Abstract
The teen film Easy A (2010) is a meta-adaptation. It plays overtly with the classic novel The Scarlet Letter, situates itself within a network of classic teen films, and deconstructs its own PG-13 rating. Notions of audience and what that audience “knows” are equally crucial to the PG-13 rating (with respect to mature themes and language), and to adaptation (with respect to intertextual competence). Both involve a game of knowing and unknowing. Hawthorne’s novel is entirely about sex, conveyed entirely through irony and presupposition, and oblique signs (notably the scarlet letter “A” for adulterer). In Easy A, Olive’s class projects on Hawthorne’s novel and her web log similarly deconstructs sexual rumor in a reflexive, knowing way that simultaneously adapts the novel and deconstructs how adaptation works.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Linda Hutcheon, in Narcissistic Narrative (1984), identifies a dual, paradoxical movement to intertextual texts, at once self-referential (“narcissistic” or inward turning) and at the same time intensely outward reaching (toward other texts, toward the ideal reader). Intermedial adaptation is an intertextual process where the same dual movement is evident, a truism that underpins Hutcheon’s later work A Theory of Adaptation (2006, 2013) in which she further discusses audience knowingness and unknowingness, concepts that arose from intertextuality theory.
- 2.
By most measures, Easy A is a “teen film.” It features a teen protagonist and is largely set in a high school. It references other teen films (including a montage of films directed by John Hughes); it parodies tropes of teen films (like the “cool parents”—noted by Riley 2010); it is rated PG-13; it is directed by Will Gluck, who has directed other teen films and references a Spanish version of his previous film; it is referred to in reviews as a “teenage comedy” (Baby), “teen comedy” (Edelstein), “teen-pic” (Metz 2012, 2017), and “youth film” (Petersen).
- 3.
While the MPAA ratings such as “R” are specific to the USA, other countries implement similar age-based ratings systems, but the variety of ages stipulated for the same film comprise an interesting litmus for differing expectations about what youth know and don’t (or shouldn’t) yet know in different countries. While Superbad (2007) is rated R, or Restricted, in the USA, ratings for the film vary from 11 (Sweden, Norway), to 12 (Netherlands, Iceland), 13 (Argentina, Finland), 14 (Italy), 15 (Australia, UK), 16 (Brazil, Germany, New Zealand, Portugal, Ireland), and 18 (Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Spain). The film is banned in Malaysia and was cut for Singapore. DVD ratings are higher than theatrical release in several instances. And across the various provinces of Canada, three different age ratings are represented (from 13 for Quebec to 18 for Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia) (“ Superbad [2007]: Parents Guide”).
- 4.
The very notion of such guidance (and how quickly it becomes outdated) is parodied in the 2012 (PG) comedy, Parental Guidance, when “old school” grandparents meet their twenty-first-century match in the form of their three grandchildren.
- 5.
- 6.
Both Smith and Feuer go further: Smith (2017) states that “the sexual coming-of-age narrative [is] the primary determiner of what constitutes the Hollywood teen movie” (18). Smith cites Jane Fauer in her comment that the “‘sexual coming of age narrative’ has emerged since the 1980s as a syntax that is particular to the teen movie” (Feuer 1993, 125, quoted in Smith 16), in contrast to the otherwise derived borrowings that make up the genre. Further, Smith notes that the literary adaptations popularized from the 1990s draw out the sexual coming of age undercurrent in the source text and move it to the forefront of the teen film (16).
- 7.
While the majority of viewers of the “teen film” may also be actual teenagers, the “teen viewer subject position” is one the film and other teen films collectively construct and project as an implied, or ideal viewer. It is a subject position any actual viewer can occupy, as arguably they must. Christine Petersen (2011) calls this position “youth spectatorship” which refers “not only to the adolescent moviegoer but also to a structure of looking and feeling constructed by the formal organization of the youth film accessible to the filmgoer of all ages.” It is this subject position I am referring to throughout, although it is a subject position in this case constructed on the basis of what actual twenty-first-century teen viewers are expected by that subject position to “know.”
- 8.
