Author(s): Stefano Murro Christopherson
Mentor(s): Dr. Kevin Flanagan, English
AbstractStrangely, few scholars have analyzed the similarities between Federico García Lorca’s play The House of Bernarda Alba and Sofia Coppola’s film The Virgin Suicides. An analytical comparison of the texts, the latter of which is a filmic adaptation of a novel, reveals a life-long tendency of context conditioning the content (and meaning) of narrative adaptations. This English honors thesis, under the advisement of Dr. Kevin Flanagan, explores how the lives of Lorca and Coppola are reflected in their texts. Moreover, through the theoretical lenses of transcultural adaptation and narrative theory, it demonstrates how the story at the heart of both narratives can be adapted—along varying mediums and time-place contexts—to reflect the cultural, historical, and sociopolitical moments of their creators’ lived experiences. The rise of the Spanish Civil War is palpable in the play, and the oppressive, patriarchal forces of fascism and Catholicism, and their effects parallel to Lorca’s homosexuality, are transposed onto the female, authoritarian protagonist. Similarly, Sofia Coppola’s transformation from reviled actress to award-winning filmmaker—amidst living in a ‘gilded cage’ of Hollywood royalty under the shadow of the masculinity of her father Francis Ford Coppola’s famed filmography—creates a unique ‘girly’ aesthetic she cinematically imbues her adaptation’s narrative style with. The repressed girls, the forbidden sexuality, the oppressive, patriarchal mother at the center of the story are all further transculturally adapted in 2011 and 2016 stage-adaptations of the original play imbued with the transposition of the anxiety, sadism, and dread of their respective sociopolitical climes.
Audio TranscriptKeywords:
Lorca, Coppola, transcultural adaptation, patriarchy, fascism, Catholicism
Hello everyone, my name is Stefano Murro and today I will be presenting my English honors thesis written under the advisement of Dr. Kevin Flanagan of the GMU English department. “No Me Deja Respirar”/”I Can’t Breathe in Here”: Comparatively Analyzing Transcultural Adaptations of The House of Bernarda Alba & The Virgin Suicides tackles the notion of adaptation, specifically, how it is that the same base narrative can repeat itself uniquely across time in varying literary mediums under drastically different cultural, historical, and sociopolitical climates. Through the theoretical frameworks of narrative theory, and, especially, transcultural adaptation, I aim to demonstrate how the creators of both texts, Federico García Lorca and Sofia Coppola, and those of subsequent stage-adaptations of The House of Bernarda Alba, influence their work using the context of their own lives and moments in time while still maintaining the central story. Moreover, a close-reading analysis will underscore the societal danger and toxic oppressiveness posed by the intersection of Catholicism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism as highlighted through the transference of said ideologies onto traditionally female characters and spaces as a means for the artist to both escape a suffocating environment using an artistic outlet and self-actualize in the process of doing so.
But first, begin, we have to first wonder what an adaptation is. Is it simply transferring the exact contents of a story told in one literary medium to another, like with the television miniseries adaptation of the novel Sharp Objects? What happens to that conceptualization, though, when the story being adapted originates in an entirely distinct place in history and gets rebranded as belonging to a newer cultural moment, like Shakespeare’s play the Taming of the Shrew becoming the iconic ‘90s film 10 Things I Hate about You? To answer this question, research was done on Kent Puckett’s notion of an ever-evolving narrative theory built equal parts on discourse and evolving meaning of texts and contexts, as well as Linda Hutcheon’s theory of transcultural adaptation which states that quote “…there is an accompanying shift in the political valence from the adapted text to the ‘transculturated’ adaptation…Transcultural adaptations often mean changes in racial and gender politics” unquote. These were chosen as analytical lenses due to their ability to speak to the fact that context conditions content, and therefore, meaning.
