Netflix's Ripley

Table of Contents

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. Introduction

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   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).

3. Chapter 2. The Empathy Game in Ripley

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   This chapter interrogates how adaptations of the Ripley property work with readers’ or spectators’ empathy for Tom. It canvasses arguments about the “negative empathy” generated in readers by the literary character before interrogating how that complicated response translates to film and television (Bonasera, 2023, Zdunkiewicz, 2021). It applies Jason Mittell’s insights about how television antihero series secure audience alignment with the morally ambivalent protagonist to Ripley (Mittell, 2015). However, it argues that Mittell’s explanation does not entirely account for the effects created by Zaillian’s series. It also encompasses arguments made by Margarethe Bruun Vaage in The Antihero in American Television and “Should We Be Against Empathy?” (Vaage, 2016, 2023) but finds that the most appropriate way of approaching Ripley is via Eric Leake’s concept of “difficult empathy” (Leake, 2014, 2024).

4. 3. The Aesthetics of Forging and Reproduction

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   Ripley is both an adaptation of Highsmith’s novel and a readaptation and remediation of Clément’s Plein Soleil and Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. My argument in this chapter is that Ripley defies these antecedents: Zaillian makes something as unlike Clément’s and Minghella’s versions as he can. Zaillian claims to make a “truer” adaptation of the Highsmith story than either of the cinematic versions, and he does this in part by hearkening back to older intertexts which he mobilizes by means of pastiche: Carol Reed’s The Third Man (Reed, 1949) and Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960). This allows him to explore the greyscale aesthetics and murky moral chromatography of mid-century Europe. I also explore Ripley’s visual and narrative emphasis on reproduction, including repeated events and forged identity papers to develop the thesis about evaporation of embodiment. I argue that Zaillian develops the theme and aesthetics of forgery as a self-reflexive metaphor for the process of adaptation and readaptation. The chapter also discusses the affordances of SVOD (Streaming Video On Demand) when it comes to adaptation and remediation.

5. 4. Where’s the Sex?

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   This chapter argues that where Clément and Minghella sought to “normalize” and stabilize Tom’s sexuality by making him calculably straight or gay respectively, Zaillian’s series explores non-sexuality and commodity fetishism. If the spectator is encouraged to feel empathy for Zaillian’s Ripley, it is empathy for the class outsider. This brings the class analysis, already prosecuted by Highsmith and Minghella, into sharp relief, as eroticism is stripped away.

6. 5. Unfunny Fun: Ripley and Comedy

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   This chapter takes a personal approach to irony and black humour in Ripley by offering first-person close readings of two episodes in which Tom commits murders: “Sommerso” and “Lucio.” Some viewers have baulked at the tedium of these episodes, but their tediousness is the point. Zaillian makes me watch Ripley work to secure my allegiance with him. Paradoxically, Zaillian yokes opposing responses together: amusement and boredom; I am induced to laugh and to yawn at the same time. But all the while, I am unsure whether I should laugh. Ripley is playing with corpses, after all. But this horrid laughter just makes the humour of these episodes more delicious. In this chapter, I mobilize ideas about comic immoralism to assert that if the jokes were not about murder, they would not be as funny.

7. 6. The Vile Marge Sherwood

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   Marge Sherwood as Zaillian and Dakota Fanning create her is more agentic than previous adaptations’ versions of Marge, but also more complex and less sympathetic. She is possessive, opportunistic, and above all, presents obstacles to the series’ protagonist, Tom. Zaillian reproduces some of Highsmith’s internalized misogyny in insisting on Marge’s disorderly female embodiment, but also updates her, so that she becomes the kind of “difficult woman” who is made to be hated in contemporary antihero television (Pinedo, 2021). This bespeaks the masculinism of antihero series in general, which Ripley does not escape (Castellano & Meimaridis, 2023; Hagelin & Silverman, 2022). Zaillian and Fanning interestingly complicate and amplify the figure of Marge, while restoring some of Highsmith’s ambivalence. These choices take us beyond easy empathy. If one feels empathy for Marge in Ripley, it is difficult empathy.

8. 7. Italy

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   Ironizing nostalgia for 1960s Italy, Ripley both appeals to transnational middle-class microaudiencesand critiques their modes of consumption and identity construction. Tom Ripley curates European artefacts and practises murder and forgery to construct his identity, subverting moral structures. Italian characters and institutions provide the frameworks in which the American and English characters are judged in Ripley, both in terms of sympathy and in terms of morality. Unlike other adaptations, Ripley portrays Italians as well-developed characters with whom Ripley enjoys warm relationships, encouraging sympathy for Tom rather than his American and English victims. Tom truly appreciates Italian music and art, but values artists who subverted, as he does, the normative morality imposed by Italian institutions like the law and the church.

9. 8. Conclusion

   Joy McEntee

   Abstract

   Each instantiation of the Ripley story claims to be better at something than the ones that went before. This chapter argues that Zaillian’s and Scott’s Tom Ripley is better at playing “nothing” than in Clément’s or Minghella’s versions. From restraint and flat affect in the acting, to the evocation of difficult empathy, it is hard to know what to feel about Scott’s Tom Ripley. Relative to Plein Soleil and Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley radically remodels the relationship between the audience and the protagonist, encouraging oscillation between poles of empathizing with Tom and being appalled by him, but finally, settling on reinforcing allegiance between the spectator and the antihero, despite his crimes. To achieve this, Zaillian capitalizes on contemporary cultural movements and developments in television to create a challenging viewing experience that perversely entertains audiences by making them uncomfortable. The series critiques capitalism, consumption, and identity construction, and prompts viewers to ask hard questions about their own complicity as transnational consumers in the twenty-first century. This chapter also outlines potential lines of enquiry for future scholarship.

10. Backmatter