Pride and Prejudice and Zombies...and misogyny, racism, ableism, and sexual innuendo
Finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies this morning.
I really wanted to love it, but I didn't. I think I made a tactical error in reading it only a few months after re-reading Pride and Prejudice. I've seen a few people say that it only works if you don't like/haven't read P&P, and I think that's really true.
If you read it fairly soon after reading P&P, you realize just how little Grahame-Smith actually did. I'd say the book is 90% P&P, 10% zombies, maybe less. There are lots of sentences where it's like, someone says "Could you pass me a cup of tea?" and he replaces "tea" with "katana". Very little in the way of the plot or dialogue is changed at all.
Which...makes no sense, really. When I've seen praise of the book, it's about the way these people cling to outdated and ridiculous social norms in the face of a zombie apocalypse. Except when you realize it's just him leaving the original text unchanged, it just feels like laziness, not social commentary. Also it makes you kind of think everyone is brain-damaged. It's like "Oh, Mr. Darcy is not as bad as I thought, how could I have ever -- ZOMBIE ATTACK HACK SLASH -- misjudged him? What shall I do when he comes to dinner tomorrow?" There are spurts of violence and bloodlust, but the zombie attacks don't change anything, all the characters develop the same, have the same opinions, make the same choices, SAY THE SAME DIALOGUE.
Example: Charlotte marries Mr. Collins because she's turning into a zombie and wants some brief happiness before she dies. Ooh, interesting (this is something I heard before reading the book.) Except NO ONE SEEMS TO NOTICE. Yes, there's a tiny handwavy thing later that explains why one person didn't say anything, but not any of the others (including Mr. Collins.) Even her dialogue is completely unchanged, except for the addition of a speech impediment.
Also Grahame-Smith manages to add in mistakes and logic flaws. During the discussion of the source of Wickham and Darcy's feud, the description flip flops between the church living of the original story and a desire to study the deadly arts in the new one. You can't follow what he did and what he was supposed to do because the text keeps mixing it up. Plus the whole thing with Darcy making him "lame" as part of the agreement to marry Lydia? Makes no fucking sense. Why would Wickham agree to be beaten into quadriplegia? Why would he agree to join a seminary in Ireland? And if Mrs. Gardiner is lying and this is just Darcy just beating the shit out of him, why the hell would Darcy do that, and then make Lydia marry him so she has to look after him and change his diapers for the rest of their lives? Why not just make them marry to preserve her reputation, then kill him?
Oh and the whole "lame" thing...really squicky. There's a lot of ableism strewn around the story, from the "God's wretched accidents, the lame and the deaf" to the whole treatment of Wickham. Plus some lovely Orientalism to give a flavor of racism, since everyone studies the deadly arts in Asia but doesn't seem to have much regard for actual Asian people. Or for servants, for that matter, who are mostly treated as interchangeable zombie fodder.
And bonus misogyny! The few places where the dialogue has been significantly changed, it's usually been changed to be really vicious. Mr. Bennett threatens to sew Mrs. Bennett's mouth shut, Darcy insults Miss Bingley constantly. The desire for women to shut the fuck up is repeatedly expressed by all the men and most of the women. Everyone in the whole thing manages to come off as exactly the same people, except more violent and more nasty.
Yes, all this stuff would be not unusual for a book from the early 1800s...except it's NOT. None of this is in the Austen original, it's all new. And what's with all really lewd sexual innuendo? Puns about "balls", references to what's inside various people's trousers, even an accusation of incest between Darcy and his sister. Oh, and the story waffles back and forth on whether Wickham is a rapist and abducted Lydia against her will, but either way she still loooooves him and has to marry him, which really misses the point of the original and is really icky as well.
Maybe all this is supposed to be funny. Maybe it's part of the joke that he doesn't change anything, except to add vomit and sex? But I guess it didn't work with my sense of humor, or maybe I'm too fond of the original (or at least too familiar with it.) So I guess most of this comes with a big YMMV tag. And in my defense, it's not the idea of messing with Austen that bugs me -- I was really excited when I first heard about the book, I looked forward to it for ages, and I was so happy when I got it for Christmas. But I think I was expecting either a little more of a change -- have some parts of the plot go differently -- or less of one, where there aren't random bursts of assholery interrupting the dialogue.
I think part of the problem was that I already since this done before, and done BETTER, in fandom: I read a fairly long commentfic that was essentially Master and Commander and Zombies. But it didn't rewrite M&C, it took off from canon, where Jack and Stephen return home to find England overrun with zombies and the plague spreading through Europe. They are forced to kill what remains of their families and escape to the sea, gradually collecting survivors into a great Fleet of ships, and eventually attempting a reconquest of the British Isles. They try to maintain some semblance of civilized Navy routine, while dealing with panicked survivors, possibly infected refugees, and the gradual breakdown of life as they know it. It was fucking fantastic. *That's* more what I was hoping to get from P&P&Z.
I guess P&P&Z was trying to be more funny, but I honestly think a pastiche would have been much better than just shoehorning some beheadings and sex jokes into the original text. But maybe I'm missing the point.
What it comes down to for me is, if you want to read P&P&Z, don't read the above rant. :D Don't read P&P first, or at least keep a few years in between. I might try it again later myself, with a little more distance between the two.
