The fact that Scout is only eight years old makes the reliability of her narrative questionable yet it is the successful use of Lee’s multi-layering and the maturity in Scout that reassures the audience. “Part or the novel’s success has to do with adult-as-child perspective (…) the image of an adult reflecting on her past and attempting to recreate the experience through a female child’s point of view” (Shackelford). Although this multi-layering enables the success of the novel and allows the author to switch between adult and child narration, therefore ensuring the reliability of the narrative, it makes the adaptation process more difficult. The film is unable to slip between an adult and child Scout, and through the use of a child Scout a lot of the narrative focus has been diverted to other characters. The film tends to focus more on Atticus and the maturation of Jem as he passes through the ‘Rites of Passage’ from boyhood to adulthood, in the same way that Scout develops from a tomboy to a more mature girl. The use of the child narration is key to understanding these ‘Rites of Passage’ moments and due to this diversion of attention away from Scout, some of her stages of development have been lost in the film.
The use of the child narrator is not always appropriate and there are certain points when Atticus would have been a more suitable narrator even in the text, and this would be emphasised further when accompanied by the visual narrative. Therefore, Foote may have chosen to draw the narrative away from Scout because of the fact that the story alludes to themes of rape and domestic violence, inappropriate situations for a child. In a film, along with the visual narrative this can divert the attention away from the actual content of the film as the audience may feel uncomfortable by the use of the child. Scout’s immaturity can be used more passively in the text because there is no visual element to accompany it and the reader can, to some extent, ignore the fact that she is so young. “It is frankly and completely impossible, being told in the first person by a six-year old girl with the prose style of a well educated adult” (Adams, 1960). Although there is not as much focus on Scout in the film as in the book, the story is still being told through her eyes and it is this naivety as well as the excellent relationship she has with her father that makes the film so realistic, idyllic and moving.
The narrative also contains a number of implied meanings, which add to the fact that, at times, it is only providing a frame for the story to develop further. At certain points in the text, the narrative is only suggesting something to the reader and there imagination and own interpretation of the events is required to further elaborate on them, such as when Scout rolls into the Radley yard, “I had heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. Someone inside the house was laughing” (Mockingbird, 48). The type of laughter heard from inside the house is not defined and the reader has to use their knowledge of the characters from information given previously and the context in which it is written in order to decide on how this has been delivered. The context in which it is described would suggest evil, cynical laughter not the laughter of an immature adult which it later turns out to be. This is one of many problems they are faced with when adapting the novel for a film as abstract references cannot be sustained and a concrete decision has to be made or the event removed, and the audience are not given as many opportunities to form their own opinions and interpretations of events. The use of Scout’s silent narration also becomes distorted in the film such as the scene in which the Missionary ladies come to visit, “Miss Maudie must have silenced the whole missionary society at one blow (…) I learned more about the poor Mruna’s social life from listening to Mrs Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family” (Mockingbird, 264). Scout is only an observer at this point, and in the text, her main purpose is to relay the events to the reader, whereas in the film, with the visual narrative there is less of a need for Scout to be present as it is the audience hwo become the observers.
The use of narrative as a framework, is further developed in Lemony Snicket’s A Bad Beginning and more so in the film adaptation, A Series of Unfortunate Events. There are a lot of differences between the text and the film as the entire text narrative acts as a framework and structure from which the film is developed with added content in the middle. However, despite there significant differences, there is still a strong sense of narrative voice in both the film and the text. As mentioned earlier in To Kill a Mockingbird, there is the added problem of setting the film within a particular timeframe and location, whereas the text is able to be more abstract and general. Snickett’s is a story specifically for children, whereas Lee’s was for an older audience of teenagers or young adults. Therefore, Snickett may have adopted the use of a strong narrative voice in order to reach his target audience, as it is in keeping with the style of the fairytale. “I’m sorry to tell you this but this is how the story goes” (The Bad Beginning, 1). As a result of this fairytale style narrative the text also lends itself to being read out loud and at certain points, flows better when it is spoke as opposed to read, which may have influenced the use of voice-over in the adaptation process. The use of adult-child narrative is also similar to that used in To Kill a Mockingbird but in A Series of Unfortunate Events, this multi-layering of the narrative gives the sense of an authoritative figure speaking as opposed to it being the voice of a child. This use of the authoritative voice as opposed to the child narrator is also in keeping with the fairytale structure, and may suggest that Snickett as well as the director, is trying to use the story as an educational tool, which will appeal to the parents, and present the child with a more realistic version of life, things don’t always have a happy ending. “In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle” (The Bad Beginning, 1).
