Translating a popular novel from one culture into a film aimed at another is certainly fraught with challenges. It’s essentially an act of double translation: from one culture to another and also from one artistic genre to another.
A host of artistic choices have to be made. Whatever the end result, it isn’t merely a matter of transposing the content from Form A to Form B.
Yet how odd it initially seems that an American film version of a European crime thriller omits a jail term served by one of the key characters. That is what writer / director David Fincher chose to do, however, in his Anglo Saxon take on the sensational Swedish novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
In the Stieg Larsson original, muckraking journalist Mikael Blomkvist must serve a couple of months in jail as part of his sentence after being convicted of libeling a notorious business tycoon. In Fincher’s film, the sentence consists only of fines, with no jail time or even probation.
One might have thought that including the jail term would be quite natural in a film aimed at American audiences. After all, we are the country that leads the world in incarceration rates, the country sometimes called A Nation of Jailers.
Fincher probably felt that the very liberality of the conditions of Blomkvist’s confinement would make it unintelligible to many Americans. For example, Blomkvist gets to choose when he will serve his jail term. Such discretion is little known in our system, geared as it is toward punishment.
Similarly, the jail term itself, when Larsson’s Blomkvist does serve it, turns out to be a positive experience for him - more like going to a summer camp than to a hellhole. This contrasts sharply with the American perception that a jail term must inevitably evoke constant fear and trembling.
Showing posts with label Stieg Larsson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stieg Larsson. Show all posts
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Monday, February 7, 2011
Crime, Delinquency and the Ethics of Investigation
The philosopher Hegel distinguished very carefully between morality and ethics. Moralty (Moralitaet) was more abstract and transnational in nature. Ethics (Sittlichkeit) was about the mores of a particular cultural group.
Stieg Larsson employs both of these terms in describing the actions of his character Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo. Joining forces at last - after over 350 pages - with the other lead character, Mikael Blomkvist, Salander has absolutely no compunction whatsoever about hacking into Blomkvist's computer.
Especially with a high-stakes inquiry into the actions of an apparent serial killer on the line.
Larsson puts it this way: "Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child's take on morals and ethics."
Salander wanted the info, so she took it. Her action was akin to delinquency in its lack of respect for the other person. If she'd simply asked Blomkvist, he probably would have given her the information without all that much hesitation.
Instead, she risked sabotaging a key relationship by undermining essential trust.
Stieg Larsson employs both of these terms in describing the actions of his character Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo. Joining forces at last - after over 350 pages - with the other lead character, Mikael Blomkvist, Salander has absolutely no compunction whatsoever about hacking into Blomkvist's computer.
Especially with a high-stakes inquiry into the actions of an apparent serial killer on the line.
Larsson puts it this way: "Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child's take on morals and ethics."
Salander wanted the info, so she took it. Her action was akin to delinquency in its lack of respect for the other person. If she'd simply asked Blomkvist, he probably would have given her the information without all that much hesitation.
Instead, she risked sabotaging a key relationship by undermining essential trust.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Dragon Tatoo, Dangerous Society
Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo is - as Michael Palin used to say - a "ripping good yarn." The international publishing sensation it's become is evidence enough of that.
Yet it's also a clear critique, written by a man, of a pervasive culture of violence against women permeating Swedish society. Larsson appends short, devastating statements of fact to introduce sections of the book.
Before Part I, for example, is this statement: "Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man."
The statement before Part II moves from threat to action: "Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man."
Despite these warnings in the section epigraphs, I was shocked when, 200 pages into the book, Lisbeth Salander, the title character, was brutally and mercilessly raped by a man who was supposed to be her guardian.
Outweighing her by over 100 pounds, this man, Advokat Bjurman, forces Salander to suck his cock. And thinking himself insulated from consequences by his social power over her, he doesn't expect her to report it.
The story is set in Sweden in 2002 - a society surely among the most egalitarian in world history. A country with paid family leave for men, many of whom have embraced the role of caregiver.
Yet The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo suggests that there is a spectre haunting this society - the spectre of male violence.
Yet it's also a clear critique, written by a man, of a pervasive culture of violence against women permeating Swedish society. Larsson appends short, devastating statements of fact to introduce sections of the book.
Before Part I, for example, is this statement: "Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man."
The statement before Part II moves from threat to action: "Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man."
Despite these warnings in the section epigraphs, I was shocked when, 200 pages into the book, Lisbeth Salander, the title character, was brutally and mercilessly raped by a man who was supposed to be her guardian.
Outweighing her by over 100 pounds, this man, Advokat Bjurman, forces Salander to suck his cock. And thinking himself insulated from consequences by his social power over her, he doesn't expect her to report it.
The story is set in Sweden in 2002 - a society surely among the most egalitarian in world history. A country with paid family leave for men, many of whom have embraced the role of caregiver.
Yet The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo suggests that there is a spectre haunting this society - the spectre of male violence.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Everybody Loves a Good Krimi
In English, detective novels and other crime stories are often categorized as "mysteries."
That has always seemed to me to be a bit of a stretch. More often than not, pulp fiction does not really explicate the Eleusinian mysteries.
The Germans, however, have a wonderfully pithy word for the genre: Krimi.
For the past few years, the Krimi par excellence on the world stage has been Stieg Larsson's millenium trilogy, which begins with The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo.
A friend at work gave me two of the three volumes. Dipping into Dragon Tatoo, I found the early going pleasurable but slightly tepid. Then, when I reached page 92, the hook was set. Like millions of others around the world, I am finding it hard to put the book down.
On page 104, Larsson's memorable character Lisbeth Salander drops a synonym for jail or prison that I omitted from my short list of those terms in my post a couple of months ago. Salander notes that Mikael Blomkvist, the noted journalist convicted of libel, is headed for "the slammer" for three months.
The slammer, I suppose, as in the door slams behind you.
That has always seemed to me to be a bit of a stretch. More often than not, pulp fiction does not really explicate the Eleusinian mysteries.
The Germans, however, have a wonderfully pithy word for the genre: Krimi.
For the past few years, the Krimi par excellence on the world stage has been Stieg Larsson's millenium trilogy, which begins with The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo.
A friend at work gave me two of the three volumes. Dipping into Dragon Tatoo, I found the early going pleasurable but slightly tepid. Then, when I reached page 92, the hook was set. Like millions of others around the world, I am finding it hard to put the book down.
On page 104, Larsson's memorable character Lisbeth Salander drops a synonym for jail or prison that I omitted from my short list of those terms in my post a couple of months ago. Salander notes that Mikael Blomkvist, the noted journalist convicted of libel, is headed for "the slammer" for three months.
The slammer, I suppose, as in the door slams behind you.
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