An Adaptation by Any Other Name: Earth vs Ice-Candy Man Anonymous College

There is a striking difference between the film poster for Deepa Mehta’s Earth and the novel cover for Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man (see Appendix). The novel cover, dominated by blues, greens and a silhouette of Lenny, is more evocative of Lenny’s moments of wondrous childhood than the turmoil of partition. In contrast, the film poster - dominated by a deep blood red and featuring the erotic embrace of Ayah and Masseur - is representative of the darker side of the novel. The stark contrast between poster and cover embodies the changes made during the adaptation process. Hutcheon claims that “the act of adaptation always involves both (re)interpretation and then (re)creation” in which “simplifying selections” must be made. In the text, Lenny is “about 4 years old at the beginning…and 8 by the time the subcontinent splits into pieces in 1947” (Bahri) but in the film, narrative time is distilled down to the crucial year, 1947. Similarly, characters are distilled, such as Adi into Cousin, or cut like Slavesister. Equally, Mehta has – as all adaptors must – not simply “(re)interpret[ed]” (Hutcheon et al) but also “(re)creat[ed]” (Hutcheon et al) the text. Certain themes have been “amplify[ied]” (Hutcheon et al) over others, the...