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"A cause celebre here is Psycho, both the Hitchcock and Van Sant versions, where one explanation for the Van Sant remake - clearly made at one level to capitalise on a renewed interest in the horror/slasher film - was that it was an update for a new generation of viewers, many of whom were unfamiliar with Hitchcock's film. Of course, referring to this particular film raises all kinds of issues, some of which have been well written about already. There is, though, an increasing amount of decent scholarly writing on the remake that - for me, at any rate - takes us beyond the pleasurable but ultimately uninformative list-making that accompanies the purely opinion-based approach to the remake." Unless one wants to subscribe to a complete cultural and historical relativism with regards to critical evaluation, it seems to me that the question of which one is better (in some significant sense of that term) is more than superficial. If Plato is right, forming such hierarchies demonstrates one's understanding of excellence in things of that type. While I am no Platonist about the absolute, timeless and changeless nature of such hierarchies, it strikes me that debating about them is nonetheless important. In that connection, and with reference to your choice of remake, I have seen few critics argue that Van Sant's version is cinematically better than Hitchcock's original. While critical opinion is mixed as to whether the remake has merit in its own right, I don't remember seeing anyone who thought that the master had been bested here. As I do follow Hume in putting some credence to the consensus of the critics over time, this is significant (although the consensus could of course change three decades from now, if Van Sant is glorified in the pantheon of the immortals by then). Daniel Shaw Professor of Philosophy and Film Lock Haven University (570) 484-2052 Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy "And remember you are more authentic the closer you are to the person you dreamed of being" Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother ________________________________ From: Film-Philosophy Salon [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of bill harris [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 10:49 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Remakes 'Sounds like the question might be nothng more than a generational paradigm. In other words, it's not so much that different directors impose their own particular sensibilities as it is a common-sense tweeking to the expectations of new viewers. This, in essence, is how all commodities are milked for profit. Also, f course, we have to consider 'difference' from the pov of new technology... BH > Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:21:50 +0200 > From: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Remakes > To: [log in to unmask] > > Paul, thanks for your elaboration. The Hitchcock/Gus Van Sant Psycho versions are certainly a very interesting case in point. I wonder, did the Van Sant version work with audiences unfamiliar with the older film? > > Remakes of course involve the two notions of repetition and novelty, and I wonder whether in the literature on remakes use has been made of Kierkegaard's trifold notion of repetition, or of theories of the new, such as that of Boris Groys (Das Neue, don't know if it's been translated into English)? > > Henry > > > > > > > The value judgements that tend to come into play in comparative analyses between 'originals' and their 'remakes' strike me as problematic - they're fun in conversation but not especially helpful when attempting to explore the remake with any kind of academic rigour. As Lucy Mazdon has demonstrated, the binary that underpins these kinds of judgements doesn't really hold up once one starts to factor in genre, intertextuality, etc. Historically, one might argue that the remake was central to cinema's development and to the emergence of genre in its cinematic context. Prior to the introduction of copyright, films were regularly copied or remade. French films were frequently copied for the US market for example, their original intertitles replaced with English language versions. At one level, the expansion of cinema rested on this almost 'viral' proliferation, fuelled by copying and remaking. As films grew in length and copyright was introduced, it became more difficult to copy films directly and remaking, certainly in a transcultural context, began to require some degree of cultural translation. As Sarah Dawson suggests in her post, the effectiveness or rather the plausibility of such remakes depends upon the subtlety of this 'translation'. Mazdon has written a great deal in this area, primarily in relation to Hollywood remakes of French film and she deploys translation theory deftly to support her work. As far as 'new remakes of old Hollywood films' are concerned, I think again that a certain kind of 'cultural translation' is at work, although in such cases one is dealing with an historical or generational translation. A cause celebre here is Psycho, both the Hitchcock and Van Sant versions, where one explanation for the Van Sant remake - clearly made at one level to capitalise on a renewed interest in the horror/slasher film - was that it was an update for a new generation of viewers, many of whom were unfamiliar with Hitchcock's film. Of course, referring to this particular film raises all kinds of issues, some of which have been well written about already. There is, though, an increasing amount of decent scholarly writing on the remake that - for me, at any rate - takes us beyond the pleasurable but ultimately uninformative list-making that accompanies the purely opinion-based approach to the remake. > > > > Paul Sutton, Roehampton University > > Consider the environment. 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