Adaptation as Innovation or Decontextualization?

I mentioned in my previous post that, this week, my theme was to revisit my inquiry question and try to come to some sort of conclusive remarks and reflections. I began this on Saturday. However, it is now Monday, and it seems I have left my concluding remarks attitude over the weekend, and am beginning my work week with a different pair of eyes.

That is to say, I have more questions, despite intending to come to conclusions today.

In commenting on people's posts and just in thinking a little more about last module's readings, I find myself revisiting the topic of decontextualization as developed in my earlier post on Jessica Ball's article (2004), which I then connected to Fariha Roisin's book, Who is Wellness For (2022). I admit this was a bit of an extrapolation, because Ball (2004) and Roisin (2022) were specific in their type of decontextualization to refer to the removal of one's cultural context in introducing/ using/ teaching a concept. Roisin's (2022) concept, in particular, brought up this idea of cultural appropriation for commercial gain.

In the context of New Media 10/ my English 10 course, I admit that concerns around decontextualization have a different angle.

Specifically, I am talking about novel and film adaptations of classics. 

I do not actually teach Shakespeare in my New Media 10 class; this is reserved for the other English 10 stream. But I've been to Pro-D workshops where teachers do a film study on a given Shakespeare play, and I am excited to try this out. Our Grade 10's study either Merchant of Venice or Taming of the Shrew. For this, I'd have two options:

a) Film study where the director preserves the Modern English tongue, like Michael Radford's Merchant (just be sure to skip past all the explicit scenes)

b) A movie that's a modern adaptation of the original play, so like Ten Things I Hate About You in place of the original Taming (though I'll probably skip past the scene where male genitalia is drawn on a character's face)

I don't know of any modern adaptations to Merchant at this current time, but any readers, if you do, please let me know! Radford said he wanted to preserve the Venice of the times, which is why there were those few R-rated scenes, but they are peripheral to the plot and can be easily skipped past. Any dialogue can be summarized by the teacher. I like how Radford takes a more sympathetic view to Shylock, which comes through in the tone that Al Pacino takes to his lines when his daughter Jessica leaves him. And that intense scene with Jeremy Irons, right at the play's climactic pound of flesh scene.. But I digress. 

Anyway.

Point is, these are the two options I could possibly have to introducing Shakespeare into the New Media 10 class. There has been discussion on the possible merits of cultural wealth and, by connection, cultural knowledge (Martin, 1996). At the same time, there has been a discussion on the repetitive saturation of canonical works in English classes over the decades (Stallworth, 1999). One could argue that the way to mediate both perspectives is to honour these canonical works, but also the idea of differentiation and novelty, through the use of adaptation works. You'd have to do some pre-work so students understand that their primary text is an adaptation, though, so they could appreciate the cultural weight/ gravitas of the original work. But this doesn't, I don't think, have to mean studying the original canon, if that is not the teacher's (or the class's) desire. 

So that could have been a solution.

But then, I'm thinking about my earlier post on decontextualization as a societal problem (Ball, 2004; Roisin, 2022), and now I'm questioning if there could be a problem in adaptation as a whole. I know I'm extrapolating a bit, but I suppose the week with Ball's reading, and the connection to Roisin, just had me more consciously re-evaluating my intentions and hypothetical practices. Are we doing any disservices if we teach modern adaptations to, say, Shakespeare, and omitting the original play?

Then again, hasn't there been at least one person who read Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed or John Fowles's The Collector, without having seen The Tempest? Or someone who's read Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres without having seen King Lear? Someone who's read Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose without reading Arthur Conan Doyle? Heck, even someone who's read If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio without having read Donna Tartt's A Secret History?

References

Ball, J. (2004). As If Indigenous Knowledge and Communities Mattered: Transformative Education in First Nations Communities in Canada. American Indian Quarterly, 28(3/4), 454–479. https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2004.0090

Martin, J.R. (1996). There’s too much to teach: Cultural wealth in an age of scarcity. Educational Researcher, 25(2), 4–16  

Mueller, J.S., Melwai, S., & Goncalo, J.A. (2012). The bias against creativity: Why people desire but reject creative ideas. Psychological Science, 23(1), 13–17. doi: 10.1177/0956797611421018

Roisin, F. (2022). Who is Wellness For: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind. [Audiobook]. HarperAudio.

Stallworth, B. J. (1999). Diversity in the English curriculum: challenges and successes. Multicultural Education, 6(3), 19–21.