VOL.53, NO. 3
The Work of Adaptation
Christina Wilkins
There comes a point in Todd Haynes’ recent film May December where we see exactly what is required for the character of Elizabeth to adapt. Elizabeth, played by Natalie Portman, has been selected to play Gracie in a TV movie of her life. Julianne Moore – a long-time favorite of Haynes, herself – plays the part of Gracie, “based on” the real-life narrative of Mary Kay Letourneau. Elizabeth is visiting Gracie in her home, diligently following her around with a notebook, but it is in the mirror shot that this work begins to translate itself from the page to the body (see Figure 1). Elizabeth’s hair is brushed to mimic Gracie’s, and she is wearing Gracie’s make-up. Elizabeth gazes for a moment, transfixed by her transformation into a version of Gracie. Haynes’ framing of the two here asks us to see the similarities and differences – the “repetition without replication,” to borrow Linda Hutcheon’s phrasing for adaptation (7). Elizabeth’s adaptation of Gracie’s character does not just happen by gathering information, but through a becoming that involves a translation of Gracie into Elizabeth’s own body; a becoming that requires work. This work is made evident through the multiple layers of adaptation; the film itself takes the “character” of Mary Kay Letourneau and places her in a new context, a new state, with a new name, and in a part of her life that was not covered in the media narrative about her. This is the first adaptation.
The second adaptation comes in the fact that the film follows Elizabeth as she shadows Gracie for inspiration and insight into how to play her in the TV film: how does (and should) she adapt herself to the character of Gracie (who is in turn, an adaptation of LeTourneau)? Alongside these adaptations of character, the audience is shown the impact the situation has had on Gracie’s second husband, Joe (Charles Melton, playing a fictionalized version of LeTourneau’s lover) and how he has adapted to a different life. To briefly outline the case for those who may not know, Mary Kay Letourneau was, as Wikipedia bluntly but accurately put it,1 an American sex offender. She was caught sleeping with her then 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, became pregnant by him, and gave birth. She was initially sentenced to serve six months in prison, serving only three. Her trial led to some becoming fascinated with her (see discussion by Hesse, Washington Post, 2020). After her release, she was re-arrested and re-sentenced when found with Fualaau again; she gave birth to his second child in prison. After serving a six-year sentence, Letourneau was released in 2004. She and Fualaau wed shortly thereafter, and the two stayed together until 2019. Letourneau subsequently died in 2020. The relationship, trial, and aftermath were rampantly reported by the US media, and it is partly this narrativization that forms a basis for Haynes’ adaptation here.
May December thinks about the mediation and retelling of a story, highlighting the work of adaptation. When I say “work” – I would like to clarify I am thinking about adaptation not only as process, and the act of adapting that requires labor of some kind, but what is visible in its traces – i.e. how a text arrived at its outcome. This work often also functions as an attempt to “solve” the question of the text, and the work of adapting through the acting body may be read as a “working through.” I aim to argue in this article that Natalie Portman’s character Elizabeth, in her capacity as adaptor, makes manifest the work adaptation requires through the body, and simultaneously illuminates the adapted status of other textual elements. In doing so, the film begins to (re)consider the approach to adaptation that is privileged in critical discourse, one that foregrounds the concept as either process or product but does not attend to the space in between. Ultimately, I argue that the effort of adaptation – adaptation as labor – is not often discussed, and this provides a limited understanding of the “how” of adaptation. By using the acting body as example, I aim to outline how adaptation can move between process and product. To do so, I will first outline my thoughts on the question of work in adaptation, before examining May December as an ideal example of a text that shows this work.
