Acculturated adaptation

Film Adaptations are of various kinds. One of the many types is Acculturated adaptation. One such example is an Indian movie called ‘Omkara’ (2006) which is based on Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’. According to the Fidelity argument a film is seen inferior to the written text, somehow less worthy, less demanding and not as artistic, but this film has proved that an adaptation, that too set in a different culture with an extremely different social background can make for a great film. ‘Omkara’ is considered to be one of the master pieces in India directed by Vishal Bharadwaj. He not only created a great piece of art but also managed to spread the story of Othello to masses. Here the Fidelity argument can be weakened, for if the Indian audience was to read Othello, more than half would not have been able to get the context right, which is fair, because they come from a different cultural background, but after having seen Omkara the text would be much more clearer to the audience. This proves that sometimes the adaptations can help make the original text understood better. As Deborah Cartmell (1999) says ‘Even when a literary text is the subject of an adaptation it may not be a text that many potential viewers are familiar with: it may be a misremembered children’s story or an obscure work of fiction that only became widely known through the process of realization on screen’.



Omkara (2006)