Emma
- Submitted by: verawo
- Views: 912
- Category: English
- Date Submitted: 01/21/2011 02:12 PM
- Pages: 7
- Report this Essay
Elective 1: Transformations
The composers of both your prescribed texts are guests on an ABC Radio National Programme called “Text Appeal.” The interview explores how context leads to changed values being reflected in texts. In your response, you need to examine the relationship between language, purpose and audience and the concept of literary transformations.
Write the transcript of this interview.
Host: Good evening and thank you for tuning into “Text Appeal.” Tonight we welcome two very special guests to our program to talk about Transformations, Jane Austen, author of the C19 classical novel Emma, and Amy Heckerling, director of the vibrant and modern teen pic Clueless.
Host: Ms Heckerling, many consider you a plastic surgeon of canonical literature, appropriating Ms Austen’s C19 novel Emma into a flamboyant teen pic; some even suggesting that your film transforms the joys and thrills of Ms Austen’s satire into little more than a narrative about fashion, image and adolescence. How do you respond to these critics?
AH: As a student in high school, I grew up studying novels like Jane’s Emma, about the values reflected in the text as a product of its time, C19 paradigms of gender roles and refined social hierarchies, and the value of the text to modern society. In transforming the novel to film media, I not only wanted to explore how a text may be updated to engage a modern audience, but also, how the context and societies in which Emma and Clueless were composed affect the values that are instilled in the texts. I think we need to give more credit to modern teens, because just as Jane’s novel was a comedy of manners, a satire of a society founded on birthright, the ideal of the gentleman and dinner parties, viewers can appreciate that Clueless is a film that parodies the inherently consumerist culture we live in today. The message conveyed by both protagonists in Emma and Clueless is that the realisation of self worth and the journey towards...
The composers of both your prescribed texts are guests on an ABC Radio National Programme called “Text Appeal.” The interview explores how context leads to changed values being reflected in texts. In your response, you need to examine the relationship between language, purpose and audience and the concept of literary transformations.
Write the transcript of this interview.
Host: Good evening and thank you for tuning into “Text Appeal.” Tonight we welcome two very special guests to our program to talk about Transformations, Jane Austen, author of the C19 classical novel Emma, and Amy Heckerling, director of the vibrant and modern teen pic Clueless.
Host: Ms Heckerling, many consider you a plastic surgeon of canonical literature, appropriating Ms Austen’s C19 novel Emma into a flamboyant teen pic; some even suggesting that your film transforms the joys and thrills of Ms Austen’s satire into little more than a narrative about fashion, image and adolescence. How do you respond to these critics?
AH: As a student in high school, I grew up studying novels like Jane’s Emma, about the values reflected in the text as a product of its time, C19 paradigms of gender roles and refined social hierarchies, and the value of the text to modern society. In transforming the novel to film media, I not only wanted to explore how a text may be updated to engage a modern audience, but also, how the context and societies in which Emma and Clueless were composed affect the values that are instilled in the texts. I think we need to give more credit to modern teens, because just as Jane’s novel was a comedy of manners, a satire of a society founded on birthright, the ideal of the gentleman and dinner parties, viewers can appreciate that Clueless is a film that parodies the inherently consumerist culture we live in today. The message conveyed by both protagonists in Emma and Clueless is that the realisation of self worth and the journey towards...