H.G.
WELLS
THE
TIME MACHINE
THE
NOVEL AND THE FILM ADAPTATIONS
Dr
Jacques Coulardeau
THE TIME
MACHINE, A DYSTOPIC UTOPIA
Dr
Jacques COULARDEAU
University of Paris 1 Pantheon
Sorbonne
University of Paris Dauphine*
H.G. WELLS, THE
TIME MACHINE
Dr
Jacques COULARDEAU
Université Paris Dauphine
Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
Herbert Georges Wells (1866-1946) witnessed
eighty years of our developing industrial world during whichall basic
productive activities bloomed to produce our present mass consumer society
based on mass productionand the industrial and agricultural, financial,
services, communications, entertainment and labor mass markets.He witnessed the
growth of the two extreme ideologies produced by this industrial world,
communism (or Stalinism) and Nazism (or fascism). He also witnessed the
development of biology and particularly Darwinismand his evolution
of species, the survival of the fittest, and the birth and elaboration
of the theory of relativityand the physics that emerged from it or at
the same time. Finally, he witnessed, both in Europe and the USA, the junction of
the analysis of society in two antagonistic classes and their class struggle for
domination, evenreduced to the American simplified approach of the rich and the
poor, what he calls himself the “haves” and the“have-nots” (53) on one hand,
and Darwinism on the other hand. He died in 1946 after witnessing the fall
of the extreme racist form of this social Darwinism (Nazism and fascism)
but also the seemingly triumphantexpansion of the second form of it, Stalinism.
The Time
Machine
was published in 1895.We should also consider Wells’ The Invisible Man (1897). Wells first warns us about the
biological-and-social-danger of our social Darwinism in The Time Machine and about the plain criminal danger of the
uncontrolled development of science in The
Invisible Man. This
cannot represent a fear of the modern world since Wells was a socialist, but
the sign of an independent mind in symbiosis with a quickly changing world.
I will concentrate on the ideological message of
The Time Machine along with two
adaptations of this short novel to the silver screen. George Pal’s (1960) shows
how the book was read before 1968, the turning point towards mass-consumerism
and mass-communication. Simon Wells’ (2002) shows how it is read after the
no-return turning point of globalization, September 11 and the war on terror.
These two adaptations deviate from the original novella in concordance with
their times. I will consider these two films in Marshall McLuhan’s perspective that
states the message is the medium, which implies the meaning of the films can only
be considered from the moment the films meet an audience. The audience gives
meaning to the film that is nothing but a hollow shell otherwise. Note this approach
is similar to Kenneth Burke’s dramatist theory. This implies that a film’s
meaning will change through time along with the audience that builds meaning
into the film.
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:45 PM