Entertainment
How to adapt Jane Austen — and why it’s so hard to get right
![How to adapt Jane Austen — and why it’s so hard to get right](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220729101658-04-jane-austen-movies-tv-pride-and-prejudice-restricted-super-tease.jpg)
And but, filmmakers maintain making an attempt.
It is an unenviable activity, condensing volumes’ price of social critique, glowing dialogue and characters so beloved that they’ve impressed a whole archetype of affection curiosity. However typically, these movies succeed and even reveal new layers to Austen’s canonical works. On the very least, they encourage debate amongst her many readers.
CNN consulted a number of Austen students and devotees to elucidate what they search for in an adaptation of Austen’s work — and break down why the magic of her phrases might be so difficult to translate for the display screen.
Why we love adapting Austen
Seen a method, Austen’s tales are quintessential romances. They have all of the hallmarks of the style: Disapproving household, mismatched {couples}, hate-to-love relationships, long-awaited reunions, swoon-worthy declarations of affection.
On one hand, it is a shrewd enterprise resolution to revive Austen — there’s at all times an viewers for her work, mentioned Jillian Davis and Yolanda Rodriguez, hosts of the “Pemberley Podcast,” by which they analyze numerous diversifications of Austen’s work.
“Complicated interpersonal relationships won’t ever exit of fashion,” Davis and Rodriguez informed CNN in an e-mail.
Although Austen’s novels at all times folded love and marriage into their plots, the writer did not at all times painting marriage because the seamless pleased ending to which her heroines aspired. It is a monetary resolution and a familial responsibility, of which her feminine characters are acutely conscious. Austen’s girls are sometimes ambivalent about what it might imply for his or her independence in the event that they marry, even once they genuinely love their companions, mentioned Inger Brodey, an affiliate professor of English and comparative literature on the College of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
“Austen is a manner for at the moment’s readers to each romanticize about soul mates and likewise maintain their self-respect,” mentioned Brodey, who’s revealed a number of papers on Austen.
And so, in that manner, she mentioned, Austen’s tales proceed to encourage and empower at the moment: They’re clear-eyed love tales informed from a subtly feminist perspective that also give their protagonists some kind of company.
What one of the best Austen diversifications get proper
A powerful Austen adaptation does not must parrot the unique textual content and even happen in late 18th-century England. In actual fact, Brodey mentioned, she’d choose a movie not really feel indebted to the supply novel. The Austenites CNN interviewed agreed — for an Austen adaptation to succeed, it wants to keep up the spirit of her work, particularly her incisive depth and incomparable wit.
“What’s most difficult for any adapter of Austen should be capturing her fiction’s unimaginable mixture of comedy, irony and social criticism, together with genuinely shifting tales of courtship,” mentioned Devoney Looser, a Regents professor of English at Arizona State College and writer of “The Making of Jane Austen.” “It is clearly exhausting to get that stability of characters in content material in two hours, together with the requisite, satisfying pleased endings.”
“I would say I discover any adaptation of Austen to be a profitable one if it will get me pondering, or rethinking, any elements of the unique,” Looser informed CNN.
Take the seemingly divergent however thematically devoted “Clueless,” a ’90s retelling of “Emma.” It isn’t an apparent candidate for many correct Austen adaptation (the lead’s title is Cher, for one, and her closet comes with software program that helps her coordinate outfits), however each Brody and Austen scholar William Galperin mentioned Amy Heckerling’s movie is an exemplary model of a movie that modernizes parts of the story whereas retaining Austen’s spirit.
“Clueless” is “celebrating a sure sort of autonomy and playfulness and solidarity amongst girls,” the sort that Austen took critically, too, mentioned William Galperin, an English professor at Rutgers College and writer of “The Historic Austen.” And like “Emma,” “Clueless” is extra involved with Cher’s improvement than her romantic escapades, and even these plotlines serve to strengthen her character.
