INTRODUCTION
Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal
I don't invent: I steal.
Jean-Luc Godard
I.
This collection of original essays is dedicated to exploring the scope and nature of remakes in film and in related media, in Hollywood as well as in the cinemas of other nations. We are concerned with remakes as aesthetic or cinematic texts and as ideological expressions of cultural discourse set in particular times, contexts, and societies. Although there has been considerable recent work in film as an intertextual medium,[1] the remake has received relatively little critical attention to date.[2]
Remakes themselves, however, continue to proliferate. Case in point: the 1994 summer blockbuster Maverick . This film suggests some other genre and cultural boundaries we wish to explore beyond the obvious level of new films made from old. In what sense is the film Maverick a "remake" or "makeover" of the old James Garner television show that began in 1957, the year Mel Gibson, who plays Maverick in the movie, was born? What exactly are the boundaries of a remake? At what point does similarity become simply a question of influence? And what is the difference between a remake and the current television label "spin-off"? Darren Star, creator of Beverly Hills 90210 , agrees that his more recent show, Melrose Place , is a twenty-something spin-off of his earlier high school series, which, in turn, he claims, is a spin-off of the film The Breakfast Club . How do we define the complex relations between these texts?
Our collection of essays responds to these questions in a variety of ways and suggests some of the directions that others may follow, either with a more theoretical interest in defining "remakes" or with a more focused interest in cultural studies and the meanings of repetition in whatever shades of difference such texts may suggest.
Find the entire Book: Play it Again, Sam
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE— NEXT OF KIN: REMAKES AND HOLLYWOOD
Remakes and Cultural Studies
Algebraic Figures: Recalculating the Hitchcock Formula
The Director Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock Remakes Himself
Robin Hood: From Roosevelt to Reagan
"Once More, from the Top": Musicals the Second Time Around
The Ethnic Oedipus: The Jazz Singer and Its Remakes
Raiders of the Lost Text: Remaking as Contested Homage in Always
Double Takes: The Role of Allusion in Cinema
PART TWO— DISTANT RELATIVES: CROSS-CULTURAL REMAKES
The French Remark: Breathless and Cinematic Citationality
The Spring, Defiled: Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Spring and Wes Craven's Last House on the Left
Cinematic Makeovers and Cultural Border Crossings: Kusturica's Time of the Gypsies and Coppola's
Godfather and Godfather II
Made in Hong Kong: Translation and Transmutation
Modernity and Postmaternity: High Heels and Imitation of Life
Feminist Makeovers: The Celluloid Surgery of Valie Export and Su Friedrich
Nosferatu , or the Phantom of the Cinema
How Many Draculas Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?
PART THREE— ALTERED STATES: TRANSFORMING MEDIA
The Superhero with a Thousand Faces: Visual Narratives on Film and Paper
"Tonight Your Director Is John Ford": The Strange Journey of Stagecoach from Screen to Radio
M*A*S*H Notes
Afterword: Rethinking Remakes