A Dark-Adapting Eye: Susanna Moore, Jane Campion, and the Fractured World of Postmodern Noir

This essay troubles the ‘fidelity model’ of adaptation criticism by mobilizing a slightly more dialogic analytical lens: one which re-conceives literary and cinematic works as textual engines generating and circulating affect, and the adaptive process as a productive drifting of those intensities from one medium to another. Specifically, I offer close readings of Susanna Moore’s 1995 novel In the Cut and Jane Campion’s 2003 filmic adaptation, not with an eye toward similarities and differences in story or character, but rather toward the palpable affective forces fostered by Moore’s text—the unease and anxiety, the discomfort and dread— and the means by which Campion’s film seeks to tap into those affective lines of flight, seeks to redirect those intensities from page to screen. In the process, I illustrate how both works, each in its own unique manner, come to function as critical meditations on the seemingly fragmented nature of postmodern identity.