Ursula Vooght | Durban University of Technology (original) (raw)

Papers by Ursula Vooght

Peer-review declaration The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African 'National Scholarly Book... more Peer-review declaration The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African 'National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer-Review of Scholarly Books'. The book proposal form was evaluated by AOSIS Scholarly Books' Social Sciences, Humanities, Education and Business Management editorial board. The manuscript underwent an evaluation to compare the level of originality with other published works and was subjected to rigorous two-step peer-review before publication by two technical expert reviewers who did not include the author and were independent of the author, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author. The reviewers were independent of the publisher and author. The publisher shared feedback on the similarity report and the reviewers' inputs with the manuscript's author to improve the manuscript. Where the reviewers recommended revision and improvements, the author responded adequately to such recommendations. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the book be published. v Research justification This book, The Great Gatsby meets Alain Badiou: Rethinking fidelity in film adaptation, occupies the disciplinary field of adaptation studies, an interdisciplinary field located at the intersection of literary studies, cultural studies and film studies. Its intended audience is scholars of film adaptation and F Scott Fitzgerald scholars. It considers the Hollywood film adaptations of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) in light of philosopher Alain Badiou's theorisation of fidelity and truth, as well as his theoretically informed writings on cinema as a form. Although this book has grown out of my PhD thesis in Media and Cultural Studies and a previously published 2018 article, I affirm that at least 50% of the work has not been previously published. The book represents original research. No part of the book has been plagiarised from another publication or published elsewhere, and it has undergone an iThenticate similarities check.

Safundi, Jul 18, 2023

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an American novel that has arguably established a globa... more F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an American novel that has arguably established a global cultural recognizability, with the Hollywood adaptations of this novel commanding the biggest budgets and stars. However, Fitzgerald’s depiction of race poses problems for the contemporary reader, as it both critiques and replicates racism. Baz Luhrmann’s Hollywood-produced The Great Gatsby (2013) and the independent production G (2002), directed by Christopher Scott Cherot, both choose to emphasize this theme. Whilst Luhrmann links race to aspirational hip-hop “bling” consumerism, G recreates the theme as intrinsic to the meaning of Gatsby as a parable of the failure of social mobility. In 2021, The Great Gatsby was released from global copyright restrictions. The article ends by asking how we read these texts through an African and indeed South African perspective, and the possibilities a South African adaptation of Gatsby might offer.

Critical Arts, 2018

The concept of fidelity has long been one of the seminal debates with regard to film adaptation—o... more The concept of fidelity has long been one of the seminal debates with regard to film adaptation—often roundly denounced by key critics as a reductive model in which the adaptation is routinely diminished. Equally, the very concept of “truth” has, until recently, been consistently under fire from relativist theorists. This article seeks to relocate the controversial concept of fidelity in relation to film adaptation, by using contemporary philosopher Alain Badiou's proposition that truth is produced through “fidelity to an event.” This premise is used to interrogate four film adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. By including an analysis of the directorial intentions and context of these films in the light of Badiou's ideas, we find possible reasons for their perceived failure within particularity and imitative approaches, an excessive concern with Fitzgerald's treasured cultural status, and commercial motivations, thereby moving the locus of fidelity well away from a traditional conception of homage and copying. In doing so, a case is made to reassert the value of a concept of truth and fidelity in relation to adaptation.

Books by Ursula Vooght

The Great Gatsby meets Alain Badiou: Rethinking Fidelity in Film Adaptation, 2023

The subject of this book is a consideration of the usefulness of the concept of fidelity put forw... more The subject of this book is a consideration of the usefulness of the concept of fidelity put forward by the philosopher Alain Badiou in the discussion of film adaptation. Fidelity or faithfulness is primarily a consideration that emerges in relation to so-called canonical texts in adaptation: Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby occupies a position of global recognisability and, within the United States, cultural mythology that has triggered strong reactions to the four Hollywood adaptations. The various adaptations allow for the differing approaches to the adaptation of this novel to be meaningfully explored. The film adaptations’ paratextual elements are discussed in order to show how these acted as limiting lenses. The strategies of the films for handling elements of Fitzgerald’s prose and themes are compared across the adaptations. The book concludes by asserting the worth of a larger application of a Badiouian fidelity within the field.

Safundi, Jul 18, 2023

Critical Arts, 2018

The Great Gatsby meets Alain Badiou: Rethinking Fidelity in Film Adaptation, 2023