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In the field of adaptation studies, few scholars have it down so clearly as Oscar, the world's most prestigious film award; as far as Oscar is concerned, assessing adaptations presents no major problem, since they can be easily separated from non-adaptations, or: Original Screenplays, to use Oscar's terminology. It may best be left to the imagination of the reader whether the Academy Awards have managed to solve the question of originality, in spite of adaptation theory's continued insistence on die fact that "there is no such thing as an autonomous text or an original genius that can transcend history" (Hutcheon 111), or whether they have not really bothered to ask it in the first place. By focusing on one of the Original Screenplay award's most recent winners, writer-director Woody Allen (whose script for Midnight in Paris won him his third Academy Award in that category, following past wins for Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, respectively), this essay will discuss Oscar's clear-cut distinction between Original and Adapted Screenplays, which is not shared by a number of other award ceremonies.1 I will argue that Midnight in Paris is not only an adaptation that went unnoticed by the Academy voters, but that it also delivers a highly satirical take on Hollywood's adaptation policy in general, which fails to conceptualize adaptations in a wider sense, that is, beyond a legal term to avoid copyright infringements. This interpretation shares an aim frequently articulated within adaptation studies at the moment, as scholars like Simone Murray have attempted to look beyond mere textual analysis and to foreground "those issues usually pushed to the margins of adaptation studies work: the industrial structures ... and legal and policy regimes within which adaptations come to be" (6). Therefore, I will draw attention to some major inconsistencies at the heart of the world's most prestigious award bestowed upon screenwriters. In the process, I will address the topic of adaptation with regard to Allen's oeuvre, an aspect that tends to be overlooked in favor of auteur rhetoric.
The Screenplay Policy of the Academy Awards
Although the design of the Oscar statuette itself reflects the movie industry's indebtedness to screenwriters,2 and although the screenplay category is included in the list of the "Big Five" categories (Best...