Acting as Fan Activity
January 30th, 2008 by ArielSo, after the screening last night I was watching some of the BBC miniseries about Casanova with David Tennant and was reminded of how David Tennant came to be an actor: by watching Doctor Who and thinking that was what he wanted to do. t the moment, David Tennant is playing the Doctor, which is an interesting slide along Bob’s producer/consumer scale. So, we’re discussed the idea of canonicity of multiple authors, but what about multiple actors in the same role? Tennant’s portrayal of the 10th Doctor must be influenced by the acting of the 3rd and 4th Doctors that he watched as a child (for those who don’t know, part of Doctor Who canon is that a Time Lord, like the Doctor, can reincarnate a limited number of times and ergo David Tennant’s character is the 10th incarnation of the Doctor and he is the 10th actor to play the role). Does that mean that his acting is fanfic-esque in some sense?
It seems to me there are three possibilities for different actors in the same role: things like the Doctor, where it’s part of the canon; situations where there are re-makes and multiple adaptations, like the fact that Laurence Olivier, Colin Firth, and Matthew McFadyen have all played Mr. Darcy, but Darcys with different scripts; and things like Broadway musicals, when many different people play the exact same role.
So what’s canon in the latter two situations? Whose portrayal is the canonical one?
Posted in Industry | 3 Comments »
I think technically, since the movies are adaptations and thus retellings of the Jane Austen novels, none of the movies can be considered canon. LotR and the Harry Potter movies aren’t considered canon after all. So it doesn’t matter if Mr. Darcy has ben played by multiple actors in different movie version since none of them are canon.
Perhaps a more productive line of conversation (rather than ruling certain texts/performances as outside canon, and leaving it at that) is to consider the ways in which media franchises like Doctor Who differ from other models of “chain” media (such as Jane Austen adaptations) in terms of their casting protocols. As Ariel points out, the Who franchise quite smartly built into its rules the provision that different actors would take over the lead role as time went on. Compare this to the problem faced by Star Trek — which simultaneously built new series around new casts/ships, while putting an aging troupe of actors through their paces in movies. Now that the Original Series cast are dying off, or no longer able to perform their roles plausibly, the franchise has to “reboot” itself with new actors playing the roles of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc., opening up continuity problems and potentially alienating the fan base.
The larger issue, it seems to me, involves questions of industry and public, in addition to the status of a text as chapter / sequel / adaptation.
Ah, I disagree, Kathy. The LotR movies are a canon — the movieverse rather than the book verse. I say this because there is movieverse fic, etc. I think the problem with the HP movies that invalidates them from being canon is that they’re too different from the books to count as a visual version of the canon (like the BBC Pride and Prejudice is — that things is almost line-by-line) and yet doesn’t bring anything new. This is one of the issues of canon. Clearly the BBC P&P wasn’t written by Jane Austen and therefore isn’t part of the *Austen* canon, but I would argue that it is in some sense part of the *P&P* canon, just as the LotR movies are part of the LotR canon but not the Tolkien canon, if that makes sense.
Bob – I think the idea of casting protocols in terms of remakes, adaptations, and continuations is really interesting and very much involved in the way that fans see characters and the limitation of industry. I know that almost no one in HP fandom would have chosen Gary Oldman for Sirius — a lot of people wanted Daniel Day-Lewis but he turned it down, violating this sort of platonic ideal of adaptations fans tend to have (of course, a lot of things about the HP movies have done that). Doctor Who is particularly interesting for its casting — there’s also an interesting contrast between the implied casting protocols for the Doctor, who’s supposed to have some continuity, and the Doctor’s companion, who could, theoretically, be anyone on earth (there was a really interesting controversy about racism last season that I’ll bring up when we get to race). This all seems to be tied to the semi-permeable membrane separating movies and TV from movie- and TV-making, an issue that fans have to grapple with sometimes compared to the world of book fandom.