Audience Dynamics in Novel-to-Film Adaption: The Case of Half of a Yellow Sun

This paper sets out to evaluate reader-audience attitudes to adaptation. It underscores the point that intertextuality and technological evolution have had a great influence in audience preferences for a film over its novel counterpart in the study of novel-to-film adaptation. Inspired by such transformation, this analysis posits that in the contemporary world, especially in the African/Cameroon postcolony, more people prefer watching/viewing than reading. To sustain this premise, the paper examines intertextuality and audience reaction dynamics. Stated differently, the paper seeks to reveal that there exists an ideological contestation between the novelists and artistic directors which has a causal effect on the audience in terms of audience perception and preference. This is because there exists a controversial question of “which is better: the book or the film?” The response to such a question will always be linked to both the literary artist and the artistic director. The challenge is for the audience to deduce relative meaning from the film based on the artistic director’s vision in the adaptation, which in most cases is different from the ideological frame of the source text, thereby making it difficult to ascertain faithfulness. This gives way to the discourse of infidelity in cinema, with the audience caught between the biases of the source author and film director. Applying intertextuality as a theoretical frame, the paper employs the mixed research method wherein selected texts are exploited and data is collected with the help of observation, textual analysis, field survey, the use of interviews, focus group discussion, administration of questionnaires and pilot reconnaissance survey.  The results reveal that indeed in today’s society, a vast majority of people prefer viewing to reading.

Keywords: Adaptation, intertextuality, audience, preference, novel and film