). In 2008 Fitzgerald's story was adapted into a film directed by David Fincher.2 The film dispenses with the narrator, supplying a frame story set in New Orleans in 2005; as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Benjamin's daughter learns her father's story while visiting her dying mother, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), in the hospital. Benjamin (Brad Pitt) also has a different biographyhe is born in 1918, in New Orleans, and dies in 2003. It is the contention of this article that the narrator's casual attitude, above, dismissing the period of Benjamin's existence probably best described by the term adolescence, is also curious, although has not been noted as such. This article accounts for the narrator's curious attitude. To do so, is necessary to examine the short story and film's representations of age and aging. This, in turn, opens the way for a reading of Fitzgerald's story and its film adaptation in relation to a key question in studies of adaptation generally-that of what passes from one text to another in the of adaptation-particularly as this question is framed by Kamilla Elliott;Adaptation lies the rock of a post-Saussurean insistence that form does not and cannot separate from content and the hard place of poststructuralism's debunking of content, of original and local signifieds alike. If words and images do not and cannot translate, and if form does not and cannot separate from content (whether because of their mandated insoluble bond or because content is simply an illusion), then what remains to a novel and a film in adaptation? (3)The adaptation of Curious Case of Benjamin Button presents a useful case study for consideration of the critical conundrum Elliott poses, because is an example of adaptation in terms of form (from short story to film) and content (in both texts, Benjamin's story is about whether and how he adapts to his society-more precisely, to its conventions regarding the experiences and narratives of human development and aging). The narrator's decision that it will to dismiss Benjamin's adolescence as a time of normal ungrowth constitutes a puzzle that, when solved, assists in providing an answer to the question Elliott asks.Strikingly, Elliott notes that adaptation is commonly depicted as between. She acknowledges the tendency to position adaptation, as theoretical, abstract category (and perhaps additionally in Linda Hutcheons sense of adaptation as product [7]), the rock and hard place of structuralism and post-structuralism. Elliott then focuses on a less generalized (but still not specific) example, that of adapting a novel to film, in order to ask what pass [es] between both in adaptation. (Here she focuses on adaptation in Hutcheons sense of process [7]). In the very specific instance of adapting Fitzgerald's narrator's comment, above, nothing passes novel and film. Rather, an absence is turned into a presence, because the film devotes considerable attention to Benjamin's life his twelfth and twenty-first years, years Fitzgerald's narrator declines to represent. This suggests that the narrator's comments are perceived as inadequate. For the film adaptation, does not suffice to record Benjamin's adolescence as one of normal ungrowth. Saying nothing about Benjamin's life ages twelve and twenty-one constitutes a gap, filled by the film. …
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