Jane-sploitation*

This has got to stop.

The publisher who brought us the explicably but undeservedly popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has moved on to its next target: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

The concept itself makes me wearily angry but the publisher's press appearances make me furious.

First, the concept, from the Canadian distributor's website:

"SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS expands the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, swashbuckling pirates, and other seaworthy creatures."

People, if you wanted to combine Austen and sea monsters, the logical novel would be Persuasion. That you opted for the catchy alliteration and easy title recognition confirms that you don't really care about the original text. Thankfully there are no more Austen novels with the "X and Y" title structure to be used.

Next, there's editor Jason Rekulak's absurd claim that he's resisting the trend to do something with vampires: "I know there are a lot of vampire fans, but the genre feels exhausted to me." Because remember, when he published P&P&Z, zombies weren't trendy at all.

Instead, he draws on a genre that hasn't been overplayed, mainly because it's not an actual genre (note also the sentence fragment):

Whereas Sea Monsters allowed us to draw inspiration from so many rich and diverse sources—most obviously Jules Verne novels and Celtic mythology, but also Jaws, Lost, Pirates of the Caribbean, even SpongeBob Squarepants!

Spongebob Squarepants might be a little tongue-in-cheeck (unless little Margaret Ferrars breaks into a plaintive rendition of "Where's Gary?") but the rest of the listed inspirations (Celtic mythology?) are too diverse to be brought together into anything cohesive.

But who needs cohesion when we have—wait for it—originality!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fans are counting on us to deliver something original, and I don’t think they will be disappointed.

Following up a bestselling Austen literary mashup with another Austen literary mashup? Very original.

And how does one achieve such originality? By employing the Grandpa Simpson method of literary adaptation: a little of column A and a little of column B. No, I'm not exaggerating:

Quoted in the Guardian story, original here:

"I thought it would be funny to do a 'new and improved' version of a classic that kids are forced to read in high school," he [Rekulak] told Publishers Weekly. "So I made a list of classic novels and a second list of elements that could enhance these novels—pirates, robots, ninjas, monkeys and so forth. When I drew a line between Pride and Prejudice and zombies, I knew I had my title and it was easy to envision how the book would work."

Because a title is totally a strong enough concept to base a book on. And because classic novels need improving: "Fix me, Jason Rekulak! Fix me! Readers throughout the decades and centuries didn't know what they were missing by reading Moby Dick without robots!"

We have crossed a line from the mashup, in which disparate elements are brought together to create a cohesive and new original, and are well into exploitation terrority, in which a popular author in the public domain is used to sell half-baked, poorly written books. It is disrespectful to the Austen, to Austen's novels, to those who appreciate the novels, and to anyone who values real originality and creativity.

The first defence against such criticisms is that extreme Austen-lovers have no sense of humour and take themselves too seriously. But bad writing is not "literary mashup" and exploitation is not originality. Someone needs to put her foot down and that someone might as well be me: Stop it, Quirk Books. It's fine with me that not everyone likes Austen. But there are a lot of people who like Austen very much, and they would prefer that she be left alone.


* credit for the term to the Guardian caption writer

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Snap Judgement/Review

The following paragraph was originally going to be my conclusion, but it's too important to leave until the end of an incredibly long post, so I'll just say it here:

What bothers me the most about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is that I know that people who have never read Pride and Prejudice before bought this book, but instead of getting Austen plus some cool zombie action, they are going to get decent zombie action and sub-par Austen. New readers are going to think that Austen is a poor writer who cannot develop characters or move a plot along. Instead of bringing new readers to Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies does a disservice to the text that its entire existence is based on.

---

What follows is sort of a rant, not quite an essay. Possibly in the same way that zombies are sort of dead but not quite inanimate. It is, however, long.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a lot like a zombie: lumbering, ill-mannered, and serving no purpose but to be nuisance to be dispatched. It's an interesting idea clumsily executed with little attention to important narrative elements such as pacing, style, and characterization. Considered as an "adaptation/alteration" of Austen, it's distractingly inconsistent; considered as a novel on its own merits, it's pedestrian.

