Three Adaptations And Community Of Meaning: Three Statements Of The Great Gatsby

As one of the most important modernist classics,F.Scott Fitzgerald's novella The Great Gatsby has always been the focus of film adaptations,and the comparative study between the novella and the film has become an important part in the study of modern art.It is commonly claimed that the general understanding of the relationship between the original text and film adaptations is of “dualistic relationship”,which means that films are variations of the text;when dealing with the issue of “how to adapt”,scholars are more concerned with the feasibility,limitation and fidelity of adaptation.The thesis argues that the three film adaptations of The Great Gatsby are three interpretations of the novella,existing in the identical structure of the novella as the foundation,thus the films and the fiction form into a community of meaning.With this as the presupposition,this thesis focuses on the three film adaptations made in 1974,2000 and 2013,and explores how to make film adaptations of literature and meaning of the former in relation to the latter under the theoretical framework of Gadamer's hermeneutics.The thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter 1 discusses the 2013 film adaptation,centering on a comparison between the perceptions of modernity caused by the innovation of technology applied in the film.The thesis argues that the differences indicate temporal distance between the film and the work.Temporal distance inspires the positive creativity of understanding which is reinterpreted and strengthened by film technology.Chapter 2 explores the film adaptation in 2000 and discusses how the roles in this version enrich characterization of the original text by the emphasis of the love theme.The thesis regards the changes in the role of Gatsby in the film as a recreation based on the text,and this textual expansion is the result of the self-presentation of the novella.Chapter 3 discusses the film adaptation in 1974,a film emphasizing more on its ethical and moral function by illustrating the disillusion of the American Dream.The thesis believes that this version is the closest among the three to the original work,and intermingles in the film a critique of the material world.This critique could not be separated from the economic depression in the seventies of the last century in America,which is a presentation of the pre-understanding and the horizon of the film maker.Under the perspective of Gadamer's hermeneutics,the essence of the three film adaptations of The Great Gatsby lies in the hermeneutical understandings of the text.Different adaptations,which reveal the fundamental meaning of the novella with different modalities of statements,are also expansions of it.Consequently,the community of meaning of The Great Gatsby is achieved by the novella and three film adaptations.