Movies that replace, modernize or in any other case remix Austen for a brand new time, place or tradition are, paradoxically, “extra capable of reveal new points of Austen than movies that attempt to observe her novels extra slavishly,” Brodey mentioned. Even “Satisfaction and Prejudice and Zombies,” although something however refined, discovered a parallel between “settling down” and zombiism.
However except for the uncommon battle between Bennets and the undead, Austen’s tales mine narrative riches out of comparatively mundane goings-on at English manors, amongst members of some native households.
“What (Austen) is making an attempt to counsel on the biggest scale is that what goes on within the on a regular basis foundation of all of our lives is full of all types of implications,” Galperin mentioned. “It does not should contain massive issues like fights and energy struggles on a grand kind of geopolitical degree. Bizarre, on a regular basis life is full of all types of complexities. And the nearer the movies come to representing that, the higher they’re.”
The place Austen diversifications fall quick
Condensing a whole bunch of pages of wealthy textual content — rife with social critique, beautiful phrasing and revelatory interior musings — right into a two-hour movie or perhaps a six-hour miniseries isn’t any small feat. So, Galperin mentioned, some filmmakers concentrate on the obvious strand within the story: The wedding plot.
Relationships are in fact vital in Austen’s novels, however extra typically, Galperin mentioned, the wedding plot is the mere “scaffolding,” a skeleton of a narrative. The meat, he mentioned, is within the narrative episodes that reveal her characters’ true intentions.
“The novel is extraordinarily good at demonstrating that pressure (between love and responsibility), whereas the movie simply sort of flattens that into an early rejection,” Galperin mentioned.
Typically, Brodey mentioned, movies “overwhelmingly take pleasure in romance on the expense of social satire.”
Why Austen’s tales will stay perpetually
Even when new variations of “Persuasion” and different classics aren’t essentially profitable in reinterpreting Austen’s work, they’re nonetheless price making, Looser mentioned — on the very least, they’re going to entice new audiences to fall for the brooding Darcy, the beachside bliss of Sanditon and the cunningly resourceful Girl Susan.
“If we do not recreate Austen’s nineteenth-century tales for our personal time, and entice new generations of viewers, then these texts will not stay on,” Looser mentioned. “So I am undoubtedly all for diversifications that use Austen’s materials as an inspiration, and make their very own mark on it, slightly than treating her originals as blueprints that should be religiously copied.”
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Movie Reviews
Movie review: “The Watchers”
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Entertainment
How did Travis Kelce know he was falling for Taylor Swift? He offers a 'genuine' answer
![How did Travis Kelce know he was falling for Taylor Swift? He offers a 'genuine' answer](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c248086/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2394x1257+0+44/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe2%2F6f%2Feb82fa494249a34f42f4b210a4f7%2Fap24043153273430.jpg)
Travis Kelce isn’t afraid to share his love story.
It turns out that Taylor Swift’s unexpected behavior during the Kansas City Chiefs game against the Chicago Bears in September tipped the relationship into this-is-the-real-deal territory, he said on the “Bussin’ With the Boys” podcast.
Kelce explained that they had already been seeing each other privately but that her attitude toward taking things public impressed him.
He offered her a security escort into the stadium, but she brushed it off and walked in with the rest of his guests.
“She really won me over with that one,” the tight end said, describing how Swift preferred to “be around family and friends and experience this with everybody” instead of getting celebrity treatment.
“She’s very self-aware. And I think that’s why I really started to really fall for her, was how genuine she is around friends [and] family. It can get crazy for somebody with that much attention … and she just keeps it so chill and so cool.”
The two have kept the intimate details of their relationship under wraps but are notably more public than Taylor has been with past boyfriends. Their passionate kiss after Kelce’s Super Bowl win in February effectively broke the internet, and he joined her onstage in London over the weekend, spicing up the Eras tour.
Kelce says he wants to “keep things private,” but “at the same time, I’m not here to hide anything … that’s my girl, that’s my lady.”