Work
Definitions of adaptation demarcate boundaries, outlining what counts as an adaptation. Thus, definitions of adaptation set parameters around the adaptation, usually examining adaptation as product. These definitions primarily focus on what adaptation is or does: borrowing, intersection, transformation, version, interpretation. However, they do not tell us what is required for the how of adaptation. Although these phrasings and different definitions give a sense of what and potentially how, these are only outlines, and do not implicate or directly address the work required to adapt. Linda Hutcheon’s idea of adaptation as “process” could appear on the surface to engage with these ideas of work. In her discussion, she mentions a few examples of cutting, expanding, alighting on the idea that adaptation is “an act of appropriating and salvaging” (20). This does not implicate the work required, or really, as I am discussing here, the effort involved in the process. Similarly, Simone Murray’s discussion of the adaptation industry implicates work through the very word “industry,” and she argues,
Neither macro-oriented political economy nor textual- and audience-focused cultural studies was predisposed to examine the how and why of adaptation from the perspective of the authors, agents, publishers, editors, book prize committees, screenwriters, directors and producers who actually make adaptations happen. (11)
However, this does not implicate the material reality that produces the adaptation: the actor’s body, the physical page, the energy expended. This is in part because of the broader definitions of adaptation that continue to proliferate and seek to understand through a demarcation of boundaries, rather than with an engagement with the material process. Whilst materiality is discussed by scholars like Meikle (“Rematerializing Adaptation Theory” 174-183), again, it does not ensure attending to the work required to produce the materiality of adaptation. The body can be seen as the physical material evidence of an adaptation (as indeed I have argued previously in 2022).2 This is the result – the product – rather than the process. It is useful to ask: what is required to produce adaptations? Further, what evidence is there of this work left behind in the product itself?
My intention here is not to rehash scholarship, but to point out a missing link, with the hope that it will enable an examination of adapted texts with an eye on the traces of this work, thereby allowing for a broader understanding of adaptation as process. To focus on the effort required in discussions of adaptation is a tricky business: it could potentially lead to re-energized conversations of authorship and intention, for example, asking who is putting in this effort and why. The process of adaptation can indeed include the intent of the adaptor, which is sometimes seen as a guidance for how it should be interpreted. However, this should not deter thinking around the work itself of adaptation. By this I am not only referring to the technical elements of adaptation – the writing or filming, or production process (if we are looking at it from an industry perspective as Murray does) – but the effort involved in adapting, the work required to adapt one text to something else.
This may be difficult to quantify. Work and labor are hard to demarcate, much like the boundaries of adaptation itself. Where does work begin? In the thought of how a text could be adapted? Or does it not become “work” until there is physical evidence of it? These questions perhaps speak more broadly to changing conventions of work in culture: there is talk of emotional labor, and an acknowledgement that labor of different kinds is valued differently, particularly along lines of gender and race. Thus, what constitutes work is contested, and inherently political. What also contributes to the complexity of pinning this idea down, or perhaps, the reticence in doing so, is how work is framed in relation to creativity. From the perspective of romantic notions of creativity and genius, work seems antithetical to it. Work implies effort, and effort suggests that creation is not an act of genius, disrupting the romantic notion of creativity as genius. Indeed, this has been explored in discussions of types of genius. Christopher R. Miller posits Edward Young’s outline of two forms of genius: original genius, and imitative genius. 3 Miller describes Young’s definitions as “impl[ying] something different about original genius: that it arises spontaneously, that it relies on deliberate design and concentrated labor” (316).
As with adaptation and its links with imitation, original genius stands in opposition to imitative genius, and does not appear, by Young’s definition or Miller’s interpretation of it, to require sustained effort. What it does is highlight is how ideas of creativity and work have frequently been tied to, or positioned in opposition with, labor. Conversations about or with artists in their various forms (actor, writer, etc.) encompass their creativity and talent, and may touch upon their work, but this is rarely engaged with in the same way. Work is something invisible that we take for granted or do not discuss in detail.4 If work can be identified, then it is seen to have failed. Something is considered “over-worked” or “half-baked” if it is deemed bad, and so work is central but invisible in successful texts. So, why am I discussing it?