Turning now to the main texts, it’s a surprise few have noticed the narrative similarities between Lorca’s 1936 Spanish play The House of Bernarda Alba and Coppola’s 1999 filmic adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s American novel The Virgin Suicides. Both share the same story: a Catholic matriarch is given the opportunity to embrace the toxic patriarchal nature of the doctrine’s inherent authoritarianism, imprisons her daughters in the family home under the guise of helping them, and abuses them relentlessly until one or more die by suicide. The cultural, historical, and sociopolitical factors which shaped both artists’ lives are reflected in their texts while uniquely speaking to the encerramiento trope, or the oppressive locking away of females by females in a patriarchal manner that underscores the repression of sexuality and futility of self-actualization amidst authoritarianism. In the former, the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War are palpable in the text and stage directions—with the suffocating feeling of existing as a gay man amidst the rise of one of the most authoritarian forms of governance, fascism, expounded by familial control made socially acceptable by wealth and strict Catholicism is transposed onto the characterization of Bernarda and the emotional ramifications of the abuse she heaps on her daughters. The latter, itself a film adaptation of a transcultural adaptation of Lorca’s words, brings to life Coppola’s frustrations with being in a ‘gilded cage’ of Hollywood royalty, self-actualizing as a filmmaker through denigrating the Italian-Catholic machismo of her father, Francis Ford Coppola’s, filmography by creating her own unique ‘girly’ aesthetic of omniscience.
Moreover, creators of stage-adaptations of Lorca’s play, like Coppola, are able to come into their own as artists by infusing their creations with elements of their own lives in tandem with the historical, cultural, and sociopolitical moments and issues of the time—all while maintaining the narrative the same. Engaging in a close-reading of reviews and images of two adaptations—a 2011 London staging and 2015 Chicago staging—further emphasizes the notion that, with transcultural adaptations seeped in conceptualizing narrative theory as ever-evolving, context is everything and conditions meaning. This is seen in Iranian-descended Bijan Sheibani’s 2011 London staging through playing with light and costuming to underscore an overarching fading hope, much like what was felt across Iran and most of the Middle East during the start of the contemporaneous Arab Spring. Similarly, the late 2015 Chicago staging, entirely in Spanish and held in an immigrant community, uses the actors’ physicality to emphasize the sadism of existing within the uncertainty of the shadow of the vitriolic and game-changing 2016 U.S. presidential election vis a vis mass deportations, xenophobia, and a general anti-immigration rhetoric.
Thank you so much for listening.
But first, begin, we have to first wonder what an adaptation is. Is it simply transferring the exact contents of a story told in one literary medium to another, like with the television miniseries adaptation of the novel Sharp Objects? What happens to that conceptualization, though, when the story being adapted originates in an entirely distinct place in history and gets rebranded as belonging to a newer cultural moment, like Shakespeare’s play the Taming of the Shrew becoming the iconic ‘90s film 10 Things I Hate about You? To answer this question, research was done on Kent Puckett’s notion of an ever-evolving narrative theory built equal parts on discourse and evolving meaning of texts and contexts, as well as Linda Hutcheon’s theory of transcultural adaptation which states that quote “…there is an accompanying shift in the political valence from the adapted text to the ‘transculturated’ adaptation…Transcultural adaptations often mean changes in racial and gender politics” unquote. These were chosen as analytical lenses due to their ability to speak to the fact that context conditions content, and therefore, meaning.
Turning now to the main texts, it’s a surprise few have noticed the narrative similarities between Lorca’s 1936 Spanish play The House of Bernarda Alba and Coppola’s 1999 filmic adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s American novel The Virgin Suicides. Both share the same story: a Catholic matriarch is given the opportunity to embrace the toxic patriarchal nature of the doctrine’s inherent authoritarianism, imprisons her daughters in the family home under the guise of helping them, and abuses them relentlessly until one or more die by suicide. The cultural, historical, and sociopolitical factors which shaped both artists’ lives are reflected in their texts while uniquely speaking to the encerramiento trope, or the oppressive locking away of females by females in a patriarchal manner that underscores the repression of sexuality and futility of self-actualization amidst authoritarianism. In the former, the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War are palpable in the text and stage directions—with the suffocating feeling of existing as a gay man amidst the rise of one of the most authoritarian forms of governance, fascism, expounded by familial control made socially acceptable by wealth and strict Catholicism is transposed onto the characterization of Bernarda and the emotional ramifications of the abuse she heaps on her daughters. The latter, itself a film adaptation of a transcultural adaptation of Lorca’s words, brings to life Coppola’s frustrations with being in a ‘gilded cage’ of Hollywood royalty, self-actualizing as a filmmaker through denigrating the Italian-Catholic machismo of her father, Francis Ford Coppola’s, filmography by creating her own unique ‘girly’ aesthetic of omniscience.
