In which she blathers on about Mr. Darcy
Nov. 5th, 2006 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meddowThe thing I’ve realised with LJ going down is how much LJ has become the centre of my internet activity.
I did the unthinkable last night – I rented the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. Curiosity finally got the better of me.
You have to understand that to many women, including myself, my mother and the vast majority of my RL friends and my mother’s friends (ie nearly every woman I know), the 1995 BBC miniseries is more than just a TV miniseries; it’s a way of life that verges on a religion. Nobody I know watched it when it first came on television. VHS and later DVD copies have been leaded from one friend to another friend. If a group of us would find out someone hasn’t seen it, that’s when emergency procedures occur and we all end up dragging out a copy and sitting there for nearly six hours watching it. It’s sort of a word-of-mouth underground movement.
So of course with the news a few years ago that they were making a new version with Keira Knightly as Elizabeth there was a lot of anger and bitterness (for a start she’s too bloody skinny to play Lizzie). It was like Fandom Wank, but in the real world. The big fear, for me at least, was that my mental image of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy would be ruined. Instead of seeing Colin Firth when I read the book, it would be an amalgam of Colin Firth and Mathew Macfadyen (who is nothing special IHMO) and that would be the pits.
Anyway, I needn’t have worried. The BBC version is still far superior. Mathew Macfadyen and Keira Knightly have nothing of Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Yes, the set design was far prettier and the scenery was also prettier and I liked the way the movie handled Charlotte Lucas better than the miniseries did and the proposal between Mr. Bingley and Jane was insanely cute. But in the eagerness to cram the whole of the plot into two hours, they forgot to have any chemistry between Lizzie and Darcy. Dude, if you’re going to do an adaptation of one of the greatest romances ever, it’s a good idea to have the two main characters believably in love with each other.
So I’m all happy and smug because my adaptation of choice is still the best adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
I did the unthinkable last night – I rented the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. Curiosity finally got the better of me.
You have to understand that to many women, including myself, my mother and the vast majority of my RL friends and my mother’s friends (ie nearly every woman I know), the 1995 BBC miniseries is more than just a TV miniseries; it’s a way of life that verges on a religion. Nobody I know watched it when it first came on television. VHS and later DVD copies have been leaded from one friend to another friend. If a group of us would find out someone hasn’t seen it, that’s when emergency procedures occur and we all end up dragging out a copy and sitting there for nearly six hours watching it. It’s sort of a word-of-mouth underground movement.
So of course with the news a few years ago that they were making a new version with Keira Knightly as Elizabeth there was a lot of anger and bitterness (for a start she’s too bloody skinny to play Lizzie). It was like Fandom Wank, but in the real world. The big fear, for me at least, was that my mental image of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy would be ruined. Instead of seeing Colin Firth when I read the book, it would be an amalgam of Colin Firth and Mathew Macfadyen (who is nothing special IHMO) and that would be the pits.
Anyway, I needn’t have worried. The BBC version is still far superior. Mathew Macfadyen and Keira Knightly have nothing of Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Yes, the set design was far prettier and the scenery was also prettier and I liked the way the movie handled Charlotte Lucas better than the miniseries did and the proposal between Mr. Bingley and Jane was insanely cute. But in the eagerness to cram the whole of the plot into two hours, they forgot to have any chemistry between Lizzie and Darcy. Dude, if you’re going to do an adaptation of one of the greatest romances ever, it’s a good idea to have the two main characters believably in love with each other.
So I’m all happy and smug because my adaptation of choice is still the best adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
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Date: 2006-11-05 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 02:40 am (UTC)I really need a Darcy icon, Jack 's going to have to do
Date: 2006-11-05 02:52 am (UTC)jack is always fantastic.
Date: 2006-11-05 02:58 am (UTC)Indeed he is.
Date: 2006-11-05 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 10:11 am (UTC)But it absolutely baffles me how someone can think that there was no chemistry between Lizzy and Darcy. I found it extremely palpable throughout. If anything they should perhaps have turned it down a tiny bit.
Also, if you've read the book I don't see how you could think Keira Knightley too thin for the role. Not that Lizzy's weight is important to the story at all, but Austen does tell us that her figure is "light", that she is on a smaller scale than 16 year old Georgiana and that she's lighter than Jane.
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Date: 2006-11-05 11:15 am (UTC)As for chemistry, I really didn’t see it, and I can’t see how anyone else can see it, but it’s been pretty much proven by various fandoms shipper wars, chemistry is in the eye of the beholder.