He did admit there have been a few downsides to entering her spotlight — notably, random fans showing up at his pad in Kansas City, Kan.
“I’ve had fun with just about every aspect of it. It’s just when you’re at home you want privacy, and you don’t always get that,” he said.
The wild online speculation is another annoyance. The athlete said that his father would come across crazy tabloid stories from time to time and call him to fact-check.
“He’d see something so f— out of the blue, like something about me and Taylor, he’s like, ‘Hey, you guys OK?’”
Kelce always has a reply at the ready: “Get the f— off Facebook, Dad.”
And for those still wondering — KillaTrav’s favorite TSwift songs are “Black Space,” “Cruel Summer” and “So High School.”
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘Summer Camp’ is an entertaining disappointment
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Nothing forges a friendship like treating an arrow wound. For Ginny, Mary and Nora, an ill-fated archery lesson and an injured classmate are just the beginning of the lifetime of trouble they’re about to start.
Ginny is a year above the other two, more experienced in both summer camp and girlhood, and takes it upon herself to somewhat forcefully guide her younger friends. Mary cowers in the bathroom away from her bunkmates, spouting medical facts, while Nora hangs back, out of place. When their camp counselor plucks them out of their cabin groups to place them in the new “Sassafras” cabin, they feel like they fit in somewhere for the first time.
50 years later, “Summer Camp” sees the three girls, now women, reunite for the anniversary reunion of the very same camp at which they met. Although they’ve been in touch on-and-off in the preceding decades, this will be the first time the women have seen each other in 15 years.
Between old camp crushes, childhood nemeses and the newer trials of adulthood, the three learn to understand each other, and themselves, in a way that has eluded them the entirety of their friendship.
I really wanted to like “Summer Camp.”
The opening scene, a glimpse at the girls’ first year together at Camp Pinnacle, does a good job at establishing Ginny, Mary and Nora’s dynamic. It’s sweet, funny and feels true to the experience of many adolescent girls’ friendships.
On top of that, this movie’s star-studded cast and heartwarming concept endeared me to it the moment I saw the trailer. Unfortunately, an enticing trailer is about the most “Summer Camp” has to offer.
As soon as we meet our trio as adults, things start to fall apart. It really feels like the whole movie was made to be cut into a trailer — the music is generic, shots cut abruptly between poses, places and scenes, and at one point two of the three separate shots of each woman exiting Ginny’s tour bus are repeated.
The main character and sometimes narrator, Ginny Moon, is a self-help writer who uses “therapy speak” liberally and preaches a tough-love approach to self improvement. This sometimes works perfectly for the movie’s themes but is often used to thwop the viewer over the head with a mallet labeled “WHAT THE CHARACTERS ARE THINKING” rather than letting us figure it out for ourselves.
There are glimpses of a better script — like when Mary’s husband asks her whether she was actually having fun or just being bullied, presumably by Ginny. This added some depth to her relationship with him, implying he actually does listen to her sometimes, and acknowledged the nagging feeling I’d been getting in the back of my head: “Hey, isn’t Ginny kind of mean?”
Despite all my annoyance with “Summer Camp,” there were a few things I really liked about it. I’m a lot younger than the main characters of this movie, but there were multiple points where I found myself thinking, “Hey, my aunt talks like that!” or, “Wow, he sounds just like my dad.”
The dynamic of the three main characters felt very true to life, I’ve known and been each of them at one point or another. It felt especially accurate to the relationships of girls and women, and seeing our protagonists reconcile at the end was, for me, genuinely heartwarming.
“Summer Camp” is not a movie I can recommend for quality, but if you’re looking for a lighthearted, somewhat silly romp to help you get into the summer spirit, this one will do just fine.
Other stories by Caroline
Caroline Julstrom, intern, may be reached at 218-855-5851 or cjulstrom@brainerddispatch.com.
Caroline Julstrom finished her second year at the University of Minnesota in May 2024, and started working as a summer intern for the Brainerd Dispatch in June.
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