Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation

Abstract

<p>There is a moment early on in Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002) in which the fictive Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) has a truncated epiphany: he envisions his own place within the evolution of life on earth. This would seem to explain many of his own problems" he is subject to selective and fitness pressures, which generate the psychological and cultural conditions he struggles within. When he goes to translate this realization to the page, however, there is no meaningful information to convey. As Joshua Landy puts it, "there is no such thing as the story of everything" a story about everything is a story about nothing."1 The epiphany was short-lived, and seems not so profound after all. I recognize this moment. I have been through it before in my own life, but also my own scholarship. In fact, it is a central challenge in the work of literary and cinematic Darwinism. While it may be true that evolution explains life's manifold iterations, what can it then contribute to our understanding and humanistic documentation of complex human culture and storytelling practices? In effect, our adaptive origins explain everything about life, and yet nothing at all. Jonze and Kaufman use Adaptation to explore our subsequent searches for meaning, and their collaboration yields a filmic model for understanding how and why stories can feel original to us when working from seldom fused influences.</p>