Introduction

This article aims to look more critically at the terms transnational film adaptation and transnational cinema, within both their definitions and their functioning in film and adaptation studies. Despite widespread use, the modifier transnational remains highly ambiguous; scholars repeatedly note that it often functions as an umbrella term for a wide range of phenomena, including industrial collaboration, aesthetic exchange, and cultural representation, yet it is rarely given consistent theoretical clarification. In adaptation studies, the theoretical foundations of transnational remain largely borrowed from film-studies discourse. As a result, the term often appears in adaptation research without a clear methodological framework. In order to address this problem, it is necessary first to examine how the concept has been theorized in film studies and what analytical perspectives it offers. The following discussion therefore defines transnational cinema and the modifier transnational in adaptation studies. In contrast to prior definitions, I propose to treat transnational adaptation not as a fixed term with a stable and closed definition, but rather as an analytical approach. I also suggest narrowing the concept by introducing the additional modifier imagological, which underlines a specific research focus on the representation and imagination of countries and peoples (e.g., film adaptations of Russian literature in American or British cinema).

A “Self-evident Qualifier”: Defining Transnational Cinema

Even though transnational is challenging to define, there are attempts to theorize the term, usually in collocation with cinema, that reflect perspectives and concerns from the field of film studies. For example, Nataša Durovicová in the “Preface” to the collection World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives differentiates the adjective transnational from international and global:

In contradistinction to “global,” a concept bound up with the philosophical category of totality, and in contrast to “international,” predicated on political systems in a latent relationship of parity, as signaled by the prefix “inter-,” the intermediate and open term “transnational” acknowledges the persistent agency of the state, in a varying but fundamentally legitimizing relationship to the scale of “the nation.” At the same time, the prefix “trans-” implies relations of unevenness and mobility. It is this relative openness to modalities of geopolitical forms, social relations and especially to the variant scale on which relations in film history have occurred that gives this key term its dynamic force, and its utility as a frame for hypotheses about emergent forms.” (ix-x)

Durovicová discerns two main strategies to locate the transnational in her definition: a spatial construct distinct in its reference to the state and geopolitics, and a diachronic, or historiographic, perspective, which shows the flexibility and changes in the development of the cinematic industry. Significantly, Durovicová defines the modifier transnational by opposing it to other collocations, such as international and global cinema. In adaptation studies discourse, the term transnational is often contrasted with concepts such as intercultural, cross-cultural, and transcultural, or used interchangeably with them despite important conceptual differences1.

In the same collection, Mette Hjort proposes a typology of cinematic transnationalisms and distinguishes nine types: “epiphanic transnationalism, affinitive transnationalism, milieu-building transnationalism, opportunistic transnationalism, cosmopolitan transnationalism, globalizing transnationalism, auteurist transnationalism, modernizing transnationalism, and experimental transnationalism” (16).2 She notes that there are no strict boundaries between these types and they may overlap. The types proposed by Hjort share an industrial dimension and are network- and production-oriented, focusing on the forms of collaboration within the filmmaking industry. This typology can undoubtedly be applied in adaptation studies when the network and economic issues are the prime concern of research. An example of such an approach is the chapter “Hollywood and the Popular Cinema of the Philippines” in Hollywood Meme by Iain Robert Smith, which examines Philippine-American cooperation in Philippine movies shaped by cooperation with the USA and aimed at international distribution (100).

In cinema studies, three main directions in approaching the concept of the transnational can be distinguished: 1) network, 2) economic/cooperation-oriented (precisely described by Hjort), and 3) cultural. The economic perspective concerns the financial, material, and production conditions of filmmaking. It includes the use of technology, labor policies (e.g., collaboration and co-production, migration of actors), and historical transformations in film industries, such as different stages in their development (with the transnational viewed as a practice of globalization). Marketing and distribution strategies, pre-modeling of target audiences, aspirations toward a global audience, and box office performance also fall under this category. The cultural perspective includes various forms of artistic cross-fertilization, including aesthetic and visual styles, thematic choices, genre influences, the circulation and migration of texts within the global system, and the transnational movement of characters and “universal figures” (e.g., Sherlock Holmes). From this point of view, cinema can be understood as a meeting point of cultures – a bridge enabling cultural flow, but also a wall or a “conflict zone” that accentuates cultural and historical otherness.

