Simultaneous Adaptation: Examples from Popular Culture
Abstract:
The present paper responds to Lindiwe Dovey’s call for studying what she terms as Simultaneous Adaptation and which thus far has not attracted much attention within contemporary Adaptation Studies. Adapting more than one source simultaneously, the practice of Simultaneous Adaptation encourages readers/listeners/viewers to compare and contrast the thematic resonances and implications of the juxtaposed sources rather than recall each individual source separately in detail. Thus, lack of protracted knowledge of adapted source text(s) ceases to be an obstacle in the recognition and enjoyment of the adaptation.
Through two examples, the song “Something Just Like This” and the official video accompanying Sia’s single “Cheap Thrills”, the researchers seek to study how Simultaneous Adaptation goes on to thematically enrich texts belonging to popular culture. By way of close-reading, the researchers bring out and analyze the role and significance of the multiple sources simultaneously adapted within the selected texts, all the while highlighting that texts belonging to popular culture demand close scrutiny in order to extract from them relevant, interesting, and complex meanings.
Keywords: “Cheap Thrills”. Dovey. Leitch. Simultaneous Adaptation. Sia. “Something Just Like This”. The Chainsmokers.
Introduction
Lindiwe Dovey’s article “Fidelity, Simultaneity and the ‘Remaking’ of Adaptation Studies” (2012) considers Simultaneous Adaptation as “an emergent form of adaptation” (169) and one which thus far has not attracted much attention within contemporary Adaptation Studies (170).
Simultaneous Adaptation offers two advantages: it brings together two or more originals, fashioning a “creative tension between or among these originals” which goes on to provide “intellectual pleasure” (170) to readers/listeners/viewers and encourages them to “simultaneously measure two or more originals against one another rather than consider how the adaptation is an adaptation of those originals” (170, emphasis added). The focus thus shifts from comparative analysis, often in service and search of fidelity to hermeneutics and interpretation from within the simultaneously adapted texts, and to comparing and contrasting the thematic resonances and implications of the juxtaposed sources rather than recall each individual source separately in detail.
Prompting one to draw “parallels between and among the presented texts” (170) Simultaneous Adaptation is thus uniquely qualified to mitigate the dangers of the reader/listener/viewer not being totally familiar with the source(s) adapted – instead, even partial knowledge of the sources is sufficient for comprehension of the adaptation as adaptation and facilitates the study of mutual exchanges, similarities, and differences between the multiple adapted sources, an enriching, revealing, and intellectual exercise in itself. In other words, lack of detailed knowledge about the adapted source texts does not necessarily amount to an impossibility of recognizing, enjoying and appreciating an adaptation.
Moreover, Simultaneous Adaptation “does not require of the audience a long and protracted engagement after the event to experience the pleasures of adaptation. Indeed, in some cases, the sources are tangential or only briefly touched upon” (169, emphasis added) thus allowing for almost immediate recognition and interpretation during the duration for which the adaptation lasts.
Dovey’s article is focused on studying and analyzing Simultaneous Adaptation as practiced by postcolonial artists who seek to rewrite singular, Western colonial narratives that bowdlerize black histories and voices.
The present article turns its interpretive lens towards exploring and analyzing how Simultaneous Adaptation goes on to thematically enrich texts belonging to popular culture. The status of the selected texts as adaptations – first, the song “Something Just Like This” (2017) by The Chainsmokers and second, the official video accompanying the song “Cheap Thrills” (2016) – is debatable and can be pronounced tenuous yet considering their status as adaptations reveals significant insight about the works not apparent otherwise.
“Something Just Like This”
“Something Just Like This”, released on February 22, 2017, is a collaboration between The Chainsmokers, an American electronic music and DJ duo Alexander “Alex” Pall and Andrew “Drew” Taggart, and Coldplay, a British rock-band, with Will Champion and Christ Martin from the latter providing vocals to the song penned by Andrew Taggart, Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion, and Chris Martin.