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Date: 2006-11-05 01:14 pm (UTC)Elizabeth Bennet, as written, is not an average woman. In fact she's far superior to the average women. She's beautiful, incredibly charming, witty, intelligent, kind, generous, loyal, etc.
How come she can be seen as accessible in spite of all that, but if she happens to be played by someone who's thin then it all falls apart?
Would it be better if it was someone who was thin, but not pretty?
In P&P Austen was not very kind to plain women (Mary and Charlotte). She clearly didn't set out to make the case that appearances don't matter. The two sisters who are the most beautiful on the outside are also the best on the inside and end up being rewarded appropriately.
...
What constitutes a healthy weight will vary greatly from person to person. People come in all shapes and sizes and society ought to embrace that variety rather than pretend there is one ideal everyone should conform to. And that goes both ways. Telling naturally skinny people that they're sick or disgusting or stick insects is just as hurtful as mocking those who are a bit more robust than the average.
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Date: 2006-11-05 08:24 pm (UTC)I do actually think that is Keria Knightly proper weight, she’s not unhealthy in anyway. There are a lot of actresses out there who are a similar size and they do look unhealthy. I don’t think we should be attacking naturally thin women and saying they are unnatural. The problem is when all the female characters in all movies are played by women of Keria Knightly size, women with naturally slightly larger body type begin to get an inferiority complex, which is not a reason why Elizabeth should not be thin, but it is where my initial gut reaction stems from.
The way that we could avoid pitting skinny women against medium to large women is of course if we had a wide range of body types in movies, alas we don’t.
Now it is possibly unfair to target Elizabeth Bennet as the role that should fix this problem, but it also sort of applies to all costume dramas, since the concept of beauty is one that is constantly changing. What was pretty back then is illustrated very well by a recent book cover that uses an old painting from back then (http://meddow.livejournal.com/40213.html). That was beauty back then, and they are not thin. So it would fit having Elizabeth played by a woman who resembles that kind of beauty and not modern day’s construct of beauty, which just happens to come out in favour of the type of women I am arguing for, you’re averaged sized woman. Elizabeth’s the medium sized woman’s and they should be able to have her.
Elizabeth Bennet, as written, is not an average woman. In fact she's far superior to the average women. She's beautiful, incredibly charming, witty, intelligent, kind, generous, loyal, etc.
She is all those things, but I don’t think she is far above the average when it comes to all the women I know. And we all like to picture ourselves as these things, so I don’t think it defeats her accessibility.
Who are you by the way?
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Date: 2006-11-06 12:24 am (UTC)There are so many interesting aspects to this, but I've only got time to comment on a few of them...
I agree that greater variety in the way actresses (and actors) look would be a good thing - and not just when it comes to weight. But they'll never match what's average in real life. To some extent people want their movie stars to be glamorous and unattainable.
About historical standards of beauty:
First of all any film is made for a contemporary audience and not people from several centuries ago. So if it's important to the story that a character is beautiful the best way of representing this is to use someone who the intended audience will naturally find beautiful and not to go for what you think people back then might have preferred. Because even if it's explained to you, having the knowledge that "this would have been considered very beautiful" will not produce the same emotional reaction as something you actually do find beautiful yourself.
Having said that, although fashions change I don't think the variation is actually that great. I think most people who are considered beautiful now also would have been in the 19th or 18th centuries - and vice versa. It's not so very long ago and the gene pool must have been much the same as today.
The women in the painting you linked don't seem very large to me - they certainly have pretty narrow waists. But it's hard to tell from paintings. The lack of photographic evidence makes it difficult to be too sure about anything, but based on the corset sizes used there certainly seems to have been fashionable skinny women long before our time.
Getting back to P&P, however, the character meant to represent the ultimate beauty isn't Elizabeth, but Jane. And it's explicitly stated that Lizzy is lighter than Jane.
Now, no one is going to call Rosamund Pike overweight. But I wouldn't say she's particularly skinny either.
And if Lizzy isn't far above the average of the women you know your acquaintances must be a pretty extraordinary group of people. I would go so far as to call the character of Elizabeth Bennet a Mary Sue - albeit an incredibly well written one. She's got nearly every positive character trait that you can think of, and while most people share some of them to some extent having the full set must be a rare occurrence indeed.
I personally think it's harder to identify with (not sympathize with - that's a different matter) a character who's significantly more intelligent or articulate or charitable than myself than with someone who's a different weight.
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