The modifier transnational remains problematic both in cinema and adaptation studies for several reasons, including its broad usage, its shifting meanings across disciplines, and the variety of contexts in which it appears. Russell Meeuf and Raphael Raphael describe the term as questionable due to its “overuse and under-clarification by academics” (2), noting its appropriation across diverse fields of study. At the same time, the scholars caution that attempts to narrow the term too strictly “can also be stifling and unhelpful, especially given the dynamic and fluid kinds of phenomena usually described as transnational” (2). Hjort similarly warns that “the term ‘transnational’ does little to advance our thinking about important issues if it can mean anything and everything that the occasion would appear to demand” (12). She adds that in the cinematic transnationalism discourse, the term is used as a “self-evident qualifier requiring only minimal conceptual clarification” (13). The problem with defining transnational posed by Hjort was addressed by Austin Fisher and Ian Robert Smith in a critical roundtable, which approached a number of leading scholars in cinematic transnationalism to reflect on the growing use of the term transnational cinema. The contributors emphasize that the term reflects diverse methodological perspectives and therefore requires more precise definitions and more critical engagement with the political, aesthetic, and economic implications of cross‑border film production and reception.

The scholars shared their views on the use and meaning of the modifier transnational by responding to the question, “What is your definition of ‘transnational cinema’?” The diversity of responses demonstrates how broad, flexible, and often unsystematic the use of the modifier has become within film studies. For instance, Robert Burgoyne, like Hjort, argues that the term risks becoming tautological, providing not “much definitional clarity” (Fisher and Smith) and even suggests dropping it. Rosalind Galt agrees that “it’s easy to see any film or other cinematic object of study as transnational” (Fisher and Smith). For scholars, the looseness of the term is problematic; at the same time, however, its openness is part of its appeal. Andrew Higson advises against an overly rigid definition or excessive theorization of the term. He points out that while alternatives such as transcultural, intercultural, or cosmopolitan foreground cultural aspects of cinema, they “overlook the industrial dimensions of production, distribution and exhibition and the issue of policy; they also overlook the dimension of reception, the nature and composition of audiences and how they make sense of particular films” (Fisher and Smith). Will Higbee observes that the debate around terminology largely concerns academics; filmmakers, by contrast, are often indifferent to such labels, typically responding with “a blank expression” when asked about terminology (Fisher and Smith). Lúcia Nagib proposes a narrower, economically grounded definition, suggesting that a transnational film is one “funded by a pool of multinational producers” (Fisher and Smith). Kathleen Newman, by contrast, doubts whether any single concept can be “a sufficiently capacious term to signal all of the current theoretical and analytical stakes” (Fisher and Smith). Burgoyne suggests that many films can be read as transnational, depending on the critical perspective adopted, yet warns – like Lucy Mazdon – that if every film is labeled transnational, the term risks losing analytical value and “runs the risk of reducing the term to a self-evident qualifier and emptying it of all critical force” (Fisher and Smith). For this reason, Mazdon argues for retaining “a critical and discursive engagement with the transnational and its applicability to film research” (Fisher and Smith), even though the flexibility of the term makes it possible to define all movies as transnational.

Chris Berry characterizes transnational as “a catch-all category for everything that is not national cinema” (111), highlighting the opposition between the national and the transnational. He further argues that if the concept “is to have any value, it needs to be more than just another way of saying ‘international cinema’ or ‘world cinema’” (111). In his article “What is Transnational Cinema? Thinking from the Chinese Situation,” Berry traces existing patterns in the use of the term transnational and identifies the kinds of triggers that allow scholars to think about cinema in transnational terms. Berry, nonetheless, echoes the assumptions by Mazdon, Hjort, Burgoyne, Higson, Higbee, and Newman already noted above:

the potential meanings of ‘transnational cinema’ are many and various. It can be traced back to the beginnings of cinema itself. Or it can be dated from the impact of globalization in the cinema. It can refer to big-budget blockbuster cinema associated with the operations of global corporate capital. Or it can refer to small-budget diasporic and exilic cinema. It can refer to films that challenge national identity, or it can refer to the consumption of foreign films as part of the process of a discourse about what national identity is. (114)

