The Intermediality of Carol – Expressions of Marginalized Desire
Irene Valenti (2022)
Since its original publication under pseudonym in 1952 with the title The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith’s novel Carol has not received much academic attention, perhaps due to its status as a pulp novel, while nevertheless managing to gain the reputation of a classic queer story. Renewed enthusiasm was raised by its 2015 film adaptation, critically acclaimed and object of many analyses in the fields of cinema and media studies. However, in the representation of a queer relationship that is, exceptionally, granted an ending that does not invoke tragedy, both works lend themselves to considerations on the marginalized desires they portray. Consequently, a combined reading of both incarnations of the story can highlight the ways in which desire is constructed through different media. While in this case the process of adaptation implies an intermedial re-elaboration of the material, intermediality also plays a role in both the novel and the film when singularly observed. Thus, when considering the shift from novel to film, the notion of adaptation itself can be regarded as an instance of media transposition whose intermedial quality is granted by the transformation of a pre-existing media product. Through this, a movement from adaptation to intertextuality and, subsequently, to intermediality, can be highlighted. Additionally, the phenomenon of media combination within the single medial form can be analyzed with regard to the medium of photography within the movie – as opposed to the design and production of stage sets in the novel – and to the latter’s use of ekphrasis in the crucial description of a painting.
In this paper, the different combinations of media will be shown to have specific functions within both incarnations of Carol. In particular, the use of photography in the movie creates a mediated, idealized image of the character of Carol, reproducing the extremely subjective way she is represented in the novel. In this case, the film camera mimics perspectives and styles typical of mid-century American photography to recreate the illusion of Therese’s subjective gaze as the novel’s main focalizer, and as such only renders her strictly subjective perception of Carol. Similarly, her occupation as stage set designer is transformed for the movie screen into an interest in photography, so that throughout the film she can be seen taking pictures of Carol. These contribute to the idealization of the object of love and its transformation into a refined product. This idealization process, already present in the novel, is interrupted therein by an instance of ekphrasis, in which the visual impression of a painting is rendered through verbal description. The novel works in the opposite direction, revealing Therese’s idealized perception of Carol and successively contributing to its deconstruction. Thus, the introduction of a different medial form within the novel interrupts the narration and facilitates self-reflection for the focalizer, as well as a deeper insight into her perception for the reader. Meanwhile, the moment of ekphrasis serves as a means towards the de-idealization of the object of love and turns the title character into a multidimensional subject.
Finally, the filming techniques employed in the movie will be analyzed with regard to their role in reproducing the marginalized desire that characterizes Highsmith’s novel. Specific shots and camera perspectives can be considered as a visual representation of the marginal state of the characters’ relationships. Here, much of the development of queer desire is not dramatized into dialogue and action, but rather transferred into points of view and thus alluded to through the camera lens. Shots through windows, framed within mirrors or split into subjective spheres, make for the visual portrayal of a queer story that is characterized by the marginalization of its participants and the delayed realization of their desires. Thus, the intermedial workings of Carol, both in the novel and in its film adaptation, (re)produce an idealized version of the title character, while simultaneously hinting at her reality as a fully realized subject, portraying an expression of marginalized desire through Therese’s subjective perspective.
From Adaptation to Intermediality
In the joint discussion of a movie adaptation and the novel it is based upon, the issue of fidelity shall fade into the background, as theories of adaptation assume both texts to be “equally significant, … neither holding status of primacy over the other” (McKee 140). It is thus not the goal to evaluate the differences between the novel and its reworking, but rather to analyze both as equals and discuss the various ways in which each constructs desire through intermediality. In this regard, Hutcheon’s definition of adaptation as a “repetition with variation” (Hutcheon 4) can be productive to focus on how these possible variations work to create meaning.
