#adaptation problems

[bethanydelleman]

The one thing that really throws me off in the new Wuthering Heights trailer is the party scenes that seem to have like, people in them. Wuthering Heights is supposed to be so isolated. There are two families who keep marrying each other and like 8 people, a bunch of whom share names, and by the end half of them are eaten by the moors. The parish can't even keep a curate. Cathy II has met two young men total and both of them are her cousins. Nelly probably keeps working for these insane families because where the f else is she gonna work? Joseph is somehow the best they can do for servants and he is eternal. Zillah shows up near the end and you are shocked that anyone else even exists

Edit: Now that I've watched the movie, well sorry it is actually very isolated, but Catherine appears to be trapped in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory so the vibes are still super off

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #12,397:

Disney specific:

Let's not pretend all the POC being cast as previously white characters isn't performative and lazy.

You know what would be a great way for a company known for their fairytale adaptations to add representation?

ADAPTING FAIRYTALES FROM THOSE REGIONS!

Adapt Mexican fairytales. Adapt South American fairytales. Adapt Southeast Asian fairytales. Adapt African fairytales. Adapt Middle Eastern fairytales. Adapt Native American tribe Folktales. AND CONSULT THOSE GROUPS WHILE ADAPTING!

[ponfarratthedisco]

Since I'm on a roll, I'm also going to share another thought I had while writing my latest post: it is not lost on me that the reason why Jane Austen has multiple book-accurate adaptations of her work, while Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë don't, is due to the fact that most of her work (while genius) isn't nearly as controversial.

It's way safer to talk about the daily struggles of middle-to-upper class white, English families, than to tackle discrimination or female labour as horror via casting a man in a maternal role.

[the-mad-woman-in-the-attic]

Anyway, kudos (derogatory) to the Netflix adaptation of L'arte della gioia/The Art of Joy for managing to perform both bisexual erasure AND lesbian erasure at the same time, and meanwhile ALSO adding both a sapphic AND a het storyline which were absent in the book.

[bethanydelleman]

source

[bethanydelleman]

I came across your post on the Bennets being actually rich. Why is then they are depicted wearing those plain-looking darker dresses? In the 2005 their house looked so shabby and poor. The new adaptation made it no better, it seems.

This question refers to this post

I think the 2005 movie was trying to depict the very real class/wealth difference between the Bennets and Mr. Darcy and to some extent the Bingleys, but they went too far.

Mr. Bennet has 20x the income of a master blacksmith. Mr. Bingley has 40x, Darcy has 100x. So there is a difference! However, this is like, having one personal yacht, three personal yachts, or a whole helicopter. No one here is actually poor, it's gradations of wealth.

Even if Mr. Bennet died and Mrs. Bennet had only her 250/year, she is still at 2.5x the income of that master blacksmith and that's all passive income.

I have to think you can show wealth gradations without making them look poor.

[bethanydelleman]

Someone tagged my post (the one about the importance of female work) with "OP's favourite Jane Austen novel is Mansfield Park and I think that explains some of this post" (paraphrase) and you know what? Good on you, because it totally does.

Fanny Price is weak, sickly, shy, nervous, and everything that modern readers and media creators seem to hate. She never stands up to her abusers. She is staunchly moral. She is not sassy. She cannot defeat anyone in hand-to-hand combat, but I still think she is a heroine worthy of being represented accurately in film. I still think her book is worth reading, even if it loses in popularity on every single poll. Because Fanny is freaking strong. She has incredibly limited choices, means, and energy but she still stands her ground and refuses to marry Henry Crawford. And I would bet she's a heck of a lot more relatable to the real general population than a lot of heroines seen in film or books today; not every heroine needs to be inspirational (I mean, I do think she is inspirational too, but I think a lot of people would disagree).

When Hollywood makes Fanny Price sassy to make the film "better" or they hand Cinderella/Snow White a sword to make them "interesting", it says to me that they think women with their personality/situation don't deserve to be portrayed as heroines. No one wants to see that; it won't make money. People want Strong Female Characters! And then they did it again with Anne Elliot. She can't be prudent, self-sacrificing, and know when to hold her tongue! Make her sarcastic, messy, and drunk. And then you have people getting annoyed any time a woman cries because now she's "weak." Humans cry! But no, women have to be some insane level of "strong," so they cannot cry.

I want love for the weak women, the oppressed women who cannot defeat their oppressors, the quiet women, women who are chronically ignored or forgotten, women with disabilities, but women who still fight in their own way for their happiness and place in the world. Because not all of us are the "right" kind of strong.

If viewers/readers and producers/writers think there is no place for women like Fanny Price, then I think we have a problem.

[bethanydelleman]

The real problem with both "Persuasion" 2022 and Mansfield Park 1999 is that they didn't just change Anne Elliot and Fanny Price, they turned the main characters into people to whom the story could not happen. I do not believe that "Anne" 2022 would have been persuaded to give up Wentworth by her family. She's just not the kind of woman who would be. There was no reason for her and Wentworth to not get back together almost the moment they saw each other, because her personality was so different that them staying apart was illogical.

Jane Austen, whose personality was bestowed on "Fanny" 1999, would probably not have survived at Mansfield. She'd have been sent packing to Portsmouth years ago. She would have gotten in a fight with Mrs. Norris. Fanny Price's personality is just as vital to the story as her being pushed down by abuse. A different personality would make her into Jane Eyre and Jane Eyre famously did not get to stay with her wealthy relations long term.

So often, the events of the story are very tightly tied to the personality of the characters, which is why alterations to the character ruin the story. P&P 2005 gets away with making Darcy shy and Elizabeth more angry because that story can still be achieved with those traits. It's less interesting than canon Darcy's arrogance and snobbery, but it works. A snarky Fanny Price makes the story fall apart. Anne Elliot despising her family makes her story illogical.

You cannot just take a completely different person, throw them into a story and expect it to happen in the exact same way. It wouldn't.