In general, almost all articles devoted to defining the term transnational tend to end with similar conclusions. Promising titles of articles and collections that appear to finally tackle this complex definition often disappoint readers by the end, as they simply repeat what has already been stated: that the term is highly complex and thus no exhaustive definition can be provided.3

To avoid producing yet another article that merely summarizes everything previously written on this subject (though some repetitions are inevitable in order to illustrate the research problem and the direction I propose), I therefore suggest considering transnational in adaptation studies primarily as a research approach and critical perspective, rather than as a subject or categorical label. Following Burgoyne’s argument that transnational cinema can be understood “depending on the angle we take” (Fisher and Smith) and Deborah Shaw’s emphasis on the meaning of the term transnational as depending on “the focus of the study and the knowledge base of the researcher” (Fisher and Smith), I advocate for treating the term as a critical perspective applied to the study, rather than as a defining feature of an adaptation itself. Thus, the modifier transnational does not define the type of adaptation but rather signals the research angle, its focus, and its critical priorities.

Narrowing Down a Transnational Approach: Imagological Perspective

A further perspective, particularly visible in the case of transnational adaptations, is that of authority and power. Transnational adaptations raise questions of agency, including the role of the state and related ideological issues. They also juxtapose the “legitimized nation” with the openness of the nation as a social construct consisting of various groups, and this juxtaposition can delegitimize exclusionary narratives and contribute to national liberation, reconstruction, or re-legitimation of what is perceived as “the national,” understood here as not being “a self-contained entity” (Fisher and Smith). The authority and power perspective also highlights geopolitical asymmetries and dominant discourses. This perspective is crucial for the transnational approach because it emphasizes the construction of a nation and the performance of national traits. Following Benedict Anderson, we may consider nations as imagined communities, socially constructed through shared practices, language standardization, rituals, and collective memory. At the same time, we cannot overlook the role of the material artifacts, such as books and films, in shaping or contesting these communities, as they produce and reinforce the images with which these groups identify. As Eduard Cuelenaere notes, “one should not underestimate the materialized outcomes of such imaginations” (230).

While considering how source texts from a different national culture, understood here as “foreign bodies,” are adapted in film, especially within the privileged positioning of the national subject and constructions of national identities, I suggest employing an imagological perspective. The modifier imagological is especially productive for narrowing down the transnational approach to a specific analytical framework. I therefore propose naming an adaptation imagological when it primarily explores how a nation is imagined, represented, and performed within a host culture. The term is borrowed from imagology, the study of cultural images and stereotypes of nations and peoples, which examines how such images are produced and circulated in literature, film, and other media. Manfred Beller defines an image “as the mental silhouette of the other, who appears to be determined by the characteristics of family, group, tribe, peoples or race” (4). As he further explains, “We do not know the real thing, but only its simulacrum in the form of mental images” (4). Similarly, Joep Leerssen argues that “To a very large extent, we schematize and make sense of the world by means of notions (prejudices, stereotypes) of national characters and ethnic temperaments. Alongside gender, ethnicity and nationality are perhaps the most ingrained way of pigeonholing human behavior into imputed group characteristics” (14). And while he does not use the term imagology, Thomas Leitch explains, in a related reflection, “every time we refer to a specific culture, or culture in general, as a going concern, we are performing that culture, endowing it with power and currency by the very act of naming or describing or invoking it as a system of norms or a touchstone for evaluating other cultures” (“What Isn’t a Cross-Cultural Adaptation” 15). Cultural elements, norms, and values, therefore, “become effective only in performance” (“What Isn’t a Cross-Cultural Adaptation” 15) – a process through which cultures are reinforced and cemented in viewers’ imagination. The analysis of film adaptations through an imagological lens gives a deeper understanding of the cultural messages that an adaptation communicates.

