This thesis explores the question of adaptation in relation to Paul Thomas Anderson's film There Will Be Blood and Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!. I argue, the reason adaptation studies has not necessarily moved beyond its obsession with fidelity is because theorists have neglected to understand a larger, more general, film going audience does not participate in perpetuating the academic theories that would do so. I then examine There Will Be Blood and its self-awareness of its relation to literature and its use of Upton Sinclair's Oil!. Finally, this line of inquiry leads me to conclude that There Will Be Blood disavows a notion of authority that would always make the adapted book better than the film.

This thesis explores the question of adaptation in relation to Paul Thomas Anderson's film There Will Be Blood and Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!. I argue, the reason adaptation studies has not necessarily moved beyond its obsession with fidelity is because theorists have neglected to understand a larger, more general, film going audience does not participate in perpetuating the academic theories that would do so. I then examine There Will Be Blood and its self-awareness of its relation to literature and its use of Upton Sinclair's Oil!. Finally, this line of inquiry leads me to conclude that There Will Be Blood disavows a notion of authority that would always make the adapted book better than the film.