Whilst the narrative in a film adds to the overall effect and often clarifies certain things that the reader may have been unsure about or had to depend on their own interpretation for when reading the text, there are certain occasions when the choice of narrative in the adaptation is responsible for losing certain aspects from the text. This is the case with A Series of Unfortunate Events as there are moments of black humour within the text which, although not noticed by the children, provides an added layer for the adults reading the story to the children. “I had a very difficult case in the High Court and it was taking up much of my time (…) it concerns a poisonous plant and illegal use of someone’s credit card” (The Bad Beginning, 35). However, this added humour is lost through the narrative of the film in particular, which may be because the visual narrative does not allow for subtle undertones and hints and the fact that it needs to be made attractive to children and suitable for the age of the audience. These elements of dark humour would also be wasted on children as they wouldn’t understand and therefore may have been removed for economical or time purposes.
Within the text, a postmodern children’s narrative is being used to give the narrative a sense of literary self-consciousness. This postmodern style has been maintained through the adaptation process which adds to the overall effect of the film. This is established from the very beginning in both the book and the film as the book immediately states that it is aware of it’s position as a text “if you are interested in books with happy endings you would be better off with some other book” (The Bad Beginning, 1), and the film begins with The Little Elf in order to defamiliarize it from the type of film about to be presented. This opening line places the narrator and the visual character of the narrator in the film in a powerful position as the reader is hearing them from within the dialogue. “The opening section of each new instalment immediately digresses into a postmodern dissection of the reading experience . . . Readers are given the impression that their storyteller could not be more straight with them” (Bruce, 282). The film establishes a strong sense of the narrative voice, and reinforces this through the use of visual narration by visualising the character of Lemony Snickett himself and showing him writing the narrative whilst voicing it. The use of third person narrative also helps to attract the attention of the reader as it gives the feeling that the narrator is speaking personally to the reader, “Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry” (The Bad Beginning, 57).
In both the book and the film, there are moments when the narrative does not flow and is disrupted. In the film in particular this may be as a result of the interjection of the third person narrative overriding the visual action presented, and when the camera switches to Snickett writing the novel, visualising this third person narrative, and possibly making it more interesting for this younger audience. However, it is not just in the film where the narrative is disrupted yet the way in which it disrupts the text is quite different, through the deliberate use of definitions, which break up what is being told., “if I describe the action of this insipid – the word “insipid” here means “dull and foolish” – play by Al Fucoot,” (The Bad Beginning, 141). Whilst this serves another educational purpose and may even encourage some parents to buy the book, it can be patronising for the adults who may be reading the story, and may even result in them skipping sections of lengthy definitions in order to maintain the attention of the children and keep the narrative flowing. However, the fact that these definitions are not always accurate may add an element of humour for the adult, in-keeping with the earlier notion of black humour and is also a subtle hint that it is a text intended for children. This preoccupation with definitions is a common theme in postmodern literature and is established within the choice of narrative.
Narrative is a key part of any text or literature and influences the overall effect of the story on the reader or the viewer. It is inevitable that the narrative will become subverted or changed through the adaptation process and this is partly due to the two forms of narration present in all films, the visual and the spoken. How these two narratives work together however, is very different in every film as has been briefly mentioned here through the examination of A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Bad Beginning and To Kill a Mockingbird. Whilst film can be seen as presenting a better picture overall due to the added visual effects and the two forms of narration, it can also be seen as providing a poorer experience “since the persona of the narrator is so much weaker” (Monaco, 46).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Phoebe. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird: a critical review’. Atlantic Monthly, August 1960.
Butt, Bruce. ‘”He’s Behind you!”: Reflections on Repetition and Predicatability in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events’. Children’s Literature in Education, Vol. 34, No. 4, December 2003.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Heinemenn: London, 1960.
McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. OUP, 1996.
Monaco, James. How to read a film: movies, media, multimedia. 3rd edition. Oxford: OUP, 2000
Shackelford, Dean. ‘The female voice in To Kill a Mockingbird: Narrative Strategies in film and novel.’ Mississippi Quarterly, Winter 96/97, Vol. 50, issue 1.
Snicket, Lemony. The Bad Beginning: A Series of Unfortunate Events. Egmont Childrens Books 2003.
Stam, Robert & Alessandra Raengo. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Blackwell Publishers, 2004.
Wall, Barbara The Narrator’s Voice. Basingstoke: Macmillan 1991.
FILMS:
To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir Robert Mulligan. Universal, 1962
A Series of Unfortunate Events. Dir Brad Siberling. Dreamworks, 2004.