This perspective also suggests two further developments: auto-images and hetero-images, both of which may have various degrees of self-awareness, attempting to idealize or criticize Self or Other, and both of which are interconnected with the issues of authority and power. Auto-images refer to self-representations in national cinema (yet another problematic concept4), created within a nation, usually for the local market – though not exclusively. Such images can be more or less institutionalized and ideologically exclusionary or inclusionary. We might further distinguish here between two opposing perspectives: nationalistic versus national cinema. Nationalistic cinema portrays the nation as a legitimized, self-contained entity. Sergey Bondarchuk’s 1965 film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace can serve as an example: it is highly ideologically loaded in terms of its production (unprecedented funds were spent to show the cultural supremacy of the USSR during the escalation of the Cold War) and in its Russophile representation of the nation (imagining Russians as “chosen people” (Poole, Trandafoiu 161)). By contrast, national cinema in a broader sense is more inclusive, covering exilic, diasporic, or “accented” cinema, all of which demonstrate that no nation is ever fully homogeneous or uniform. This understanding of a nation corresponds with Mary Louise Pratt’s critiques of the tendency of linguistics to privilege langue as an abstract, homogeneous system while treating parole, actual speech and its variation, as secondary. Thus, national cinema shows that a nation is not a homogeneous construct; it shakes and challenges the notion of “nation.”

Hetero-images, by contrast, (re)construct, (re)imagine, and perform a nation from the outside. When we ask how national elements are presented in transnational adaptations, we inevitably approach them through an imagological lens. From this perspective, the point of view depends largely on the director’s and producer’s assumptions about the expectations of the target audience, the director’s personal beliefs, or approaches imposed from above by economic, political, or ideological circumstances. For example, Hollywood censorship practices influenced Love (1927), an adaptation of Anna Karenina, which was released with two different endings: one for European audiences and another for American viewers. For the American market, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer prepared a happy ending, reflecting studio’s concerns about public morality; consequently, rather than depicting Anna’s suicide, the adaptation ends with Anna and Vronsky’s reconciliation.

Strategies of Performing National Specificity in Imagological Adaptations

Three strategies of performing national specificity in imagological adaptations can be distinguished: “othering”/evaluating, “dissolving/universalizing,” and “mimicking” national specificity. Performing culture almost always involves its evaluation – displaying it either from a negative or admiring perspective, often through stereotypical or evaluatively charged depictions. Concepts such as Orientalism, Occidentalism, “positive Orientalism” and “positive Occidentalism” highlight how foreign cultures and countries are frequently framed as “othered” spaces, subject to nostalgic, romanticized, or exoticized interpretations (Smith 45). Particularly interesting here is “strategic exoticism,” that is, “the self-conscious use of exoticist techniques and modalities of cultural representation” (Graham Huggan, quoted in Anastasi 125). Certainly, the exotic seems appealing, though these practices can also contribute to distancing “othered” cultures by bringing them on screen. Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray calls this depiction the “false-exotic” (Satyajit Ray, quoted in Anastasi 125).

As Yvonne Griggs notes, citing Thomas Leitch, such othering representations can provide “what Leitch terms a ‘site of exotic tourism’ rather than a meaningful construction of place and … identity” (175). She adds that landscapes are often exoticized and “fetishized” to bring films greater appeal in the global market. She calls it “landscape exhibitionism” (179), which “remains an important unique selling point that can be exploited in pursuit of export markets” (O’Regan and Ward, quoted in Griggs 178). Jeremy Strong in the book chapter “Adapting Pagnol and Provence” shows how different interpretations of Provence reveal the idea of “cultural landscape” that is “socially constructed out of textual representations” (18). Strong refers to the concept of the “spectacle” developed by Guy Debord, according to whom real life is replaced by images. The spectacle is a characteristic feature of film tourism: films transform settings into cultural landscapes that are highly manipulated and reinforced through cinematic representations. Landscape exhibitionism may also lead to the rise of commercial tourism: the releases of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit boosted the touristic appeal of New Zealand, and Dubrovnik has been overrun by tourists after the release of Game of Thrones. However, places depicted as what Leitch calls “the ultimate Gothic tourist destination” (“Across the Russian Border” 21), which evoke curiosity and a sense of threat, or serve as the backdrop of extreme human conditions, do not translate into real-world tourist appeal. An example of such a Gothic tourist destination is the USSR in David Lean’s 1965 adaptation of Doctor Zhivago, which did not encourage Americans to visit the USSR, even though the adaptation ends with an optimistic rainbow in the last scene. The representation of national specificity of a foreign country in a hetero-imagological adaptation depends on the prevalent trends and tropes in representing a country and culture during a particular historical moment. In the case of Dr. Zhivago, ideological cliché was unavoidable, since Lean produced his epic film during the height of the Cold War.