The book follows the plot of Austen's novel closely, hitting almost all the major (and most of the minor) plot points. Seth Grahame-Greene's most evident contributions to the book are the zombie-related details (all five Bennet sisters are trained zombie fighters). The zombie scenes themselves range from clever to pedestrian; the quality of writing takes a noticeable dip as it perfunctorily describes action with little of Austen's irony or wit. Graham-Greene is most successful when he integrates the martial-arts world of zombie fighting with appropriate moments in the novel, such as Elizbeth's response to Darcy's first, insulting proposal (there's kicking). Graham-Greene also inserts references to zombies or the plague into characters' dialogue, with less success. Placing his own work immediately next to Austen's, in the same paragraph, further emphasizes the differences in style, tone, and skill, especially when he steps on her punchlines. For example, Graham-Greene alters Mr. Bennet's classic response to Mrs. Bennet's insistence that he make Elizabeth marry Mr. Collins. The new version reads as follows. Guess which part is added.

An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do; for I shall not have my best warrior resigned to the service of a man who is fatter than Buddha and duller than the edge of a learning sword. (88)

Yes, Grahame-Smith's idea of humour consists of fat jokes, double entendres about balls, and vomitting. Classy.

Grahame-Smith is not only the co-author of this book, but also an editor. Sections of the original are cut completely (the portrait scene is missing from the Pemberley visit) or condensed. Some chapters begin on the left-hand page and end on the following right-hand facing page. While this was presumably done to make the narrative shorter, it paradoxically results in making it read slower. How can this be?

Two reasons. First, the pleasure of getting into any novel lies in getting caught up in the story and the characters. Cutting down Pride and Prejudice means cutting back on characterization and lessening the reader's investment in that most basic of questions: what happens next? Just because something is shorter does not mean that it will read shorter; flow is as important as length. Secondly, Austen's rhythm, which carries the reader along, is disrupted. Why? Because Graham-Smith inexplicably takes it upon himself to edit Austen's prose. He makes seemingly minor edits that ruin entire paragraphs. Take, for example, this paragraph, in which Jane finally realizes that Miss Bingley is not as nice as she seems. This is the altered version:

As she predicted, four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him [Mr. Bingley]. She endeavoured to persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be blind to Miss Bingely's inattention. After waiting at home every morning for a fortnight, the visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay and the alteration of her manner would allow Jane to deceive herself no longer. The letter which she wrote to her sister will prove what she felt. (113)

All the words are Austen's except the first three (which introduces a vague pronoun reference, but hey, nobody's perfect), yet the paragraph comes to a clunky stop with that final sentence. Here's the original, with the excised portions in bold:

Four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him. She endeavoured to persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be blind to Miss Bingley's inattention. After waiting at home every morning for a fortnight, and inventing every evening a fresh excuse for her, the visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay, and yet more, the alteration of her manner, would allow Jane to deceive herself no longer. The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister will prove what she felt.

The first eliminated phrase relates to Jane's characterization—of course she would find an excuse for Caroline Bingley's rudeness. The second excision is unforgiveable because the "yet more" indicates the importance of the detail. Taken as a whole, the paragraph builds, starting with a short sentence, culminating in the long third sentence and then transitioning smoothly to the letter in the final sentence. The altered paragraph reads oddly because the sentences are of a more uniform length—there is little variation to maintain interest and the repeated rhythm is annoying. The last omission, "on this occasion", seems excusable, yet it is more precise than the edited version (Jane writes more than one letter to Elizabeth) while the edited version is more abrupt.

Grahame-Greene's own writing could have used a better editor. In a sentence quoted by Entertainment Weekly as an example of his cleverness, Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Bingley find that the Netherfield kitchen staff has been killed by zombies. To prevent further infection, Mr. Darcy must decapitate the dead servants: "He then made quick work of beheading the slaughtered staff, upon which Mr. Bingley politely vomited into his hands" (82). For "upon which" substitute "whereupon" and it won't sound like poor Bingley threw up on his servants and on his hands. Here's another example where "upon which" should not be used next to a noun: "Kitty put the creature down with a shot to the face, upon which Lydia placed her barrel against its head and promptly dispatched it to Hell" (91).

In addition to awkward writing, the zombie part of the novel needs a clearer narrative arc. It is uninteresting to have the Bennet sisters already be capable zombie killers—there are few opportunities for tension or development. It would have been much more fun to have mysterious creatures appear, slowly at first, and watch people figure out what was going on (see: Dracula). The novel already has an education component, as Elizabeth learns to distrust first impressions; adding how to kill zombies to the mix could have been fun. Moreover, the best zombie texts (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) have used zombies as a metaphor, pointing out how grind of modern society (dreary job, mass consumerism) reduce us to nothing more than hollow shells of our former selves. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes no advantage of the potential for social commentary, even as it appropriates a classic work of social satire.

