Haikus, Hot Water Bottles, and a Huia: Taika Waititi’s Screen Version of Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress

McGovern, Derek 새한영어영문학회 2023 새한영어영문학 Vol.65 No.1

From Novel to Hollywood Musical

McGovern, Derek 새한영어영문학회 2012 새한영어영문학 Vol.54 No.2

When Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. purchased the screen rights to James M. Cain"s 1937 novel Serenade, a controversial tale concerning a singer"s struggle with his sexuality and its tragic consequences for both his career and the two people with whom he has relationships, it would take the studio twelve years (1944?1956) to produce an acceptably bowdlerized film adaptation of the work. In the process, Cain"s often?brutal tale metamorphosed into a radically altered film musical. The 1956 film version of Serenade disposed not only of the novel"s problematic sexuality issue, but transformed the original work"s violence and cynical fatalism into a story of redemption. This article details how the censorship constraints that existed in America during the 1940s and 1950s impacted on Mann"s adaptation, offering a close examination of the principal differences between the novel and the film with regard to thematic elements, plot, and characters, as well as identifying and analyzing departures in the finished adaptation from the film"s (unpublished) screenplay.

Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider : Thematic and Narrative Differences Between the Novel and the Film Version

McGovern, Derek 새한영어영문학회 2014 새한영어영문학 Vol.56 No.4

Acclaimed M?ori writer Witi Ihimaera’s 1987 novel The Whale Rider addresses the spiritual, environmental and economic challenges facing M?ori people in (then) contemporary New Zealand society, while demonstrating the continuing relevance of legends and myths in everyday life. The novel also emphasizes the historical significance of whales in M?ori mythology and genealogy, arguing that by abandoning these cetacean creatures, M?oridom as a whole has lost its way in an increasingly materialistic world. Drawing upon the story of tribal founder Kahutia Te Rangi, commonly known as the Whale Rider, and focusing on one particular tribe in the tiny New Zealand East Coast village of Whangara, Ihimaera offers a feminist twist on a popular genealogical tale. In doing so, he challenges the prevailing patriarchy that regards females as incompatible with leadership roles. This essay analyzes the novel’s thematic concerns, and then compares the work as a whole with the critically acclaimed 2002 film adaptation- renamed simply Whale Rider-arguing that the latter dilutes Ihimaera’s thematic richness and mythological emphasis. This occurs largely through a major shift in narrative perspective and the aggrandization of its principal female protagonist. Indeed the film, far from being a faithful adaptation of the novel, is in fact an example of what film theorist Geoffrey Wagner classifies as a commentary on an original work, that is to say an instance in which an adaptation either deliberately or unintentionally departs significantly from the precursor text. Ironically, however, the thematically more profound novel has received virtually no scholarly attention, in contrast with the critically and commercially successful film adaptation, and has essentially been supplanted by the latter work in academic analysis. This essay seeks to redress this imbalance by demonstrating that The Whale Rider is a novel deserving of greater scholarly attention that it has hitherto been afforded, while at the same time more successful tonally-in terms of presenting a world in which myth, legend and reality co-exist-than the somewhat prosaic film adaptation.

Themes and Narrative Perspective in To Kill a Mockingbird

McGovern, Derek 새한영어영문학회 2014 새한영어영문학 Vol.56 No.2

Harper Lee’s only novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), skillfully addresses the interwoven themes of racial injustice, courage, loss of innocence, and gender roles, as witnessed by its narrator, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, this deeply textured part-bildungsroman relates the often-picaresque adventures of Scout (aged six at the outset), her older brother, Jem, and their friend Dill in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb from 1933 to 1936. In its more somber second part, the novel also tells the story of an African-American man, Tom Robinson, who is wrongfully accused of rape by his “white trash” accusers, Bob Ewell and his teenaged daughter, Mayella. When Scout’s and Jem’s father, the principled attorney Atticus Finch, agrees to defend Robinson at his rape trial, the children discover that justice is not color-blind. This essay compares the novel with the Academy Award-winning 1962 film adaptation of the same name, arguing that in spite of Lee’s own enthusiastic endorsement of the latter, the motion picture is not the faithful replication that it is generally purported to be, given that it both simplifies and distorts the novel’s principal themes while also diminishing Scout, the novel’s central protagonist. The sole beneficiary of these changes, this essay demonstrates, is screen acting legend Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch, a character whose aggrandizement in the film occurs at the expense of every other protagonist. Moreover, in order to accommodate Peck/Atticus as the film’s central character, the adaptation creates a narrative illogicality through its decision to adopt an omniscient viewpoint whenever Peck appears in scenes not depicted in the book, and which do not involve Scout. In doing so, the film fails to resolve the novel’s own (lesser) narrative inconsistency.

