Asian Images

As I watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s and write this post I can’t help but think about our readings and discussions of the relation of a text and image. What exactly happens when we bring a piece of literature to the screen or television? Do we lose or do we gain? And what remains of the literature that was adapted?

Timothy Corrigan talks about fidelity to a text in adapting literature to a film. Adapters often want to create or recreate their own interpretation while still maintaining some semblance of faithfulness to a text. In looking at the difference between the films discussed in Corrigan’s essay and the T.V. series adaptation of Goong, I can’t help but wonder if the same standards of fidelity apply to TV as to film. Goong the comic book has so many images and details that it’s hard to image a completely faithful representation of the book on screen. Comic books may be excluded in this since the images are already interpreted for us by the drawings (where as in a novel there are no pictures). Do you think a lot is lost in the translation from one medium to another? Do we look at Goong the same after see the images interpreted for us on screen? And if we did create Goong into a film, would it bring a piece of literature in a “low culture” as Corrigan suggests? Would this be making the assumption that all literature is high culture or is only classical or canonical literature high culture?

Another note on images, when we read a piece from NYT a few classes back, the article mentioned that Japanese characters were drawn with Caucasian features, something we noted was true for the characters in Goong (big round eyes, lighter hair, etc). Characters that were bad or needed to be vilified were drawn with Asian features. So in adapting Goong for TV, shouldn’t the characters be much more anglo-looking? If Caucasian features are considered most desirable, then why don’t directors use more anglicized characters versus very Asian characters? Are the characters we saw on the Princess Hours considered anglicized Asians?