Another strategy is “the dissolution” of national specificity. Joe Wright’s 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina may serve as a perfect example of this approach. Though it is based on Tolstoy’s novel and constructs Russia and Russianness using national-specific décor, it does not represent a “meaningful construction of place and of Russian identity” (Leitch “Across the Russian Border” 20). Griggs sees this adaptation more as a highly stylized costume drama, which strengthens its theatrical mode (see Figure 1):

Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina (2012) represents a refreshing challenge to costume drama’s ongoing capacity to dictate adaptive terms of reference by parodying the tropes of the genre through its highly stylised theatrical mode of presentation; however, as with its cinematic predecessors, the destructive love between Anna and Vronsky forms the narrative focus of this film, and though Wright’s treatment of the period costume genre deconstructs the artifice of heritage cinema, it is tethered to the genre by association and generic expectation. Like earlier adaptations of the 1930s and 1940s, it remains a ‘site of exotic tourism’ dressed here in a theatrical garb that further dilutes any meaningful construct of nationhood. There have also been several British TV serialisations of Anna Karenina, all of which are costume drama adaptations that, like their film siblings, employ a heritage aesthetic. (175)

Wright localized and, to a certain degree, appropriated Tolstoy’s novel through its stylistic alignment with British costume drama. This strategy may appear less an act of cultural localization than a calculated distribution practice aimed at securing international pre-sales. As Carol Poole and Ruxandra Trandafoiu observe in their article on the British 2016 adaptation of War and Peace, producer Julia Stannard had to “envisage an ‘international’ audience” to secure European and US pre-sales and access the global market (159).

Although heritage films are presumed to be based on the literary heritage, or “inherited” national literary canon, adaptations allow canonical texts to migrate across cultures, be appropriated by other nations, or even lose their national specificity as they enter global circulation; this process demonstrates that literature cannot be confined to the ownership of any single state or nation. Many costume drama adaptations have been criticized for bearing distinctly English stylistic features derived from BBC heritage television productions. As Eckart Voigts-Virchow notes, “Englishness does not crumble (as Bhabha suggested), it migrates” (135), producing what Poole and Trandafoiu describe as “a more post-national ‘European’ take on identity” (162). The dissolution or marginalization of national markers in these adaptations, combined with a post-national ethos, contributes to the “softening” and assimilation of cultures “into a single material world culture” (Habermas, qtd. in Poole and Trandafoiu 162). Consequently, such adaptations are frequently criticized for being “too English,” which is hardly surprising given that “the British TV costume drama adaptation creates a monopoly around what has become synonymous with its own exportable brand of British heritage, cultivating a ‘Britishness’ that remains an ingrained and exportable part of the genre’s DNA” (Griggs 173). In this way, costume drama adaptations – even when based on non-British literary heritage – often reproduce the aesthetic and cultural conventions of the British heritage television tradition, thereby “dissolving” nationally specific elements of a source text.