Having already gone into great detail about the writing style, I'll spare you, my poor reader, the litany of abuses visited upon characters, whose inconsistent behaviour (would Lydia have ever paid sufficient attention in class to master the art of killing zombies? Would Mrs. Gardiner ever cheat on her husband? Would Mr. Collins be so dismayed over Charlotte's death that he would hang himself on her favourite tree?) could lead to diagnoses of schizophrenia.

Instead, I will end with what I believe is the most unforgiveable of Grahame-Smith's additions, pure cliché which any good writer would blush to acknowledge:

For the more she dwelled on the subject, the more powerful she felt; not for her mastery of the deadly arts, but for her power over the heart of another. What a power it was! But how to wield it? Of all the weapons she had commanded, Elizabeth knew the least of love; and of all the weapons in the world, love was the most dangerous. (213)

And here I was, thinking that love was a battlefield.

PPZ used

I want to buy a used copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Here's why.

I've been thinking about the book that many are calling a "literary mash-up" and why it makes me angry. I didn't like how my anger suggested that I was a defensive Austen purist (whatever that might mean), since I believe that good scholars should be open-minded and curious.

This evening I figured out what was actually bothering me about the phenomenon:

The new author is making 100% of the money off a work where he contributes 10% of the text.

Fuck that.

Considering how much trouble Austen had finding a publisher (an early version of Pride and Prejudice was rejected; she had to buy back her manuscript of Northanger Abbey for £10 when the publisher who had bought the rights decided not to publish it), it kind of sucks to see someone else capitalizing (in both senses of the word) on her popularity. I think that it does take skill to mash two or more things together in an interesting way (see: The Grey Album; Girl Talk), but in the examples I list, there is much more manipulation, reworking, and fragmentation. Perhaps I am adhering to a stricter definition of the mash-up than most, but I can't help feel that PPZ's experiments in mixing multiple forms is as exploitative as it is creative.

But if I buy my copy used, then my money does not go to the publisher or the author at all, but the bookstore. And if I buy it at a used book store in town (i.e., not online), then at least I would be supporting a local business.

And if anyone out there wants to sell me their used copy, let me know.

Going gentle into that good night

In reference my previous Onion-beats-up-on-Bush post here:

After one more (Spiders Hatch in Bush's Brain), it's over.

I'm still not sure I completely get it.

The Onion's feud with Bush continues

A follow-up from a previous post about The Onion's series of satirical news stories detailing increasingly violent things happening to outgoing President Bush.

The latest:

Single-Engine Cessna Crashes Into Bush

It's like a morbid cross between fan-fiction and a snuff film, if said film was to be rendered as a newspaper article.

How Jane Austen movies should really be watched

At the very least, I wouldn't be (as?) angry at Becoming Jane.

Saw these guys, Mostly Water Theatre, at the Edmonton Fringe Fest this year.



Written rules, with a link to a slightly different radio version (with clearer audio) here.

I think it's really quite clever, though it's "drawing-room", not "parlour".

Oh for fuck's sake, Andrew Davies

PBS (in North America) and ITV (in the UK) are currently broadcasting a "Jane Austen Season", comprised of six TV adaptations of Austen's novels (four of them brand new). As such, it's an excellent opportunity to send Andrew Davies, screenwriter and adapter of the 1995 wet-T-shirt Pride and Prejudice and the latest Northanger Abbey, out on the publicity circuit, resulting in this infuriating, kind of stupid, and just plain weird fluff piece on CNN.com.

To sum up the main points:

1. Mr. Davies claims that Austen's plots are actually driven by sex and that the stories are more contemporary than people think they are.

Me: By trying to overcome a popular misconception, Davies overstates the issue. Austen's plots make use of the traditional structure of the marriage plot, meaning that sex could be one of the driving points. However, the plots are also often driven by social forces like lack of money (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility) or encroaching changes in the class structure (Emma). And by concentrating so much on sex, Davies neglects the importance of love, of Austen's exploration of what it means to love someone feelingly but also rationally. And it's not like there isn't sex in the novels. Sex is what drives Lydia towards Wickham and what, one generation earlier, attracted Mr. Bennet to Mrs. Bennet. And look where that got them.

2. Mr. Davies likes to emphasize the physicality of the characters, admiring the heroines:

"Their bodies are quite a substantial part of what they bring to the whole sexual equation. Their hair and their shoulders and their necks and their breasts" -- ripe in decolletage -- "are all on show, part of the whole deal."

(Me: Ew?)

and the heroes:

"And the men, too," he goes on. "I have men on horseback riding very fast, working up a sweat, in boots and tight breeches, all that kind of thing."

