1. Introduction

This chapter traces the intertextual genealogy of adapted versions of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley with a focus on the most recent adaptation: Steven Zaillian’s Ripley. Tom Ripley is a protean character whose amorality and sexual blankness provide successive generations of adapters with an opportunity to remodel him for their times. However, it can prove difficult for audiences to connect with such blank characters because audiences are tutored by more conventional cultural products to take pleasure in identifying with protagonists. This means Zaillian, who has expressed a desire to be faithful to Highsmith’s original conception, faces the difficult task of translating his complex opacity to the screen while eliciting audience engagement with him. In this context, the chapter introduces Eric Leake’s concept of “difficult empathy,” by means of which the spectator is encouraged to align with characters who breach the social contract, such as antiheroes (Leake, 2014, 2024). It also asserts that the governing aesthetic of Ripley is forgery, which extends not only to Ripley’s own imposture, but also to the act of adaptation itself. The series engages in postmodern “complicitous critique” of late capitalism and also reflects post-postmodern and metamodern sensibilities (Hutcheon, 2002 p. 9).