As is the case with the movie Carol, homonymous with the 1990 retitled novel, adaptation “openly announces” its relationship to other texts (Hutcheon 6), so that an intertextual dependency is highlighted by which adaptation appears as “a subset of intertextuality” (Leitch 89). In particular, when considering a film adaptation of a novel, an intermedial quality can be observed as given by the “transposition” (Rippl 11) of a pre-existing media product into a different medium, so that adaptation appears not only as an intertextual phenomenon, but also as an intermedial process. However, intermediality is not limited to the media transposition of an adapted text but is also to be found in the combination of different media within a single text, since “media do not exist disconnected from each other” (Rippl 1). While there have been attempts to introduce the term “mediality” as a more open-ended form of the concept of “medium” that appears as more connected to the “media product” (Bruhn 16), the focus shift from the medium as an object to its communicative potential still leaves space for ambiguity surrounding the term. Although different definitions of the notion of “medium” have been proposed, , varying from channels of communication to considerations on its materiality as the carrier of a sign (Rippl 7), the term can more generally be understood to convey meaning.
In this sense, “all media are mixed, but in infinitely differentiated ways” (Bruhn 15), so that, similarly to Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality, all media products appear to be necessarily interconnected with, and dependent upon, others. In the case of film and literature, a clear distinction between the workings of the two may be counterproductive, since ultimately “many novels depend on images, … and even more films depend on words” (Leitch 90), subverting a notion that relegates novels to language and reduces film to its visual dimension. The interdependency of words and images within novel and film as “hybrid modes” (Leitch 90) can be productive for the analysis of ekphrastic passages in the former, in which linear narration is interrupted by the description of a visual artefact, as well as regarding the dialogue in the latter.
In the following, the term intermediality will be used to indicate the manner in which a literary text appears to include extraliterary material and can thus be understood under consideration of the “medialities” it works with, namely those “tools of communicative action inside or outside the arts” (Bruhn 1) as employed in the creation of meaning within a singular work of art. Interestingly, the concept of intermediality is often used as synonymous with interart studies, but actually comprises a “broader aesthetic and technological field of investigation” (Bruhn 14) that is relevant for the analysis of a book-movie dyad such as Carol. It is a workwhich includes the analogue mode of representation of stage sets and the advancements of photography, while also eliminating the concern for their classification as art as opposed to a supposedly lower cultural framework.
The notion of – or rather the term – ‘intermediality’ has been criticized as to its morphological implications. For instance, Bruhn’s criticism of the term ‘intermediality’ is motivated by an issue with the prefix ‘inter’, which seems to focus on the relationship between medialities, as opposed to characterizing the entire text as an intermedial composition and thus possibly a differentiation between intermedial and “pure” texts (Bruhn 14). However, having established that “there is no such thing as a ‘pure’ medium” (Rippl 3), the term seems fitting when relating the connotation of inter to the relationship between the different medialities within a text and the text itself.
The outlined movement from adaptation to intertextuality to intermediality can be observed in the analysis of the two incarnations of Highsmith’s novel, as its 2015 film adaptation clearly reflects the intertextual relation to its source material while transposing the text into a different medium. Furthermore, an additional notion of intermediality that works on the diegetic level (Bruhn 23) can be observed in both texts, as different media are employed within the storyworld and are differentially perceived by the characters and the consumer of the media product. In the following, the intermedial workings of both texts will be analyzed regarding their effects on the representation of marginalized desires, as the combination of media types within each can be seen to contribute to the creation and resolution of the relationship central to the plot.
Intermedial Workings in Carol: A Queer Adaptation
When analyzing the intermedial workings of an adaptation dyad, it is worth noting that the process of re-elaborating and adapting a text “always occurs at a particular historical moment and in a particular cultural context” (Straumann 253). This is the case with Todd Haynes’s Carol and its production some sixty years after the novel’s publication, at a time in which the desire for queer narratives, combined with the growing issue of queer representation – or lack thereof – was gaining relevance. In this regard, Carol may be characterized as a queer adaptation not only in its dealing with a text about queer identities, generally meaning “whatever is at odds with normative sexuality and gender identities” (Demory 146), but also in the broader sense. According to Demory, an adaptation may be queer when dealing with a queer character or plot, in erasing or revealing the queerness of the source material (148), or even in its form by subverting an implied “‘natural’ progression” in the linear development of the story (150).