Me: Okay, look. Yes, they had sex in the eighteenth-century. In fact, they had lots of sex, and lots of bastard babies, and lots and lots of STDs. But none of that appears in Austen for a reason. A lack of physicality in characterization and plotting means that whenever characters do move (dance, walk, move to a closer chair, inch a chair forward ever so slightly), its significance is greater. It is a matter of scale, and the scale Austen was working in was the drawing room, not the red light district.

3. Mr. Davies has mother issues:

"My mother was a difficult and unfathomable woman," declares Davies, "and I started trying to understand women at an early age."

Me: No comment.

4. Mr. Davies also seems to base his creative decision on his personal whims, not whether the new additions further overrated components such as plot, theme or characterization:

"All these novelists choose the scenes that they're going to write, and imply the scenes that they don't write -- and quite often I think the scenes they DON'T write are the scenes I want to see."

Me: I know that fidelity criticism in film adaptation is unproductive. I know that a more useful approach is to think of an adaptation of a novel as another reading, another interpretation. I know that adapations of classic novels often say more about the time that the adaptation was made rather than the time period that it portrays. But damn if I don't want to strangle Davies for his arrogance. I have yet to see Davies' version of Northanger Abbey so I'll reserve judgement on that. But that won't stop me from hatin' on his interviews.

P.S. I actually really like the Davies adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (wonkily paced ending notwithstanding). Why must creative people give interviews?

The key to productivity

...seems to be having somewhere to be and not letting yourself go out and play until the day's page goal has been accomplished.

Birthday party yesterday + Canada Day festivities tonight = 19 pages so far.

I'm getting there. Another page on Lovelace and convenience, something about space and the body, a little something about Lovelace and cover stories, and then on to a larger section on the heterotopic aspect of the Sincalir House.

Published; Writing

First, the good news: The issue of Persuasions On-Line in which I'm published has gone live. It's an entire issue about the 2005 big screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Can you handle it?

The bad news: I've been suffering from writer's block. Sigh.

Running page count: 10

Best sentence of the day: "The prostitutes become perverse midwives of a monstrous affair."

Becoming Jane: Another opinion

This is the review I should have written, instead of my overlong, jetlagged rant of a snap judgement.

Incidentally, I stand by my initial assessment of the ending. It's not bittersweet; rather, it's inaccurate and illogical.

Lyme Regis (May 5-7)

The party from Uppercross passing down by the now deserted and melancholy-looking rooms, and still descending, soon found themselves on the seashore; and lingering only, as all must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all, proceeded towards the Cobb...

– Jane Austen, Persuasion

Lyme Regis is beautiful. It's a little seaside town that used to be a major port, and was only a port because of the Cobb, a man made harbour that consists of two "arms" of stone (one much bigger and longer than the other) jutting out into the sea. Lyme Regis was a part of the tour because a significant part of Austen's novel Persuasion occurs at Lyme Regis. Also, I wanted to deserve gaze and gaze upon the sea as well. It was worth it.

We arrived in the evening and after finding our B&B, headed down the beach for dinner. Lyme Regis at dusk seems particularly pretty:


The next morning we went to the Cobb. It really is a huge stone structure with uneven (and slanted) surfaces that are slippery when wet. Neil, who I'm lodging with, mentioned that every year, at least one or two people get swept off the Cobb in particularly bad weather. I was grateful that the weather was nice.


The east side of the Cobb (pictured above) is the "outside" of the harbour, and the waters are noticeably choppier than the water on the other side. Nicole and I walked all the way to the end.


Walking the Cobb is a little scary because it is a bit tilted and if you slip off, there's no lifeguard (it's the damn ocean). But it's exhilerating to be that far out in the ocean. The wind is really strong, according to Nicole it smells salty, and everything feels fresh. The views are also spectacular—not just of the ocean, but also of the coast. It was beautiful.

While on the Cobb, we couldn't resist taking a photo of me "falling" off the stair s, à la Louisa Musgrove. And yes, that is a Jane Austen reference. Neither of us actually fell and broke our heads when Capt. Wentworth failed to catch us, though.


It was also a minor miracle that neither Nicole or I twisted or sprained our ankles, because that afternoon we decided to walk the beach (at low tide) from Lyme to the neighbouring village of Charmouth, and the walk itself was literally a bit rocky.


The scenery is just breathtaking. Needless to say, though the walk took us an hour and half, we stopped to take a lot of photos. By the time we reached Charmouth, we were tired and took the bus back to Lyme instead.


