Some words about The Dark is Rising movie. (Oh, and um, hi.)

[dotsomething]

Hi. I swear I meant to do a real update and don't mean for my first post in a while to be only film-related.

But I'm having an unpretty film moment.

Unlocked, please link away.

Thank you sistermagpie for alerting me with her post with the info. Originally found by charlotteschaos and posted here. Here's the page ywith the original information, the audition casting notes

Comments

[raincitygirl]

In the book(s) Will's father was the son of a Buckinghamshire farmer and he owned a small jewellery shop in Windsor. He and his wife didn't have an actual farm, but did have some land on which Mrs Stanton raised poultry, rabbits etc. for extra income. She was also the child of a farmer. Neither of them seemed to have a whole lot of formal education or privilege, possibly because they'd grown up in an era with much less social mobility than the UK circa 1970, an era in which becoming a jeweller's apprentice was probably a step up the socio-economic ladder for an intelligent, ambitious youth. Free secondary school education and grants for the tuition of university students whose parents couldn't afford to pay for university didn't come in until after 1945.

But they placed a high priority on education for their kids, and were culturally aspirational. i.e. They were musical, encouraging James and Will to sing in choirs, and presumably finding the money somewhere to get extra flute lessons for the extremely talented Paul. I think it's implied in one of the later books that Paul goes on to become a professional musician. Their second son Max is at art school, which would suggest they value the visual arts as well as music. Of course, he could have gotten that creativity from his father, as being a jeweller is not only a skilled trade, but a trade towards which someone who has a strong feel for art and design might gravitate, particularly if art school were well beyond his means. Their eldest son Stephen is a naval officer, which would imply educational and career-wise ambition on his part, and support from his parents for those goals.

The Dark is Rising isn't set in an Enid Blyton-ish Neverland of England-That-Was, but is specifically set in the early 1970's. They have the NHS. They use modern currency instead of shillings and pence. While everybody living in the village seems to be white and mostly local, the bus driver from Windsor a black immigrant from the West Indies (and widespread non-white immigration, mostly from former colonies, is a feature of British life that didn't kick in until well after WWII ended). They listen to modern-ish music on the radio and use modern-ish slang.

The Walker is presented as a relic of a bygone age, with the doctor and the other adults slightly incredulous about the presence of a rural tramp, unmedicated, uninstitutionalised, not homeless in a city but wandering the countryside. Popular literature of the "Golden Age" (1920s through 1950s, roughly) features tramps fairly regularly, both in children's books and in mystery novels. Mentally ill and/or substance-abusing homeless people are generally an urban phenomenon these days, and attempts to help them would more likely involve a good Samaritan notifying social services or a hospital to get them into a shelter or detox program, rather than private charity.

Not only is the Walker explicitly presented as an old-fashioned anachronism, so is Miss Greythorpe, with her manor house and live-in domestic staff. She's the only person in the book who has servants, and everybody else peels their own potatoes. Class-consciousness is presented from the point of view of the less privileged class. Mr Stanton, a small business owner (and therefore probably first-generation member of the expanding middle class) with rural roots, is slightly hostile towards Merriman in his butler disguise. He perceives Merriman as patronising him, and seems mildly contemptuous of the idea of being a butler as a profession.

Mr Stanton's class-consciousness is stated far more explicitly later, when his refusal to move his family into the manor during the storm is a question of pride. He resents Miss Greythorpe's noblesse oblige sheltering of the peasantry, explicitly calling it "feudal".

[dotsomething]

Thank you! That's some terrific analysis. I don't know that much about the social-political background of England but Cooper seemed so particular about it being a real England and the decade the books were written is relevant.

That's right, jewlery store. I had the impression they didn't have bundles of money, but enough to feed and clothe all those kids. They weren't suffering but they weren't affluent either.

The retooled version takes away that nicely real complexity of the Stantons. They are rural, Mrs. Stanton is descended from farmers, and this is not at all incompatible with being artistic, musically inclined, gentle.

It's a gross exeraggeration in the other direction to make the Stantons stereotypical cold, successful academics.

I love Mr. Stanton's pride there, his reverse snobbery. Which does seem like it would be tied to a particularly 1970's England and his instinctive reaction to social history.