In this regard, while Carol does recount a relationship at odds with heteronormativity, implying the hardships and the contrast with the norm which makes for the marginalization of queer desires as represented in the novel and film, the latter may also be observed to work with a concept of “queer time” that is “organised according to logics other than conventional dictates” (Demory 150). The circular structure of the movie, beginning and ending with the same scene, results in the queering of the linear development of the novel as an alternative understanding of its narrative that eludes normativity as much as its characters do. The peculiar choice to have Carol purchase a toy train instead of the doll she buys in the novel may be seen as a premonition of the “journey” that the characters will embark on in the movie “which, like the circuitous route of toy trains, will return them to their starting point” (Wilson). The role granted in the adaptation to an object originally defined in its “wrath and frustration” in “futile pursuit” of its closed route (Highsmith 8–9) is thus symbolic of a circular structure that “tampers with the temporal dimension of its source text” (Demory 150) and contributes to the realization of a queer adaptation.
Further, the story of Carol and Therese may be characterized as – paradoxically – inherently queer with regard to Therese’s urge to escape the conventions of her familiar world (Breen 13) as well as to a relationship that is “neither conventionally heterosexual nor stereotypically lesbian” (Breen 11). It is not furthering questionable stereotypes of feminine and masculine women, or “woman-who-is-man” (Stimpson 367), as do other classic lesbian novels, but rather having both characters not look like “girls falling in love” (Highsmith 100). In addition, as Highsmith “dared to give Therese and Carol a happy ending” (Bañal) that subverts expectations for queer novels, where “homosexuals male and female … had had to pay for their deviation” (Highsmith 311), Carol also goes beyond traditional pulp standards in a reshaping of the genre that makes the representation of queer desires possible (Breen 10). Here, the queering of the adapted material is also realized “through the construction of the gaze” (Demory 151) that perceives Carol’s character in both the novel and, subsequently, in the film through the visual portrayal of the book’s focalization through photography. In this regard, intermedial workings are central to the production of the object of Therese’s love in both texts: the film’s focus on photography as opposed to the novel’s occupation with stage design, as well as the ekphrastic moment that reverts Therese’s perception in order to highlight the construction of the title character through a subjective gaze and her (de)idealization in desire.
The Film: A Photographer’s Gaze
Todd Haynes’s 2015 film adaptation of Highsmith’s novel features one particular variation from the source material that may be most apparent to the viewer, namely the change of Therese’s occupation from stage set designer to aspiring photographer for cinematic screens. While the reason for this variation has been very pragmatically explained by screenplay writer Phillis Nagy as that “a stage designer on the screen would’ve been a ‘nightmare’” (qtd. in Bañal), the move to photography also becomes central to the movie’s aesthetic, where “capturing figures through windows, mirrors, and glass” as inspired by mid-century American photographers creates a distance between the perceiving subjects and the reality of their involvement while simultaneously allowing for a subjective perspective that mimics Therese’s limited “gaze” in the novel (Bañal). Here, the film may appear to “lie somewhere between reflection and reality” (Bañal), both in its photographic mirroring of the world it represents and in the choice of the mimetic medium of photography, as opposed to the concrete reality of stage sets.
Regarding the intermedial relation between photography and Haynes’s movie, it is not simply the medium per se that is portrayed, but rather “a whole medial or aesthetic genre” (Hallet 610), so that the movie not only portrays a broad notion of photography but, more specifically, the genre of mid-century American photography. Here, Carol’s portrayal of “‘women in the shadows’” is given by a “careful play of light, color, and composition … to provide a visual vocabulary of city streets blurred by rain, traffic, and shop windows” (White 11) that characterizes the atmosphere of the movie in its entirety while the photographic framings of windows and mirrors (McKee 153) pervade the scenes. Inspired by a series of images captured by women photographers from mid-century America (see White 11), the intermedial appearance of the genre reiterates the chronological setting of the story, as well as recalling the historical moment of the novel’s publication.