The next morning, our last morning, dawned drizzly. Nonetheless, we walked out to the Cobb one last time. It was not as welcoming as it had been the day before:


But we still walked to the end. The waves were huge and coming up on top of the Cobb. A woman walking behind us got totally soaked by one wave.

Generally, Lyme was really fun, though I was really sick of potatoes by the end of the trip. I'm not sure why, but the English really like their potato-based sidedishes. It's not whether you want fries (I mean, "chips"), rice or a salad with your fish, it's whether you want chips or a baked potato (which then leads to the question of how you would like your "jacket potato"?). Even if you get the vegetables, there are definitely going to be potatoes.

Overall it was a really, really fun trip. If anyone ever wants to go to Lyme, I'll give you the contact info for our nice B&B (which served breakfast on a trolley that we rolled into the room! And which had a "Turbo Toilet" that sounded like the angriest toilet in the world when flushed) and a list of places to go. We did neglect the museums and whatnot, but who can compete with a view like this?

Many many many more photos from Lyme here (don't say I didn't warn you about the "many").

Jane Austen Tour: Chawton and Winchester (May 5)

This past weekend was a long weekend in the UK, so my friend Nicole and I embarked on a Jane Austen tour of England. Stops included: Chawton Cottage, where Austen spent the last eight years of her life and where she wrote or revised all of her novels; Winchester Cathedral, where she is buried; and Lyme Regis, where a significant part of her novel Persuasion takes place. We'd both already been to Bath (another important stop) so we skipped that, which was for the best because the itinerary was already full.

First stop, Jane Austen's House at Chawton Cottage. Austen moved here in 1809 and lived here until she died in 1817. Despite being called a cottage, it's more like a solid red brick house.

View from the front:


Austen's house from the side:


Though it is called a house and museum, the "musuem" part is a little suspect. It was more like a simulacrum of a museum, in which objects that were marginally or potentially related to Austen were displayed. You can see, for example, copies of Austen's letters mounted on the wall, a tea set that the family would have used in the time period, a dining table that was in the Chawton Great House that was never in the cottage while Austen lived there, a faded lock of her father's hair, a copy of a contemporary watercolour of Austen's childhood home Steventon, and, for a few months only, costumes worn by the actors in that other piece of Austen simulacrum, Becoming Jane.

I knew that no educational value would be gleaned by going to the house. The trip was indeed a pilgrimage more than anything else. Because house itself was converted to flats in the 19th century before being bought after WWII and restored, it's difficult to know how close the building resembles its early 19th century incarnation. Nonetheless, it was still meaningful to walk through the same physical space that Austen did. To think: I have occupied the same coordinates in space as Jane Austen, time (200 years) notwithstanding.

From Chawton we cabbed it back to Alton and took a bus to Winchester (yes, logistics were tough on this trip) to see where Austen is buried. Winchester is a very pretty town and we caught a bit of the local market, which included loud flowersellers and really fresh strawberries, while there (roses were reduced from £5 to £4! That's 20% off!). After a short coffee break, we headed to Winchester Cathedral:


And saw Jane Austen's final resting place:


For those who care, here's what it says:

In Memory of
JANE AUSTEN,
youngest daughter of the late
Rev. GEORGE AUSTEN,
formerly rector of Steventon in this county.
She departed this Life on the 18th of July 1817,
aged 41, after a long illness supported with
the patience and the hopes of a Christian.

The benevolence of her heart,
the sweetness of her temper
and the extraordinary endowments of her mind
obtained the regard of all who knew her, and
the warmest love of her intimate connections.

Their grief is in proportion to their affection
they know their loss to be irreparable,
but in their deepest afflication they are consoled
by a firm but humble hope that her charity,
devotion, faith and purity have rendered
her soul acceptable in the sight of her
REDEEMER.

We quietly sat there for a few minutes, but time was of the essence so we didn't stay long. We made it to the train station with mere minutes to spare (and after buying tickets, pretty much seconds to spare) and took the train to Lyme Regis, which will definitely be another post. More photos of Chawton and Winchester here, and Nicole's insightful report (she is a journalist, after all) is here.

Jane Austen: The Portrait

Fri. May 4: The Portrait

The first time I visited London five years ago, one thing I really wanted to do was go to the National Portrait Gallery and see the watercolour and pencil sketch of Jane Austen that's there. I was staying in Oxford at the time so I made day trips into London. When I arrived at the National Portrait Gallery, I looked at the floor plan to figure out where she was, took the escalator up, wandered through the rooms, and was greeted with a sign stating that the 18th century collection was currently touring America. Damn colony, always stirring up trouble.

