Adaptation as Parodic Critique: Jack Gold’s Man Friday
Adaptation as Parodic Critique: Jack Gold’s Man Friday

Summary/Abstract: Over the centuries, Robinson Crusoe has created a long and wide path of controversial commentaries and multifarious approaches, from different critical interpretations of Defoe's novel to modern rewritings of the story. Hence the story's capacity for "metamorphosis," as well as the reinterpretation of the original text in relation to the context that produced it, possible source texts, and contemporary texts that imitated Defoe's novel. The modern, linear and historically embedded Crusoe has been remodelled into a non-linear and self-referential postmodern figure, who dances and has a good laugh at Friday's witty opinions. While mentioning different representations of Robinson in literature and cinema, I will focus mainly on Jack Gold's 1975 film, which adjusted to the postcolonial vogue in the academia of the 1970s. As far as the concept of "parody" is concerned, I will discuss the term in relation to Linda Hutcheon's and Simon Dentith's theoretical approaches to parody and I will look into the different means of narration used by Gold: linguistic and nonlinguistic, visual, cultural, and filmic codes.

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