The narrator/speaker/singer in the song says that of late he has been reading books about mythological figures and pop-culture superheroes including Achilles, Hercules, Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman. He confesses that compared to these mighty heroes, blessed with “superhuman gifts” (Champion et al.), who have proven their might in great battles or rescued humankind and Earth from formidable dangers, he has done or achieved little that would qualify him to be “upon that list” (Champion et al.). Reading about this divine, semi-divine and uniquely gifted personalities, he is overcome with anxiety and fells inferior to them. In all probability, he is addressing his beloved, confessing over his lack of glorious achievements.
Seeing that her beloved is stressed about his commonplace life, she beings to reassure him by first posing to him a pertinent question – “where'd you wanna go? / How much you wanna risk?” (Champion et al.). Moreover, she assures him that she isn’t “looking for somebody / With some superhuman gifts” (Champion et al.). Rather than, “Some superhero / Some fairy-tale bliss” she prefers what she has, in the form of her beloved, “something I can turn to” in difficult or testing times, “Somebody I can kiss” (Champion et al.), one who is always near to her, not out to save the world, a noble deed, but that might threaten his own life, leaving her alone and lonely. She is more than happy with what she has, for she wants “something just like this” (Champion et al.).
The speaker, still not convinced, recalls “The legends and the myths / The testaments they told” of heroic and epic battles and how Superman, despite concealing himself behind the alter-ego of Clark Kent, a reporter for The Daily Planet, has risen on countless of occasions to save Earth from lunatics like Lex Luthor, prompting his beloved to again repeat the assurance with which the song concludes (Champion et al.).
An interesting question arises: what is it that the song actually, simultaneously adapts? Living in an age dominated by the Internet which facilitates access to information at the click of a button, it is more than likely that one would have comes across not only the names of Achilles and Hercules, either through studies, movies or random Internet surfing, but also to truckloads of contextual information regarding them. Even if one is not familiar in detail with Homer’s Iliad, one knows of Achilles’s birth, gifts, and his exploits in the Trojan War. Similar is the case with superheroes of popular culture. One might not have read the original DC comics but still know, who exactly Batman and Superman are.
To return to the question just posed: is the song adapting these heroic figures? The clear and obvious answer is, no. None of them actually figure as characters – at best, they are being referred and referenced by the speaker to highlight his sense of inadequacy.
Yet, even though not being entirely familiar with the varied mythological and popular sources to which these heroes belong, almost all readers/listeners/viewers of the song would be able to juxtapose almost immediately, through their partial yet crucial knowledge, the different figures and infer what unites them, what is being adapted. To put it simply, all these figures are united by what they have lost, either in becoming or before becoming the superheroes the world today recognizes them as, often as a direct consequence of their “flaws and weakness” (Le).
The danger of committing grave errors and losing those near and dear to us on the road to fame and glory is what is being adapted from these varied sources, as an implicit warning in the words of the beloved. Let us consider what some of the mythological figures and superheroes mentioned in the song had to lose on their road to greatness:
(1) Achilles, though nearly invincible thanks to his mother Thetis, was fated to lose his life if he participated in the Trojan War. In choosing glory and greatness in the field of battle, Achilles ended up losing his life and the opportunity to ever enjoy the simple pleasures it has to offer. Moreover, he loses his friend and companion Patroclus during the Trojan War (March 6).
(2) Hercules, though he slayed monsters and accomplished the Twelve Labors, was seeking repentance and redemption through them for killing his wife and sons when he was driven mad by goddess Hera (March 232; 236-38).
(3) Spider-Man protects New York from criminals, but ironically, his origin story also reveals how, after being bitten by a radioactive spider that gave him superpowers, he turned wrestler and television star but let an escaping burglar go uncaught, considering it not as part of his job. When the same burglar ended up killing his guardian Uncle Ben, Peter comes to realize that “[w]ith great power there must also come – great responsibility!” (Lee and Ditko)
(4) Unlike the rest, Bruce Wayne led a privileged life with his parents until he was eight years old; he ended up losing both his father and mother, for no fault of his own, when a burglar killed them in cold-blood as they were returning home from a movie theater. Bruce swears to spend the rest of his life fighting crime and criminals and Gotham City gains a brooding vigilante (Finger).
