avenge or not—might be closer than the audience hoped to those debated by, for
instance, Charles Bronson’s bloody avenger in the Death Wish series (25, 25 n.48).
Adaptation, with its own laying bare—that all texts speak of other texts—usefully
explicates the appeal and permutation of revenge plots. For, as Julie Saunders reminds
(Adaptation and Appropriation 2006), adaptation not only translates information
between genres, but offers “commentary” on sources by, in effect, filtering them through
the aesthetic demands of subsequent presentations (18). Such aesthetics, in turn, defer
to surrounding cultural environments. Each generation, adage reminds, creates its own
Shakespeare (in the ‘Sixties, his lovers tossed Frisbees). Adaption works as if cultural
blotting paper, absorbing—and revealing the stain of—the environment in which it is
compiled.
Revengers on Stage
An interesting case in point is offered by adaptations of A. J. Quinnell’s novel
Man on Fire (1980). The source text will not be known by many US readers, but millions
of viewers worldwide have witnessed Denzel Washington’s performance in the 2004
film rendition. Two other film adaptations, however, also exist, and offer viewers quite
different experiences, even as each evokes its own reading of the source material.
Imagining adaptations more askew in mood might be difficult. Yet all three films no
doubt provide a version of revenge an intended market was thought to crave.
Quinnell, author of the root novel, himself performed a bit of adaptation. He was
born in England, his actual name Philip Nicholson. The pen name under which he
published the novel is a combination: last name taken from a prominent Welsh rugby
player;; the “A. J.” part, apparently, the initials of the son of a bar tender at the
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