The rating was in fact produced for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984, directed by Steven Spielberg). Teen films have not always gotten this balance “right,” though. For example, Lisa Dresner (2010) writes of the R-rated teen films Little Darlings (1980, directed by Ronald F. Maxwell) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, directed by Amy Heckerling) that those under seventeen had to either watch with a parent or sneak into the theater: “the films straddle an uneasy line – they are a bit racy for (and indeed forbidden to) their natural audience, yet they are a bit tame for the adults and older teens who can see them legally” (174–75).
- 9.
Easy A has a PG-13 rating “for mature thematic elements involving teen sexuality, language and some drug material” (IMDb). Hawthorne’s novel is of course not formally rated, but as will be shown walks a similar line by making the entire novel about the “adulteress” (and thus illicit sex) denoted by the letter “A,” while never mentioning sex. Common Sense Media, which provides parent guides, rates Hawthorne’s novel at 14+ as a “[c]lassic novel of American religion, morality, and hypocrisy.” The same page notes that parents rate the book at 13+ and kids at 12+ (Berry, n.d.).
- 10.
Easy A checks off most of the boxes of the high school film: It is largely set in a high school and features high school scenes and characters (see Davis 2006, 54, for a list of these). The school counselor plays an active role as is typical for the high school film (54), as does the English teacher who, as Davis notes, is an important figure in these types of teen literary adaptations: in this case not only because he has assigned The Scarlet Letter but also because he is married to the counselor (Lisa Kudrow), who is having an affair with a (legal-aged) student. Robert C. Bulman ([2005] 2015) further organizes the teen high school film into three distinct subgenres: urban, suburban, and private. Bulman mentions Easy A only in passing, but the film exhibits many of the traits Bulman uses to describe the (middle-class) suburban high school film.
- 11.
Such is the title of the book by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan (2010), Screen Adaptation: Impure Cinema.
- 12.
Terms like “fidelity” (and “infidelity”), or “faithful” (and “unfaithful”), and other attendant labels like “betrayal,” “taking liberties,” and so on, draw adaptation studies into the realm of romantic relationships. Desmond and Hawkes (2006) summarize this view endemic in adaptation studies: Fidelity invites “a language of buried metaphors that inappropriately draws the adaptation into the human moral dimension” (41).
- 13.
In an obvious parallel to this, under the Hollywood Production Code “the word virgin was taboo” (Jeffers McDonald 2010, 6).
- 14.
For more on meta-adaptation in the context of youth media adaptations in particular, see Hermansson (2019).
- 15.
Conversely, David Kelly (2003) does argue that Clueless puts itself on the same footing as Emma: “This [creative transforming] implies that the original is no more valid than the copy, the authentic no more valid than the inauthentic – in this situation neither takes precedence…” (6).
- 16.
- 17.
A number of critics note that the film’s resistance is ultimately in service of the status quo. As McMillan (2017) writes, “The ultimate message is not that slut shaming is bad but that slut shaming an innocent girl is bad” (94).
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
“Adaptability: Questioning and Teaching Fidelity” (James M. Welsh, 97–108); “Teaching Adaptation: Adapting Teaching, and Ghosts of Fidelity” (Peter Clandfield, 139–55).
- 21.
Walter Metz (2012, 2017) excerpts some of the more horrified responses to this adaptation and quotes (Metz 2017) Bruce Daniel’s comment “Reviewers hated The Scarlet Letter with a vehemence usually reserved for child molesters” (“Bad Movie/Worse History: The 1995 Unmaking of The Scarlet Letter,” Journal of Popular Culture 32.4 [1999]: 6). Daniel’s expression is especially pertinent given the context in this article for intersections between the sexual connotations of infidelity and Easy A’s use of its intertexts.
- 22.
Both Katherine Farrimond (2013) and Frances Smith (2017) analyze this film and the highly constructed nostalgia for the ’80s evidenced in this montage and Olive’s comments about them with respect to the “complexities and contradictions in contemporary postfeminist femininity” (Smith 2017, 134).
- 23.
- 24.
See, for example, Little Darlings (1980) in which it is a contest, The Big Bet (1985, directed by Bert I. Gordon), and Cruel Intentions (1999, directed by Roger Kumble, based on the same plot feature of Dangerous Liaisons).
