smokingboot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokingboot) wrote2020-07-31 08:24 am
smokingboot) wrote2020-07-31 08:24 am
Emma
They want to do another Austen readathon fundraiser for the arts.
This time it will be two stints of 12 hour readings; understandable as Zoom seems to cut out after a certain point but is it really a marathon then?
Not that it matters. With so much good will behind it and being such fun to do, it's very tempting. It may be that there is no light again, that I am once more the mysterious narrator, but that's OK; if people aren't looking at me they may listen more and pay attention to the faces of the actors.
I'll be very surprised if this is as successful as the last, because Emma is unlikely to sparkle in the minds of readers like Pride and Prejudice. There have been nowhere near as many adaptions, though the Johnny Lee Miller/ Romola Garai one was perhaps the most successful, with Clueless a close second. The worst was the Gwyneth Paltrow/Ewan MacGregor one, and honestly not just I detest GP's Goop wellness rubbish.
The thing is, though Emma's a very subtle novel, it is riddled with the understood social standards of the day in a far less subversive manner than P&P.In our current age some of these snobberies are hard to bear, and some delicacies of behaviour are entirely misunderstood. Emma is far more invested in class and money and how one is meant to behave with either or both of these advantages. Our heroine, the original smug Surrey goddess, has two near rows with our hero, and both of these are about the treatment of inferiors. There is one moment when Emma is cruel because she's bored and thoughtless, and though she's corrected very quickly by the Man of the Book, it's a hard moment for a modern audience to forgive. Also, right at the end, the hero and husband-to-be reveals that he started to fall in love with Emma from when she was 13 (He is about 16 years older than she is ) again not easy for today's audience, in fact I wonder if they'll edit that line out for the read.
But yes, I'll do it.
This time it will be two stints of 12 hour readings; understandable as Zoom seems to cut out after a certain point but is it really a marathon then?
Not that it matters. With so much good will behind it and being such fun to do, it's very tempting. It may be that there is no light again, that I am once more the mysterious narrator, but that's OK; if people aren't looking at me they may listen more and pay attention to the faces of the actors.
I'll be very surprised if this is as successful as the last, because Emma is unlikely to sparkle in the minds of readers like Pride and Prejudice. There have been nowhere near as many adaptions, though the Johnny Lee Miller/ Romola Garai one was perhaps the most successful, with Clueless a close second. The worst was the Gwyneth Paltrow/Ewan MacGregor one, and honestly not just I detest GP's Goop wellness rubbish.
The thing is, though Emma's a very subtle novel, it is riddled with the understood social standards of the day in a far less subversive manner than P&P.In our current age some of these snobberies are hard to bear, and some delicacies of behaviour are entirely misunderstood. Emma is far more invested in class and money and how one is meant to behave with either or both of these advantages. Our heroine, the original smug Surrey goddess, has two near rows with our hero, and both of these are about the treatment of inferiors. There is one moment when Emma is cruel because she's bored and thoughtless, and though she's corrected very quickly by the Man of the Book, it's a hard moment for a modern audience to forgive. Also, right at the end, the hero and husband-to-be reveals that he started to fall in love with Emma from when she was 13 (He is about 16 years older than she is ) again not easy for today's audience, in fact I wonder if they'll edit that line out for the read.
But yes, I'll do it.
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I really appreciate your readiness to support though, especially give that Austen's not your bag. Thank you so much :-)
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They have made the disparate ages less of a thing here, which is understandable, but Mr Knightley really needs to be a lot more mature in understanding than Emma; here we have a glorious golden pair so perfectly suited it would be a miracle if they hadn't fallen in love the moment puberty hit.
Bill Nighy's Mr Woodhouse is far more sprightly and lively than the character in the book.
So from the little I've seen, it is a different vision rather than a faithful version. But at some point I'll sit through it to be sure.