The work of adaptation highlights the fact that texts, in being adapted, require not just creative genius to rethink, recontextualize, or represent ideas, stories, or characters. There is the work: the idea and its working through, the process of creation, and its manifestation into something that constitutes an adaptation. Linda Hutcheon argues that adapters work to create adaptations differently:
All these adapters relate stories in their different ways. They use the same tools that storytellers have always used: they actualize or concretize ideas; they make simplifying selections, but also amplify and extrapolate; they make analogies; they critique or show their respect, and so on. But the stories they relate are taken from elsewhere, not invented anew. Like parodies, adaptations have an overt and defining relationship to prior texts, usually revealingly called “sources.” (3)
Hutcheon never explicitly says “work” here, but her mention of “tools” implies work in a way that is not as present in other discussions. The work of adaptation is a different kind of labor than source creation, but labor nonetheless. As such, its valuation changes dependent on who is doing the adapting. To be aware of this is to approach adaptation from a different standpoint and to recognize ideological obstacles in adapting art. A claim to see a text’s work, or to define it as overworked, is to ascribe value judgments to it, thereby denoting visible work as bad. Yet work is only visible when defined as different, outside the boundaries of acceptability. In order to work through some of these ideas further, I want to now turn to May December.
May December
To show the work of adaptation in May December, it is necessary to foreground the elements of the film that work to position the text as adaptation and position the understanding of work from those involved in it (through interview materials). Firstly, May December takes the story of Mary Kay Letourneau and posits a fictional rendering of a later period in her relationship with Vili Fualaau – a choice that moves away from the scandal and back from what could have been an ethically difficult position to entertain. Instead, the adaptation uses the story of Letourneau as a basis for Haynes to focus on how their relationship could be recontextualized after the fact. How does a different perspective shift the story of Letourneau’s actions, or Fualaau’s response and role? This re-narrativizing subsequently could be seen then to adapt or change the understanding of the story of their relationship. This becomes clearer with the character of Joe, who loosely represents Vili.5 He comes to some realizations about their relationship, namely about his capacity for consent, and his status as victim. These realizations stand in as a fictionalized working through of the consequences of Letourneau’s actions and the media treatment of her, readapting the story as I touch upon below.
Most importantly for the discussion here, the role of Elizabeth presents an adaptor onscreen: throughout the film she is actively working to adapt. By positing adaptation in one physical body here, the film raises questions broadly pertinent to adaptation, such as “who is the adapter?,” and returns us to the question of the evidence or traces of the work, which are usually rendered materially. Although we predominately focus on one person’s approach to adaptation in May December, we must ask who else may be involved. As Hutcheon has argued, adaptation in “performance” is “collaborative” though, as she also notes, the director is often held responsible (80). Haynes himself is held in this role and unquestionably shapes the text with his stylistic qualities and formal approach (which itself takes a cue from a Sirkian approach.)6 In Haynes’ other melodramas, there is an “active isolation of female protagonists” (525) and “the central characters….develop towards independence” (522).7 We see this repeated in May December with not necessarily the central female character, Gracie, as we would expect, but with Joe.
Joe’s independence is a central strand of the film. Gracie is isolated, a social pariah, but unlike Haynes’ previous melodramas wherein this role has been presented as unreasonable to modern audiences,8 Gracie’s reason for isolation cannot be sympathized with or forgiven. Instead, the audience is asked to look to Joe, who must come to a realization about his past and reconfigure or adapt the narrative to one that allows him the option of a different ending. He is isolated, trapped, looking for independence, and the metaphorical use of the butterflies he cares for become an overdetermined symbol common to Sirkian melodrama. Joe’s positioning as outsider is also framed as reflective of Mary Kay’s in previous adaptations of her story (see Figures 2 and 3). Joe is trapped visually, framed in a way that strongly resembles Mary Kay in the TV movie All American Girl from 2000.
Elizabeth, the actress who is following Gracie to adapt her, is the hub around which the film works. Due to the time period in which we find Gracie and Joe, she operates as a reason to relive and recount Gracie’s past and the narrative of the relationship with Joe. She speaks to multiple people in Gracie’s life, greedily taking in information to try and flesh out the character she will be playing. She is, as a review in The Guardian noted, an “audience proxy” (Horton, “In Todd Haynes’…”). She asks the questions we want to, allowing us to fictionally interrogate the motives and mind of a public figure who has confounded norms. The story of Mary Kay Letourneau was already heavily narrativized before the film was released. Interestingly, analysis of the story by Grimm and Harp argues that it positions their relationship as a fairy tale whereby Letourneau is rescued from social judgment by Fualaau, and the resultant wedding cements it as a “love story.” As Grimm and Harp argue, “the young boy went from a child victim to an old soul in a teenager’s body” (13). This particular presentation of the story was primarily seen in tabloids, which May December touches upon (see Figure 4). There were also later documentaries and interviews, which Haynes also directly adapts.