- 25.
In Superbad , Seth is refused sex because he is drunk; Evan narrowly avoids being thrown up on by Becca because she is drunk; and while Fogell does achieve sexual penetration of his girlfriend in bed, this “triumph” is cataclysmically dashed when two police officers break into the bedroom seconds later.
- 26.
Possibly this name is an allusion to the character played by Demi Moore in St. Elmo’s Fire (1985, directed by Joel Schumacher).
- 27.
Lisa M. Dresner (2010) discusses another 1980s female quest film in this context: Little Darlings (1980, directed by Ronald F. Maxwell).
- 28.
Timothy Shary’s (2010) contribution on such teen films, a survey of sex-focused teen films from the 1950s to 2010, identifies a great many such films and characterizes different decades, the impact of AIDS, and the conservatism of the Reagan era, on how teen films have depicted sex and virginity.
- 29.
Tamar Jeffers McDonald (2010) discusses the paradoxes of something internal being rendered visible, a spectacle, even, in a visual medium such as film: “how virginity, a lack of experience, a zero, can be made visible to audiences” (2). But her description of virginal inexperience as “a zero” is another paradox; the “zero” of inexperience is represented by a hymen; the rupture of the hymen through sexual experience renders the “zero” of the absent hymen.
- 30.
See also Shary (2005, 109), arguing for increasing programs of media literacy for youth.
References
American Pie. 1999. Directed by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz. Film. Universal Pictures.
Animal House. 1978. Directed by John Landis. Film. Universal Pictures.
Baby in the Corner. 2014. “‘Easy A’ Loves the 80s.” Rollins, June 7. http://social.rollins.edu/wpsites/filmsofthe80s/2014/06/07/easy-a-loves-the-80s/.
Berry, Michael. n.d. “The Scarlet Letter, Book Review by Michael Berry.” Common Sense Media. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/the-scarlet-letter.
Buchbinder, David. 2011. “From ‘Wizard’ to ‘Wicked’: Adaptation Theory and Young Adult Fiction.” In Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory, edited by Kerry Mallan and Clare Bradford, 127–46. London: Palgrave.
Bulman, Robert C. (2005) 2015. Hollywood Goes to High School: Cinema, Schools, and American Culture. New York: Worth.
Cartmell, Deborah, and Imelda Whelehan. 2005. “Harry Potter and the Fidelity Debate.” In Books in Motion: Adaptation, Intertextuality, Authorship, edited by Mireia Aragay, 37–49. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
———. 2010. Screen Adaptation: Impure Cinema. New York: Palgrave.
Cox, Carole. 1982. “Children’s Films: The Literature Connection.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 7 (3): 10–13. https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.0.0663.
Cutchins, Dennis, Laurence Raw, and James M. Welsh (eds.). 2010. The Pedagogy of Adaptation. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow.
Davis, Hugh. 2006. “I Was a Teenage Classic.” The Journal of American Culture 29 (1): 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734x.2006.00275.x.
Denninger, Lindsay. 2015. “8 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Easy A,’ Because There’s a Whole Jar of Olives in the Fridge.” Bustle, September 17. https://www.bustle.com/articles/110211-8-things-you-didnt-know-about-easy-a-because-theres-a-whole-jar-of-olives-in.
Desmond, John M., and Peter Hawkes. 2006. Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Dirty Dancing. 1987. Directed by Emile Ardolino. Film. Great American Films Limited Partnership.
Dresner, Lisa M. 2010. “Love’s Labor’s Lost? Early 1980s Representations of Girls’ Sexual Decision Making in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Little Darlings.” In Virgin Territory: Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film, edited by Tamar Jeffers McDonald, 174–200. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Easy A. 2010. Directed by Will Gluck. Film. Screen Gems.
“Easy A (2010)—Connections.” 1998–2018. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282140/movieconnections.
Edelstein, David. 2010. “‘The Town,’ ‘Catfish,’ and ‘Easy A.’” New York Magazine Movie Review, September 13. http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/68101/index1.html.