However, photography is not only present as a genre influence on Haynes’s cinematography, but it is also a recurring theme as Therese’s occupation. Often appearing behind the camera, Therese can be seen to take pictures of Carol in a visual reproduction of her limited perspective through which Highsmith’s novel is filtered. While in the novel the reader “must necessarily occupy [Therese’s] position” (McKee 142), as the events are told via her subjective focalization, her photo camera in the movie becomes the visual transposition of her extremely limited, first-person view of Carol, who is captured as a mere projection of Therese’s gaze as a Lacanian “object a of perception” (Hendrix 12) that gives rise to the Other. Here, the actual photographs taken in the movie reproduce an idealized image of Carol in Therese’s eyes, while the photographic aspects of the movie’s own visual language transport the viewer into the photographer’s perception. Thus, through the photography in the movie the viewer becomes a spectator through the lens of Therese’s camera, viewing Carol through her eyes while she once again “becomes the single subjectivity from which all the story’s characters, emotions, and events emanate” (White 12).
Furthermore, Therese’s camera has been characterized as “a gaze that captures and transforms a being in motion into a static yet immortal image” (Bañal), transforming the subject of Carol into an everlasting – though idealized – object. In this case, the use of photography as a discernible medium within the movie is reminiscent of Highsmith’s own inspiration for The Price of Salt,[IV1] revealed in the 1989 afterword to the novel to derive from an authentic encounter with a woman that would be fictionalized as Carol. Of her, Highsmith writes of a wish “to arrest her suddenly … as if I took a photograph, to make her in an instant cool and rigid as a statue” (qtd. in Bañal), foreshadowing her making art out of the subject, immortalizing the object of desire in a novel as though in photograph, as Therese ultimately manages to do in the movie. Here, the invasive yet somewhat distant lens of Therese’s camera allows for the expression and immortalization of a desire, that longs for possession, but remains marginal and marginalized in its unlikelihood while simultaneously capturing its object in an idealized image.
While the viewer is transported into Therese’s place through the camera lens, this identification process is intertwined with the desire for the object of love so that, more specifically, it “is Therese’s desire with which to identify” (White 8). In the first meeting between the two women, the spectator follows Therese’s eyes while “desire … is born from the gaze,” a notion that is often reiterated as they “alternately look at each other” (Badt 69) in the development of their relationship. Throughout the movie, desire “unfolds … in and through the gaze of [a] camera” (McKee 155) that is equated with Therese’s photographic lens and mirrors her own point of view, so that intermediality is experienced both by the characters and the viewer. Thus, although Haynes’s movie does extend the point of view to – rather sporadically – include Carol’s, showing her experience of divorce proceedings that give some space to her unfiltered subjectivity, the use of photography to mimic Therese’s gaze as the very “function of perception” (Hendrix 12) ultimately “determines the frame” (Badt 70), filtering Carol’s character for the viewer.
This is the case until the very end of the movie, in which “the camera follows Therese’s gaze” (Breen 21) in what is now, however, her perception of a less idealized, more fully realized Carol. After a time of personal growth in which she experiences life in the absence of her lover, Therese seems to “leave the fantasy behind, the photographic world she created” (Bañal), moving on from an idealized version of their romance. However, as she begins working as a professional photographer, the very act of transforming her “voyeuristic hobby” (Bañal) into a job is a development of the latter, rather than a complete renewal, so that she ultimately never stops providing a photographer’s perspective for the film. In the shift from hobby photographer capturing moments of intimacy to newspaper employee portraying real life, Therese’s subjectivity develops into a more refined version that reflects the progression of her desire for what is now recognized as a real, multidimensional character.
The Novel: Ekphrasis as (De)Idealization
The idealization of Carol’s character in Therese’s eyes is quite present in the novel, where, as the sole focalizer, it is her very subjective perception that creates the image of Carol and assumptions on her character. Their first encounter reveals to Therese “wise” and secretive qualities that are solely based on her perception and ascribed to Carol’s physical appearance (Highsmith 36), giving rise to a feeling that she “almost knew, almost could place” her (Highsmith 39) before any real personal interaction. In fact, the only appearance of Carol’s subjectivity is represented by the letters she sends Therese (Highsmith 261, 270), which are nevertheless “filtered” though the latter’s perception (McKee 151). However, by the end of the novel, Therese experiences a “radical acceptance of herself and the woman she loves” (McKee 145), recognizing Carol as a real person rather than an idealized image and facilitating the resolution of their relationship.
