Overriding Values: Locating Post-9/11 Anxieties in Adaptation and Youth Culture

Robert Stam’s “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation” contends that alterations in adapted texts can be attributed to “evershifting grids of interpretation” 57 . Adaptors may utilize a familiar text from the past, but the cultural climate they share with their audience will override the values and anxieties found in the earlier expression. Stam further explains “the greater the lapse of time…the more likely the reinterpretation [will occur] through the values of the present” 57 . The most recent adaptations of Tomorrow, When the War Began 2010 , Red Dawn 2012 , and How I Live Now 2013 invite a textual reformulation that demonstrates Stam’s suggestion. All three films, adaptations in their own right, allow post-9/11 cultural anxieties and ideologies to replace the post-Cold war anxieties that marked their earlier expression. Moreover, all three films specifically locate the more current anxieties and ideologies in youth and youth culture, which teen audiences will consider as they shape the world in which they live

Keywords:

Youth Culture, Post-9/11 Anxieties, Adaptation, Pop Culture Textual Reformulation,

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