A study of the pH dependence of electronically excited guanosine compounds by picosecond time-resolved infrared spectroscopy

McGovern, David A.,Doorley, Gerard W.,Whelan, Aine M.,Parker, Anthony W.,Towrie, Michael,Kelly, John M.,Quinn, Susan J. Korean Society of Photoscience 2009 Photochemical & photobiological sciences Vol.8 No.4

The photophysical properties of 5'-guanosine monophosphate (5'-GMP) and polyguanylic acid {poly(G)} in $D_2O$ solutions of varying pH have been studied using picosecond transient infrared absorption spectroscopy. Whereas in neutral or weakly alkaline solution only the vibrationally excited electronic ground state of 5'-GMP is observed, in acidic solution the relatively long-lived ($229{\pm}20\;ps$) electronic excited state of protonated 5'-GMP, which possesses strong absorptions at 1517 and $1634\;cm^{-1}$, could be detected. The picosecond transient behaviour of polyguanylic acid in acidic solution is also very different from that of the polynucleotide in neutral solution due not only to the protonation of guanine moieties yielding the protonated excited state but because of the disruption of the guanine stacks which are present in the species in neutral solution.

Rectifying E. M. Forster? The Film Version of Maurice

McGovern, Derek 새한영어영문학회 2013 새한영어영문학 Vol.55 No.3

The novels of E. M. Forster, the acclaimed British author of such popular works as Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924), attracted the attention of a number of prominent film?makers in the 1980s and early 1990s. To the surprise (and consternation) of many, Forster’s posthumously published Maurice (1971), a novel concerning the plight of a young stockbroker struggling with his sexual orientation in Edwardian England, was adapted for the screen in 1987. By far the most controversial of Forster’s works, Maurice-even to its admirers-contained a number of glaring weaknesses, most notably in its characterizations of its three leading characters, none of whom was completely convincing. Worse still, to many readers its poorly drawn title character invited little sympathy. Moreover, the fanciful resolution of the novel, in which middle?class snob Maurice Hall chooses to defy the laws and conventions of his time by forming a relationship with earthy under?gamekeeper Alec Scudder, has been strongly criticized as ill?advised wish?fulfillment on the part of its author. This essay examines how the 1987 Merchant?Ivory film production of Maurice seeks to rectify the inherent weaknesses of the novel upon which it is based through its efforts to improve the characterizations of its leading characters, enhance the overall credibility of its plot, and its numerous departures from its source material. In its comparative analysis of the novel Maurice and its screen adaptation, the frequently asserted criticism that the latter is overly reverential to the former is also challenged.

Shakespeare on the Streets of New York : Musical Leitmotifs and Social Consciousness in West Side Story

Derek McGovern 새한영어영문학회 2019 새한영어영문학회 학술발표회 논문집 Vol.2019 No.5

Ambiguity Preserved: Shanley’s Screen Version of His Play Doubt: A Parable

( Derek Mcgovern ) 21세기영어영문학회 2018 영어영문학21 Vol.31 No.3

American playwright John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt: A Parable is a morality tale that addresses both the elusiveness of certainty and the implications of judging a person’s guilt without proof. Its plot concerns the suspicions of a senior nun, Sister Aloysius, at a Bronx Catholic parochial school in 1964 that her parish’s popular young priest, Father Flynn, has sexually abused the school’s only African-American student. The evidence against the priest is far from conclusive, however, and the play ends without definitively resolving his guilt or innocence, thereby obliging each member of the audience to determine if Sister Aloysius was justified in driving the priest away from his parish. This article examines the ambiguity surrounding Father Flynn in the play and then compares the work with the 2008 film adaptation, which Shanley himself wrote and directed, viewing the latter as the playwright’s attempt to establish a definitive version of his play. In particular, this article demonstrates how the adaptation, through a number of new scenes and a much larger cast of characters, carefully maintains the play’s ambiguity with respect to Father Flynn’s guilt or innocence. The article also demonstrates how the film, partly through the use of visual means, underlines how the same event can be interpreted in different ways, thereby further illustrating the elusiveness of certainty.

Playing Romantic Favorites

Derek McGovern 새한영어영문학회 2017 새한영어영문학회 학술발표회 논문집 Vol.2017 No.5

From Novel to Film : Poetry and Symbolism in Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Derek McGovern 새한영어영문학회 2019 새한영어영문학회 학술발표회 논문집 Vol.2019 No.10