Yesterday saw the start of filming of A Star is Born, a reworking of the Warner Bros. Pictures musical interpreted by Bradley Cooper (who is also the director) and Stefano Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga. The film joins the long list of remakes that have filled cinemas in recent years, raising more than one criticism on the lack of original ideas; something found in many areas within the audiovisual sector.
When talking about remakes it is important not to confuse them with their close relations, the reboot. While the former is a pretty faithful reproduction of an existing work (for example: Francesca Archibugi’s Il Nome del Figlio – An Italian Name as compared to the French film Le Prénom – What’s in a name?), a reboot is just that: a new work that derives from an existing one but reworks the subject matter. A good example of this is the recent Ghost in the Shell by Rupert Sanders, a re-adaptation of the 1989 manga by Masamune Shirow (which had already been adapted as an anime in 1995, produced by Mamoru Oshii). It must be said that the two terms often overlap, both because a remake is almost always a reboot too (except for particular cases such as Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, a film that was practically a shot-by-shot reproduction of Hitchcock’s original), due to the fact that a remake inevitably has to adapt to the present day and to the new reference audience; and because, in point of fact, a film can be both a remake and a reboot at the same time. If we take Beauty and the Beast, the live action version of the Disney’s 1991 film of the same name, we find many aspects that are typical of a remake (the main storyline and characters, practically untouched, along with many directorial choices), but also undeniable re-workings of principal themes, setting the stage for a possible prequel of the film.
During the past edition of MIA a discussion panel was held, entitled Remake it!, attended by Alessandro Usai from Colorado Film, Lorenzo Gangarossa from Wildside, together with Raquel Esquivias, from 2 Hour Parking, Robert Darwell, from Sheppard Mulin, the lawyer Clifford Werber, from GlobalGate Entertainment, and chaired by Guido Rud from Filmsharks Intl’. They all stressed the fact that a remake can be a great opportunity for creative development, a sort of translation, as it allows the circulation of stories that were successful in their own home country and have the potential to meet the tastes of a world-wide audience. Various box office successes in Italy during the past year are the result of a re-adaptation (for example Mamma o Papà, Poveri ma Ricchi and Benvenuti al Sud – Welcome to the South), while certain historic TV shows, such as Un Medico in Famiglia or the more recent In Treatment, are proof that the remake tactic has been used to good effect for some time, so much so that we Italians have recently become the inspiration for some of them, like Perfetti Sconosciuti – Perfect Strangers, which will shortly have a Spanish remake directed by Alex De La Iglesia.
So what is all the discussion about? Many sustain that the remake has become too widely used, and that continually re-working existing stories and subjects is an irrefutable sign of a downturn in creative verve and ideas. This criticism only applies if we consider a remake as synonymous with a “copy”, and if the adjective “commercial” is used only in the most negative sense of that term. It is obvious that market interests, particularly in the audiovisual sector, often take precedence over artistic ones, but this does not mean that the artistic value of a work is dependent on its level of originality.
With the discovery of mirror neurones, neurophysiology has highlighted the fact that the human brain seems to be programmed to discover a meaning in moulds, repetitions, mirror images. This is why Rorschach came up with symmetrical ink blots, as a useful means of stimulating the subconscious of patients. Post-modern literature took pride in this copying of previous models, almost as if wishing to exorcise “the anxiety of influence” mentioned by the critic Harold Bloom, that is to say the suffocating weight of tradition. It has been shown that undisputed masterpieces such as Lolita are forms of plagiarism, in this case of a short story with the same title published many years earlier by Heinz von Eschwege. The two pieces are not identical, but as well as having the same title, the eponymous heroine of the German work is likewise a nymphet with whom the narrator, a more mature man similar to Humbert Humbert, falls in love. In spite of this, comparison of the two texts gives more the impression of a creative imitation than a true plagiarism, in which the later work improves and completes the source of its inspiration. The truth is that there are various types of plagiarism, not all of which are necessarily fraudulent, as Richard A. Posner points out in his work The Little Book of Plagiarism. An example of this is self-plagiarism, in which a writer copies sections from his own previous works, a method that even Kafka resorted to in certain almost identical love letters sent to different women.
