Responding to my last post, IKnight pointed me in the direction of an interesting little theory, and, since I haven’t been able to muster the concentration required to watch Ouran High School Host Club for long periods of time like I’d planned, I figured I may as well see what I could make of mouvance. Come to find out, I can at least ramble on the topic for a little while; this began as a pontif.us post, but quickly outgrew those humble origins.
In short, mouvance was introduced by Paul Zumthor as an explanation of the variability of medieval texts.
Zumthor noted the contrast between the relatively fixed texts found in manuscripts of the works of some named late-medieval French poets…and the much more common medieval combination of authorial anonymity (or near-anonymity) and a high level of textual variation, which might involve not only modifications of dialect and wording but more substantial rewriting and the loss, replacement, or rearrangement of whole sections of a work. He used the term mouvance to describe this textual mobility.
Simple enough, right? Think Arthurian legend. Zumthor describes a relationship between the “work,” which is (I think) at once a combination of the skeins of story that tie adaptations together and a sum of all adaptations, and the derivative manuscripts based on that work (which are in fact parts of the work): the manuscripts are individual texts, which is what I’ve been suspecting; the work, it seems, is something else entirely.
The ‘work’ was not static, a chronological starting-point for the process of manuscript transmission, but dynamic, passing in the course of its transmission through phases of growth, transformation, and decline.
Whether you prefer the Toradora! novels or the Toradora! anime, then, the work that is Toradora! consists of both. I concluded before that it’s quite difficult to keep adaptations from “contaminating” one another during reading, and that it may be futile to really try to do so; perhaps that’s simply the nature of the work, huge mass of signifiers and their sometimes-contradictory signifieds that it is. A multi-adaptation character is always more than it appears to be in any one adaptation (reminds me of Sartre) — while we don’t really need to worry about that when examining one adaptation as a text, or while reading, it’s worth remembering if we ever intend to examine the work as a…whatever it is (and I don’t know if I do intend to do so; I suppose I’ve started to on a few occasions, but I still have to convince myself it’s worth doing).
I wonder, though, how similar the adaptation-rich world of otaku media really is to medieval European literature — and why it’s as similar as it is, for that matter.
Zumthor explained mouvance as a product of the oral culture of the Middle Ages, an ‘intervocal’ (as opposed to ‘intertextual’) network offering access to a variety of possible resources for poetic composition; the different realizations of a ‘work’ reflected a continuing interaction between written and oral culture at each stage of transmission…
Anime, manga, light novels et al. do not, by and large, constitute an oral culture. But texts, it could be argued, interact in much the same way.
Jerome J. McGann, for instance, argued in A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (McGann (1983)) that even modern literary works ‘are fundamentally social rather than personal or psychological products’ (p. 43). ‘The fully authoritative text is . . . always one which has been socially produced; as a result, the critical standard for what constitutes authoritativeness cannot rest with the author and his intentions alone’ (p. 75). The role of printers, editors, even friends, in the production of successive stages of a literary work needs to be taken into account; and the printed version of an author’s draft may offer opportunities not only for contamination but for decontamination (‘Authors’ works are are typically clearer and more accessible when they appear in print’, p. 41).
I maintain that even novels, written as they are most often by individual writers, are effectively authored by social constructs — the writer is a translator for a body of knowledge and experience (and that’s not even considering the subsequent influence of editors and such that McGann mentions). Consider that, and then imagine the kind of social dynamic behind a work that is 1. created by a team, such as an animation studio’s production staff and contracted labor, and 2. an adaptation of an earlier work, which itself may have been a team effort. Anime and manga are not products of an oral culture, but they are products of a network of creators and fans kept in contact by high-speed long-distance communication technology — a very vocal network, as I’m sure you know.
Authorial anonymity remains a major difference between medieval oral poetry and anime/manga/etc. — we know for certain who is responsible for the art we consume, probably because it ultimately matters when determining who gets paid what. But considering the sheer sizes of the teams attached to certain anime productions, we can probably say that it’s difficult to figure out precisely who exerts precisely what creative influence precisely where — all the more so when the work in question is an adaptation, as is so often the case — which amounts to a kind of…if not anonymity, then certainly authorial obscurity. Credit rolls notwithstanding, perhaps the nature of the work is such that it actively obscures the authorship of its derivatives/components.
I realize that this post amounts to a few quick observations, but I really haven’t delved into the idea of mouvance beyond the source of all those blockquotes (which you should certainly read if you’re interested). I do, however, intend to use all this as a springboard for later analysis — I’d really like to work Frye in somehow (I have some cursory thoughts about the modes, anyway), but Frye tends to require a fair bit of mental preparation.
Pontifus
kaiserpingvin
cuchlann
Shance
TheKittymeister
Ubiquitial
/ 9 March 2009Starting to sound a bit like Cuchlann, wouldn’t you agree?
But true, about the adaptations, though I would say manga and light novel adaptations are more akin to translations of Russian Literature.
Some, like the Toradora light novels and Bantham Classic’s Brothers Karamazov, are awful. Some, like Crime and Punishment by Volokhonsky and Pevar, embody the sprit of the original writing extremely well.
Pontifus
/ 9 March 2009Cuchlann and I theorize that one of us is a clone of the other. Probably I’m the clone, since I’m younger, but we have yet to figure out which of us is the evil one. Maybe we’re both clones of some older, fouler creature. God help us all if that’s true.
