[ecrea] CfP Bis Repetita Placent ? (2): Remake, Gender and Genre in Film and TV Series of the English-speaking World

Bis Repetita Placent? (2)

Remake, genre and gender in film and television series of the 
English-speaking world


Conference organized by l’Université du Have (GRIC)

and l’Université Stendhal Grenoble 3 (CEMRA)


9 -10 October 2014, Université du Havre, Faculté des Affaires 
Internationales



As a follow-up to the conference on “Remake and technology” held at the 
University of Grenoble 3 in October 2013, this second conference will 
focus on the intersections between film and television genres and the 
representations of gender in movies and television series. The recent 
wave of critical writings on film adaptation (Hutcheon 2006; 
Wells-Lassagne & Hudelet 2013) encourages investigations into how new 
versions of a movie or series question the interpretation of genre and 
gender (see Horton & McDougal 1998; Nowlan & Nowlan 2000; Zanger 2006; 
Carroll 2009; Chauvin 2010; Roche 2014). Indeed, the generic conventions 
of specific genres (the action movie, the political thriller, the 
western . . .) are very often gendered. If transcultural adaptations 
often imply a shift in representations and/or racial and gendered 
discourses (Hatchuel 2011) which may involve erasure or censoring—for 
instance, between French cinema and Hollywood (Durham 1998 and Moine 
2007)—Linda Hutcheon (2006, 2013) has pointed out that some filmmakers 
and creators of TV series intentionally remake works in order to 
introduce subversive subtexts and highlight what was originally 
repressed, i.e., what Robert Stam (2005) has described as “de-repressing 
their politics.” This confirms what studying remakes from a 
transcultural or postcolonial stance has already shown: the crossing of 
film or serial genres (e.g., colonial narratives of adventure and 
conquest) and gender (e.g., male-female interaction, sexual identity) 
creates sites of comparison infused with new political meaning(s). Such 
creations may take place not only transculturally, but also within the 
“same” culture: Wild Wild West (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1999), the crossover 
remake of the 1960s television series The Wild Wild West, encourages 
“queer” readings of arch-villain Dr. Loveliss (Kenneth Branagh) and of 
the relationship between hero-partners James West (Will Smith) and 
Artemis Gordon (Kevin Kline), while deliberately combining western and 
science fiction in a hybrid space of of gender-bending and genre-bending.

The remake thus simultaneously criticizes, implicitly, explicitly and 
sometimes even emphatically, the “uncharted territories” of a genre and 
its gender stereotypes, as David Roche has demonstrated in his study of 
the horror movie genre (2014, chapter 4). Remakes can be used, for 
example, to remedy the absence of women in the leading roles by 
rewriting the original script to include “strong” female characters; the 
remake of Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, 2004-2009) transforms the 
character of Starbuck by creating a “manly” young woman, both an act of 
gender-bending and of recontextualizing the series in relation to the 
social upheavals which occurred in the 25-year gap between the two 
series, while taking into account the shifts in sci-fi viewership and 
the expectations of its larger female audience. Similarly, one can 
wonder whether the multiple remakes of Snow White in the past 20 years 
are “re-adaptations” (Hudelet & Wells-Lassagne 2011) or “remakes” that 
“deconstruct” previous adaptations, notably by studying how the 
overlapping of the fairy-tale genre and other filmic genres redefines 
gender relationships such as those of Snow White and her wicked 
stepmother. From a feminist perspective, the remake excels in 
“revealing” secondary points of view in a radical re-imagining of the 
original, by either shedding light on the motivations of particular 
characters, giving voice to those (both male and female characters) 
previously silenced or marginalized (Sanders 2006), or showing that 
gender codes in remakes function as both ritual and mask (Zanger 2006). 
Taking the opposite tack, one may wonder if the “feminized” and 
sometimes even “post-feminist” dimensions of contemporary remakes (in 
both movies and TV series) aren’t just a new, conventional form of 
interpretation or if these remakes embody an actual political project; 
when the original and the remake are compared, which version’s Zeitgeist 
is in reality the more progressive or subversive?

These considerations may, in fact, lead us to question the very 
definition of the term remake. Shouldn’t some remakes be seen as 
re-adaptations, sequels (Nowlan & Nowlan 2000) or even prequels, rather 
than “fetishistic” shot-by-shot versions of a previous film? Indeed, 
“real” remakes are quite rare (Verevis 2006). A critical failure, Gus 
Van Sant’s 1998 shot-by-shot technicolor remake of Hitchcock’s 1960 
black-and-white Psycho was even perceived as an attack on, and a 
defilement of, Hitchcock’s masterpiece (Boyd and Palmer, 2006). Can one 
not consider, rather, the TV series Bates Motel (2013- ) to be a remake, 
presented explicitly as a prequel to Psycho and yet as a variation of 
the Hitchcock scenario since the events take place, paradoxically, in 
our present (2013-) when Norman Bates is only seventeen?. Should this 
series be seen as a remake (albeit as a crossover) because of its visual 
intertextuality in spite of the manner in which the expected outcomes 
are thwarted? One possible approach, then, would be to examine whether 
or not the remake has some sort of obligation to “remold” the original 
(Leitch 1990; Forrest & Koos 2002; Caroll 2009; Hudelet & Wells-Lassagne 
2013). Robert Stam has noted how “gendered” any form of adaptation is in 
his scrutiny of the terms used to discuss the process: “Infidelity 
resonates with overtones of Victorian prudishness; betrayal evokes 
ethical perfidy; deformation implies aesthetic disgust; violation calls 
to mind sexual violence; vulgarization conjures up class degradation; 
and desecration intimates a kind of religious sacrilege toward the 
‘sacred word’” (Stam, 2000: 54).