A recent French literary scandal actually related to an accusation of “psychic plagiarism”, made by Camille Laurens against Marie Daurrieussecq. The former, years earlier, had written a book, Philippe, a painful account of the death of her newborn son, and at a later date Daurrieussecq published a novel, Tom est mort, also centring around the death of a child, told in words very similar to the ones used by Laurens. This “psychic plagiarism” is seen not as the reiteration of phrases or ideas, but of emotions. Among the various comments that appeared subsequently in the French press, one of the most convincing was made by Philippe Lançon in Libération, who stated that “literature is a successful plagiarism”, adding that the accusation did not stand, simply because the copy is a much poorer story than the original. Eliot, whose The Waste Land is clearly a tapestry of various quotations, although these are partially credited in the notes, maintained that “bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different”.
The metaphysical question of the ownership of a work and the eternal subject of identity form the central nucleus of a splendid story by Francesco Burdin, an unjustly neglected writer from Trieste, who died recently but who, during his lifetime, had the unconditional respect of a select but extremely distinguished circle of critics, such as Cesare Zavattini, Giuliano Gramigna and Luigi Baldacci, who wrote the preface to his collection Manes. In the short story that gives the book its title, no mention is ever made of an actual name, either for the characters involved in the stories or for the numerous quotations given. Rather, the word name both opens and closes the story. The anonymous protagonist is a travelling salesman with a passion for writing, the unacknowledged author of numerous texts that are constantly rejected by editors, who is finally forced to sell off his works, partly to make a living, partly to have the comfort of actually seeing them published, even under another name.
The impossibility of uniting his own name with the public destiny of the work is a sign of the latter’s radical unrelatedness to its creator who, at the very moment of creation, has already given up any right, even merely formal, to its authorship. Initially, by giving his works over to different people, sometimes even giving a suitably adapted version of the same piece, in a sort of onomastic proliferation that attempts to lessen the suffering caused by privation, he deludes himself into thinking that he still has a semblance of control over the texts that, in actual fact, he has given up for ever. But the moment of truth is not far away, when, on being approached by a literary agent on behalf of a phantom customer, he finds himself asked to write not a mere story, but a novel, or rather: a masterpiece, for the purchase of which no expense will be spared. This work exists, it is the story of life and the fruit of endless sacrifices, and its name is Manes. The deal is completed quickly, and repentance is equally quick. Having given up any residual hope of becoming a known author, the protagonist becomes desperate to discover the usurper who will do so at his own expense. Meeting your double – because that is who it is – has never been a good thing.
“He was not very tall and, although just over thirty years old, had a corpulent and unattractive figure, with a face that was both sad and sadly familiar to me.”
This description shows all the artist’s inability to live with his prosaic earthly incarnation, not because it is totally mediocre, but because, even when it flaunts every virtue, it is irremediably foreign. This is often the case: the things that are most a part of us are those we recognise the least in ourselves, like a recording of our own voice, which always sounds strange and foreign when we listen to it. Yet it is to that “strange” voice, to that “corpulent” and “sad” alter ego of the author, that the world will attribute the work (attributing it also in the sense of giving tribute for it). The protagonist, defaulting on the agreement, attempts in vain to claim his authorship, to restore the intellectual property that is so widely acclaimed to its legitimate owner, but he is hounded down as a harasser and a liar.
Having been taken out of the drawer and handed over to the world, made public, the work, any work, becomes first and foremost apocryphal. In truth it is fundamentally that, and always has been, even in the secret time prior to its publication; not so much for the reader, but for the author, who is unable to accept either of these things. Its original loss must be ratified coram populo, its impossible recovery effected by any means, even the most extreme and desperate, which for Burdin coincides with the murder of the public figure. An exemplary murder, flagrant and suicidal, in many ways similar to that of William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe. Burdin renounces any other form of recomposition. In the end, for human kind, the only alternative to an apocryphal work is thus a posthumous work.
