Adapter, c’est (parfois) trahir : fiction et stéréotypes de genre dans les séries inspirées de Diario de una abuela de verano de Rosa Regàs et El mundo amarillo d’Albert Espinosa

Abstract

The TV shows Abuela de verano (TVE, 2005) and Polseres vermelles (TV3, 2011-2013) are two fictions inspired in non-fiction books. The first one is an adaptation of Diario de una abuela de verano, a testimonial essay in which the Spanish novelist Rosa Regàs tells about her experience as a grandmother. In El mundo amarillo, which inspired Polseres vermelles, the Catalan film director and actor Albert Espinosa writes about the way cancer disrupted his life when he was a teenager, and the way the disease enriched his vision of life and happiness.The TV shows inspired in those books may seem quite different. However they build two fictional universes in which gender stereotypes are ubiquitous, though these are either absent or explicitly criticized in the original books. In Abuela de verano, as in Polseres vermelles, the girls’ characters are oversexualized, obsessed with their physical appearance and with love, whereas the boys’ figures represent a stereotypic masculinity, either by what they’re interested in (football, sexuality, mechanics) and by their attitude (violence, rejection of “feminine” activities). It’s as if the passage from the book to the screen, and from testimony to fiction, implied an adaptation of the text to the mould of Spanish contemporary TV series, by the creation of a universe marked by unchanging traditional gender roles, filled with pretty, sweet and romantic girls and brave and aggressive boys. In the cases of Abuela de verano and Polseres vermelles, adaptation might be a form of betrayal.

Keywords

• adaptation
• testimony
• fiction
• Spain
• Catalonia
• gender stereotypes