A crucial moment in this process is signaled by an instance of ekphrasis, in which the sight of a painting that resembles Carol (Highsmith 277) is both testimony of the idealization of the character thus far and the basis for its reversal. While the very concept of ekphrasis has been much debated and seems to have no clear-cut boundaries, Heffernan’s definition as “the verbal representation of visual representation” (38, italics in original) seems appropriate for the appearance of a painting within the novel. Furthermore, ekphrasis may not only be the description within a medium of an artwork that exists outside of the storyworld, but it can also “create the objects whose representation it purports to represent” (Leitch 93). In this case, the painting exists only within the storyworld and serves a specific purpose for the development of the plot. Considering ekphrasis in the novel as a “textual fragment, a detachable unit that can be isolated and studied independently” (Karastathi 94), Highsmith’s verbal description of the visual can be analyzed in and of itself as an effigy of Carol. This is hinted at by the “arrogant head” (277) recalling the “arrogance in the tilt of her cigarette” (204), the “forehead that … seemed to project” (277) over the eyes as if “ben[t]” (36) and the smiling lips and “narrowed lids” (277) that reiterate an interconnectedness of smile and eyes first noticed in her and Therese’s first encounter.
The detailed description of the painting, hinting at a resemblance with Carol before actual textual confirmation, appears as an ekphrastic “antagonistic refusal of narrative” (Leitch 94) which pauses narration and makes for a digression leading into Therese’s psyche. In this dramatization of “the moment of looking” (Karastathi 95), Therese’s subjective perception is questioned, shifting from a vision that is “not quite the same, not the same” to a growing recognition that the picture is “exactly the same” (277) as her mental projection of Carol. Commenting “on the act of viewing” (Karastathi 96), Therese’s interpretation of the painting as Carol herself exemplifies the ongoing process by which her limited perception has made the latter into an idealized caricature, quite literally a painted image of a one-dimensional object.
At the same time, the painting awakens Therese’s own recognition of this idealization process, so that “the last veil lift[s] and reveal[s] nothing but mockery and gloating” (Highsmith 277): here, “betrayal” is satisfied in the subject’s acknowledgement of its own projections, resulting in “shuddering” shock and fugue (277). The intermediality of visual arts transported into narration is “experienced by both the [homo]diegetic protagonist and the reader” (Hallet 613) in a way that influences both their perspectives, as it reveals for the reader the idealized version of Carol constructed thus far while simultaneously affecting Therese’s view of her, initiating a process by which she ultimately manages to recognize her as a real person. Later on in the novel, confirmation appears that, at the moment of ekphrasis, Therese has been born again, “being dragged into the world against [her] will” (Highsmith 294), painfully accepting that she has been idolizing Carol and that she now has to create “space in her mind for her idea of Carol to coincide with Carol herself” (Bañal), so that the title character can now evolve from “fantasy to a woman” (Bañal).
However, the ekphrastic moment represented by the verbal description of the painting is not the only instance of intermediality that can be found in the novel. While its movie adaptation focuses on photography, Therese’s original occupation is that of stage set designer. Here, the physical production of stage sets mirrors a “fascination with imagining, configuring, and transforming spatial relations [which] suggests an ability to envision and redraw the boundaries of the livable” (Breen 14) as a central theme of the novel. In her occupation, Therese’ creative process appears to Carol as “rather subjective” (Highsmith 171), following a supposed “mood” that has no concrete foundation. Following this consideration, a journey westward is settled as a means for her to experience reality “the way [she does] imagination” (Highsmith 105), whereby the West symbolizes “a promise of open space and freedom” (Stephens 374) in the redrawing of spatial boundaries beyond Therese’s livable and lived experience.
While the West ultimately “results in hypervisibility” (Stephens 376), as the two women become exceptionally noticeable “against the backdrop of the region’s hyperheteronormative culture” (Stephens 374), it is its initial fascination that leads to the realization of their desire in an “expanding space” (Highsmith 200) of blurred boundaries. Thus, the revisioning of Therese’s subjective limits is facilitated by the experience of reality beyond her imagination as reproduced in her drawings and models for set designs, which ultimately appear as a doubly mediated imitation of reality and relegate her character to visions distanced from the real world. In this regard, her occupation can be seen as a reflection of her romanticizing tendencies, allowing her subjectivity to develop in a space of imitation of reality rather than in the essence of it as is the case with her perception of Carol. Thus, while the ekphrastic description of a painting ultimately reveals both to Therese and to the reader the extremely subjective and idealized version of facts and characters told thus far, yet another instance of intermediality may be seen as a contributing factor to the representation of desire in the novel.
