Time Passes, and Much Else Changes: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and Its Film Adaptation Tina Abashidze College

In order to discuss the importance of context and changes made to the story in accordance to that context, I would like to take David Fincher’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” as the case study for this topic. To emphasise the influence of the change of context in adaptation, I will discuss not only the contextual changes made to the original story but also the way in which the context behind the time period of the adaptation process as well as the context of the film-making process itself have shaped and enriched the changes in the plot. Furthermore, I would like to point out how these factors influenced the genre of the story, turning it from a social satire into a tragic contemporary fable tale about finding oneself. It may also be relevant to note that the reason why the contextual change does not seem out of place is because the main theme of the short story and its adaptation is time and time is itself something that both signifies a change but also something that is passing and cannot be framed.

Fitzgerald’s short story begins in 1860s Baltimore, Maryland and is defined heavily both by the context and by the mindset of the said context. The short story points out that...