Why not call it anti-feminist?
From a review of a new movie about Jane Austen, wherein the author is taught to write by a guy who in real life she actually saw three times:
“The idea that Tom Lefroy sparked Jane’s brilliance is totally foolish,” says Deirdre Le Faye, author of “Jane Austen: A Family Record.” “She came from a very smart family. By the time she met Tom she was already an accomplished writer.”
And yet, there Movie Tom is, roguishly criticizing a young Jane’s sophomoric writing and introducing her to grown-up novels like the racy “Tom Jones” - which historians say Austen had actually read long before meeting Lefroy.
We won’t suggest it’s anti-feminist. We’ll just suggest Elinor Dashwood would be appalled.
Sounds pretty anti-feminist to me. Why even come up with the idea that Austen was a bumbling neophyte until Dick-Man showed her the way? Can anybody name a biopic of a great male writer where the dude can’t write for shit until some girl he meets gives him some pointers?
One Austen fan is hopeful:
“Yes, it’s a blend of fact and fiction,” says Marsha Huff, president of the Jane Austen Society of North America. “But hopefully some people will be inspired to dig a little deeper and find out which parts are true.”
Wouldn’t count on it, Marsha. The only reality today is what’s on TV or in the movies. True story: not long ago I came across someone explaining the concept of “Greeks bearing gifts” by referring to Brad Pitt and the mouths of “gift horses.” For a moment I was startled, then realized that of course the story of the Trojan horse, along with the thing about the teeth of horses and, for that matter, about half the contents of my head, is part of the ancient past. It’s Sumerian. Who reads that old cuneiform crap anymore? But the movie Troy — that they’ve seen! And lo and behold, when I googled Troy (the Brad Pitt extravaganza) I found that every single film reviewer had independently come up with the same highly original cutesy line about looking the Trojan horse in the mouth — thus happily muddling two completely different allusions.
And there you have it: The Trojans were a bunch of computer hackers who were just minding their own business, writing virus programs and what have you, when some crazy Greek guys came along and offered them a horse, but when the Trojans looked in its mouth, Brad Pitt jumped out and stole all their condoms. And Jane Austen dotted her i’s with hearts until some guy pronged her and showed her his Playboy woodcuts, which proves that porn is good for women.
20 Responses to “Why not call it anti-feminist?”
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simply wondered says:
timeat viola at dona ferentes, i reckon. making novels into films is almost always done badly, but yes the errors so rarely seem to involve active female/passive male… odd that.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:55 pm EST -
Ann Bartow says:
There was a story on NPR today about how many Americans don’t understand that New Mexico is part of this country:
http://www.npr.org/templates/s.....d=12512979 -
Infidel says:
What about that unforgettable performance of Ben Kingsly as William Makepeace Thackeray being influenced by the likes of Frances Burney? Just making that up, but what the hell- that might make a movie.
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flawedplan says:
I don’t have the schooling to get the references though I’ve heard of Jane Austen and Trojan Horses, and it ticks me off when I pick up my learning about such things the way you describe, which happens all the time and I don’t realize it til I’m laughed out of the room by people who know their books.
But I’ve been looking for a thread here where I can go on about something, and can’t contain myself so am going off-topic, feel free to delete, I just have to tell you this.
Remember Simone D? Last week a NY MAN was in the same boat and the internet complaints convinced the hospital administrator to honor his wishes and hold off on shocking him.
How is this possible? Simone D generated so many email complaints the state health director shut down his contact page (if you go there to complain the page says it’s temporarily disabled). Her story had much more traction than John Kelly and went on for a month, and she didn’t win her battle. It took less than one week of activism to get the same state to change its mind for the man. Is electroshock a feminist issue or not?! Same situation, but her wishes were denied, his were honored, how anyone can miss the sexism is beyond me.
Mindfreedom has the story.
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Omphaloskeptic says:
Augh, I heard about the Austen movie and was very afraid; and now, the worst has come. Gives me a pain in my heart.
Very pleased to have happened upon this blog, though! Saw you over on the IBTP forums.
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Violet says:
FlawedPlan, thank you very very much for the alert on that ECT business. I’m going to see what I can find out and put up a post about it.
Re pop culture references, there wouldn’t be any problem with learning through movies and TV if the goddamn Hollywood freaks wouldn’t introduce so much bogus crap into everything they do. The real history/original literature is almost always far more fascinating/compelling than the puerile crap they replace it with.
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Violet says:
Omphaloskeptic, welcome! Love your name.
