{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,4]],"date-time":"2025-12-04T14:16:06Z","timestamp":1764857766410,"version":"3.38.0"},"reference-count":72,"publisher":"SAGE Publications","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2016,12,21]],"date-time":"2016-12-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1482278400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/page\/policies\/text-and-data-mining-license"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["journals.sagepub.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["The Journal of Commonwealth Literature"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2017,9]]},"abstract":"<jats:p> It is remarkable that what many consider as Salman Rushdie\u2019s landmark work in fiction, Midnight\u2019s Children, was first adapted to film only in 2012, 31 years after its publication. It was also the first of his works to be filmed. This is noteworthy given the novel\u2019s cinematic self-awareness and the writer\u2019s overt interest in acting and cinema, which he has reiterated over the years. Cinema, as a subject matter and a distinctive artistic language, resurfaces time and again in the pages of Rushdie\u2019s essays, short stories, novels, and other writings. As many critics have pointed out, the writer\u2019s emotional connection to cinema has translated into cinema itself being put to work as a mediating device in his oeuvre, with his characters often making sense of themselves and the world \u2014 and coming to terms with their own place in it \u2014 through cinema. In this article, we examine the three existing adaptations of Midnight\u2019s Children, with particular emphasis on the 2012 film, in view of their discursively constructed audiences. We consider these adaptations from the point of view of the audience, and how they engage with the spectator\/reader. Our analysis is supplemented by Rushdie\u2019s essays on the acts of adaptation and translation from one artistic medium to another. Our purpose is not to measure the failure or success of Rushdie\u2019s and Mehta\u2019s adaptation (although an aesthetic evaluation would indeed be of interest); we argue instead that the film adaptation is a protracted creative project that has taken into consideration, more than previous adaptations of the novel, not only new forms of representation and new ways of reading, but also new ways of engaging its constructed audiences. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/0021989416671171","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,14]],"date-time":"2017-09-14T04:23:27Z","timestamp":1505363007000},"page":"501-518","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Padma or No Padma: Audience in the Adaptations of <i>Midnight\u2019s Children<\/i>"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"52","author":[{"given":"Ana Cristina","family":"Mendes","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal"}]},{"given":"Joel","family":"Kuortti","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Turku, Finland"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,12,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-0021989416671171","unstructured":"Ahmed I (2013) Review \u2013 Midnight\u2019s Children. 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