Gulliver's Travels Adapted

Gulliver's Travels Adapted

I teach a course on Jonathan Swift to first-year students, most of whom are not planning to major in English. We start with short prose like “A Modest Proposal” to unravel Swift’s satiric methods, hone our skills on the poetry, and spend the last half of the course closely reading Gulliver’s Travels. The course concludes with students collaboratively writing updated adaptations of Swift’s great work.

Since many of them know Gulliver only through film, they are surprised to discover how different the book is from the Ted Danson and Jack Black productions.  I have found it helpful to teach an adaptation so that students understand why a film is different from its source text and why satire must adapt to different times and genres. I use either the 1939 animated Gulliver’s Travels by Max Fleisher or the 1960 Three Worlds of Gulliver, both fairly easy for beginners to work with. Students view the film on YouTube before coming to class and make written notes on omissions, additions, and changes made to tone, plot, conflict, and characterization. In class, we go over the things they observed, and I provide some historical context. In the course of the discussion, I introduce them to the vocabulary and methods of film analysis. Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation provides a framework although I do not assign the book as required reading.

Once the students have some sense of how to approach an adaptation, I have them work in groups of three or four and do the same for another adaptation, many of which can be found online or through Netflix. Here is the prompt:

Process. Choose a film or television adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels. Watch it through. Determine the major omissions and additions, changes made to tone, plot, conflict, characterization, the objects of satire, and the moral center. Determine its target audience. Research its context (director, actors, historical events, etc.) and its reception (find some of the original reviews in newspapers and magazines). Come to some conclusions about what the makers were trying to do, how that connects with the time of the film’s creation, and how the changes support that plan.

Product. In a 20-minute group presentation, explain how the makers reorient the film from Swift’s original vision to one that reflects the values of the adaptation’s time and place. Provide us with specific examples of the adjustments made to support that new vision as well as specific details that reflect the times (Zeitgeist). Show a few film clips (no more than 6 minutes total) that illustrate some of the points you discuss in your presentation and analyze them for the class.

It is a fun assignment that teaches students how to place a work in a historical context or environment and how to analyze an adaptation.  Students learn to think precisely about voice, audience, satiric focus, and moral centers. It also prepares them for the final assignment: writing the “fifth” book of Gulliver’s Travels.

Because students are great consumers of media, an assignment like this also allows them to take newly developed skills from the classroom to the dorm room and become more discerning consumers of satire and adaptations, both of which are in plentiful supply on a variety of screens: television, cinema, phone, and computer.

 

Linda Troost, Washington & Jefferson College

Tuesday, 06/21/2016 - 16:06

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