Irrespective of their source of power (divine, semi-divine, the result of a scientific accident, a more advanced species compared to humans, or simply a mixture of training, technology and wealth), these heroic figures of mythology and popular culture have either suffered deep, irreparable, and irreplaceable personal loss or committed grave errors. This experience of losing a dear one and/or the desire to atone for past errors is what propelled them towards heroic deeds irrespective of the danger involved, rather than the desire to achieve fame and glory.
As Brian Le writes:
In this song, Coldplay and The Chainsmokers [sic] reject a traditional notion of heroism that has existed since the ancient days – that of powerful figures who push themselves past the limits of human ability and human existence to attain greatness – and instead suggest that we should be comfortable with our own humanity. (Le)
Thus, even without any protracted knowledge of the source-text(s), chances are most readers/viewers/listeners would be familiar with the basic biographical details of each of these mythological and fictional superheroes. If and once they are able to, almost immediately, juxtapose all these figures, the song encourages them to think of the “parallels between and among the presented” (Dovey 170) stories/sources even though their knowledge of the adapted source text(s) is partial or incomplete.
It can be argued that the links or connections between the song and the sources are intertextual and that the song refers to rather than adapt them. However, as Sarah Cardwell argues and reminds, intertextuality is “a state of being” (12) of all texts whereas adaptation is a “consciously referential” (13), deliberate, intentional process of selection, amplification, etc. The relation between the song and the sources it refers to cannot be considered only intertextual because apart from recognizing and laying bare the connection between the two intertextuality aids interpretation only when the connections are understood and interpreted as adaptational. In other words, only when it becomes clear that some form of essence from these sources is being consciously referred to and adapted as an implicit warning – namely, the danger of committing grave errors and losing near and dear ones in the obsession to become a great, world-renowned figure – does this intertextuality accumulate a layer of meaning around it.
“Cheap Thrills”
Originally released as part of Australian singer-songwriter Sia Furler’s seventh studio album This is Acting (2016), the song was also remixed and rereleased on 11 February 2016; the latter version features rapper Sean Paul apart from vocals by Sia. Moreover, both versions have their separate official videos. With multiple awards to its credit, the song has been described by Kitty Empire of The Guardian as “a perfectly serviceable party tune” (Empire).
The speaker in the song, asks someone, in all probability her beloved, to “turn the radio on” as it wouldn’t take her long to do her hair and put her “make up on” (Kurstin and Sia). After all, its Friday night and she is longing to hit the dance floor. She accepts that she “ain't got cash” (Kurstin and Sia) but that she is in the company of her beloved and that is what matters. Moreover, she assures him the she “don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight” and that she “don't need no money /As long as I can feel the beat” (Kurstin and Sia) of music.
In other words, she assures her beloved, who too seems to be low on money, that rather than lavish outings or gifts, she’d prefer to dance while listening to the music on the radio – not at any fancy and equally costly dance club but in the confines of her room/apartment. This dancing at home is a cheap thrill that costs nothing and she “need[s] no money / As long as I keep dancing” (Kurstin and Sia). The routine on Saturday too remains the same. The girl understands her financial constraints and is more than willing to be a person who stays-at-home-on-weekends as long as she is in the company of her beloved and good music. The simple yet profound message of the song: you don’t need money to be happy.
Interesting and fun as the song in itself is, the official video accompanying the song directed by Lior Molcho has crossed more than 1.4 billion views on YouTube and serves to amp-up the interest even more.
The black-and-white video features a group of dancing couples competing in a television dance competition program reminiscent of the 1950’s programs such as American Bandstand. In the diegetic world, the song on which the dancers are supposed to dance is Sia’s single “Cheap Thrills”. While the Host of the show (Matthew Stolarz) observes the dancers and seems to be assigning marks, around 1 minute and 35 seconds in the video, two mysterious dancers in black and blonde wigs (Minn Vo and Stefanie Klausmann) break into a kind of dance that is perhaps unlike to what either the Host or the rest of the participants have ever known. Although shocked and confused at first, by the end of the video, the Host, along with the other participants, couldn’t resist joining in and practicing the strange and new dance moves this mysterious couple has introduced.