Because of the vast amount of media coverage, there is a sense of a story already being there. Haynes, in adapting it, offers a fictional filling in of gaps, something adaptations are known to do (see Leitch). However, we should ask what is being adapted exactly; by choosing a different time period than the one so clearly narrativized in the media, and making it less explicitly about Mary Kay, unlike some previous TV films, the original text of the story, and the “character” of Mary Kay becomes recontextualized. It is Portman’s Elizabeth that tries to return us to a familiar context in her digging up of the past. However, she goes beyond the events that made Gracie/Mary Kay publicly known and looks for a more holistic view of Gracie. She attempts to do so by asking questions not just about Gracie’s past, but also about her relationship now, and how she is seen within the community. This is challenged by Gracie, who in a tense dining room scene, asks Elizabeth pointedly, “Why do you need to know?.” At this narrative point, Elizabeth understands Gracie as a way into her past self, a way to encompass everything she was as well as everything she is. She does this, as noted, as if she is a detective. She takes notes, looking for details we hear in a voiceover, trying to pin down the character of Gracie: “bird-like, but steely. Mechanical, or just removed?” Elizabeth also highlights the way we may mis-remember or only partially see someone. At one point, she writes that there is “more to [Gracie] than I remember from the tabloids and our cultural memory.” Yet, at the same time, Elizabeth’s work – detective work, or work to uncover or solve — reads as clumsy and imitative, as we see in her out-of-sync repetition of movements and postures Gracie enacts. In one particular scene this becomes apparent, made most obvious by the use of mirrors, therefore giving Elizabeth no place to hide. She watches Gracie diligently in the mirror, copying her movements an instant after they occur, presenting an uncanny but flawed adaptation. By contrast, the actual adaptation in the text, that of Julianne Moore of Mary Kay, does not show its working. As one review stated: “it’s terrifying how effortless Moore makes playing a fictional Letourneau seem” (Romano).
By contrast, the adaptation of the adaptation – Elizabeth adapting herself into Gracie presenting herself before the mirror – is seen by other reviewers as “cosplaying as a serious actor” (Horton). I want to briefly trouble this contention here between work and play to dig down further into what work adaptation itself requires. We want work to be evident in skill, but nothing else. With products, we do not see the work. We see what has been created or borne from that work. The same goes with adaptations – we do not see the work, but the product that is the adaptation. At the same time, this absence of visible work is denoted as “effortless.” When it is present, it is often “playful” or taken less seriously; Elizabeth’s work to adapt Gracie is often shown as childish imitation in mirrors. Work, to be valued, must not appear or be visible in its end result. Ironically, all adaptations require work – they require an adaptor, or adaptors, and the effort of mediating between different contexts of production and reception, along with approaching a narrative through different spaces and times. I want to push back against this idea of effortlessness as inspired or genius and restate the value of work in adaptation.
The framing and importance of work as I understand it can be seen in interviews with Haynes, Portman, and Moore about the process of making the film. Natalie Portman speaks of her conversations with Moore about working with Haynes: “I was like, ‘What’s it going to be like?’ And she said, ‘You’re going to love it. He does all the work for you” (Boone).The perception of Moore’s performance in the film as effortless is echoed in other interviews and stories about her. A 2024 interview from Vanity Fair begins by stating that:
Moore always comes onto a set… fully prepared. She does the work, she understands what’s required, and she knows what she needs to give the camera and when. Then she gets it done. The Oscar winner’s process is so refined and streamlined she can make even the most epic of onscreen meltdowns look easy. (Canfield)
Note that the notion of comparative ease is foregrounded here, even whilst the interviewer is commenting on Moore’s work. In the same interview, Moore notes that Haynes “does so much work” which “gives me so much scaffolding for my performance” (qtd. in Canfield). Thus, questions of who is doing the adapting come to the fore here: is it the one doing the work? And how is this being defined? Moore and Portman perform the work of adaptation through act of mediating through their bodies and making the adaptation visible. Haynes’ work is manifest in their bodies too. This is perhaps too simplistic though, as Aaron Taylor argues that “screenwriters, directors and actors each make independent artistic acts…the actor makes a decision to play the scene a particular way, while the director agrees to accept the actor’s interpretation of the screenwriter’s blueprint” (406).
