Tumblr crosspost (10 June 2019)

An anon asked:

What are your thoughts on Pride and Prejudice (1995 miniseries)?

I said:

Oh, anon.

It’s pretty good TV, occasionally interesting in its takes on Austen, and I bitterly hate it. My #pride and prejudice 1995 tag (eta: p&p2 tag here) is dedicated almost entirely to hating it, for variously major and petty reasons.

My main ‘and THIS IS WHY’ posts are here and here, however. They’re older posts, but I haven’t budged since then.

(My main pet peeves are converting Darcy’s smiles to brooding or snappish UST, especially in the argument at Netherfield; the general broodification of Darcy; the wet shirt scene; the painfully influential I-will-only-marry-for-love scene; Wickham flirting with 11-year-old Georgiana; leaving out ‘God bless you’; …actually I’ll stop there.)

Tumblr crosspost (10 June 2019)

Another anon asked (almost immediately afterwards):

(Different anon here) but what are your thoughts on the 1940 P&P? (I def remember your hatred for the 1995 and might or might not have sourced you on that when people hate on the 2005)

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Tumblr crosspost (29 June 2019)

There’s obviously a lot I find endearing about Darcy, but one of my favourite small details is when he says in the letter that he’s told Elizabeth everything there is to know about his backstory with Wickham.

Because he actually didn’t mention one thing. We later find out that Wickham left a bunch of debts behind when he flounced out of Derbyshire, and Darcy paid them all off.

The money is nbd, but it would have been an easy opportunity to make himself look better. Instead, he just quietly left it out—a sort of tiny foreshadowing of how he’ll try to obscure his involvement with the Lydia/Wickham disaster later.

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Tumblr crosspost (30 June 2019)

In response to this post, an anon asked:

I 100% agree with you that it's time for a new P&P!! I'm so sorry if this is an annoying question - honestly feel free to ignore it! I'm obsessed with adaptation theory, especially analyzing opening scenes. If you were in charge, do you have any ideas for how you would open? Like how the 1995 one starts with the energetic galloping of Darcy and Bingley's horses entering town for the first time because the writer wanted to convey "that sense of energy" that he believed pervaded the entire book.

I replied:

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Tumblr crosspost (30 June 2019)

An anon asked, in response to some collective wishful thinking:

Who would you cast in the new pride and prejudice adaptation???

I replied:

Oh, I’m terrible with fancasting, sorry! It makes me feel old, lol, but I don’t really know most actors except the really big names (who I wouldn’t want for P&P).

I do think it’s important that, apart from parental figures, the cast basically runs from 15 to 30. P&P is fundamentally about young people, and I think that should be reflected in the casting. Elizabeth, Bingley, and Jane are in their early twenties. Mr Collins, Charlotte, Darcy, and Wickham are closer to 25 than 35. The teenage girls should be teenage girls.

I would really prefer casting where Jane, Darcy, and Wickham are very conventionally attractive while Elizabeth is more ordinary-looking. I’d also like to escape the tendency to use blondness/thinness as coding for personality.

Otherwise … I imagine there are a lot of options, really.

Tumblr crosspost (30 June 2019)

In response to my post about Darcy paying Wickham's Derbyshire debts, someone at Tumblr corrected me and said that, well, Darcy paid Wickham's debts after Lydia eloped with Wickham, that's why he didn't mention them earlier.

I replied:

Neither had any thing occurred in the intelligence of their Lambton friends that could materially lessen its weight. They had nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably had, and if not, it would certainly be imputed by the inhabitants of a small market-town where the family did not visit. It was acknowledged, however, that he was a liberal man, and did much good among the poor.

With respect to Wickham, the travellers soon found that he was not held there in much estimation; for though the chief of his concerns with the son of his patron were imperfectly understood, it was yet a well known fact that on his quitting Derbyshire he had left many debts behind him, which Mr Darcy afterwards discharged.