The Need for a Theory of Children’s and YA Adaptation

Serving primarily as an introduction, chapter one has two functions: explaining binary polarization and suggesting why scholars will benefit from thinking about children’s adapted film in a new way. This first chapter defines key terms, describing how film adaptations widen the divide between concepts to rework power structures. Chapter one explores why, even in the face of a critical movement away from fidelity-based studies, scholars are still drawn to hierarchical approaches, and in particular, why there may exist a particularly strong pull toward this kind of study in children’s and YA criticism. As such, chapter one not only articulates the text’s theory of children’s and YA adaptation, but also explains the need for such an approach.

Choosing a Theme and Sticking to It

Chapter two describes an important cause for binary polarization: children’s films often focalize around a single theme from the source text and make it a driving element of the adaptation, amplifying the weight and intensity of that theme. First, this chapter explores binaries in Henry Selick’s adaption of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline to claim that instead of distorting some of Gaiman’s themes, Selick makes them stronger, leading to a widening of independent/dependent, real/other, and adult/child binaries. The chapter next highlights how the movie adaptation of The Tale of Despereaux amplifies a set of overlapping binary systems, and then uses the film version of How to Train Your Dragon to illustrate how thematic amplification is culturally bound and historically situated. Overall, the chapter suggests that when film adaptors select a theme of the novel and use it as a cornerstone in the adaptation, the result is binary polarization.

Audience and Aetonormativity in Picturebook to Film Adaptations

Chapter four suggests that the polarization of adult/child binaries in picturebook adaptations consistently highlights adult roles and presence within the story more than in the source, often foregrounding adult characters and featuring adults learning lessons from children. The chapter uses The Lorax and Jumanji to reveal how dual audience works differently in picturebooks and film, highlighting how these films seem to overturn adult/child binaries, placing children in increased power positions for a time, but eventually reestablish aetonormative power structures. The chapter ends by examining Spike Jonze’s controversial adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, a film that emphasizes a common ideology that results from binary polarization in picturebook adaptation, wherein adults are portrayed as feeling powerless despite their seeming position of power.

Female Saviors in Adolescent Film Adaptations

Chapter three identifies a key ideological ramification of polarized binaries, suggesting that a widened divide between concepts of male and female consistently shifts depictions of female characters to position them as the emotional and spiritual saviors of their male counterparts. The chapter draws on Mike Cadden’s analysis of single and double-voiced discourse and Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze to explore Warm Bodies, The 5th Wave, The Hunger Games, Paper Towns, and The Spectacular Now and explains how a greater emphasis on romantic elements in the film leads to constructions of male and female defined as more starkly different. The chapter posits three reasons that polarization of binaries leads to ideologies surrounding the female savior, concluding that shifts in point of view, attempts at female empowerment, and traps of the male gaze and Manic Pixie Dream Girl produce a film that is far more single-voiced than its textual predecessor.