I really wanted to love it, but I didn't. I think I made a tactical error in reading it only a few months after re-reading Pride and Prejudice. I've seen a few people say that it only works if you don't like/haven't read P&P, and I think that's really true.
If you read it fairly soon after reading P&P, you realize just how little Grahame-Smith actually did. I'd say the book is 90% P&P, 10% zombies, maybe less. There are lots of sentences where it's like, someone says "Could you pass me a cup of tea?" and he replaces "tea" with "katana". Very little in the way of the plot or dialogue is changed at all.
Which...makes no sense, really. When I've seen praise of the book, it's about the way these people cling to outdated and ridiculous social norms in the face of a zombie apocalypse. Except when you realize it's just him leaving the original text unchanged, it just feels like laziness, not social commentary. Also it makes you kind of think everyone is brain-damaged. It's like "Oh, Mr. Darcy is not as bad as I thought, how could I have ever -- ZOMBIE ATTACK HACK SLASH -- misjudged him? What shall I do when he comes to dinner tomorrow?" There are spurts of violence and bloodlust, but the zombie attacks don't change anything, all the characters develop the same, have the same opinions, make the same choices, SAY THE SAME DIALOGUE.
Example: Charlotte marries Mr. Collins because she's turning into a zombie and wants some brief happiness before she dies. Ooh, interesting (this is something I heard before reading the book.) Except NO ONE SEEMS TO NOTICE. Yes, there's a tiny handwavy thing later that explains why one person didn't say anything, but not any of the others (including Mr. Collins.) Even her dialogue is completely unchanged, except for the addition of a speech impediment.
Also Grahame-Smith manages to add in mistakes and logic flaws. During the discussion of the source of Wickham and Darcy's feud, the description flip flops between the church living of the original story and a desire to study the deadly arts in the new one. You can't follow what he did and what he was supposed to do because the text keeps mixing it up. Plus the whole thing with Darcy making him "lame" as part of the agreement to marry Lydia? Makes no fucking sense. Why would Wickham agree to be beaten into quadriplegia? Why would he agree to join a seminary in Ireland? And if Mrs. Gardiner is lying and this is just Darcy just beating the shit out of him, why the hell would Darcy do that, and then make Lydia marry him so she has to look after him and change his diapers for the rest of their lives? Why not just make them marry to preserve her reputation, then kill him?
Oh and the whole "lame" thing...really squicky. There's a lot of ableism strewn around the story, from the "God's wretched accidents, the lame and the deaf" to the whole treatment of Wickham. Plus some lovely Orientalism to give a flavor of racism, since everyone studies the deadly arts in Asia but doesn't seem to have much regard for actual Asian people. Or for servants, for that matter, who are mostly treated as interchangeable zombie fodder.
And bonus misogyny! The few places where the dialogue has been significantly changed, it's usually been changed to be really vicious. Mr. Bennett threatens to sew Mrs. Bennett's mouth shut, Darcy insults Miss Bingley constantly. The desire for women to shut the fuck up is repeatedly expressed by all the men and most of the women. Everyone in the whole thing manages to come off as exactly the same people, except more violent and more nasty.
Yes, all this stuff would be not unusual for a book from the early 1800s...except it's NOT. None of this is in the Austen original, it's all new. And what's with all really lewd sexual innuendo? Puns about "balls", references to what's inside various people's trousers, even an accusation of incest between Darcy and his sister. Oh, and the story waffles back and forth on whether Wickham is a rapist and abducted Lydia against her will, but either way she still loooooves him and has to marry him, which really misses the point of the original and is really icky as well.
Maybe all this is supposed to be funny. Maybe it's part of the joke that he doesn't change anything, except to add vomit and sex? But I guess it didn't work with my sense of humor, or maybe I'm too fond of the original (or at least too familiar with it.) So I guess most of this comes with a big YMMV tag. And in my defense, it's not the idea of messing with Austen that bugs me -- I was really excited when I first heard about the book, I looked forward to it for ages, and I was so happy when I got it for Christmas. But I think I was expecting either a little more of a change -- have some parts of the plot go differently -- or less of one, where there aren't random bursts of assholery interrupting the dialogue.
I think part of the problem was that I already since this done before, and done BETTER, in fandom: I read a fairly long commentfic that was essentially Master and Commander and Zombies. But it didn't rewrite M&C, it took off from canon, where Jack and Stephen return home to find England overrun with zombies and the plague spreading through Europe. They are forced to kill what remains of their families and escape to the sea, gradually collecting survivors into a great Fleet of ships, and eventually attempting a reconquest of the British Isles. They try to maintain some semblance of civilized Navy routine, while dealing with panicked survivors, possibly infected refugees, and the gradual breakdown of life as they know it. It was fucking fantastic. *That's* more what I was hoping to get from P&P&Z.
I guess P&P&Z was trying to be more funny, but I honestly think a pastiche would have been much better than just shoehorning some beheadings and sex jokes into the original text. But maybe I'm missing the point.
What it comes down to for me is, if you want to read P&P&Z, don't read the above rant. :D Don't read P&P first, or at least keep a few years in between. I might try it again later myself, with a little more distance between the two.