Film Remakes and
Cross-cultural TV series Adaptations

My research focuses on film remakes and cross-cultural TV series adaptations. These remakes and adaptations convey cultural values and reflect local movie-making traditions. They offer an arena for comparative analysis retracing the historical, sociocultural, and technical changes in the development of contemporary cinema and television poetics. They are also an ideal platform to study and compare cultural representation.

Perfect Strangers: 23 remakes worldwide

Les Intouchables / The Upside

Ghostburster / Sequels

Law & Order / Paris Enquêtes Criminelles

Twilight Zone: Traveling Through Time

The 1960s’ series The Twilight Zone is a monument in TV history. First, it pioneered the genre of science fiction on television. Most importantly, it addressed social issues and taboos of the time. Embedded in a cold-war context it deals with racial tension, fear of war, dictatorship and communism. In setting stories in another world, the creator of the series Rod Serling was able to address those tensions and fears while avoiding the ominous censoring of sponsors whose only goal was to sell commercial goods at the expense of potentially controversial content of TV shows.

If television reflects society and captures the zeitgeist of the time, we ought to wonder how does The Twilight Zone remakes operate in their contemporary settings. Revivals depict original narrations in a recontextualized society. They provide us with an opportunity to do a comparative analysis to trace the manifestations of historical, sociocultural, and ideological changes in the US over time. Despite the different contexts, The Twilight Zone remains relevant nowadays. Not only because US society is still crippled with anxiety and fear of the enemy, but because it deals with human emotions such as selfishness, narcissism, and paranoia. In sum, The Twilight Zone talks to what is fundamentally and universally human.

The remakes also epitomize the new production techniques and the liberalized television market more open to controversial topics.

Using a combination of software analysis programs, such as Multimodal Analysis, Final Cut, and Cinemetrics, I explore shifts in narrative structure, self-representations of the U.S., and cinematographic techniques. Among the notable cultural differences between the two periods, racial representation of U.S. society is probably the most salient. In the 1960s all the characters were white actors, whereas 2003 episodes feature black people. Additionally, black actor Forest Whitaker replaces host Rod Serling. Such cast choices herald the rise of a multi-ethnic society.

Episodes Studied:

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street (1960)

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street (2003)

The Eye of the Beholder (1960)

The Eye of the Beholder (2003)

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1960)

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1983)

Nightmare at 30,000 Feet (2019)