In-between Baby Janes: From book to film to book to film

Abstract

This article is concerned with adaptation as a ‘process of in-betweenness’, a movement of connections, in which the ‘original’ work and adaptations are thought of through analogy, i.e. as similarities born from difference. The connections between two American versions of the story of Baby Jane ‐ Henry Farrell’s novel, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1960) and Robert Aldrich’s film of the same title (1962) ‐ and two Finnish versions ‐ a novel by internationally acclaimed author Sofi Oksanen (2005) and a film directed by Katja Gauriloff (2019), both titled Baby Jane ‐ are discussed emphasizing their narratological and thematic analogies. While the American versions focus on the relationship between two ageing sisters, the Finnish versions tell the lesbian love story of two young women living in contemporary Helsinki. In addition, the article comments on some conceptual questions, such as the relationship between appropriation, adaptation, intertextuality and transfictionality.