An Analysis of Joy Carol Oates

Suspension Without Suspense Though the film “Smooth Talk” maintains considerable fidelity to Joyce Carol Oates’s, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” the written form on which it is based, a single yet critical difference separates a literary masterpiece from a cheap flick’s misguided interpretation. The main pitfall of the film adaptation is that it portrays a concrete ending, effectively negating the possibility of alternative conclusions, an intentional device employed by the …

…delinquent experimentation or a final attempt to protect her family from this monster who will not leave until he has that for which he has come. Because “Smooth Talk” expands upon the original ending here and provides us with irreverent closure to Connie’s saga, much of the confusion is sadly lost in transposition to a film from the original story, effectively weakening the point across which Oates so expertly conveyed in the written original.