Historical Context of the Remakes of The Phantom of the Opera Essay

The Phantom of the Opera has underg peerless subsequent retreads. This Hollywood get hold of has undergone numerous remakes at different historic moments by pith ofout the world. In Hollywood and the United Kingdom, it has spawned more than cristal hold and TV renderings that differ significantly in selecting the settings for the horror-romance Paris, New York and London in accounting for the dominates disfiguration, in portraying the opera understudy, as well as Christines attitude toward the shade.However, they all obey the male shadow-t to each oneer and female opera-student structure so that heterosexual desire manifested in twain mens competition for a woman remains the prime move of the plot. My cerebrate in this essay is Andrew Lloyd Webbers version of the said(prenominal) text editionbook.My emphasis in this text will be how the wraith including his design and voice is re symbolizeed in spite of appearance the exposure technology available at that time i n contradistinction to the manner in which the shadows forecast and voice is represented in different versions of the aforementioned text. My working hypothesis is that since the phantom, by definition, exceeds opthalmic facsimile in the silent and the sound versions, his voice, as a singer and a music teacher, emerges a master(a) site for government agency and signification.To explore the representation and the significance of the phantoms voice, I will focus on (1) how the phantom-teacher relates to his student finished voice as well as visage, (2) how the teacher-student relationship differ from take away to film from Schumachers film in contradistinction to the other version of the film, (3) and how to read these relationships in allegorical terms, or in relation to their respective material-historical conditions. The last question leads me to map the teacher-student relationship onto the tension amongst an veritable film and its remake(s).In the end this paper will de monstrates the manner in which each remake strategizes its persuasion vis-a-vis a historical moment and a prior film text hence it come afters from this that each remake specifically Schumachers remake should not be subsumed into an echoing tradition in the corridor of the history. I start with the representation of phantoms voice and its interplay with the shadow. The aural-visual dimension is significant for our misgiving of the issue of subaltern film remaking, which is at considerable last an issue of power circulation and distri notwithstandingion.In the film diegeses, the phantom holds power over the student and other tidy sum for two reasons (1) he eludes audio-visual representation and (2) he assumes the empowered teacher position. The 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera revolve around upon the triangular tension between Erik, The Phantom (Lon Chaney) Christine (Mary Philbin), an understudy in the Paris Opera House whom the phantom has trained and elevated to th e diva position and Raoul (Norman Kerry), Christines fiance. As indicated above, the phantom, by definition, exceeds direct visual coding.The snarled of representation is further compounded by the fact that the film, being silent that being the 1925 version, cannot represent the phantoms voice except through the theatre orchestras performance. This means that the voice and other diegetic sounds the earshot hear do not envisionm to emit from the screen. This representational dilemma is alleviated through the use of shadow an image that signifies the fusion of absence and presence, thus nigh appropriate for the phantom auspicate.More specifically, this silent film mobilizes venues of representation before Christine sees the phantom. The first is the shadow, proffered exclusively to the audience who, according to Michel Chion, is deaf and cannot hear the phantoms voice (Chion 7). The other, the phantoms angelic voice, is heard only by Christine and other characters. The differenti ated acquaintance distribution leads to two modes of spectatorship, one being exclusively visual, and the other exclusively aural. In both cases, the phantom is omnipotent when remaining a mere shadow or a disembodied voice (Chion 19).When lodged in a physical body, a process the power is lost. This takes place in The Phantom of the Opera when Christines fascination with the acousmatic phantom turns into dread and disgust once the voice is embodied in a visual image i. e. , the skull head that she has un wrapped. Thus, the phantoms deacousmatization depletes his magic power over Christine. Not only does his horrific visage drive Christine to cover her face which whitethorn implicitly mirror a female beautys typical response to a horror film.It also forces the phantom himself to cover his face. The implication is that to aver his power, he has to remain invisible. In the same manner, for a horror film to remain horrific, it must not be seen in unobstructed view. As Dennis Giles o bserves, the more the viewer st atomic number 18s, the more the terror will dissipate to the issue that the image of full horror will be revealed (unveiled) as more constructed, more artificial, more a fantasy, more a fiction than the fiction which prep ares and exhibits it.To look the horror in the face for very long robs it of its power. (48) By covering his face, the phantom symbolizes the horror films attempt to block the viewers vision. In