Is Adaptation Studies Sustainable?

Abstract

The protagonists of Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind recycle twice over, using junkyard stuff like tires and plastic bags to remake famous films in a series of no-budget shorts. This essay turns to Be Kind Rewind to ask how the recycling of materials may relate to the recycling of intellectual properties. It argues that such a question is paramount at a moment when adaptation not only represents a major media practice but also one major response to climate change. As such, the essay offers several different approaches to thinking about media adaptation in the age of global warming, drawing variously from sociologists, political ecologists, film theorists, and designers.