Ninth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

If the representation of historical figures as spectral or corporeal presences is a staple of stage and screen history, intermedial adaptations and digital technologies have multiplied their potential to activate alternate temporalities and counter-histories, disrupting hegemonic, regulatory time. Elizabeth Freeman’s concept of erotohistoriography describes instances in which past and present are treated as a hybrid, particularly when dead bodies come back to life, performing cross-generational encounters and effecting counter-histories. This paper extends the spectacle of such “ghosting” to consider intermedial adaptations wherein historical personae become co-authors of new representational forms and contents. The Builders Association’s Atlas Drugged (2024) interrogates Ayn Rand as a spokesperson for free-market capitalist-dystopias by leveraging AI to place “her” and her ideas within multi-layered media imagery, both archival and current. Similarly, François Ozon’s Peter von Kant (2022) mirrors R. W. Fassbinder’s stylistic tendencies and the autobiographical quotient of his “body” of work in his adaptation of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). By swapping the protagonist’s gender, and casting an actor with an uncanny resemblance to Fassbinder (Denis Ménochet) and an actress most associated with his films (Hannah Schygulla), Ozon demonstrates that with Fassbinder—and Ozon as well—biography and auteurism are inextricably bound. And though only minimally utilizing intermedial elements, Matthew Lopez’s trans-historical The Inheritance resuscitates E.M. Forster as co-author for a queer adaptation of Howards End alongside the visceral resuscitation of those who died at the height of the AIDS epidemic.