Shots of Marginalized Desire
Similarly to how the film adaptation of Carol has been previously characterized as queer for multiple reasons, including formal and screenwriting choices, Highsmith’s novel has been defined as the “first lesbian novel that did not end in tragedy or conversion to heteronormative ideologies” (Stephens 373, emphasis mine). While defining a media product as queer or lesbian has implications in and of itself, possibly connoting the identity of the characters, if not alluding to the authors themselves, and positioning it in a larger context of queer politics and social developments, it may, most importantly, connote desire, particularly as “a necessary but not sufficient condition that occasions all of the rest” (Juhasz 143). As Therese’s extremely limited first-person perspective on Carol, both in the novel’s focalization and in the film’s projection of her gaze, has already been equated to the notion of marginalized desire that pervades the story, Haynes’s movie adaptation employs particular shots and camera angles that highlight the two women’s desire while simultaneously reflecting its marginal status.
In the study of adaptation, it has been noted that “in the move from telling to showing, a performance adaptation must dramatize” (Hutcheon 40), meaning that the narration of a novel generally must be transposed into speech and action for movie screens. If then, “represented thoughts must be transcoded into speech” (Hutcheon 40), Carol might, on the contrary, be striking in its renunciation of comprehensive dialogue and explicit verbal realizations of the women’s thoughts. Here, the covert narrative of desire present in the novel is not transposed into speech, which is, if anything, even more contained in the film. Rather, thoughts and desires are transferred into perspectives and character points of view and thus alluded to through the camera lens. The supposed “loss” often related to book-to-film adaptations in negative terms (Hutcheon 37) of the dismissed dialogue is possibly only to be felt audibly, as the visual sphere makes up for it in guise of Therese’s photographic gaze and subjective perception. In fact, her initial look guiding the viewer into the story, as well as its repetition in the final scene, are portrayed through subjective camera angles in which her gaze encapsulates the narrative in her idolizing view of “the exquisitely tailored and mannered Carol” (Breen 20).
While film may in fact convey character perspectives through speech and commentary, a series of other devices such as camera angles and mise-en-scène can serve the same purpose on the visual level (Straumann 252), as do the photographic angles of the camera in Carol by reflecting Therese’s desire. Furthermore, close-up techniques, used for instance in the representation of Therese’s sorrow when alone in the West, can be seen “to create a sense of psychological intimacy” (Straumann 252) that highlights the character’s feelings with no verbal aid. In fact, a “hyperfocus on visuals … stripping away much of the original dialogue from the novel” (Wilson) is characteristic of the entire movie, which, rather than relying extensively on words, takes full advantage of the film’s visual dimension to render Therese’s focalization, ultimately “allowing us to ‘see’ lesbian desire” (Wilson). This is apparent in the depiction of the character’s fugitive journey as well, where the “succession of diners and hotel rooms [constituting] flight” makes use of repetitive visuals to depict the haunting sense of escape in Highsmith’s novel (White 11), while the reliance on the gaze rather than on dialogue mimics sparse moments of narrative silence that represent the ghost of Carol’s limitations (Stephens 383).
Such camera angles and their visual focus on the characters’ subjectivity can be further analyzed as a visual representation of marginalized desire, as is the case with the “split” shots “whenever Carol or Therese try to discuss their private lives with another person” (Bañal). When sharing her interest in photography with Dannie, Therese’s visual is broken, as is Carol’s when talking to other women at a party, so that the “divided” shots hint at the impossibility for both women to relate to their surroundings (Bañal). Similarly, many shots appear to be “partially blocked as if viewed by someone in hiding” (White 14), capturing the characters through windows, as for major parts of the car journey westward, or mirrors which frame moments of intimacy. While a taxi window ultimately shows Therese’s reflection moments before reconciliation, the raindrops that cover it still “evoke teardrops and sorrow” (Wilson), reminding the viewer of the implications of a queer relationship in an unaccepting society, the price to pay for the salt of life. Similarly, the mirror that reflects Therese and Carol’s first kiss creates a distance between the scene and the viewer that suggests the ambivalence between the realization of desire and its price.
