thoughts on escapism

This is the last week of summer and I am starting training at a new job while still working my old job and about to go away for my cousin's wedding, SO! before Jane gets lost in the shuffle I want to put out an unfinished post I had stewing around.





I've been thinking a lot about escapism since I started reading Austen. Deresiewicz writes about how non-escapist Austen was in her own writing. She didn't write Gothic romance, though she appreciated that genre: she wrote about women's lives as they were for ladies in small English countries. With her narrow focus, rooted in a context she knew intimately, she revealed universal human truths. People weren't running around Europe, getting locked up in ruined castles. They were talking with their neighbors, falling in love, and going to dances.

But even if her novels were anti-escapist for her time, they are escapes for me now. I don't have a grasp of where my place in the world is, and a world where men of a certain status had the choice of lawyer, clergy, soldier, or sailor seems kinda nice. Her life was so different from mine that I want to escape into her novels, and I don't think this is uncommon. This new movie Austenland seems to tap into that, though I haven't seen it; modern day women go to a Jane Austen theme park to dress up and hope to find their own happy ending. And her novels were escapes for men in the trenches during WWI.

Which would lead me to...
Rudyard Kipling...Science Fiction, romance, pulp/trash...criticism against escapism sort of lame, and I don't mean "escapist" in a negative way. I recognize my reality in Austen reality, but the customs are so different...What does it mean, this word "escapist"? A blogger on romance fiction says: "I’ve always pushed back against the idea that romance is escapist in a “special” way. But that’s probably because of the way I define the word. For me, romance is no more (or less) escapist than many other activities I engage in. We act as if we all know what we mean when we invoke the term, but I’m not sure we’re defining it the same way. I would define it, in this discussion, as a cognitive activity that takes my mind to a different place from its everyday life and provides different types of stimulation, comfort, and/or cognitive stretching. Using that definition, music is an escape (both listening and playing). My scholarly research can be an escape from the modern world."

Escaping into fiction: healthier than drugs or alcohol, but not as easy.





I never got around to finishing that post, once I realized what a loaded term "escapist" was.

Emma's Gay Best Friend

Frank Churchill is such a stereotypical gay best friend. Fashionable, charming, and witty, he shares in Emma's jokes and suspicions, and even criticizes people's hairstyles with her. They have an easy intimacy, with no romantic interest coming from his side. Really, it is sort of brilliant that his Clueless incarnation is this guy reading William Burroughs:

"Dyed in the wool homosexual."

Austenland

Elise and I saw the poster for the new movie Austenland when we went to see Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha. The poster looked totally corny, but we decided to watch the trailer. I was prepared to think the best part of the experience would be the deodorant commercial beforehand, but as soon as Jennifer Coolidge appeared on the the screen we were like: "Ooo! Let's see it." Glad that there's a pop Austen movie this summer. Good timing.

Check out the trailer below. What do you think?

(And as a non-Austen sidenote: France Ha was wonderful. Go see it!)

Ann-Margret and Elvis star in a saucy adaptation of Mansfield Park!

This song is so apt for where I am in MP. Also, I have discovered a love for Ann-Margret I haven't felt since watching Bye Bye Birdie repeatedly as a child.

Lady B with Pug

The lovely, lazy Lady B with her pug, from the '99 movie adaptation, of which I have not seen. "The heat was enough to kill any body. It was as much as I could bear myself. Sitting and calling to Pug, and trying to keep him from the flower-beds, was almost too much for me" (59).

I love Lady Bertram: The exchange between Edmund and his mother on whether or not Fanny should go to the Grant's for dinner made me laugh; it was so delightful (170). She is completely spacey and fabulous. I am convinced she was on some kind of narcotic, because no one is that comatose.

Also, I'm a sucker for a wife with an ugly dog, like the German and her bulldog in Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools. Deferred affection?

Pride and Prejudice, 1980

I'm watching the 1980 adaptation of P&P that Amy Patterson mentioned in her Gala talk as including one of the most faithful portrayals of the Darcy character (puh-puh-puh-poker faced David Rintoul). The scene when Mrs. Bennet finds out Mr. Collins is engaged is ah-may-zing. She reminds me of Miss Piggy in A Muppets Christmas Carol.

And in searching for the date for this movie (series?), I read this post talking about a new movie called Longbourn, which tells the story from the servants' point of view. It's based on a book by Jo Baker, who says that if she had lived in Austen's time she wouldn't have been going to the ball, she'd be home sewing. Servants remain invisible in Austen's literature, as far as I know, so this must bring a new perspective. As long as it isn't just a Downstairs/Abbey sort of thing.

But back to P&P: Though some of the acting is just atrocious (Mr. Collins--seriously?) I am totally charmed by Elizabeth Garvie's portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet, and it is fun to see the story externalized. There are some things I could not have pictured, and so it's helpful to see in film. Like how dark it was at night, and how frizzy their hair was, but how lovely they still are.