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simply wondered says:
just to put in a word for my industry, you have to do something with a 900 page novel if you are going to fit it into 90 mins screen time…
i too like omphaloskeptic’s name… -
Violet says:
Sure, but we’re not talking about simplifying. We’re talking about distorting, and not just novels. The weird thing is that the distortion doesn’t generally produce a better story, or even a story that’s as good as the real one.
The cartoon movie Anastasia is a hilarious example of an utterly senseless trashing of the truth. Rasputin and that whole deal is one of the most fascinating episodes in history; you can’t improve on it. It would make a cool movie! Instead, whoever made Anastasia decided to tell a completely different story with characters that bore no resemblance to the real people. Why not just start from scratch?
I remember when I saw the Charlton Heston movie about the Lewis and Clark expedition, I was floored. The L&C expedition was pretty amazing, with lots of fascinating material. Instead the scriptwriters invented a wholly fictitious love triangle involving the two men and another woman back east, plus a love story between one of the guys and Sacagawea. Bizarre. There was almost nothing in there about the real L&C expedition. Again, why not just do a new story from scratch?
But this isn’t just annoying; it’s harmful. These distortions all too often are in the direction of transforming real women into love puppets, two-dimensional figments of male imaginations. This biopic of Jane Austen is just bullshit sexism. (And note that it’s a biography of her, not an adaptation of one of her novels.) “Becoming” Jane my foot.
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simply wondered says:
“annoying” “harmful” - oh yes and more.
forgive the approaching lecture on film finance for dummies (very appropriate given the people who do it) but the industry in the states and almost as much in the uk is predicated on not doing anything to give people an excuse to kick your arse when it fails. less about avoiding failure than having a really watertight looking series of excuses for when you fail (as everyone will and has at some point). fail, of course, means making a picture that loses lots of money.
what is perceived as the easiest way to do this is having names around. typically actors - ‘but i got cruise to do it; it must be a winner…’ but also writers, directors producers - anyone whose name was on the last piece of crap that made some money (or in the UK, lost a bit of film council money but people said it really deserved to have done better and it won a bronze eccles cake at rotherham international - ie ‘we have films from lancashire too!’ - film festival). this currently includes that jane austen woman who never answers her phone - if you don’t know her, she’s a bit like JK Rowling, but i think she produced that pride and prejudice film and went on to write a book about it.
ahem where was i? if you are unfortunate enough to have to deal with a name who isn’t dead, they get their say according to how powerful they are, and the more money they bring, the more power they have. so they can re-write and make helpful suggestions to improve stuff like: make my part bigger, make my character nicer bigger faster stronger, and as they are usually men, this could well involve being the real author of those jane austen books. you still have the reassuring whiff of money that comes with a name that was on the last big thing but it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original.
you also have the very real problem that someone like miramax will acquire film rights for just about everything in copyright - usually just in case someone else makes a half-decent movie of it - and remember miramax have a name for being marginally less dreadful than the older studios - and they put a writer onto it to adapt it for screen. they get the first draft and it’s not quite what they want - they aren’t sure what they want but they will know when they see it so the writer is given notes by several people including harvey and the money and goes off for another draft. it comes back and it’s better - or worse - but still not quite what they want so they hire another writer and the process continues quite often through five or six writers. then of course the director thinks he’d rather like to write it so he cobbles it further and the original becomes a mere name on the credits. sorry if this sounds like quotes from bill goldman, but it does happen.quite apart from that, you have the real stylistic issue of rendering the story for film - that i actually recognise as a positive part of the process (well it’s one of the things i do, so i would)and about taking what is intrinsic to the book and making it work in a 90 minute movie. and that’s a difficult thing and a very beautiful one if you can get it right - except of course once you’ve done it, cruise wants the leading female to be a male so he can play it and hey it will make more money that way and maybe we can get that guy who adapted that old book thing to just give it a polish and we’re off… and don’t even get me started on packaging, where they want johnny lee miller to play the old black woman just because they happen to represent him too.
there’s my 2 pennorth - must find someone to edit it - maybe that george eliot will do it - if i can only find his agent’s number -
Violet says:
What’s interesting is, at what point do actors turn into these inane self-aggrandizing asshats? I used to be an actor myself, several centuries ago (mostly stage work). And we weren’t like that. We were educated, hip, sensitive, interested in complex work and serious theatre. Or at least that’s how we all behaved. I guess that somewhere between that first big off-Broadway show and Harvey Weinstein’s office, the ego is unleashed and the actor transforms from educated/hip/sensitive/complex into Tom Cruise.