The work in the eyes of Haynes, Portman and Moore could be seen as interpretation – taking the text of Letourneau’s life and interpreting it in order to present a puzzle to the audience for them to solve. This act of interpretation becomes most clear, however, when it stands out, or differs from the text it adapts.9 Elizabeth is the hub of the text precisely because she reminds other texts or elements of the text of their adaptive status by making the work visible (see Rainer Emig for more on this).10 She may be a bad actress, but she is provided as a visible, in-text comparison, something audiences themselves may opt to perform a version of after they have watched the film. The value judgments around adaptations become more prominent when they are deemed “successful.” Adaptations that are designated as such are not as often picked apart for infidelity, but arguably the element of real-life also complicates this further. The work of adaptation becomes not only what Hutcheon describes as being defined by extended engagement (key to denoting adaptation rather than intertextuality) but instead often results in audiences being more comparative and, like Elizabeth, trying to find out the “truth” of the story (Hutcheon 9). This is because, as Meikle argues, adaptations of non-fiction “qualify our sense of the real.” He continues, “Even ostensibly fictional adaptations may come burdened with the politics of believability – not of a true story but of the true story” (“Adaptations and the media,” 88-89). This is the case with May December, which despite its shift to the realm of the fictional, is still understood as “inspired by” or adapting the Letourneau case. In particular, as I have noted, this adaptation is not necessarily of the reality of the story, but the framing of it in the media. Haynes’ approach asks us to consider how we understand such cases ethically and as a story, rather than as a reality. This idea of truth is one repeatedly raised by Haynes himself in interviews about the film. In one interview with Vulture, he states that:
When Elizabeth talks about the craft of acting and filmmaking, she talks about getting to the truth, and everybody sort of nods along, as if it were an agreed-upon consensus what truth is and how available it is to everybody. (qtd. in Coleman)
Haynes also mentions this idea of truth in several other interviews for May December (in The Curb, for example, or Slant). This quest for truth is also framed by Haynes as work that is done by “excavating” (Vulture), “figure[ing] out” (Film Independent), and as part of an “investigative narrative” (MUBI). Thus, the work of adaptation is in part an attempt to ‘solve’ the original text (which in this case, is Letourneau), however futile that may be.
The use of the adaptor character highlights the way the work of adaptation is variously present and shaped by ideological concerns, which here are present in the representation of the Letourneau narrative in news media. The role of the news and its links to adaptation is discussed by Meikle as he states that “a number of adaptations circulate through the institutional, commercial, and legal frameworks of the news media” (“Adaptations and the Media,” 89). These circulations are a form of work, the act of interpretation by the framework of the media a process of work. Like the definitions of adaptation which according to Timothy Corrigan are not “stable” (34), so too are these interpretations/adaptations of stories through the news media: “Every new interpretation serves only to confirm the instability of the one that came before it, and the one that came before that” (Meikle, “Adaptations and the Media,” 92). Work is continuously required: it is not performed or undertaken once and then done. It is an ongoing process, something adapters and audiences continuously do.
I mention that (some) audiences perform this work of adaptation too, and that it is not only the adaptor themselves. One of the examples of audiences performing this work was in a clip circulated online after the film’s release. It focuses on the way in which Haynes had used a moment from an Australian television interview of Letourneau and Fualaau. The interview, from Australia’s Channel 7 news in 2018, shows host Matt Doran interview a defensive looking Letourneau and Fualaau. In it, Doran presses Letourneau to explain her actions, noting that “You were the adult” (“FULL Interview…”). Letourneau, clearly frustrated by this, attempts to defend herself by saying “I was by age,” and going on to ask Fualaau, “Who was the boss?” in an aggressive tone. Fualaau, looking uncomfortable and starting to mumble, does not immediately answer the question. Letourneau presses him repeatedly, clearly making him more uncomfortable, until he capitulates and gives her the answer she was looking for: he was the one “in charge” (“FULL Interview…”). In May December, Haynes reframes (or adapts) this moment. Speaking of his choice to do so, he noted that “we needed to hang our hat on something specific while knowing that it was ultimately going to manifest in its own way” (qtd. in Dalton).