The next approach that imagological adaptations can offer is “mimicking” national authenticity. Sometimes experts are employed “to bring an aura of ‘authenticity’ to the production” (Poole and Trandafoiu 159). As producer Julia Stannard reveals, during the production of the 2016 War and Peace, they worked closely with historical and cultural advisors. Poole and Trandafoiu elaborate on the result:

Stand-in locations, the fluid interpretation of localism and the aesthetic eclecticism of objects, music and costumes, give War and Peace an air of mimicked authenticity and approximate identity that purists would reject, but transnational audiences can better respond to. In this sense, the 2016 War and Peace pays homage to ‘authenticity’ and historical reconstruction, within the limits of contemporary production concerns and resources and without unreasonable authenticity claims. (Poole and Trandafoiu 167)

Initially, the production was planned to be shot in Russia, but complicated logistics and Russian bureaucracy changed the plans. As a result, it was filmed in Lithuania and Latvia, which served as appropriate stand-ins for Russia (Poole and Trandafoiu 166). Director Tom Harper also confirms that the production paid homage to authenticity: the team consulted a panel of literary, military, and architectural experts to create a near-authentic look for the piece. As Poole and Tranafoiu explain,

Furniture, food and tableware served to give the production a recognisably Russian feel and contributed to characterisation. This is particularly obvious in the home of the Rostovs, the archetypal Russian family, where much attention is given to decorative motifs (elk heads, bearskin rugs and gold samovars), patterns and colours, as well as furniture. (Poole and Trandafoiu 168)

The desire for authenticity produced eclectic national elements that combined pan-European features, exotic elements, such as references to national-specific folklore in settings and costumes, and a modern touch, since the adaptation was aimed at a contemporary audience (Poole and Trandafoiu 167). This approach balances between national specificity and universalism (see Figure 2).

Then, what kinds of adaptations cannot be considered imagological, even though they might still be classified as transnational (e.g., in terms of production and collaboration)? From the category of imagological adaptations, we may exclude works that rely on a strong degree of appropriation, where the source text is reused only at the level of themes, plotlines, or motifs and the adaptation does not attempt to represent or imagine the foreign culture from which the source text originates. The Australian TV show The Beautiful Lie (2015) can serve as an example: though it is explicitly proclaimed to be inspired by Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina and refers thematically to the novel (love, betrayal, and family relationships) and uses similar motifs (e.g., train), the TV show does not represent or imagine Russian culture or national identity. Instead, it is set entirely in modern-day Australia and shows Australians, Australian matters and realities (see Figure 3).

Conclusion

Theorizing types of adaptation or classifying them seems challenging or even impossible since an adaptation itself, as Kamilla Elliott notes,

refuses to conform to theorization’s definitions, taxonomies, principles, epistemologies, and methodologies. As a rival process to theorization, it is at work on everything addressed by humanities scholars, and much more: it is also at work upon theorization, adapting it. The problem of theorizing adaptation, therefore, is a relational one between rival processes. Theorizing adaptation efficaciously requires theorization to adapt to adaptation and to theorize adaptation as adaptation rather than as an exemplum of theoretical tenets developed to address other things in which adaptation participates, but which are not themselves “adaptation.” (305)

In this sense, transnational adaptation functions less as a label for a particular kind of adaptation than as a research approach: it requires scholars to specify which cross-border dynamics are being foregrounded (e.g., industrial, network, economic, aesthetic). As the review of scholarship by Durovicová, Hjort, Berry, Higson, Mazdon, Burgoyne, and others has demonstrated, the term risks becoming, in Hjort’s words, a “self-evident qualifier” emptied of critical force if applied without methodological specificity. Moreover, it seems unproductive to offer a fixed definition for transnational film adaptation that would risk excluding a significant number of titles that others have studied using that concept.

Perhaps the modifier transnational can be treated as a terminological cafeteria from which scholars select approaches depending on the subject of their studies. I propose treating transnational adaptation as an analytical approach rather than a label for a specific type of adaptation. The term always requires additional explanation regarding why it is used in a particular case study. Borrowings from related fields, such as cinema studies, intermedial studies, or imagology, may help to make the use of transnational more precise and to clearly delimit the chosen approach. From this angle, when analyzing adaptation in terms of constructing national specificities embedded in a foreign text within a host culture, I suggest using the imagological approach with a further distinction between auto-images and hetero-images, depending on whether the source text is domestic or foreign. Furthermore, three strategies of performing national specificity have been identified: othering/evaluating, dissolving/universalizing, and mimicking. These strategies are not mutually exclusive; a single adaptation may combine elements of more than one, as the examples drawn from British and American adaptations of Russian literary classics have shown.