Today, then, I went to the National Gallery and took a guided tour, and afterwards popped around the corner (of Trafalgar Square!) to see Jane Austen. I was on a mission and tried not to get distracted by the portraits of other familiar names (Samuel Johnson! Robert Adam! Addison! Steele!). Ironically, in my purposeful search through the gallery, I actually missed the portrait the first time through.


It's small. I've seen reproductions of the portrait, of course, but the actual sketch is the size of a small postcard and it's placed in an oval frame, making it even smaller. The portrait is mounted under glass in its own display case rather than on the wall (which is why I missed it). It is rather out of place amidst much bigger portraits of other artists like John Keats and Samuel Coleridge (yes, it is housed in the Romantics room even though Austen was not a Romantic; no, don't get me started). And rather than being painted by a professional portrait painter, Austen's portrait (a sketch, really) was painted by an amateur, her sister Cassandra.

What struck me the most about the painting, which I had never quite noticed before, is how she's holding herself, or rather, how she's not. She seems to be leaning back in the chair a little bit, slumped, with her arms crossed in resignation. As a pose, it's rather... modern. Unrefined. Certainly informal, unlike all the other portraits in the surrounding galleries. Fast forward a century and one imagines that the pose would fit into the Bloomsbury group or Dorothy Parker's circle—all she's missing is a cigarette in one hand.

Do I think that's what she looked like? I think it's a partial likeness. What I like about this portrait, though, which all the subsequent "improvements" erase, is the sense of character and personality that comes through in her expression and body language. The woman in the portrait is a little wary of the world, is literally observing it askance. That pleases me very much.

Posted: late Friday, May 4, when I should be sleeping.

Becoming Jane: Snap Judgement

So even though I'm jetlagged and had a pint on a less-than-full stomach, I still can't resist posting on the Jane Austen biopic, which I saw tonight in London with Nicole. Be forewarned: I'm tired and this is rambling.

There are a large number of things wrong with this movie. First of all, it is just a bad movie. Period. It is poorly directed, poorly acted (with one exception), poorly scipted and very poorly plotted to the point where you think the movie is going to end at about five or six different points... and yet it continues. It is only two hours long, but it feels much longer, with no sense of a narrative arc or even act breaks.

Initially, the movie is merely boring, as Anne Hathaway's performance fails to make the viewer care about Austen at all. Hathaway's accent sounds affected and her line delivery occasionally too rushed, as if she thinks that saying something quickly automatically makes it clever. Hathaway is let down by a script that characterizes Austen as (as Nicole put it) a petulant teenager who does not know how to behave in society. There is too much Elizabeth Bennet in this portrayal; methinks a little wish fulfillment was at play on the screenwriters' parts.

But boredom is soon overtaken by incredulity, as the flirtation noted in Austen's letters escalates to a marriage proposal and then an attempted elopement. Austen is faced with not one, not two, but three — THREE! — suitors who all propose marriage at one point or another, and sometimes on more than one occasion. That is not an embarrassment of riches—it is just an embarrassment.

The movie pays little attention to Austen's development as a writer and when it does, it presents the situation as one in which Jane Austen had to have her heart broken in order to write great novels. In other words, she wrote well because of a man. The movie presents Austen with an intriguing dilemma between being a woman writer and being a wife, but does so by having Austen meet a highly popular contemporary (but older) novelist, Ann Radcliffe, who wrote Gothic novels which are nothing like Austen's novels, and which Austen herself satirized in Northanger Abbey. The Radcliffe reference makes little sense, and that's only assuming that the viewer gets the reference in the first place (most wouldn't).

The movie's basic premise, that Austen and Tom Lefroy could not marry for monetary reasons (she is penniless, he solely dependent on an older uncle for money and career advancement) though they loved each other dearly, tells us little about the author of Pride and Prejudice or Emma. Moreover, it turns the movie into a melodramatic tearjerker about star-crossed lovers, doing so most egregiously in the stupid epilogue in which the actors are aged 20 years. The epilogue is filled with ridiculous details—Austen is recognized as the author of Pride and Prejudice even though she published it anonymously, she gives a reading for a circle of society people in London, before which she accidentally runs into Tom Lefroy who is there with his eldest daughter, who is named Jane. Turns out the real Lefroy did name his eldest daughter Jane (as we learn at the movie's end, in which textual pieces of information are shown), but to take that fact as proof that he still loved Austen (assuming that he did in the first place) is to ignore the fact that 'Jane' was a not uncommon name in the late 18th century. And really, the entire epilogue was wholly unncessary.

