Milli mála - 01.01.2011, Side 77

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MARTIN S. REGAL
ated the word as an abbreviation of the Greek mimeme. By copying
or replication, memes can thus be transmitted from one place to
another, one time to another, and one human being to another.4 As
such, their propagation has sometimes been regarded as having
more in common with the spread of a virus than the blending of
chromosomes. However, one need not go so far as try to present a
one-to-one correspondence between biological and literary adapta-
tion, nor indeed is that the intention of either Dawkins or Hutcheon.
While arguing for a homology rather than an analogy, Hutcheon
offers the idea that there is ‘a similarity in structure that is indica-
tive of a common origin’ and not merely a ‘metaphorical association’.5
However, reluctant to press the issue much further, she adds: ‘[w]e
are not saying that cultural adaptation is biological; our claim is
more modest. It is simply that both organisms and stories “evolve”—
that is, replicate and change’.6 Among the obvious advantages of
exploring such a homology would be an escape from the fidelity
syndrome. A film, for example, need no longer ‘be true’ to its source
if it is regarded not as an end-product but as part of a continuum.
Thus, to quote one of Hutcheon’s examples, instead of measuring,
say Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet (1996) against Shakespeare’s
‘original’ play, one could look, and far more productively, at the
survival of the central narrative of that story across various media.
Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses, 8AD) stands at
one end of this spectrum and works such as James Cameron’s Titanic
(1997) and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) at the other. In
between, of course, are hundreds if not thousands of versions of star-
crossed lovers.
I would like to show here not only that Hutcheon’s concept of
homology is viable, but also that the shift from product to process
will result in a significant advance for adaptation studies. I have
chosen Antigone as a test case for several reasons: it reaches back to
the beginnings of European literature, it has undegone a very large
number of adaptations and transformations and, perhaps most im-
4 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: OUP, 1976, p. 192.
5 Hutcheon, 2006, p. 444.
6 ibid., 446.