What is it about?
Victorian literary characters still prove highly interesting and even iconic today. I focus on Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and analyse how they are represented and how their masculinity is constructed in the film versions by Oliver Parker and Guy Ritchie, both 2009. I show that current strategies of film adaptation are rather slow in shaking the prejudices against homosexual identities that originate in the nineteenth century.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Adaptational strategies can define our current value systems and our cultural outlook. Within the larger field of Neo-Victorian Studies, the article shows how adaptational strategies work and how they are aligned with constructions of identities. Adaptational strategies are shown to be a means of the reproduction of cultural patterns.
Perspectives
I enjoy uncovering cultural patterns and the way in which culture shapes our lives. I hope to contribute to an understanding of how film adaptations may impact on the way we understand ourselves and others.
Nadine Boehm-Schnitker
Bergische Universitat Wuppertal
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Adapting Victorian Masculinities: Oliver Parker'sDorian Gray(2009) and Guy Ritchie'sSherlock Holmes(2009), Victoriographies, July 2015, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.3366/vic.2015.0190.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
