From: C47805NF@WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU (Rick Francis)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cinema-l
Subject: Cooper-bashing & translation
Date: 13 Oct 92 16:56:47 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

Yup, it's that ugly beast Translation, rearing its ubiquitous heads.  Or
would the beast of Translation be all tails and no head?

It won't surprise me at all if a great many people who don't care for JF
Cooper in the original decide they *like* the translation to color film.
This, IMHO, is one of the ways literature & art in general bumbles along.
I don't see the point in decrying it, lamenting etc., since it seems
to be a law as futile  to protest as the law of gravity.

Twain's hilarious send-up of Cooper showed how badly his work was ageing
after a few decades, at least to the perceptive mind of a good reader.  Of
the development of literary realism made Cooper's work outstandingly clumsy-
looking, sort of allegory that no longer worked on those terms either.

The question, then, is whether to decide that Cooper is hopelessly
dated, and should be relegated to the dust-bin of old anthologies, yet
another example of what some on this list say *never* happens:  once-great
art falls into oblivion; *OR* whether someone should see in Cooper's work
some terrrific stories that could be *punched up*, that with some editing
and accomodation to modern taste, could bring us a new Cooper.

It is probably clear by now that I think all great art, and all great
translation, consists of that capability of seeing the relevance of the past
or cultural other to the present, and that the finest examples of art can
be seen as the result of a rare vision/translation:  Faulkner translating
the Bible and Freud into 20th century American South, Picasso with African
art and El Greco, and so on.

So has anyone seen _Last of the Mohicans_?  Does it make you want to re-try
Cooper?  Do you think the film would help show you the value of the works
that you couldn't see before?  Hypothetical question:  if there *were*
a genuine revival of Early Americana literature, wouldn't it be most
likely to come about by translations to film?  Is it possible to
conceive of a renaissance of Cooper et al by translating them into contempo-
rary idiom of the novel?

A couple more questions:  if we all claim to be fed up with Cooper, are we
obligated to either dislike the film or, if we like it say that it isn't
faithful to Cooper?  If we dislike Cooper, would we have to dislike any
film which *was* "faithful" to Cooper?  I'm particularly interested to know
how Peter G., M. Kerbel, and j-man would answer those.

________________________________________________________________________
Rick Francis  C47805NF@WUVMD      |  * If I don't drive around the park,
Dep't of Comparative Literature,  |  * I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
Box 1107                          |  * If I'm in bed each night by ten,
Washington University             |  * I may get back my looks again.
St. Louis, MO  63130              |  * If I abstain from fun and such,
                                  |  * I'll probably amount to much;
                                  |  * But I shall stay the way I am,
                                  |  * Because I do not give a damn.
                                  |
                                  |    -- Dorothy Parker
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU