Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

promotion of his public image through his self portraits. The film and the
screenplay take up the challenge to reinstate that image and also create their own
“Rembrandt” through cinematic, interpretive ekphrases that compete with the
artist’s own self portraits. Although the screenplay has largely attributive
ekphrases, their concretization by the reader of the screenplay or by the film itself
turns them into interpretive ekphrases that underscore the gap between
representation and reality.
Chapter six discusses again two cases of film adaptations in which not
only the ekphrastic categories, but also the interpretation and function of the art
works change. Whereas the novels about Vermeer focus on the female perspective
and the women’s aesthetic experiences of his art works in predominantly
interpretive ekphrases, the films’ predominantly depictive ekphrases revert to the
traditional male point of view and the connection of art to economic and social
power.
The ekphrastic category in which the image is transmedialized thus has an
effect on the interpretation of the image: Different ekphrastic categories lead to
different interpretations. Moreover, only in the chapters focusing on film
adaptations are there not only different ekphrastic categories in the texts and
films, but also largely different interpretations of the images. In other words,
while film, poem, drama and screenplay use ekphrasis in similar ways, focusing
on socio-political issues and the relationship between art and society, the novels
tend to use ekphrasis to underscore personal, aesthetic, and feminist issues. As I
have indicated, this difference can be connected to the different kinds of
229