In the film adaptation of this moment, Joe and Gracie are lying in bed, and Joe is clearly uncomfortable. He questions the nature of the relationship, and Gracie, feeling attacked, reacts as defensively as Letourneau. She asks, “Who was in charge?” repeatedly, echoing Letourneau’s vocal tone and argumentative attempt to deflect blame from herself. Joe, like Fualaau, yields to the aggressive line of questioning, putting the power back in Gracie’s hands. Despite both Gracie and Letourneau trying to show their powerlessness, they do so in a manner that asserts their control, and the marked similarities make the labor of Moore’s performance visible, providing her with something to, in Haynes’ phrasing, “hang [her] hat on” (Dalton).
Although shifting the context of the conversation from the interview to a private bedroom, Haynes’ use of it adapts the relationship dynamics of the real-life Mary Kay and Fualaau through this interaction. The interview’s presence online, fueling recognition of it as being part of May December, shows the audience’s understanding and reading of the text as adaptation, as well as the decision-making work that it requires to present an adaptation of this narrative. Once this interview was shared around social media sites like Twitter (the previous name for X), for instance, it was then picked up by news outlets who reported it as “inspiring” the film (Neumann).11 These articles link audience understandings of texts, as well as show the evidence of the work to view a text as an adaptation. The way social media and the digital space operate now allow for the work of adaptation – for both creator and audience – to be undertaken and understood quicker, and for adaptations to be seen as adaptations more readily. Hutcheon argues that adaptation proliferates because of the increased output of media channels, because these channels “carry that aura with them.” To see a work as an adaptation is to see them as “haunted at all times by their adapted texts” (4-6). This presence, this haunting, is the work implied by adaptation. It is an acknowledgement that to see a text as an adaptation is to do the work to haunt the text, and to see the haunting.
The adaptation of Mary Kay’s story through Gracie, and subsequently Elizabeth, is what we see here. Letourneau haunts both characters. However, although Elizabeth makes visible the work adaptation requires, and therefore highlights Moore’s adaptation of Mary Kay through Gracie, this is not what Haynes is asking us to consider. Adaptation is not a homogeneous process applied to a text that will result in something known and predictable, or easily repeatable. Adaptation occurs at multiple levels and reconfigures a narrative – it happens with Mary Kay’s real story being narrativized in media, and again in films made about her. Any adaptation has the power to recontextualize and reconfigure – a sort of “working through” of the knots of the text. Some of the things I have considered here raise more questions. Firstly, how can we think about adaptations whilst considering the work put into them without only focusing on the product that is the adaptation? And secondly, given the way in which Elizabeth operates like a detective trying to “solve” the mystery of Gracie, could this be more broadly applicable? Do or can adaptations work to solve a text by offering new insights?
Our sense of Elizabeth’s solution is sorely deflated at the end of May December when we see footage of the TV movie she is making. There is a sordid pet-shop setting and campy imitation of Gracie that offers no new insight. In its sense of imitation, it becomes unoriginal. This unoriginality is linked to the Romantic ideas of creativity I mentioned earlier. Glenn Jellenik urges a moving away from Romanticism’s outmoded ideas of originality, arguing that we should embrace “derivative originality – something not new, yet new; derived, yet not derivative; original, yet not originary, Hutcheon’s repetition without replication. Derivative originality functions as a fundamental questioning of Romanticism’s definitions of Originality” (185).
