ABSTRACT
The political activism of Rozema's Mansfield Park does not necessarily yield more insights about constructions of social identities than do the magical stagecraft of War Horse or the humour of Lego Star Wars; both fidelity and infidelity can teach us a great deal about identity. Shelley Cobb's analysis of the patriarchal rhetoric of both fidelity criticism and its detractors demonstrates that ideological biases are not so easily expunged. Analyses of the specificities of different media can sometimes be seen as (in)fidelity criticism drained of its moralising. Conversely, fidelity to the spirit addresses the specificity of larger signifying systems. In a rejection of modernist forms of medium specificity as well as cultural elitism, several theorists in the twenty-first century have turned to cultural and ideological dimensions of adaptation. This chapter presents case studies focusing on a particular contrast between verbal and visual media that is often taken for granted: the amount of detail possible for each and their potential for abstraction.
