I.

This collection of original essays is dedicated to exploring the scope and nature of remakes in film and in related media, in Hollywood as well as in the cinemas of other nations. We are concerned with remakes as aesthetic or cinematic texts and as ideological expressions of cultural discourse set in particular times, contexts, and societies. Although there has been considerable recent work in film as an intertextual medium,^[1] the remake has received relatively little critical attention to date.^[2]

Remakes themselves, however, continue to proliferate. Case in point: the 1994 summer blockbuster Maverick . This film suggests some other genre and cultural boundaries we wish to explore beyond the obvious level of new films made from old. In what sense is the film Maverick a "remake" or "makeover" of the old James Garner television show that began in 1957, the year Mel Gibson, who plays Maverick in the movie, was born? What exactly are the boundaries of a remake? At what point does similarity become simply a question of influence? And what is the difference between a remake and the current television label "spin-off"? Darren Star, creator of Beverly Hills 90210 , agrees that his more recent show, Melrose Place , is a twenty-something spin-off of his earlier high school series, which, in turn, he claims, is a spin-off of the film The Breakfast Club . How do we define the complex relations between these texts?

Our collection of essays responds to these questions in a variety of ways and suggests some of the directions that others may follow, either with a more theoretical interest in defining "remakes" or with a more focused interest in cultural studies and the meanings of repetition in whatever shades of difference such texts may suggest.