LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:3 March 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Transposal from Fiction to Motion Picture: Crafting Jhumpa Lahiri’s
The Namesake on Celluloid

N. Nagajothi, M.A., M.Phil.

Abstract

Literary ventures are ongoing journeys towards boundless horizon with creative experiments and discussions. The film makers are exploring creative experiments by adapting the literary works on celluloid due to their high-minded respect for literary works, blended with ambitious mood of crass commercialism. Fiction and motion pictures are two different art forms, two distinct vehicles of storytelling. They are different in terms of the structures, perception and narrative. Films adapted from novels are diluted versions of novels, with remarkable mutations to the source material. Adaptations are now being analysed as “avatars of artistic creativity”.

Film is an art for audience’s sake. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake presents sociologically realistic and ethnographically detailed portrayal of Bengali Americans in memoir style with their quest for identities. Mira Nair transposed Lahiri’s novel into visual poetics on celluloid in 2007, which foregrounds the generation difference between American born Gogol Ganguli, and his immigrant parents of Bengali origin.

The two art forms of The Namesake through the perception of two women illustrate the thematic convergence as well as narrative dissonances. Though the book does not have a clear-cut narrative arc, Nair has successfully transcoded Lahiri’s elusive style on celluloid. She probes into the boundary of Lahiri’s emotional citadel and snaps Lahiri’s poignant feelings of immigrant experience through her visual venture. Both the creators, being cultural transplants themselves, have crafted the immigrant experience, with fine combination of ethnographic and autobiographical touches. This paper is an attempt to scrutinize how the two art forms of The Namesake promote a symbiotic relationship between scientific and artistic activities.

Introduction

Literary ventures are ongoing journeys towards boundless horizon with creative experiments and discussions. Henry James claims the same in his Art of Fiction, “Art lives upon discussion, and upon experiment … upon variety of attempt, upon exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints…” The film makers are exploring creative experiments by adapting the literary works on celluloid due to their high-minded respect for literary works, blended with ambitious mood of crass commercialism. Dudley Andrew observes, “well over half of all commercial films have come from literary original… (10)” (qtd. in Cora). Morris Beja reports that more than three fourths of the awards for ‘best pictures’ “since 1935, the largest proportion have been film adaptations of novels (78)” (qtd. in Cora).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

N. Nagajothi, M.A., M.Phil.
Research Scholar
Department of English
V. V. Vanniaperummal College for Women
Virudhunagar 626 001
Tamilnadu
India
joevenky87@yahoo.com
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