Saturday 28 October 2006

Perspective shifts

Thanks pretty largely to seeing Children of Men last week I have a deluge of new understandings about how the different bits of my thesis fit together. This is in spite of not having actually read the P D James novel the film is based on. Tomorrow I really need to find a bookshop with a copy.

One of the ideas in play in the thesis is that a key difference between literature and film, one that discussions about adaptation studies don't take into account, is that language narratives don't need real people's bodies to represent, but movie narratives do. Another idea in play is that the richest metaphor for understanding the type of creative relation to the past exhibited by adaptation derives from mammalian reproduction. I'm now seeing how I can augment and extend these ideas so that they supply the basic logic, and symbolic colouring, of the whole thing.

It's almost perfect timing, since after the last essays are marked, the thesis is again my sole concern. I have three other smallish projects that I need to do but I hope to get most of the work out of the way this week and to basically do the rest in as half-arsed a manner as I can manage.

Today I am giving heartfelt thanks to whatever it is that's triggered a burst of thesis-enthusiasm just now, against the odds and my rather fearful expectations. How different familiar things can look when you suddenly see them in a different light.


Lady costume inspired by cute overload's 'front-paw illusion' post.

8 comments:

Suse said...

That is a seriously displeased puss.

Will you be bring that one out at his 21st to embarrass him?

Ampersand Duck said...

fabulous costume, even without the 'frills... n'shit'.

Hooray for thesis juicy goodness. You go, girl. Get that phud wrangled.

I thought 'children of men' looked a bit cheesy from the trailer, but I've heard so many good reviews that I'm going to have to go. Right now. or at least, tomorrow.

Unknown said...

Plenty of copies of the book on Abebooks if you can't find one.

Aussie dealers start at US$7.00 plus postage.

I'm going try to work up the courage and energy to find what pile my copy is in as I would like to find that misquoted bit I left at LP today.

lucy tartan said...

Oh, he's all right, Suse. He always looks like that, so either he's always cranky or it's just the markings. FWIW he was purring while this picture was taken.

Duckie, thank you for the encouraging words. I certainly appreciate them. And IU'm looking forward to hearing what you think of Children of Men.

Thanks Ron, I hadn't thought of Abebooks. I am doubly keen to read this novel now it emerges that in the infertile future women who go mad resort to pushing kittens around in prams and having them christened.

Rob said...

I'm starting to wonder if you're a fit person to be around cats :-) Poor Baz!!!

Anonymous said...

I will second the hurrahs for your thesis enthusiasm and the excellent timing. Sometimes you think those moments will never coincide.

The 'real people's bodies' argument does sound fascinating.

lucy tartan said...

"starting to wonder", Rob?

Rest assured, he really does like the attention.

And as per Cat Prin instructions, he always gets a 'hub' afterwards.

TimT said...

I see hatred in that cat's eyes.