From Princesa to Princess with a Prince: 1994 and 2001 Fernanda's Stories
In an analysis of what presents itself as a cinematic transposition of a literary text, it is difficult to break away from the "binary oppositions literature versus cinema, high culture versus mass culture, original versus copy" (James Naremore) In the case of Princesa (2001) directed by Henrique Goldman, it is questionable whether we can speak about an adaptation at all. As Goldman himself stated, he got the idea for making the film after reading the eponymous 1994 book written by Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque in collaboration with Maurizio Jannelli. In his film, Goldman has made drastic changes to the autobiographical story of Fernanda, the Brazilian transsexual prostitute who travels to Europe in order to earn money for her sex change operation. However, the film was in fact dedicated to the memory of the real Fernanda, who had passed away in the meantime. In this contribution, the two works will be examined in their relationship to a third source text by paying special attention to the processes of worldmaking as developed in Nelson Goodman's seminal 1978 book and expanded in the 2010 collection of essays Cultural Ways of Worldmaking. Media and Narratives.