Moreover, creators of stage-adaptations of Lorca’s play, like Coppola, are able to come into their own as artists by infusing their creations with elements of their own lives in tandem with the historical, cultural, and sociopolitical moments and issues of the time—all while maintaining the narrative the same. Engaging in a close-reading of reviews and images of two adaptations—a 2011 London staging and 2015 Chicago staging—further emphasizes the notion that, with transcultural adaptations seeped in conceptualizing narrative theory as ever-evolving, context is everything and conditions meaning. This is seen in Iranian-descended Bijan Sheibani’s 2011 London staging through playing with light and costuming to underscore an overarching fading hope, much like what was felt across Iran and most of the Middle East during the start of the contemporaneous Arab Spring. Similarly, the late 2015 Chicago staging, entirely in Spanish and held in an immigrant community, uses the actors’ physicality to emphasize the sadism of existing within the uncertainty of the shadow of the vitriolic and game-changing 2016 U.S. presidential election vis a vis mass deportations, xenophobia, and a general anti-immigration rhetoric.
Thank you so much for listening.
5 replies on ““No Me Deja Respirar”/”I Can’t Breathe in Here”: Comparatively Analyzing Transcultural Adaptations of The House of Bernarda Alba & The Virgin Suicides”
Hi Steff!
Fantastic presentation, very insightful. I’m curious to know, what was the most fascinating or surprising thing you discovered during your research?
Hello kind stranger!
Something fascinating I discovered during my research was a piece by Javier Fernández Galeano called “El Todo Poderoso nos ayude, para llegar a lo que deseamos”: homosexuality and Catholicism in Franco’s Spain (1954–1970). In it, he posits that gay men living under Franco’s Catholic-seeped fascist dictatorship actually used aspects of the religion–which led to their persecution–as a means to construct subversive narratives of existence and self-actualization. It was cool to learn because I assumed gay men living under that oppression wouldn’t want anything to do with Catholicism, and it turns out some actually used it to create positive narratives about the experience of living as a gay man during that tumultuous period in history. That’s right, I actually did research 😉
Thanks for your question!
A great question and answer, and it makes me think about Alyssa’s own project, in which (as I commented elsewhere) arguably Alice Brown uses elements of spiritualism, including Christianity, to arrogate a measure of female power in nineteenth-century America. Great presentation, Steff!
Hi Steff,
Great job on this presentaion! You cover a lot of ground here and a learned a lot not only about your target work, but about adaptation in general.
I’m wondering if you have any views on what makes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ adaptation, if there is such a thing.
Tulane
Hello you ingenious genius,
Honestly, I ‘judge’ how ‘good or bad’ an adaptation is based on how the ‘author’ of said adaptation truly understands the core of the narrative. For example, I think the late and great Jean-Marc Valèe’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel Sharp Objects to be an adaptation which surpasses its ‘originary’ text. This is because he was able to understand that the core of the novel’s narrative focuses on the protagonist’s PTSD and how returning to the environment in which it was created can have both enlightening and devastating effects. He manages to imbue the action of his adaptation with reaction shots, a cinematographic choice which visually highlights the psychological processes which “trigger” instances of PTSD. Thus, an adaptation, especially a transcultural adaptation, should be measured in terms of how it seeks to uniquely represent the narrative of the original text–like Sofia Coppola so expertly does when cinematically adapting Jeffrey Eugenides’ transcultural adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s play The House of Bernard Alba.
Thanks for the thought-provoking question!