Two interesting and intriguing questions arise: what exactly is being adapted in the video and who are these dancers?
The video simultaneously adapts a television show format and several dance genres. It presents itself as a 1950’s American Bandstand-style dance competition. Thomas Leitch (2008) has discussed the possibility of identifying an adaptation based on textual markers. Although Cardwell doubts its epistemological soundness as misidentification is likely (12), in this instance, the markers indicating the status of the video as an adaptation include the black-and-white picture format, the 4:3 aspect ratio of older television programs (“Aspect Ratio”), the dressing style of the Host and participants evocative of 1950s America, etc.
Moreover, the two mysterious dancers themselves simultaneously adapt and refer to several dance styles that have developed over decades. Although they are declared winners of the competition owing to their new moves at around 2 minutes and 17s, they continue dancing.
Following their win, they perform the Robot, which though it dates back to the 1920s in miming, was improvised in the late 1960s by Charles Washington and popularized by Michael Jackson (Barton and Edwards); The Hustle, a dance form popularized with the rise of the disco in the 1970s and invented by Puerto Rican teenagers in South Bronx (Kleiman); the Moonwalk at around 2 minutes 58 seconds (earlier known as backslide) popularized and revived by Michael Jackson in 1983 although it is said to date back to the 1930s (Chandler); the air guitar, in which the performer pretends to play an imaginary rock or electric guitar to pre-selected songs or created medleys, popularized in the 1980s (White); mimic steps from Beyonce’s Single Ladies released in 2008 (00: 03:36) and finally they perform what is called “The Time Warp”, featured in the 1975 movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show (00:03:44) which is “a parody of novelty dance numbers” (“Time Warp”).
As to the question of who these mysterious dancers are, two possible responses suggest themselves: one simple, straightforward explanation can be they are strange-looking but regular participants who let their hair down and perform innovative steps. However, clues hidden within the adapted dance styles suggest a more exciting possibility: the exaggerated air guitar dance routine is similar to one featured in the movie Back to the Future (1985) – though there the protagonist does have with him a real guitar – which as the title suggests, deals with a boy travelling accidentally back in time and hence must find a way to return back from the past to the ‘future’ to which he belongs. The final dance they perform, “The Time Warp”, once again hints at the role of time behind the appearance of these two mysterious dancers. It seems they are so in love and dedicated towards dancing, similar to the girl in the lyrics-only version, that they have travelled back in time to teach and popularize dance styles that would otherwise have taken decades to develop.
Conclusion
“Something Just Like This” reminds that personal lives of great heroes is often fraught with equally great errors and losses. These errors and losses, rather than any desire for fame, prompts them to turn savior for humankind. In comparing oneself to them, one should remember what they have lost. One should focus on not repeating those errors and risk losing those near and dear to us. This message is conveyed by simultaneously adapting and hinting at key contexts from the lives of mythological and pop-culture superheroes.
The video accompanying “Cheap Thrills” plays with the trope of time-travel, declares its status as adaptation via textual markers, and simultaneously adapts dance styles developed over decades in the span of few minutes to pose a fascinating question: can and what if a genre’s development is fast-forwarded?
When multiple sources are simultaneously adapted, it encourages readers/ listeners/ viewers to compare and contrast the thematic resonances and implications of the juxtaposed sources rather than recall each individual source separately in detail. Their lack of protracted knowledge of adapted source text(s) ceases to be an obstacle in the recognition and enjoyment of the adaptation.
Moreover, Simultaneous Adaptation thematically enriches texts belonging to popular culture. By way of close-reading, the researchers have analyzed the role and significance of the multiple sources simultaneously adapted within the selected texts, all the while highlighting that texts belonging to popular culture demand close scrutiny in order to extract from them relevant, interesting, and complex meanings.
Works Cited