What do you call movies like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which provide an alternate viewpoint to a previous story (Hamlet)?
I've always loved the play and movie, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but I've never really known what to call works like this. I got into an argument with someone who called it "glorified fanfiction" which I really had no defense against. Can someone more informed than me help out with a true category to place this movie in?
Answers ( 3 )
An adaptation of a previous work is what you might consider for description. For example, the movie "Clueless" is considered a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's "Emma." It takes a very different approach to the original story but does follow a central theme. And the movie "Forrest Gump" paints a very different picture of the simple-minded Forrest, who in the book was a pot-smoking, cursing, jailed mental patient. We came to love and understand Forrest's simple needs and desires, but that's not how the original character was written. So these are adaptations of another story, very different perspectives on basic characters and spinning a different tale.
Then we get into derivative work, which must be so wholly different to allow it to be considered an original, but still retain qualities from its original source. But this more applies to copyright issues. Only a copyright holder can create derivative works from their original work. For another creator to make a derivative work, it would violate copyright. So adaptation would be the suitable description. You can take a lot of license in adapting a work, even changing story, characters, locale, motivation and more - you can provide an alternative perspective as well.
I do have to make this added mention of a little tidbit from watching a vintage movie today - Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in "Ball of Fire," which oddly enough is a bizarre little take, adaptation, on the story of the Seven Dwarves. The movie begins with the prologue, "Once upon a time - in 1941 to be exact - there lived in a great, tall forest - called New York - eight men who were writing an encyclopedia. They were so wise they knew everything: the depth of the oceans, and what makes a glowworm glow, and what tune Nero fiddles while Rome was burning. But there was one thing about which they knew very little - as you will see . . ."
I would describe Roesnecrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as an alternate-perspective piece. It's in the same sphere of literature as Grendel by John Gardner, which told the story of Beuwulf from the perspective of the monster of that famous tale rather than from the perspective of the hero who defeated it. Another more recent example of that kind of storytelling is The Things by Peter Watts. In that short story we are presented with the narrative of John W. Campbell's Who Goes There? which was the source for John Carpenter's now classic film The Thing. And like Grendel Watts chooses to tell the story from the perspective of the monster instead of its victims.
Of course, neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern are monsters, but what you get is a famous story from a different perspective. That's a little different from a simple adaptation because it can change the dynamics of the story fairly radically. For example, in Grendel the monster (and title character) is much more sympathetic than in the original story. These kinds of reworkings can be quite clever, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead certainly is. Tom Stoppard takes two very minor characters from Shakespears' classic and shows us how the actions of the powerful can effect lives that on the surface are of little consequence. But those lives are of tremendous consequence to those who are actually living them. So much of historical literature is concerned with the wealthy and powerful, and that's understandable, but regular folks lived that history too and the actions of men and women of power can reveberate through those lives in profound ways. What seems a simple decision on the part of a man like Hamlet can effect others disastrously. Stoppard gives us two kind of baffonish, but likable, characters who get screwed royally. Taken from their perspective the story of Hamlet is indeed a tragedy, a tragedy for them every bit as much as it is for all the big shots in the tale.
Probably the term that best describes the genre is "derivative." This is perhaps most commonly used in a negative sense, but at root all it means is "based upon another work." And Fanfiction is that, sure. Shakespeare's own work was often derivative, sevreal of his plays were based on earlier iterations of Italian works.