Finally, some other points:

• The movie incorporates the existence of one of Austen's brothers, George, who was born with a developmental disability. In the movie, George is shown to be included in family fesitivies, and several characters, including Austen, use a type of sign language to communicate with him. In reality, a very young George Austen was boarded with another family who were paid to take care of him for the rest of his life, and the Austen family had little contact with him. There seems to be little point to the revisionist history of George Austen, except perhaps to redeem the Austen family, somehow, for something.
• The actress who plays Jane Austen's cousin Eliza de Feuillade bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Ehle in the Pride and Prejudice mini-series. I'm not sure if it was deliberate or not.
  
• The incorporation of plot points and lines from Pride and Prejudice was superfluous. What kind of imagination did Austen have if she based every incident in her novels on real life?
• In one nocturnal scene, Jane Austen is inspired (by love, of course) to start writing Pride and Prejudice. She begins with the first chapter, and later in the montage we hear a passage from the middle of the novel. It is impossible for a person to type half of Pride and Prejudice in one night, much less write it out by quill pen.
• The movie's one redeeming factor is James McAvoy's performance as Tom Lefroy. McAvoy makes Lefroy a charming, likeable rogue who is also smart enough to talk about novels. Also, it doesn't hurt that McAvoy is a very attractive man.
• Director Julian Jarrods occasionally uses a shaky, hand-held camera, as if to give certain scenes more intimacy or emotional heft. Instead, the technique comes off as showy and self-indulgent. Moreover, when it's a period film, the illusion of realism is weaker because of the very showiness of the art direction and costume design.

And I guess that's more than long enough for now. Tomorrow: actual research.

Post time: 11:08 p.m., Wed. April 25 in London.

Jane Austen's portraits: Mary weighs in (I)

The disputed Rice Portrait of a young girl who might or might not be Jane Austen has failed to sell at auction on Thursday, ending an odd period in the mainstream media where Jane Austen's appearance was a topic of discussion. The portrait, and a recent controversy in which a British publisher retouched another Austen portrait to make her look prettier for public consumption, touches on several issues about authorship, appearance and the Austen industry. One day, I will figure out how to write an entire, publishable article about this, but in the meantime, here is part I of my blogthoughts.

1. The Rice Portrait
To sum up, a portrait of a young girl painted circa 1800 (give or take 10 years) was put up for auction in New York on Thursday with the selling price anticipated to be from $400,000–$800,000. The portrait is owned by the Rice family, descedents of Austen's brother Edward. The family claims that the portrait is of Austen, but there are no collaborating documents or mention of Austen having her portrait done in any letters. Though the painting's provenance was uncertain enough that the National Portrait Gallery in London wouldn't accept it, Christie's was happy to auction it as a portrait of Jane Austen. However, bids for the portrait failed to meet the reserve and it was withdrawn from sale.

I'm secretly quite pleased about this. The lack of interest in the portrait reassures me that people don't really care about Austen's appearance, at least not to the extent of $400,000. Moreover, considering that another painting by the same artist sold a few years ago for a $56,000, the anticipated asking price seems a little high, and shall I say... greedy. Also, an author's appearance should (ideally) have no bearing on how we read his/her works.

But, as with other attempts to "prettify" the author (more about those later), the Rice Portrait portrays a young girl who is undoubtedly attractive. The portrait is a stark contrast to the one accepted portrait of Austen in the National Gallery in London, in which she looks a little peeved and well, not that pretty. In a way, the completed Rice Portrait acts like a backwards corrective, proving that Austen was pretty at one point in ther life (pre-spinsterhood?). That begs the question, though, of why, if Austen was such a pretty young woman, she never got married?

More on the larger issue of the history of prettified Austen portraits in another post.

Jane Austen and Female Self-Worth

The British press is abuzz this week with all sorts of articles on Jane Austen, due to Friday's release of Becoming Jane. Much of it isn't worth reading, but Germaine Greer's take on why Jane Austen is still relevant to women today (and, I would argue, to men) in The Guardian is particularly sharp, and gets to the core of why Austen's novels are not about getting the man:

The point is not to achieve the man at any cost. He is not the prey or the prize but the symbol of merit. The possibility that there may be no such man is always present. Part of our gratified surprise at the Austen happy ending is that there was a man around with the good sense to see that a woman without rich and powerful connections might be a pearl beyond price, a woman whose company was reward in itself. We know that she is good company because we have been seeing the world through her disabused eyes. We go on reading and watching Jane Austen because she is good for us.

