Framing adaptation: screen stardom and aesthetics in Tragedy of W (1984)

ABSTRACT Tragedy of W (1984) is a film adaptation of a mystery novel by the author Natsuki Shizuko. However, rather than producing a straightforward, ‘page to screen’ style adaptation, the filmmakers opted to change the source material into a story-within-story, shifting the whodunnit into a stage play being performed by a theatre company. This transformation shifts the film’s narrative and aesthetic priorities away from the original story and onto its star, Yakushimaru Hiroko, which in turn requalifies the stakes of adaptation toward the goals of commercial media production in 1980s Japan. This emphasis on stardom within the mise-en-abyme mode of adaptation also generates new aesthetic concerns, such as the use of objects to crowd the edge of the frame, the treatment of stages before the camera, and the mode of performing within a performance. What emerges is an intersection of adaptation with qualities of bracketing and citation, which continuously put the film, its star, and its narrative in ‘quotation marks’ by relying on antecedent forms of meaning that connect the film to its source material, Yakushimaru’s own screen celebrity, and the wider climate of transmedia production and consumption of popular culture in 1980s Japan.