This entry is not intended to be an all-inclusive discussion of adaptation theory, which has witnessed great developments in recent years. I find the investigation of adaptations fascinating-book-to-film, television-to-book, film-to-video game, etc., but what that means here is that I’d just like to look at Andersen’s stories in various media: when they work, possibly when they don’t, and why. I can’t claim to be authoritative but I do love Andersen’s work, including the many adaptations of it. His statue in Central Park, below, is one of my favorite little spots in New York City and in 2005 I greatly enjoyed the bicentennial exhibition at the British Library. For what it’s worth, if I ever get to Denmark the Little Mermaid statue on the Copenhagen pier is at the top of my to-visit list.
Hans Christian Andersen, of course, was an incredibly gifted and prolific Danish writer who lived from 1805 to 1875. He was born in Odense, Denmark’s third largest city, which lies in the middle of the country more or less halfway between Copenhagen in the east and the Jutland peninsula to the west. He was poor. His father died when he was twelve, and at fourteen he journeyed to Copenhagen and was eventually admitted to grammar school. His penchant for storytelling turned into one for writing, and he eventually became a successful author for both adults and children. The breadth of his work is truly astounding, though he’s probably better remembered for the quality of a dozen or so of his tales that have reached a status equal to much more ancient fairy and folk tales.
Purists sometimes assert that any adaptation—in general or of a particular author or canon—is by nature a corruption and should be avoided. I certainly don’t fall into this camp, although there are specific adaptations that I view poorly (not just of Andersen). As a principle or practice, though, I think adaptation can be highly useful, entertaining, and enlightening. In fact, when I was in an undergraduate children’s media class discussing adaptation it was precisely Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” that served as an example in its favor. The professor, Dean Duncan, showed us a clip from Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre, in which a marvelous Dick Shawn struts pompously down the avenue in his royal underwear: precisely the delightful kind of visual image you can’t get by reading the page. Here’s the cover, and it’s on YouTube; the action I’m referring to is about two and a half minutes in.
And that, of course, is the first and main reason to adapt: different media have different comparative advantages—things they each do well-that can exploit different aspects of the same story. And that’s as true of Andersen as anyone else. Film and television are visual media, and can create images—comic or beautiful—that literature must describe indirectly at best. The most explicit example of this in Andersen’s oeuvre is “The Red Shoes,” where the dancing must really be seen rather than described. I love the entire 1948 film
Perhaps the best-known mantra of cinema is that film is a visual medium. Show don’t tell. To that end and in addition to Dick Shawn and Moira Shearer (above), we have marvelous examples of visual renderings of Andersen tales: Disney’s rendition of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” in Fantasia 2000
A second reason to adapt is that Andersen’s prose can be a bit heavy and verbose, especially for young kids. In reading Andersen I can see him sitting on a stool, a group of children huddled around him, spinning his yarns whichever way necessary to hold their interest. In modern practice it’s not quite like that. About a year ago I tried reading “The Little Mermaid” to Loretta and didn’t last a page. The opening description of the undersea civilization is fantastically written, but it was too verbose for a child of three—and I don’t think that’s just because modern children are conditioned by television for instant gratification; it’s because Andersen really truly does use big words, and a lot of them. Even a picture book we received of “Thumbelina” is on hold until Loretta’s a bit bigger; even with the word count cut by more than half, she still tries to flip the pages before we’re done reading the text, prompting an impromptu performance of the kind I just imagined Hans doing. So in general Andersen is too long, the only real exception being “The Princess and the Pea/The Real Princess,” which, at one and a third pages, is a model of concision . . . and possibly my favorite story in his whole body of work.