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Infidel says:
Would it not be entirely acceptable for Jane Austen to be portrayed as an inane self-aggrandizing asshat herself if it weren’t suggested that she came upon her asshattedness through the teachings and mentoring of some patriarchal peniscoat; in which case, the actress might just have to act naturally.
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Violet says:
I’m not sure my parse-Infidel-comment sub-routine is working correctly today, but: No, because there’s no evidence that Jane Austen was an inane self-aggrandizing asshat.
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Infidel says:
BUT IT WOULD BE ACCEPTABLE.
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
Jane AustenA large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Jane AustenA woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
Jane AustenAn engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.
Jane AustenFor what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane AustenI do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
Jane AustenI have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
Jane AustenNext to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.
Jane AustenSingle women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
Jane Austen -
Violet says:
Infidel, you might try reading Austen’s books rather than grabbing de-contextualized quotes from an online quotation source. The woman was an utterly brilliant social critic.
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Infidel says:
Portrayed then as an utterly brilliant social critic, but with the caveat that she was complicated and acted always with diplomacy and could have been mistaken, at least, as having been self-aggrandizing.
Claudia Johnson points out that:as Wollstonecraft’s unconventional sexual conduct became public knowledge, conservative audiences were shocked to realize that if women were indeed educated and permitted to act like “rational creatures,” they might consider themselves entitled, as free agents, to frame their own desires and pursue happiness on their own terms, rather than to be content as dutiful daughters or submissive wives.
How could a young Jane Austen not take notice? Austen biographer Claire Tomalin offers some convincing biographical evidence that Austen is likely to have known of Mary Wollstonecraft and her work. She notes that Sir William East, the father of one of George Austen’s former pupils, was a benefactor of Wollstonecraft. Furthermore, Sir William was a neighbor and friend to Austen’s uncle, James Leigh-Perrot. After Wollstonecraft attempted suicide in 1796, Sir William was credited with being particularly kind to her during her recovery. While this does not specifically link Austen and Wollstonecraft, it makes it plausible that the Austen family knew of Wollstonecraft and her ideas (Tomalin 158).
Jane Austen probably made a mental note to stay away from partisan politics and to keep her thoughts about Wollstonecraft to herself. Thanks to her skills as a writer, her balancing act worked. She managed to infuse her books with a Wollstonecraft-like feminist critique that is less politically charged but just as potent.
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Gumbercules says:
Hi Violet! I wasn’t one of your commenters before, but I am now :)
Re: mangling old stories instead of just writing new ones. I have absolutely no facts with which to back this up, but here’s what I think [God, I love teh internetz]:
1. Even a movie that *reminds* people of an older story [e.g. contains characters named "Lewis" and "Clark"] might potentially pick up some cinematic revenue. Cantankerous blog-posters will watch the stupid Austen biopic and hate on it, but at least we shelled out the Blockbuster rental fee for the ability to hate on it.
2. Reality is complex and amorphous and its reading depends on who wrote it, and somebody [c/Conservatives? Republicans? fundamentalists?] freaking hates that. They like their beers cold, their homosexuals flaming, their good and bad guys wearing colour coded hats, their uppity vixens either punished or subdued, and their leading d00ds laid wherever possible. Since the new Reality depends wholly on movies and television, it’s a good idea to make sure those stories get a good solid grounding in whatever grid they’re trying to impose on us.
Or, to put it another way, if my colleague believes that Jane Austen caught her awesome from a guy, we just lost yet another potential feminist talking point. I could conceivably try and footnote her to death but that’s just not glamourous.
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Violet says:
Gumbercules, nice to see you here!
I think your ideas sound exactly right, and besides, you don’t need facts to back them up. In the new Reality, we create truth by fiat. We’re all Sai Baba.
By the way, what does Gumbercules mean?
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Gumbercules says:
I’d create more truth with a $1.5 million budget, you know? Sigh.
“Gumbercules” is a reference to the cartoon “Futurama”. One of the main characters inadvertently ingests worms from a truck-stop egg-salad sandwich, and they give him superpowers of sorts. They make him “as strong as Hercules and as flexible as Gumby!” “Gumbercules!”
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Violet says:
Ah. GumBERcules. I was pronouncing it to myself GUMbercules.
Reminds me of when I was 8 years old and reading the Odyssey for the first time. Thought Penelope was pronounced PENelope. Guess I’m still me.