Further, Carol and Therese are not the only characters relegated to the margins of the scenes: Abby, representing the third queer woman in the film, also appears “almost squeezed to the edge of a shot’s composition, as if to indicate [her] marginality” (McKee 153), so that queerness is generally characterized by its implied exclusion. Camera angles centered around photographic and limited framing hint at a “sense of entrapment and constraint” (McKee 153) that is common to all three women in their experience of desire. The reproduction of the desiring subject’s gaze through the camera also highlights “the experience of self in relation to desire” (McKee 141) rather than the interactions with the other, only shown through the subjectivity of the observer, so that the focus of the film can ultimately be found in the “vicissitudes of desire” rather than in the action itself. Thus, through shots centering around the experience of marginality, the film effectively reproduces Highsmith’s accomplishment to “rework” conventional structures to make the affirmation of lesbian representation possible. Thus, both novel and film have been read as an “affirmation of queer desire” (Breen 9), made possible by a focus on subjectivity and represented in its realization at the boundaries of the norm.
Conclusion
In the analysis of intermediality in both Highsmith’s novel Carol and its homonymous film adaptation, the interconnectedness of adaptation, intertextuality and intermediality has found the movie to clearly be referencing its source material in its title as well as in its status of transposition, whereby the adapted material is converted into a different medium. At the same time, intermediality has been analyzed both in the novel and in the film as the combination of different media in each. With regard to this particular adaptation, its realization can be defined as queer not only in that it depicts characters and events that diverge from heteronormative structures, but also in its circular movement and disregard for conventions.
As far as Haynes’s movie is concerned, its intermedial quality lies within its variation from the novel’s mention of stage set designs to Therese’s occupation as a photographer for both pragmatic and aesthetic reasons. While the specific genre of mid-century American photography is featured in the atmosphere of the film in its shadowy depictions of women and locations, Therese’s occupation recreates the focalization of the novel by portraying a very subjective gaze that creates an idealized version of Carol. Here, Therese’s subjectivity is transmitted to the viewer while the camera follows her perception as her gaze creates the cinematic frame.
The idealized rendition of Carol is already present in the novel, where the story is filtered through Therese’s perception as the sole focalizer, as confirmed by the ekphrastic description of a painting that resembles the title character. Here, the verbal representation of the visual interrupts narration and can be textually analyzed in its references to previous descriptions of Carol, so that the painting reveals to both Therese and the reader her idolizing and simultaneously offers the impulse for its subversion. Similarly, the mention of stage set design as imitations of imitations that turn reality into drawings and, successively, physical models, symbolizes Therese’s distance from reality, so that the shift from imagination to real life as Carol becomes a fully realized person in her eyes is only made possible by her experience of the real world in their journey West.
While Therese’s perspective can be equated with her desire for Carol, the definition of the novel and of its adaptation as queer or lesbian also implies a notion of desire that is made marginal by society’s non-acceptance of its subject matter – both intra- and extradiegetically. In the film, the presence of marginalized desire is rendered through specific shots and camera angles that represent subjects at the edge of the scenes or as separated from their interlocutors, while windows and mirrors capture their reflection in an implication of distance from reality. Here, the ambivalence created mirrors the hardships of a queer relationship that gives salt to life but simultaneously implies a price to be paid in social status.
Furthermore, the move from novel to film in Carol does not reflect typical dramatization of narrative subtext into dialogue and commentary, but rather renounces lengthy conversation in favor of a greater focus on the visual dimension of the movie. Here, visual expressions of Therese’s gaze and of the women’s desire mimics the novel’s reworking of the genre to represent queer desire, challenging standards of adaptation as Highsmith challenges pulp conventions for her characters. Thus, the intermedial shift in adaptation reproduces the development of intermediality within the single media product in its representation of marginalized desire, while the photographic gaze of the film recreates the novel’s subjective focalization and the ekphrastic episode in the latter contributes to the disruption of the idealized version of the title character thus created.
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