Popular music, from novel to film: language, discourse and meaning in High Fidelity and The Commitments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2010.741n1011Keywords:
Music, urban space, identity, novel, adaptationAbstract
Adapting a novel into a film is not a simple question of translating the narrative plot from one medium to another, it also deals with the cultural competence of the reader / spectator and the meanings and discourses articulated in the interpretation of the texts. Music is present in both novels and films, and so it participates in the process of creating meanings, even when it does not take part in the formal structure of the text. This article develops the analysis of popular music in The Commitments and High Fidelity, two films based on two novels where the ideology of rock music influences both characters and spaces. Songs, musicians and instruments are present in prose, dialogues, sound and image, both in the novels by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby, respectively, and in the films directed by Alan Parker and Stephen Frears, thus demonstrating the multimedia condition of music and its capability to interact with the narrative structure of the texts in the articulation of several discourses.
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