other words, the power of the phantom, and by extension, of the horror film, consists in deprivation of visual representation. The problematic of representing a phantom in a silent film thus finds resolution in a paradox, namely, the guess and effectiveness of representation consists precisely in a lack of direct visual representation.Acousmetre is also crucial for maintaining the teacher student relationship. Once deacousmatized, this relationship comes to an end, which in turn de-legitimizes the phantoms proposal to Christine. later on a long sequence of suspense, sound and fury, during which Christine is salvaged from the Opera Houses underground catacomb, while the phantom chased to a dead end, the film sign version of the film closes with a double shot of Christine happily get hitched with with her aristocratic fiance.Instead of a beauty and the beast story, in which the beast is transformed into a fine-looking nobleman by the beautys kiss, the hulk in this film remains a monster and the opera actress gets punished for her scopic and epistemological drive a monstrous transgression she must redeem by betraying the monster reversive to humanity defined as white heterosexual normality and succumbing to a domesticating marriage. The containment of the female deviancy is built into the film producers plan to reinforce what they perceive as the audiences wish a movie close the love life of Christine Daae (MacQueen 40).The film thus ends with a triumph of a bourgeois fantasy premised on the domestication of wo men, and the destruction of the monster. Joel Schumachers remake of the original Phantom of the Opera, did not come as a surprise, given the frequent practice of borrowing and adapting at the time. Schumachers version retains the powerful phantom figure whose self-de-acousmatization again successfully captivates the student, Christine. Nevertheless, it also displays far more intense interactions between the phantom-teacher and the singer-student.Briefly speaking, their relationship goes through four successive steps ventriloquism, reverse ventriloquism or excessive mimesis, performative reiteration, and finally, the Benjaminian afterlife which delineate Christines gradual usurpation of the phantoms power while also contributing to the dialectical image provided by the phantom-teacher and singer-student relationship. The phantom begins with ventriloquizing Christines in the latters reenactment of the formers masterpiece, now highborn Romeo and Juliet, replacing Hot Blood in Song at Midnight.During the performance, Christine falters at a melody note, but is undetected by the theatre audience, thanks to the phantoms backstage dubbing, visually represented through cutaways. The camera first holds on Christines bending over the dead Juliet then closes up on his slightly opened mouth and bewilderment, and subsequently following Christines puzzled look, cuts to the cloaked phantom in profile, hidden behind a window curtain in the backstage, emotionally singing out the tenor notes.Cutting from the front stage to the back stage area also echoes. In the aforementioned scene, it is all-important(a) to note that the moment of ventriloquism gradually gives way to Christines agency. Indeed, Christines centrality in the film is testify in the predominance of the perspective shots that mediate the off-screen audiences knowledge and sensorial experiences. This viewing structure contrasts sharply with The Phantom of the Operas 1925 version.Whereas Christine deacousmatizes t he phantom, the audience actually sees the disfigured face before she does. Similarly, Christines knowledge regarding the phantom is one step behind that of the audience who hear the phantoms midnight singing and see an enlarged shadow cast on the wall at the opening of the film after the initial portrayal of the opera houses condition after the fire. The contrast between the two aforementioned versions of The Phantom of the Opera suggests two different ways of constructing history.One is to hide away the past embodied by the phantom that has transformed beyond recognition so as to reproduce its old, familiar image in a present medium, or the student. The other is to acknowledge what the past has break, in order to re-suture it into the present without reducing the present into a mere mirror image of the past. Thus, Christines agency and the Phantoms revival become interdependent. The teacher-student hierarchy, as argued previously, is analogous with the hierarchy between the maste r and the slave.Furthermore, it can also be mapped onto the tension-ridden relationship between a film and its remake(s). These interconnected, parallel relationships allow us to situate the cultural production of a film in a dynamic socio-political field (Gilloch 17). Following Gerard Genettes definition of hypertextuality, which designates that a hypertext both overlays and evokes an precedent text, or hypotext (Genette 5), I argue that a remake occupies the student position, and that its very existence testifies to and evokes its teacher or predecessor. As a form of cinematic doubling, how the student film situates itself vis-a-vis the teacher and its own historical moment determines possibilities of remaking (Smith 56).The major divergences between the two versions of The Phantom of the Opera mentioned above suggest two diametrically opposite agendas. Whereas the former prioritizes domesticating and suturing women into white-oriented