Marjane Satrapi's Poulet aux prunes offers an intriguing example of self-adaptation from comics to live-action film. This essay will consider how the Franco-Iranian Satrapi, within her dual role as self-adapter and transnational filmmaker, uses intertextuality and remediation beyond her own source text in ways that pointedly expand the transnational resonance of her film. These narrative and aesthetic strategies also extend to the film's paratextual discourses, namely, the extras available on the French dVd release of the film. The book, film, and dVd paratexts related to Poulet aux prunes thus form the core of this discussion of self-adaptation and transnationality.

Quentin Tarantino's multiple Oscar nominations and wins for Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012) raise questions about the place and status of intertextuality in Hollywood. By appropriating and adapting snippets of other films, by absorbing, cataloguing, and reflecting a broad range of cinematic history, Tarantino makes cinema itself the centre of attention. While his earlier films celebrate low-prestige genresnotably, kung fu films in the two-part Kill Bill (2003-04) and B-movie thrillers in Death Proof (2007)-Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained interweave paracinematic material with the prestigious period film, taking on, respectively, World War II and slavery in the antebellum South. Both were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and Tarantino was nominated for Best Director for Basterds, marking a sharp uptick in industry attention at this stage of his career. 1

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This essay highlights the shared critical terrain of adaptation and nostalgia: how they critically juxtapose the past with the present, and how they underscore the impossibility of return while also relying on prior experience. It also explores nostalgia’s effect on personal responses to adaptations and its interaction with textual form. Drawing from various areas of literary, media, and performance studies, including film adaptations of children’s literature, Watchmen and its screen adaptations, and Disney’s live-action remakes, this essay underscores how both nostalgia and adaptation are inherently multivalent concepts, and how they each rely on perspective to generate critical meaning.

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