More here.

Best. Acceptance Speech. Ever.

Emma Thompson accepts a Golden Globe for best screenplay for 1995's Sense and Sensibility.



Last Austen-related post for a while. Promise.

Becoming Jane, Becoming angry

Oh, my poor eyebrows. They've been raised so many times tonight at some rather disconcerting details about the upcoming Austen biopic Becoming Jane.

First, this imdb review in which the reviewer notes that the script and Hathaway fail to convey the intelligence that Austen must have possessed. One detail warranted my posting this at all:

she [Hathaway] looks quite resplendent, dashing across the hills in a billowing red dress to watch the lads skinny-dipping

Excuse me?

And then there's this excerpt from an article in the Telegraph:

When, in the film, Jane and Tom decide to elope to London, it is impossible not to think of Lydia Bennet making a dash for it with her charming, ever-so-slightly-caddish Wickham.

Elope to London? That is so inaccurate that to call it a lie would be understatement. Most Austen biographers (except for the one who was a consultant on the biopic) do not think Austen's relationship with Tom Lefroy developed beyond a clear attraction, much less to elopement plans.

For a long time, word was that the movie was based on Claire Tomalin's measured biography of Austen, but now it has emerged that it was John Spence's more problematic interpretation of Austen's life that was the source material (oh my god! there's a movie tie-in!!). I studied Spence's biography in a grad course and found it highly speculative in parts, especially the section regarding Lefroy. I'll post about the Spence bio some other time (what joy to look forward to!), but knowing how adaptation and movie-making can play with facts, I suspect that the movie will exaggerate or extend Spence's already tenuous claims even further.

The movie opens March 9 in the UK. Perhaps I'll be able to catch it when I'm there in April. Poor North Americans must wait until August. And on a slightly different note, the UK website has the trailer, which a) sounds odd with a British-accented Voice of God and b) uses the score from Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility. What?

Anthony Lane on Pride & Prejudice (2005)

I have been rewarded for my microfilming efforts (see post below). The review I so effortfully extracted is bitchy and hilarious.

In Anthony Lane's review of the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice film adaptation for The New Yorker (14 Nov. 2005, pg. 101-102), he asks,

"What would Mr. Bennet make of the film? He would be left wondering, I suspect, why God gave him only two eyebrows to raise."

And of Lady Catherine's surprise visit to Longbourn:

"And whence this knocking at the door after dark, which brings the night-shirted Bennets downstairs with quivering candles? It is Lady Catherine, come to bawl and bark at Lizzie in a surprising reenactment of the drill-sergeant routine from Full Metal Jacket."

Though I do think Lane hits a little low in comparing Keira Knightley to another movie icon:

"Like the queen in Aliens, she extends her famous underbite and gets down to business. Widening her eyes to maximum chocolaty hue, she stares into his..."

Lane concludes by noting that

"Any resemblance to scenes and characters created by Miss Austen is, of course, entirely coincidental."

List: Reasons I hate the movie Pride & Prejudice (2005)

To be specific, I am referring to the 2005 Keira Knightley adaptation of one of the greatest novels of all time, which I recently watched again for purposes academic.

1. Keira Knightley's performance. She rushes her lines, can't emote, and the director insists on shooting her face directly from the front—not her best angle. I can't believe she was nominated for an Oscar for this.
2. Jena Malone's voice. The actress plays Lydia as if she always spoke in falsetto. Perhaps it was the only way the American Malone could deliver the English accent.
3. A tonally different, quiet performance from Donald Sutherland. The man elevates anyone in the same scene as him (ahem, Keira), but his laid back, grave performance doesn't fit with the movie's gigglier tone. It's as if he's on Valium while everyone else is on Prozac.
   
4. The Script. Oh, god, the script. Mixes Austen's sharp dialogue with stupid lines like "For god's sake, leave me alone!" or "Don't judge me, Lizzie! Don't you dare judge me!"
5. The Bonte-fication of the movie in the second half, including Knightley standing at the top of a wind-blown precipice, an outdoor, rain-soaked proposal at what looks to be fake Roman ruins, and a sunrise reconciliation in a foggy field.
   
6. And finally (and most egregiously), the kissy ending. It's just as moronic as I remembered it. Full capitulation to romance conventions. To wit:

There's more, but that's enough for now.