Farrimond, Katherine. 2013. “The Slut That Wasn’t: Virginity, (Post)Feminism and Representation in Easy A.” In Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, edited by Joel Gwynne and Nadine Muller, 44–59. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. 1982. Directed by Amy Heckerling. Film. Universal Pictures.
Galperin, William. 2011. “Adapting Jane Austen: The Surprising Fidelity of Clueless.” The Wordsworth Circle 42 (3): 187–93.
Geraghty, Christine. 2008. Now a Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. (1850) 2009. The Scarlet Letter. Nashville: American Renaissance.
Hermansson, Casie. 2015. “Flogging Fidelity: In Defense of the (Un)Dead Horse.” Adaptation 8 (2): 147–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apv014.
———. 2019. Filming the Children’s Book: Adapting Metafiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hutcheon, Linda. (1980) 1984. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. New York: Methuen.
———. (2006) 2013. A Theory of Adaptation. London and New York: Routledge.
Jeffers McDonald, Tamar. 2010. “Introduction.” In Virgin Territory: Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film, edited by Tamar Jeffers McDonald, 1–14. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Kelly, David. 2003. “Emma, Cher, and the Maze of Unknowing.” Sydney Studies in English 29: 3–18.
The Last American Virgin. 1982. Directed by Boaz Davidson. Film. Cannon Films.
Losin’ It. 1983. Directed by Curtis Hanson. Film. Tiberius Film Productions.
Lunn, Oliver. 2018. “10 Great Gross-Out Comedies.” Last updated 26 October: BFI.org [British Film Institute]. https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-gross-out-comedies.
Mackey, Margaret. 2016. One Child Reading: My Autobibliography. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Martin, Adrian. 2009. “Live to Tell: Teen Movies Yesterday and Today.” Lumina 2: 6–14. iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/lumina-2/id627761936?mt=11.
McMillan, Laurie. 2017. “Mixed Messages: Slut Shaming in Mean Girls and Easy A.” Peitho Journal 20 (1): 85–99.
Meikle, Kyle. 2017. “A Theory of Adaptation Audiences,” LFQ 45 (4). http://www.salisbury.edu/lfq/_issues/45_4/a_theory_of_adaptation_audiences.html.
Metz, Walter. 2012. “Easy A (2010).” Walter’s World, November 29. http://waltermetz.com/easy-a-2010/.
———. 2017. “Unfriending Hawthorne.” LFQ 45 (4). https://lfq.salisbury.edu/_issues/45_4/unfriending_hawthorne.html.
Mumford, Gwilym. 2017. “The Keg Party’s Over: Why Gross-Out Comedies Are Going Down the Pan.” The Guardian, July 20. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/20/comedy-movies-the-big-sick-will-ferrell-seth-rogen-the-house.
Parental Guidance. 2012. Directed by Andy Fickman. Film. Twentieth Century Fox.
Parry, Becky. 2013. Children, Film and Literacy. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Petersen, Christina. 2011. “‘Just Once I Wanted My Life to Be Like an [sic] 1980s Movie!”: Female Adolescence and the Flapper Youth Spectator. Rhizomes 22. http://www.rhizomes.net/issue22/petersen.html.
Riley, Janelle. 2010. “The ‘A’ List. (Cover Story).” Back Stage (1946–5440), 51 (6): 8–10.
Risky Business. 1983. Directed by Paul Brickman. Film. The Geffen Company.
Shary, Timothy. (2002) 2014. Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema Since 1980. Austin: University of Texas Press.
———. 2005. Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen. New York: Wallflower.
———. 2010. “Virgin Springs: A Survey of Teen Films’ Quest for Sexcess.” In Virgin Territory: Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film, edited by Tamar Jeffers McDonald, 54–67. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Superbad. 2007. Directed by Greg Motola. Film. Columbia Pictures.
“Superbad (2007): Parents Guide.” 2007. Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829482/parentalguide.
Wee, Valerie. 2017. “Youth Audiences and the Media in the Digital Era.” Cinema Journal 57: 13–39. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2017.0064.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hermansson, C. (2019). Easy A(daptation): Sex, Fidelity, and Constructing the Unknowing-Knowing PG-13 Teen Audience. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17619-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17620-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)