Reviewed by:

• Women Adapting: Bringing Three Serials of the Roaring Twenties to Stage and Screen by Bethany Wood
• Jennifer Ewing-Pierce

The measure of a piece of scholarship's contribution may be how many other modes of inquiry it inspires. In coining the term "adapturgy," Jane Barnette (2017) not only shed light on the poetics of adaptation but also forced a hard look at the means of production and the structures of labor surrounding a text. In her new book, Bethany Wood connects her work to Barnette's, conducting a case study of three early-twentieth-century adaptations, applying the material considerations of adapturgy to their historicized production processes. Focusing on a moment when film moguls consolidated power and aided and abetted constructions of white nationalist middle-class femininity, her chosen period is as edifying as it is provocative. However, like Barnette before her, the spine of the book also issues a sharp challenge to adaptation studies, emphasizing that "reading with an eye toward production" marks the trail forward for this field and its interdisciplinary reach (211).

In chapter 1, Wood examines the early twentieth century when cinema began to trawl print media for properties to be made into films, thereby commodifying narratives. Women were often victims of uncredited appropriations during this time of nascent copyright law. For example, during her research for [End Page 211] what become Showboat, Edna Ferber "discovered that the showboat proprietors she was interviewing had dramatized some of her own magazine fiction for their shows" (13). However, copyright law became a more robust category as it concerned dramatization and screenwriting after the infamous Ben Hur case, Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros (1911). Consequently, a vigorous market for literary products emerged, giving rise to "the agent" as the conduit through which literary properties could be acquired. Initially, this market required writers to have strong literary ties to New York City, a region already dominated by men. However, as Wood recounts, the Kalem ruling leftfilm moguls wary of novice screenwriters. As film studios turned to magazines for adaptable material with clear copyright, women's magazine serials (the subject of Wood's study) became "an important entry point" for women into the film industry (15). While women's right to autonomous creative careers was everywhere challenged, copyright law did enable women some potential creative control over their narrative properties, leading to adaptation as a singular opportunity for women who wished to "influence representations of femininity in mainstream commercial entertainment" (31). To Wood's point: The adaptations themselves are figures, the labor conditions were the ground. Thus, Wood establishes early on that the examination of labor and the means of production is a fruitful mode of inquiry for adaptation studies, particularly for those scholars for whom parity and representation are paramount.

In chapters 2–4, Wood conducts a thorough materialist reading of the adapturgy of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel The Age of Innocence. Wood illustrates the way magazine publishers forced an emphasis on romance and a manufactured female nationalism through the figure of the strong US American wife. Further, in 1924 Warner Bros. defied droit moral (the right an author has to protect her own work for alteration) to alter Wharton's original story against her wishes, demonstrating that "poor quality adaptations of works by women played into assumptions about gender and writing and thus posed more of a risk for women authors, particularly those without Wharton's venerated professional and social status" (78). The example of The Age of Innocence demonstrates the contortion of existing law in which Wharton was both contracted as the original author and its adaptor but had no control or oversight of the product. Warner Bros. was able to advertise her attachment to the project as a selling feature while disempowering Warton.

In chapters 5–7, Wood works through Showboat, spanning musical theatre as a genre, the figure of the Ziegfeld Girl, and the jump into adapting for "sound film." Wood depicts the first film adaptation of Showboat (Universal Studios, [End Page 212] 1929...

审核人：

• 女性适应：将咆哮的 20 年代的三部连续剧带到舞台和银幕上，作者：Bethany Wood
• 詹妮弗·尤因-皮尔斯

一项学术贡献的衡量标准可能是它激发了多少其他探究模式。在创造“适应性”一词时，简·巴内特 (Jane Barnette) (2017) 不仅阐明了适应性的诗学，而且还强制审视了围绕文本的生产方式和劳动结构。在她的新书中，Bethany Wood 将她的作品与 Barnette 的作品联系起来，对 20 世纪早期的三部改编作品进行了案例研究，将改编作品的材料考虑应用于其历史化的生产过程。关注电影大亨巩固权力并帮助和教唆白人民族主义中产阶级女性气质的时刻，她选择的时期既具有启发性又具有挑衅性。然而，就像她之前的巴内特一样，这本书的书脊也对适应研究提出了尖锐的挑战，

在第 1 章中，伍德考察了 20 世纪初，电影开始在印刷媒体上搜寻要制作成电影的属性，从而将叙事商品化。在这个新生的版权法时期，女性经常成为未经授权的盗用的受害者。例如，在她研究[End Page 211]什么变成了Showboat期间，Edna Ferber “发现她正在采访的 Showboat 所有者已经为他们的节目制作了一些她自己的杂志小说”（13）。然而，在臭名昭著的Ben Hur案，Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros（1911）。于是，文学产品的旺盛市场应运而生，产生了“代理人”作为获取文学财产的渠道。最初，这个市场要求作家与已经由男性主宰的纽约市有紧密的文学联系。然而，正如伍德叙述的那样，卡勒姆执政的左派电影大亨们对新手编剧持谨慎态度。随着电影制片厂转向杂志寻找具有明确版权的适应性材料，女性杂志连续剧（伍德研究的主题）成为女性进入电影业的“重要切入点”（15）。虽然女性自主创作事业的权利到处都受到挑战，但版权法确实使女性能够对她们的叙事属性进行一些潜在的创造性控制，对于希望“影响主流商业娱乐中女性气质的表现”的女性来说，这将是一个难得的机会（31）。伍德的观点是：改编本身就是数字，劳动条件就是基础。因此，伍德很早就确立了对劳动和生产资料的检查是适应研究的一种富有成效的探究模式，特别是对于那些平等和代表性至关重要的学者而言。

在第 2-4 章中，伍德对伊迪丝·沃顿 1920 年的小说《纯真时代》的改编进行了彻底的唯物主义阅读。伍德展示了杂志出版商如何通过坚强的美国美国妻子的形象来强调浪漫和制造的女性民族主义。此外，在 1924 年，华纳兄弟公司无视道德法（作者必须保护自己的作品以防篡改的权利），违背她的意愿改变沃顿的原创故事，这表明“女性对作品的低质量改编影响了对性别和写作的假设因此对女性作者构成了更大的风险，尤其是那些没有沃顿尊崇的专业和社会地位的作者”（78）。纯真时代的例子展示了对现有法律的扭曲，在该法律中，沃顿既是原作者，也是其适配器，但对产品没有控制或监督。华纳兄弟能够宣传她对该项目的依恋作为一项销售功能，同时剥夺了沃顿的权力。

在第 5 至第 7 章中，伍德通过Showboat工作，跨越音乐剧作为一种流派，齐格菲尔德女孩的形象，以及适应“有声电影”的跳跃。伍德描绘了Showboat的第一部电影改编（环球影城，[End Page 212] 1929...