A third reason for adaptation is a fusion of the first two: changes in emphasis and length can obviously lead to changes in content, variations on a theme. Not all pieces of all Andersen stories are appropriate for all audiences, and often with a slight tweak they may be made more palatable. Corruption? Yes, but hopefully with a purpose. When that purpose is less than obvious, the result is admittedly troubling. Take for instance a cartoon of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Weston Woods and Scholastic Video. At the end of the fateful parade the Emperor undergoes an epiphany of humility and self-worth and straightens himself up, proudly finishing his march more pleased (to be naked) than ever. Andersen, in contrast, seems much more ironic:
“The emperor writhed, for he knew it [that he was naked] was true, but he thought ‘the procession must go on now,’ so held himself stiffer than ever, and the chamberlains held up the invisible train.”
Note that they’re going on with the charade even after the little boy unmasks it; that’s something you don’t get in most adaptations, but it firmly places the lesson that the emperor is still a fool. Further complicating the Scholastic cartoon is the fact that the two charlatans are thwarted in their escape by bad luck and lose all their ill-begotten money. In Andersen, they get away with it. In case we missed it, for Andersen the emperor’s a fool and is irredeemable. In the cartoon, he’s given another chance. (I forgive the entire production, however, because the emperor is also completely hilarious; it's worth it.)
As often as there are random changes in plot and themes, though, there are changes that are much more purposeful. This is due as often as not to Andersen’s religious and philosophical worldview; he can at times be heavily didactic, moralizing, or even mystical. To return to “The Red Shoes,” the whole tale is a morality play of sorts against impiety and blasphemy: the little girl who scoffed at religion in favor of hedonistic dancing is cursed with shoes that won’t let her hold still or, when she begins to reform, even attend church. She cuts her feet off and eventually dies amidst a spiritual epiphany and is taken to heaven. To Andersen such a lesson was the raison d’etre of the story, but it doesn’t sit well with little girls bent on becoming ballerinas. Thus Powell and Pressburger could maintain the tragic ending in their grown-up version, but versions for kids are much sunnier. In the Efteling amusement park in Holland, for instance, an attraction built around the story has a mechanical girl cut the straps off her shoes, which daintily keep dancing by themselves. No animatronic blood for the kiddies.
The same is true of the happy ending for Fantasia 2000’s “Tin Soldier” and other versions of other stories, but the best-known example of changing the ending has to be “The Little Mermaid.” Several years back I read a peer-reviewed discussion of adaptations of “The Little Mermaid,” of which I can recall neither the title nor the author, and there has since been another well-done one by Elisabeth Oxfeldt in Animation Journal. What I learned from the former article inasmuch as I’m recalling it correctly is that out of seven screen adaptations of the story, only one, an Australian cartoon, maintained the original ending, in which the mermaid abrogates her life in order for her beloved prince to achieve happiness—she essentially chooses to commit suicide rather than murder him, which would have allowed her to fulfill her contract with the Sea Witch and continue living her own life. In doing so she unexpectedly achieves a state of spiritual immortality that has thus far been unavailable to merfolk—she becomes a floating spirit (think of the name “Ariel”—used by Disney but not Andersen—in Shakespeare’s The Tempest) hovering around her prince and watching over him throughout the rest of his life and, more importantly, advancing herself through moral stages until she is united with God. This kind of transcendent progression through postmortality was not only acceptable but desirable in Andersen’s worldview, but it does not resonate particularly well with modern audiences, even religious ones. Hence the decision, six out of seven times at least, to change things around and allow the mermaid to remain a human and marry her prince after all. (A few months ago Carol and Loretta saw a Caribbean stage adaptation that went so far a field as to remove any and all mermaids from the story but, remarkably, kept the original ending by having the protagonist turn into a tree that could watch over and shade the newlywed couple.)
Here we have examples of three additional adaptations, an illustration by Edmund Dulac, the aforementioned sculpture from Copenhagen harbor, and an anime DVD cover, front and back:
So those are some of my thoughts about adaptation: there are times it’s appropriate for artistic and thematic purposes. Sometimes you can reap more meaning from the original story by approaching it in different ways, emphasizing different parts. Next time I’ll look at the joys of reading Andersen in the original.
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