[raincitygirl]

I think the book is very specifically placed in its setting for a reason, and there's just like in tDiR there's subtle class commentary in the later books in the series. The shifting economic and class structure in Britain in the past, say, 150 years, is just fascinating. And the evolution of education policy in the UK during the whole of the twentieth century is wonderful microcosm of class as a systemic barrier to social mobility, how that gradually changes, and the consequences.

It's actually very similar to structures in countries with racial minorities who were kept down by systemic, codified means. And similar structures arose in the UK when widespread non-white immigration turned the UK into a multiracial society with racial and non-Christian religions to contend with, on top of (and in many cases superseding) the barriers of class, sect (Anglican, Catholic, Nonconformist), country of ultimate origin (ex: the Irish got ethnic and religious discrimination as well as class barriers to deal with).Sorry, my poli sci major, modern history minor geek is showing!

And the encouragement of singing is another indication of possible ambition, and reminder of an economic way out. Cathedrals ran (and still run) choir schools for talented boys, and as they're subsidised by the diocese and focus more on vocal talent than sky high marks on the 11 plus exam (an exam which was stacked against the working classes anyway, subconsciously), it was a lot easier to earn a free place and therefore a middle-class educational background than among the other private schools, which had few scholarships available for lots of bright working-class kids. Boys, I should say. There were no choir schools for girls, naturally. But if you had a son who sang and sang well, that was a potential route upwards.

All that having been said, I think you *could* update it to the modern day. You couldn't set it in a village near Windsor, because it's pretty much a suburb now. Much of that agricultural land has become subdivisions for commuters, and the old-fashioned, picturesque farmhouses and cottages bought up by prosperous incomers. There's a hint of that gentrification already when they talk about the bank manager and his wife who've retired to the village, bought a cottage, and gentrified it. But thirty-five years on, a lot's changed in the area surrounding Windsor.

But there are still agricultural villages in England, so as long as you changed the setting slightly, you could do it. And you'd probably have to cut out a good deal of the class stuff,

A, because modern audiences wouldn't get it,
B, American audiences definitely wouldn't get it, and,
C, Cooper lets it all hover in the background throughout the series. It's definitely there, but as a detail some readers will pick up on and others won't.

So, yeah, updating to modern day would work, although you'd probably have to turn the Manor into a country house hotel or a National Trust museum. But it definitely could be set in modern England without sacrificing very much. But the major changes in personality, and the Americanisation of Will (note that the Narnia movie made money everywhere despite casting British actors as the kids) takes away his roots to the community. Although even the Americanisation bothers me MUCH less than the recasting of his family as remote, inadequate parents and his older siblings as bullies. I could cope with an American Stanton family better than an unrecognisable Stanton family.

[raincitygirl]

Oh, and in the book the Rider doesn't masquerade as the local doctor, he masquerades as a gem dealer who has met and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr Stanton in his professional capacity. To the point where he maneouvres Mr Stanton into letting him (the Rider) into his home on Christmas Day, to drop off a jewellery present that wasn't finished on time when Mr Stanton had to leave on Christmas Eve. And the Rider conveniently happened to be in the shop on other business, and helpfully offered to wait around for it to be finished, and then drop it off on Christmas morning as he'd be driving near their house on the way to his own Christmas Day plans anyway.

Nice guy, spirit of the season, pure coincidental timing, etc. Not someone Mr Stanton would've been likely to invite into his home under normal circumstances, but presented with such a situation, and such a kind gesture by a mere business acquaintance, why wouldn't he?

This change *could* work, I guess, but is Yank Will supposed to be brand-new to the village? If they've lived there for any length of time, it makes much more sense to have the Rider as a doctor filling in for the regular doctor who's on vacation. Rather like Miss Greythorpe's regular butler conveniently needing to disappear for a while (I forget if it's illness or holiday) so Merriman can step in and have a legitimate reason to be seen about the village and talk to people.

This change may actually be a good idea, because it gives the Rider more time to interact with Will onscreen, and more access to the oblivious Stantons, as a healthcare professional. But given some of the other choices that they seem to have made, I don't know about this one. It's just a little thing, and in an adaptation that seemed to have some vague resemblance to the book, it wouldn't bother me, but.....