{"title":"Nostalgic (Re)Visions of Englishness in Merchant Ivory’s Adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day","authors":"Gülşah Göçmen, Özlem Özmen Akdoğan","doi":"10.1080/20512856.2021.1907016","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article argues that the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day (1989) by Merchant Ivory evokes nostalgia as a trope that glorifies the imperial past of the British through portraying extravagantly both the butler protagonist’s professionalism and his attachment to the country house (Darlington Hall), one of the symbolic places used in heritage cinema. In the novel, Stevens’ sense of nostalgia is presented as a sensual impetus or a blueprint to revisit the past to construct a more insightful understanding of the self. Analysing both uses of nostalgia in the source text and its adaptation, this article reveals that the Merchant Ivory adaptation (1993) limits its nostalgic perspective to depicting the idealised imperial past, and it does not evoke any dissident conception of nostalgia for the audience as the novel provides through its protagonist’s retrospection for the reader. Discussing the politics and contextual background of the adaptation, it concludes that Merchant Ivory’s film version of Ishiguro’s novel exemplifies characteristics of heritage cinema to convey dominantly conservative ideologies such as elitism and nationalism as common norms upheld in Thatcher’s Britain.","PeriodicalId":40530,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Literature and Culture","volume":"68 1","pages":"49 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20512856.2021.1907016","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Language Literature and Culture","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20512856.2021.1907016","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT This article argues that the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day (1989) by Merchant Ivory evokes nostalgia as a trope that glorifies the imperial past of the British through portraying extravagantly both the butler protagonist’s professionalism and his attachment to the country house (Darlington Hall), one of the symbolic places used in heritage cinema. In the novel, Stevens’ sense of nostalgia is presented as a sensual impetus or a blueprint to revisit the past to construct a more insightful understanding of the self. Analysing both uses of nostalgia in the source text and its adaptation, this article reveals that the Merchant Ivory adaptation (1993) limits its nostalgic perspective to depicting the idealised imperial past, and it does not evoke any dissident conception of nostalgia for the audience as the novel provides through its protagonist’s retrospection for the reader. Discussing the politics and contextual background of the adaptation, it concludes that Merchant Ivory’s film version of Ishiguro’s novel exemplifies characteristics of heritage cinema to convey dominantly conservative ideologies such as elitism and nationalism as common norms upheld in Thatcher’s Britain.
摘要本文认为,根据石黑一雄(Kazuo Ishiguro)的小说《一天的遗迹》(the Remains of the Day,1989)改编的《商人象牙》(Merchant Ivory),通过夸张地描绘管家主人公的职业精神和他对乡村别墅(Darlington Hall)的依恋,唤起了怀旧之情,这是一个美化英国帝国历史的比喻。在小说中,史蒂文斯的怀旧感被呈现为一种感官动力或一种重新审视过去的蓝图,以构建对自我更深刻的理解。本文分析了怀旧在原文及其改编作品中的使用,发现《象牙商人》改编作品(1993)将怀旧视角局限于描绘理想化的帝国历史,并没有像小说主人公通过对读者的回顾所提供的那样,为观众唤起任何持不同政见的怀旧观念。讨论了改编的政治和背景,得出结论,Merchant Ivory的石黑一雄小说电影版体现了传统电影的特点,传达了精英主义和民族主义等保守意识形态,这些意识形态是撒切尔时代英国的共同规范。