Elizabeth may be seen as derivative, which gives a sense that the work of adaptation is on display: it is easier to compare her against Gracie (the text being adapted) because of the element of repetition and exaggeration in her performance. The more effortless a text is assumed to be, the less visible the work becomes, and the lack of visibility can lead to assumptions of originality. Who and what is defined as effortless and original remain shaped by societal codes and norms. To value this work, rather than see it as an admission of failure, or a slip-up, is to equalize the approach to adaptation. Valuing the work of adaptation does not mean assuming every text is “good.” After all, this is still a highly subjective evaluation. Rather, I am urging for an examination of the work even when it is not immediately apparent. The examination of this work highlights the frameworks we unwittingly impose on adaptations, creation, and reception of works, as well as showing what we define and value as work.
Endnotes
1 This has since been altered from the initial viewing of the page in Spring 2024, but the page from 2024 is included via Wayback Machine in the references.
2 Wilkins, Christina. Embodying Adaptation. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
3 Young argues that the two types of genius, imitative and original, were not quite comparative, and that “originality” was a key component of genius. Genius is thereby seen as something more innate. Miller argues that Young is one of the “first modern writers” to link the concept of originality to genius.
4 Arguably these conversations have recently been renewed with the use of AI in creative industries– Ted Chiang’s essay “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” in The New Yorker explores a creative’s response.
5 Although the names have been changed, the link to the real-life case is unquestionable and indeed, Haynes references it explicitly, as seen in a later example in this article.
6 A Sirkian approach might be described as a specific use of framing, often for ironic purposes; heightened emotional performances; intense use of colour; heavy and often overloaded symbolism in the film.
7 As Wim Staat notes, although May December was submitted as a comedy to the Golden Globes, it in fact adheres to a number of the elements of melodrama, particularly in the way Haynes has produced them before.
8 For example, in Far From Heaven (2002), Cathy (Moore) begins dating again after a divorce. However, she is judged harshly by those around her because she dates a black man. In Carol (2015), Carol and Therese (Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) are judged harshly because of their relationship. In both cases, the protagonists do not align with social attitudes, which contemporary audiences understand. When it comes to May December, the same cannot be said.
9 Which may also be similar to the uncanny valley approach– when it is similar, but not quite there, difference becomes unsettling.
10 Emig argues that adaptations highlight the status of the text as text, rather than ‘artwork’ and thereby threatens it. By being reproducible, it undermines its value. (This is a very brief summation of his ideas, and I would urge the reader to engage with his work)
11 This was in part due to the anticipation of the Netflix release of the film.
Works Cited
Anderson, Hephzibah. “Julianne Moore: ‘Like Every Other Woman in the World, I Do Ceramics.’” The Guardian, 10 Dec. 2023, www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/10/julianne-moore-todd-haynes-may-december-interview . Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.
Boone, John. “‘May December’ Was Daunting, Even for Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman (Exclusive).” Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 30 Nov. 2023, https://newsletter.oscars.org/news/post/julianne-moore-natalie-portman-may-december-interview. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.
Canfield, David. “How Julianne Moore Found the ‘Hysterical’ Truth in May December.” Vanity Fair, 15 Jan. 2024, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/julianne-moore-may-december-little-gold-men-awards-insider.
Chiang, Ted. “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art.” The New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art. Accessed 9 Sept. 2024.
Coleman, Madeline Leung. “Todd Haynes Plays the Superego.” Vulture, 1 Dec. 2023, www.vulture.com/article/todd-haynes-in-conversation.html.
Corrigan, Timothy. "Defining adaptation." The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 23-35.
Cutchins, Dennis, et al. The Routledge Companion to Adaptation. Routledge, 2018.
Dalton, Connor. “Todd Haynes Talks May December and Why There’s No Such Thing as Responsible Storytelling in This Interview.” The Curb, 27 Jan. 2024, www.thecurb.com.au/todd-haynes-talks-may-december-and-why-theres-no-such-thing-as-responsible-storytelling-in-this-interview. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.
Emig, Rainer. “Adaptation and the concept of the original.” The Routledge Companion to Adaptation, Routledge, 2018, pp. 28-39.
“FULL interview with Mary Kay Letourneau.” YouTube, uploaded by 7 News Spotlight, 7 Dec. 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RezOEn0daNU
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