Last but not least, expanding on the idea that the remake can and even 
must be free to reappropriate the codes of a genre so as to (re)play the 
original “as it pleases,” participants in the conference are invited to 
explore the aesthetic and narrative freedom to be found in certain 
particularly audacious— and one might say outrageous —intersections of 
genre and gender in “edgy” remaking practices like vidding, “sweding” 
and other forms of fan fictions which transform the original through the 
use of “scene ripping” and “re-clipping.” The remake can, then, be 
considered as creator of new spaces for gendered, generational and 
transnational readings by “remade” audiences, construed by the altered 
perspectives it carries or the repressed desires it expresses.


Proposals (300 to 400 words) in French or in English, along with a short 
5-7-line biblio-biography, are to be sent to Claire Maniez 
((Claire.Maniez /at/ u-grenoble3.fr)) and Donna Andréolle 
((dandreolle /at/ gmail.com)) for June 1st 2014.


Scientific committee

Donna Andréolle and Sarah Hatchuel (GRIC, Université du Havre) ; Claire 
Maniez (CEMRA, Université Stendhal Grenoble III) ; Anne Crémieux 
(Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre) ; Georges-Claude Guilbert (Université 
de Tours) ; Monica Michlin (Université Paris-Sorbonne) ; David Roche 
(Université Toulouse 2 Le Mirail)




Titres cités

Boyd, David & R. Barton Palmer (eds). After Hitchcock : Influence, 
Imitation, and Intertextuality. Austin, Texas : University of Texas 
Press, 2006.
Caroll, Rachel (ed). Adaptation in Contemporary Culture : Textual 
Infidelities. London : Continuum, 2009.

Chauvin, Serge. Les trois vies des Tueurs : Siodmak, Siegel et la 
fiction. Perthuis, France : Rouge Profond, 2010.

Durham, Carolyn A. Double Takes : Culture and Gender in French Film and 
their American Remakes. (Darmouth College) Hanover, NH : New England, 
University Press, 1998.

Forrest, Jennifer & Leonard R. Koos (eds). Dead Ringers : The Remake in 
Theory and Practice. Albany (NY) : State University of New York Press, 2002.

Hatchuel, Sarah. Shakespeare and the Cleopatra/Caesar Intertext : 
Sequel, Conflation, Remake. Madison Teaneck : Fairleigh Dickinson 
University Press, 2011.

Horton, Andrew, and Stuart McDougal (eds). « Play It Again, Sam » : 
Retakes on Remakes. Berkeley, Cal : University of California Press, 1998.

Hudelet, Ariane, et Shannon Wells-Lassagne (eds). De la page blanche aux 
salles obscures : Adaptation et ré-adaptation dans le monde anglophone. 
Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011.

Hudelet, Ariane, et Shannon Wells-Lassagne. Expanding Adaptations. 
Interfaces No.34. Worcester, Mass., and Paris: College of the Holy Cross 
and Université Paris-Diderot, 2013.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York : Routledge, 2006, 2013.

Leitch, Thomas. “Twice-Told Tales: Disavowal and the Rhetoric of the 
Remake.” Dead Ringers. Eds. Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos. 
Albany, NY : SUNY Press, 2002 [1990]. 37-62.

Loock, Kathleen & Constantine Verevis. Film Remakes, Adaptation and Fan 
Productions. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Moine, Raphaëlle. Remakes : les films français à Hollywood. Paris : CNRS 
Editions, 2007.

Nowlan, Robert A. & Gwendolyn Wright Nowlan. Cinema Sequels and Remakes 
: 1903-1987. Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2000.

Roche, David. Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s: Why 
Don’t They Do It Like They Used To? Jackson, MS : UP of Mississippi, 2014.

Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. New York : Routledge, 2005.

Stam, Robert. “The Dialogics of Adaptation.” Film Adaptation. Ed. James 
Naremore. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2000, 54-76.
Stam, Robert. Introduction : « The Theory and Practice of Adaptation », 
Literature and Film : A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film 
Adaptation, Robert Stam & Alessandra Raengo (eds.). Oxford (UK) : 
Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.

Verevis, Constantine. Film Remakes. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University 
Press, 2006.

Wells-Lassagne, Shannon & Ariane Hudelet, eds. Screening Text : Critical 
Film Perspectives on Film Adaptation. McFarland, 2013.

Zanger, Anat. Film Remakes as Ritual and Disguise : From Carmen to 
Ripley. Amsterdam : Amsterdam UP, 2006.



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