Yes, Infidelity is Ethical

Until I took Dr. Bishop's class in film adaptation, I did not understand that, since movie audiences must expect different things from movies than from books, book-to-movie adaptations do not necessarily need to be completely faithful to the source text. Thomas Leitch illustrated this concept most eloquently in his essay “The Ethics of Infidelity,” which is included in the Adaptation Studies anthology. He said, “If the audience in question has already read the novel … on which the film is based, surely they expect a different experience; otherwise, they would not be watching the movie at all” (63). When I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button after having read the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I realized that this idea Leitch has posed is not only very logical, but it is extremely applicable to the adaptation in question. After reading Leitch’s essay, it was obvious to me that the film version of Benjamin Button had no business being identical to the book, because, not only was it simply not a necessity, but also because the odds were high that not many people would notice the differences, and the producers were under no contract to be completely faithful anyway.

When the Benjamin Button film was released in late 2008, not many people had read the original short story, or even the graphic novel that was published in 2007. This is one of the reasons that the filmmakers did not need to worry about fidelity to the source text: because “absent [an audience that is familiar with the source text], it’s hard to see why filmmakers shouldn’t feel free to do whatever they like with their source material” (Leitch 64). Such was the case when Benjamin Button was released, and such is the case now, more than two years later. After talking with fellow students, I realized that none of them had ever heard of the short story, although they had all either heard of or seen the film. If this is the case with most movie-goers, then the filmmakers must have had the same idea that Leitch poses here, because they were hardly faithful to the original text.

Likewise, Leitch also says, concerning the “fidelity” of an adaptation, it is only greatly necessary “when fidelity is likely to be a selling point in order to presell a particular adaptation by association with [an already] commercially successful property” (64). This was obviously not an issue for the creators of the Benjamin Button film, as they were not very faithful to the original text. They kept the premise of a man aging backwards, but changed the mythology of even that. In the original story, Benjamin ages backwards mentally as well as physically. When the reader first sees him, he is described as “an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-coloured beard” (Fitzgerald). Here, he is a full-sized grown man who also has the ability to think and speak for himself. In contrast, baby Benjamin in the film is accurately newborn-sized, but afflicted with the appearance and complications of old age, and ages forward mentally, but physically he ages both forward and backward, growing to a full-size man, and then shrinking as his body de-ages to a child. Had the filmmakers been more concerned with fidelity, they would not have overlooked this first and most crucial element to the story, as it is what gives the story its flavor.

The last, and possibly the most crucial, point that I would like to address is the fact that “filmmakers who purchase adaptation rights to particular properties are purchasing, for example, the right to change specific elements in those properties” (Leitch 67, italics added). The truth of this statement should be obvious, but I would like to illuminate it by providing a rather all-inclusive example from the Benjamin Button story. In the original, Benjamin is born as a full-sized old man, which adds a bit of comedy to the story, especially in the beginning when his father buys him a rattle and insists “that he should ‘play with it,’ whereupon the old man took it with--a weary expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at intervals throughout the day” (Fitzgerald). In the film, however, Benjamin is born with an old version of a newborn baby’s body and abandoned by his father, which is not funny on any level. Abandonment is, of course, tragic, and the sight of a wrinkly, old baby is rather pathetic. It seems that the filmmakers were choosing to make the story more of a dramatic tragedy and less a comedy, and they had every right to do just that. They bought the right to do so when they bought the rights to the film.

When they changed the experience of the Benjamin Button story from a comic/tragedy to a dramatic, but ultimately tragic, story, the filmmakers were entirely in their rights. They had purchased the literal right to do so. Also, the fidelity of the story was not the reason for the adaptation, so it was not necessary. Since the film version of Benjamin Button was undoubtedly successful, winning three Academy Awards and grossing more than three hundred million dollars worldwide, it is clear that the infidelity of the filmmakers was warranted and “ethical,” just as Thomas Leitch says that infidelity can be.