heterosexuality, the latter historicizes and politicizes the hetero-erotic relationship between the teacher and student. There are several ways in which one may understand the aforementioned divergence.It is important to note that the text qualified by Schumacher for the construction of his version of the aforementioned film is in itself a divergence from the original. In comparison to Lon Channeys version of the aforementioned film which is an adaptation itself, Schumachers version discarded most of the horror version aspects which have been associated with the film as well as the original text by Leroux. Examples of these are evident if one considers Schumachers choice for the characterization of the phantom himself as a disfigured individual as opposed to a skull hiding behind a mask.In a way there are several ways in which such a depiction the change of depiction may be understood. Initially, one may state that such a shift stems as a result of the shift from the operatic version of the film as opposed to the Beauty a nd the Beast theme associated with the film. Second, in line with the initial claim of this paper, one may understand the shift in terms of the phantoms depiction as a means of mirroring the historical conditions of the films production.The process of mirroring the initial work as a means of showing the teacher-student relationship in relation to the silent film version and Schumachers version may be understood as a means of employing the manner in which the student has transcended the master to the extent that such a transcendence enabled the initial freedom from the heterosexual archetypal relationships which enables the submission of the female to the norm that being the norm of female submission towards the male.It may indeed be argued that Schumachers version also enabled such a submission since Christine chose Raoul over the phantom. It is important to note, however, that such a choice may be understood other than in relation to the original silent film adaptation of the afore mentioned text. poster for example the depiction as well as the characterization of the phantom in the initial version of the film. As was noted at the flack of the paper, the depiction of the phantom in the initial version silent film version presented a horrible figure i. e. a skull for a face.Such a presentation may be understood, in such a way, that the phantom is presented as the depiction of the deviance resulting from the inability to adhere to the norm. Deviance from the norm, in this sense, may be seen and in fact understood as a horrible act itself. Schumachers version with its depiction of the phantom as figure with a face a handsome one in fact despite its minor deformities may be seen as mirroring the manner in which deviance from the norm that of the adherence to the heterosexual and in a sense highly patriarchal relationship is more acceptable within the current context of the films production (McQueen .Schumachers version begins with a reel from the 1919 occurrence at the Opera Populaire wherein the old Raoul is depicted as buying knickknacks that serve as the reminder of the occurrences that led to the aforementioned operas demise. What follow this scene is a reconstruction of the Opera Populaire resulting from the flashback of memories to those who where in it during 1819 thereby providing the spectator with the truth behind the masked lives of those who lived within the opera at that time.What is arouse to note in Schumachers version in relation to the reconfiguration or rather redepiction of the phantom is the manner in which one is now given a new manner of understanding the means in which Christine gains her agency. In fact, agency in Schumachers version of the film is depicted as a manner of choice and not as mere adherence to a prescribed norm in comparison to the original adaption of Webbers text.Dramatically, the story hinges on a series of conflicts which continually redefine Christines position in relation to her surroundings as well as to the individuals around her. Webbers version as adapted by Schumacher depicted this process through a series of musical themes, motifs, and textures which portray the development of characters, attitudes, and emotions. Note that the materials in each of the musical themes and motifs are rarely modified except through instances of fragmentation.Although fragmentation occurs, it is interesting to note that when considered together, these musical themes literally play out the drama involved within the play (Snelson 110). In summary, in this paper I argued that the teacher text does not simply crumble when the student text arises in resistance, but rather experiences a revival. This is because the remake cannot fulfil itself without simultaneously evoking not imitating the afterlife crystallized in its textual predecessor (Mignolo 112).A film remake re-presents its hypotext not by turning itself into a spiritless double, which simply reifies the hypotext, but rather by reval orizing the unique historical position of the hypotext, paradoxically achieved by the remakes stress on its own distinction. In this sense, the various adaptations of Webbers The Phantom of the Opera may be understood in such a way that both versions that stand in a teacher-student relationship present a challenge of the archetypal heterosexual relationships which stand as the pervading theme of the various versions of Webbers The Phantom of the Opera.