Many have seen the Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, originally a novel first published in 1985 discussing the value of women and their ability to reproduce in society. Both The Handmaid’s Tale and Invisible Man discuss extremely important political and societal ideas. Hulu is now tackling the novel Invisible Man and turning it into another Hulu original series. As of October, 2017, “the project [was] in its early development phrase, so there’s no script or cast yet“. It will be interesting to see who is cast as the narrator/main character who is unnamed in the novel. I’m very curious about how they plan to turn this novel into a TV show, it doesn’t seem to be as well tailored to that sort of story telling as The Handmaid’s Tale was. So far the story telling is very fragmented and disorienting, without a seemingly cohesive order of events. There are plenty of TV shows that have been successful with experimental story telling so I definitely think it can be done. However, nontraditional story telling can be difficult to make work well so Hulu definitely has their work cut out for them.
As fans demand more diverse casting for movies and TV shows we are seeing more politically important on screen stories. We have discussed Moonlight in class on multiple occasions due to it’s importance in representing both African Americans and members of LGBTQ+ on screen. This sort of representation is extremely important as fans are becoming tired of whitewashed movies with little to no diversity. Black Panther was another successful movie that shows directors that casting African American actors does not ruin a movie. I think bringing such politically important books to the screen for people to view at home is a great way for people to become engaged in discussions about race and gender. While it pains me to say, some people don’t want to read books so adapting them into shows is a good way to increase exposure for these novels. Plus, sales of these books always increase when a movie or TV show adaption is in the works so hopefully more people go out and buy Invisible Man and other novels such as The Handmaid’s Tale.
While this is unimportant to my blog post, I would feel wrong if I didn’t include it. While looking for some other sources about this Hulu adaptation, I found a Hulu show called The Invisible Man. This show appears very different from the novel Invisible Man. I’ll include the description and a picture from Hulu’s website for you all to enjoy. Side note, the show has an 8.9/10 rating.
“An ex-thief agrees to undergo an experimental surgery and work for the government in exchange for his freedom.”
You are the second person to bring up the long-standing sci-fi trope of invisibility. I wonder how intentionally Ellison worked to engage, or parody, this trope in his own much more socially and culturally insinuating reflection on invisibility as it relates to race in mid-century American (and beyond).
As for your broader point about the adaptability of Ellison’s novel, there’s a clear dramatic structure to the story (we’ll talk about this in class) and you’ll notice that it soon begins to fall into a distinctly episodic patterning, which would actually lend itself quite well to serialization. As one “recipe” for the great American novel, according to Buelle, is its iterability, its ripeness for re-telling, this only adds to the Invisible Man’s stature as one of a handful of truly remarkable, representative, and lasting American novels.
I also think you point about serious serialization being a gateway to readerly engagement is a good one. The Handmaid’s Tale became a best-seller and a prominent book club selection–and if it took a good piece of streaming media to make that happen, so what!