Faulkner, Fiction, Film, Culver City and the Canon Revisited

Today’s readings offered a chance to compare the adaptation of Faulkner’s ‘Turnabout’ from short story to screenplay. It was interesting to see how the class critiqued the screenplay version and even the short story itself in terms of where the works sat in comparison to the rest of Faulkner’s body of work. Comments and chortles were bandied about the seminar concerning it’s gaudy unrefinement in comparison to the complexities of Absalom! Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury. One student however exclaimed they quite liked what may be considered in ‘bad taste’ , ‘bad movies’ or works which receded such literary or cinematic refinement. I was inclined to agree and it got me thinking…

The point of the exercise I assume was to interrogate the nature of what we may deem worthy of canonical inclusion. To consider Turnabout’s value as both a short story, and a screenplay (albeit an unproduced one) churned out as part of the Golden Age of Hollywood in the back lots of the movie houses that populated Culver City in the 1940s. To consider these texts again in comparison to the ‘value’ of Faulkner’s other works.

It becomes then a seemingly superficial task of gushing about Turnabout’s lack of complexity in comparison to Faulkner’s other works. If one begins to interrogate why this maybe so, the task does not prove so easy. It was suggested that labour may be an adequate measure of the value of a work. This I am not so sure of. While time and effort spent on something would contribute to a work’s greatness, I do not think that it would ensure it. I’m sure there exists completely terrible literary (and perhaps in bulk cinematic) works which have been labour, time and or budget intensive but have failed to deliver. And that is another question. Deliver in terms of what? How or what does one ‘deliver’. In terms of sales, in terms of its contribution to the genre or form? How do we determine these inconstant value markers?

Bernstein Smith’s derivational process of evaluation would suggest that we place value on a work through a consideration of our total experiential economies, which would in the case of Faulkner, for those of us who have read Faulkner’s other work or are familiar with his literary reputation, will value Turnabout with those other experiences or encounters in mind. And then does it not just become a matter of technique? We will measure then according to other works experienced and their effectiveness, their personal (on the readers behalf) likeability or relate-ability? The process will also then turn to a micro-level of analysis.

Perhaps, on another level, other works within the same periodical genre or form may spring to mind, other short stories published in the 1930s or movies of similar weight in the 1940s and the subject of our concern may then be compared against these. The politics of the value placed on different genres then become apparent and again, although some genres may be held in higher regard than others, this does not diminish their validity. Liking ‘bad movies’ is not a bad thing. But we then fall ino even more complex territory. What is bad? Is it kitsch, camp, b-grade, cult, lo-budget, cliché? The determination of such is again a complex process…..


- mia