Approaches to Aging in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and Its Film Adaptation

抄録

Analyses of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality, which have been integral to the studies of literature and culture, have led to discussions of social relations systems. Age is a marginalized category of investigation compared with the other categories, but it is currently gaining prominence as it cooperates with disability studies. This article accounts for aging as a cultural and ideological narrative by which we are governed, dealing with F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (1922) and David Fincher's film adaptation of the same (2008). The main character, Benjamin Button, embodies reverse aging: he enters life as a septuagenarian and becomes younger as time passes. Through this symbolic protagonist, Fitzgerald's story and its film adaptation present us with the question of what the normative life course is, contrastively representing the gap between what an individual really is and what he/she is supposed to be. This article explores the differences between each work's approaches to the issue of aging and how film adaptations contribute to the evolution of literary work over time.