Multiple audiences and readings of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde: an analysis of Rupert Everett’s film adaptation
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Abstract
The author of the article presents an analysis of The Happy Prince (2018), a film written, directed, and starred by Rupert Everett —an English actor with an extensive Wildean career—. The film has integrated key excerpts from the 1888 fairy tale “The Happy Prince” narrated in English and French by Oscar Wilde’s character at different points in the film. Because of these changes of medium and language —inter-medial and inter-systemic translation in Kaindl’s (2020) terminology—, the film reveals dimensions of the queer child obviated from previous research about this short story and its translations. Also, the Spanish subtitles of the film reveal how the “fossilization” of a translation decision from the first decades of the twentieth century omitting inter-male passion becomes a symptom of such narrative manipulation when three language systems interact simultaneously on screen.
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