Laurence Raw - Adapted from the Original: Essays on the Value and Values of Works Remade for a New Medium

EDITED BY LAURENCE RAW AND DEFNE ERSIN TURAN

The Adaptation of History: Essays on Ways of Telling the Past (McFarland, 2013)

ALSO BY LAURENCE RAW

Character Actors in Horror and Science Fiction Films, 19301960 (McFarland, 2012)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

The author died on June 27, 2018, after completing the manuscript for this book.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-3287-2

2018 Estate of Laurence Raw. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover image 2018 massimo1g/iStock
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
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This collection is dedicated to the memory of
Nehir Sert, my erstwhile office-mate and head
of the Department of English Language Teaching
at Bakent until 2015, who sadly passed away
in late 2016 well before her 60th year.

I am eternally grateful to the medical and nursing staff of Bakent and Hacettepe university hospitals in Ankara for their professionalism and sympathy during a recent stay.

I am also eternally grateful to a number of people at Bakent University who offered invaluable support. They include the founding rector, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Haberal; the current rector, Prof. Dr. Ali Haberal; the former rector, Prof. Dr. Kenan Araz; assistant rector Prof. Dr. Kadir Varolu; the dean of the Faculty of Education, Prof. Dr. Sadegl Akbaba Altun; the immediate past dean, Prof. Dr. Fsun Eyidoan; and my head of department, Prof. Dr. Glsev Pekkan. Their generosity in arranging cover for my professional duties will not be forgotten.

Colleagues such as Senem Kaya, Defne Tutan, Gordon Marshall, Santiago Vaquera-Vsquez and Jason Mark Ward offered good counsel both face-to-face and online, even if they were not necessarily aware of it. Tony Gurr has always been around ever since we did Adaptation and Learning in 2013. Other colleagues from The Journal of American Studies in TurkeyMarshall, zlem Uzundemir, Meldan Tanrsal, and Tanfer Emin Tunhave been extremely kind.

I have also benefited from the generosity and sympathy of Adrian Thomas and Peter Wiseman, both stalwarts of Beckenham Cricket Club in southeast London, where I spent many years as a member during my teenage and 20-something years. I reconnected with them after a 27-year hiatus. My cousin Steve Colling has also been very helpful in ways that cannot really be explained.

This book would not have come about without colleagues I first encountered at the annual Southwest Popular Culture Association conference in Albuquerque. I am grateful to Lynnea Chapman King and her highly competent staff for providing such a fruitful occasion to discuss adaptation with colleagues young and old. I pay tribute to the organizers of the Association of Adaptation Studies conference, especially Deborah Cartmell, Jeremy Strong, and Jamie Sherry, for providing a similar forum within the United Kingdom and Europe.

Many of my ideas for the introduction were worked out in the online journal Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy (journaldialogue.org). I am grateful to co-editors Lynnea Chapman King and A. S. Cohen Miller for commissioning material from me. I also thank Ann Larabee, editor of the Journal of Popular Culture, for permitting me to write a regular column.

This collection would never have been completed if it had not been for the support offered by my wife Meltem, who combined the task of caring for me with her full-time post at the Department of American Culture and Literature at Bakent University. Quite how she managed to accomplish the task is a wonder to behold, especially as I am seldom a very good patient.

Laurence Raw

Our constructions of value have been shaped by two distinct theoretical traditionsthe economic and the psychological. The conservative economist Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that the value of any product depends on labor and supply costs. The distinction between short- and long-term value is an important one: short-term value is determined through goods potential usefulness in daily life, while long-term value is more specialized. Smith uses that distinction to claim that there are two important notions of valuevalue in use and value in exchange. Value in use covers those goods required for daily existence, while value in exchange pertains to luxury goods (for example, diamonds). Value in exchange enables us to purchase other luxury items whose price perpetually fluctuates. The things that carry value in use have no value in exchange; those that carry value in exchange have no value in use (De Gupta 10515). A century later theorists such as John Stuart Mill reinterpreted Smiths theories by claiming that exchange value depends on goods usefulness. Use value determines the price as well as production costs, supply and demand (de Vivo 6769). Goods are either utilitarian or marginal and form the backbone of economic activity while remaining largely stable in terms of price; marginal goods depend on market value (Lichtenstein et al. 5467).

Psychologically speaking, value inevitably asks questions of us: How do we feel when we make the act of valuation? What are the conditions determining that feeling? Who exactly are we? Values are subjective and internal, often intimately connected to motivation; they are cognitive, permitting us to seek out knowledge about what matters to us; and they involve the imagination and desire as well as experience. They are conditional and subject to perpetual change throughout our lives. If distinctions have to be drawn, we can say that psychological values are either intrinsic or instrumental. An intrinsic value relates to personality traits or other aspects of our character, while an instrumental value related to an object or item that attracts us (Lewis 89111).

Although originating from different disciplines, there are palpable links between the two traditions. Marginal goods might carry instrumental value (for example, family heirlooms), while value in exchange might be interpreted psychologically as well as materialistically. Fans choosing to alter their appearance, their name or their outlook on life might be an example. Each year at the Southwest Popular Culture Conference in Albuquerque a group of aca-fans (known as dead-headers) listen to papers while paying tribute in music and sound to the Grateful Dead. For three days, they set aside their daily identities and subject their past selves to re-evaluation in the present. For the organizers, the event is highly profitable, due to the number of participants involved, thereby promoting value in exchange as well as instrumental values.

Adaptation studies is one of those disciplines that requires us to consider both theoretical traditions. We are all familiar with certain issues of value, such as the relationship between literature and film. George Bluestones pioneering