| Since the film study has been included into the field of literary criticism, the study of film adaptation has long been limited in its scope by its preoccupation with fidelity analysis which focuses on comparing the adapted film and its source literature and determining how faithfully the film transposes narrative and thematic elements from the source. Drawing on Karl Marx's and Terry Eagleton's theories on ideology, this thesis intends to investigate the adaptation process and strategies, and to probe the ideology behind a film and its functions.By analyzing the Hollywood film The English Patient and its original novel, the research attempts to reveal that under the manipulation of ideology that dominated the America in the 1990s, the filmmakers, using three adaptation strategies, erase or dilute the ideological challenges substantiated in Michael Ondaatje's novel and adapt the film into a traditional Hollywood desert adventure-romance. It finally concludes that there is still a long way for the people outside the dominant ideological structure to get their value reflected in the dominant cultural industry. |