I’m hesitant to start making flat-out value judgments about adaptations because the reception thereof is very situational. They differ from translations in that the story of the source material is very often deliberately altered, whether slightly or heavily. Supposedly the Toradora anime diverges from the novels quite a bit in certain areas, but that doesn’t make it bad — for all I know at this point (which isn’t much — I still haven’t read past the first chapter of the first novel), it may make it better, in my estimation.
Ubiquitial
/ 9 March 2009Of course adaptations differ. But we are not discussing the adaptation of light novels into anime, I believe, but rather, from one language to another. That is usually where the problem is. No matter how good the translator is, the cultural gap is always the hubris of the translation.
Pontifus
/ 10 March 2009I’m dealing more with the former kind of adaptation here. I’m sure linguistics come in somewhere — should we consider different translations to be wholly different derivative texts, I wonder? — but I’m not ready to approach that issue yet.
ghostlightning
/ 9 March 2009I shat bricks. That ‘mouvance’ theory looks good re this adaptation issue. This is especially significant IMO when creators use GATTAI pseudonyms like Hajime Yatate, who along with Yoshiyuki Tomino are credited for creating the Gundam franchise.
@ Ubiquital
What’s the best translation of “Karamazov”? I had only read the Penguin one I think.
Pontifus
/ 9 March 2009Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Tomino an ever-present creative force in the Gundam franchise for quite a while? That’s an interesting variation on the creator who makes the source work and essentially lets other people run with it.
ghostlightning
/ 9 March 2009Apocryphal, but Tomino has been cock-blocked by executive meddling quite a bit. From the choice of Amuro’s love interests, to ZZ ending up being stricken from the canon (don’t quote me) as well as his writing different resolutions in his novelzations. Who is the authentic source then?
Man, Gundam is just Gundam to me.
Ubiquitial
/ 9 March 2009Volokhonsky and Pevar translated The Brothers Karamazov too. All their translations are superb, though you won’t usually find it at libraries. Softcover is $12
animekritik
/ 9 March 2009Damn, I’m pretty sure I own the Oxford Classic version of Karamazov. But yeah, anyone who knows even a smattering of Russian will tell you translations from Russian are not translations, but by necessity recreations. The language is far too removed from Western European tongues. May I add that Japanese translations have similar issues, which is bad for me coz I’ve only mustered the courage to read maybe 10 books in the original.
On the post, there’s an interesting experiment going on right now in the Haruhi franchise. Kadokawa has taken fanwork and made a series of cartoon shorts based on it, using the original voice actors of Haruhi Season 1. There you have some mouvance maybe. It really does your head in when trying to think in terms of canon. Then there’s Leiji Matsumoto, who’s a one-man oral culture phenomenon.
Ubiquitial
/ 9 March 2009Haruhi – Chan is not funny. Heard the manga is, but the anime is not. Probrately just Kadokawa milking the Haruhi cash cow like they did to Evangelion with Petit Eva.
ghostlightning
/ 9 March 2009I found a few of the eps very funny, but then again I enjoy in-jokes, meta-jokes, etc.
vendredi
/ 10 March 2009“Mouvance” certainly fits, and can explain also explain variation between adaptations, whether visual-novel-to-anime, light-novel-to-anime, manga-to-anime, or any combination. However, not sure if I’m entirely convinced it is the best term to use here… or rather, the only term. To be honest, I think the term “mouvance” is essentially shorthand for “how authors interact differently with a ‘media franchise’.”
In a similar manner to potentially some medieval orators and scribes (and completely opposite Chaucer’s point of view about the integrity of the text), media franchises at the end of the day only hold certain elements of the intellectual property constant. Hence, in all ToraDora expectations we expect to see iterations of Taiga, Ryuuji, Ami, Minorin, etc. But aside from that, anything goes. This is even more evident in long running franchises, such as Batman, where many authors and artists have tried their hand at the character with very different results.
Essentially, the structure of a media franchise is not so different from what Zumthor describes – the distinction between the “work” and the “manuscripts” is pretty much legally enshrined in franchise law: the first being the “intellectual property” and an “adaptation” (or, if you’re particular cynical, “the merchandise”).
Of course, this is just looking at the issue of narrative adaptations of a media franchise. There are certainly other modern complexities to the situation… it’s doubtful that you had rabid collectors of 1/65 scale figures of the Knights of the Round Table circa 1200 AD. (Perhaps even with a mail-in special offer? Collect all twelve and receive a limited edition Holy Grail?)
Cuchlann
/ 10 March 2009I cite statuary. ; )
Pontifus
/ 10 March 2009I don’t mean to suggest that mouvance is the best or only term that applies to adaptation; I’m just throwing it out there (or, well, I’m catching it after IKnight threw it out there) as a term. I tend to think that no situation can be summed up with a single term.
I think there’s a gulf between the ideas of work and intellectual property; I consider the latter to consist, in artistic/creative if not legal terms, of those core ideas you mention that run through all derivatives (it gets pretty vague anyway), while the former consists of that plus all the derivatives themselves. The work, then, would list beneath its “Taiga” heading not just the general idea of the character that all Toradora adaptations get across, but every nuance of the character from every adaptation — contradictory though some may be, Taiga as signifier can be said to encompass all of them, from the standpoint of the work.