Pink covers do not sell
Watched Jane Eyre last night then. S'all right like.
Actually it's better than that, though, I dunno, can't they adapt Shirley or Villette for a change? I mean, I was thinking how iconic Jane is with that strange early-Victorian hairstyle that highlights the ears, and then I realised, no, it's because people keep making adaptations. I like the actors - Ruth Wilson is a prettier version of a caricature of Jane, angry eyebrows and a line of a mouth, and Toby Stephens is having fun with his role like he's Orson Welles or something. (I really liked Welles's take on Rochester, though the rest of that adaptation doesn't work for me.) And the girl who played Lucy in the Narnia films as Jane - not as waiflike as Anna Paquin, but she nailed some of Jane's lines, setting up her character well. The girl who played Helen Burns was pretty stiff, though, I think they just cast her for her looks.
The superspecial and different thing about this adaptation is the wacky things they do with the camera. at least, as wacky as a BBC adaptation of a cassic novel that's airing on its flagship channel is going to be. It worked well to suggest Brocklehurst's effect. There were a couple of things that made me raise an eyebrow. Rochester wasn't a naturalist in te book, was he? I mean, it looks good to have Jane staring at multi-coloured beetles and butterflies, and getting some reality to grround her fantasies. Also, the Fantastic!Jane opening didn't fake me out like it was intended to. The other thing is that Rochester is a bit too, well, flirty, and I think that's in the script as much as Stephens's playing.
The ending was irritating because I'm used to non-serial adaptations of the novel, and the novel itself, where I can just turn a page to Jane's rescue of crispy Rochester.
Then I watched Reader, I Married Him on BBC4 (a repeat), which has Daisy Godwin, an occasionally irritating presenter with a slight tendency to drawl. It's an apologia or defence of 'romantic fiction.' The use of fiction irritated me, because really, you're talking novels, not other forms. Some interesting points, although using 'denigrate' three times does not a programme of great intellectual rigour make. it was a bit all over the place, really, jumping from the history of Mills and Boons to repackagin Jane Austen's books for Asda mum to chick lit to individual testemonies of readers and writers. I deleted a rude comparison between two writer's appearance and shall merely note tha Marian Keyes has the most amazing green eyes. Georgetter Heyer go name-checked, which pleased me mightily, although so did Barbara Cartland, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Catherine Cookson.
Some of the topics discussed were similar to fannish discussions - is sex necessary or is it okay to 'close the bedroom door' (different audiences want different things, quoth the experts, discriminating on the basis of age. To which...ho hum.) How one sentence can pull the reader out of a sex scene, how some writers want realism - the show danced around the idea of romantic novels as fantasy/escapism, while trying to hook us with its real life effects, though the 'scientific' evidence was not particularly rigorous.
It all came down to money really, we had some figures about how well it sold, the discussion of covers and costs from various publishers and booksellers bewildered me - blurb and word of mouth have more of an effect, and actually, I had a stronger reaction to the old-fashioned M & B covers of the 30s than anything. It didn't help that my naive ideas about a publishing comppany were smashed by the appalling grammar in a discussion about cover designs at one company. There was a discussion about how romantic novels are looked down upon because written by women for women's pleasure, but the programme didn't tackle it, nor did it go after the question of class and the readership.
One rep introducing the presenter to the Mills and Boon lines came across particularly well, smart and laughing, and there was another reader who seemed to have her tongue in cheek that I also liked. I was also fascinated by the necklaces of the contributors, apart from Barbara Cartland, who wore diamonds, of course, a few colourful beads, pearls were by far the favourite choice of attire.
ETA: Two other thing that I forgot to mention. A bookseller was talking about how female writers put off male readers. My hackles automatically rose, but thinking about it, my reading has always been biased towards female authors. Now, this is in part because of genre preferences as well as identification with the heroine etc., but it was a good reminder to myself not to get too happy with my generalised assumptions. Having said that, I don't think the point about gender bias re the looking down at romance as a genre is an invalid point.
The other point raised by the bookseller was that there was more cross-over between romance novels and other genres. She specificaly mentioned a modern 'tec, and I sat there blinking, rather. Romance has always been a fairly imporant element of a lot of mysteries - Sayers, Heyer and Christie to a degree, and definitely Patricia Wentowrth, Maud Silver is as much a match encourager as a sleuth. Just reiterates the lack of thorough historical perspective.
(Edited the Jane Eyre section for punctuation and typos and added a tag, 7/1/22.)
Actually it's better than that, though, I dunno, can't they adapt Shirley or Villette for a change? I mean, I was thinking how iconic Jane is with that strange early-Victorian hairstyle that highlights the ears, and then I realised, no, it's because people keep making adaptations. I like the actors - Ruth Wilson is a prettier version of a caricature of Jane, angry eyebrows and a line of a mouth, and Toby Stephens is having fun with his role like he's Orson Welles or something. (I really liked Welles's take on Rochester, though the rest of that adaptation doesn't work for me.) And the girl who played Lucy in the Narnia films as Jane - not as waiflike as Anna Paquin, but she nailed some of Jane's lines, setting up her character well. The girl who played Helen Burns was pretty stiff, though, I think they just cast her for her looks.
The superspecial and different thing about this adaptation is the wacky things they do with the camera. at least, as wacky as a BBC adaptation of a cassic novel that's airing on its flagship channel is going to be. It worked well to suggest Brocklehurst's effect. There were a couple of things that made me raise an eyebrow. Rochester wasn't a naturalist in te book, was he? I mean, it looks good to have Jane staring at multi-coloured beetles and butterflies, and getting some reality to grround her fantasies. Also, the Fantastic!Jane opening didn't fake me out like it was intended to. The other thing is that Rochester is a bit too, well, flirty, and I think that's in the script as much as Stephens's playing.
The ending was irritating because I'm used to non-serial adaptations of the novel, and the novel itself, where I can just turn a page to Jane's rescue of crispy Rochester.
Then I watched Reader, I Married Him on BBC4 (a repeat), which has Daisy Godwin, an occasionally irritating presenter with a slight tendency to drawl. It's an apologia or defence of 'romantic fiction.' The use of fiction irritated me, because really, you're talking novels, not other forms. Some interesting points, although using 'denigrate' three times does not a programme of great intellectual rigour make. it was a bit all over the place, really, jumping from the history of Mills and Boons to repackagin Jane Austen's books for Asda mum to chick lit to individual testemonies of readers and writers. I deleted a rude comparison between two writer's appearance and shall merely note tha Marian Keyes has the most amazing green eyes. Georgetter Heyer go name-checked, which pleased me mightily, although so did Barbara Cartland, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Catherine Cookson.
Some of the topics discussed were similar to fannish discussions - is sex necessary or is it okay to 'close the bedroom door' (different audiences want different things, quoth the experts, discriminating on the basis of age. To which...ho hum.) How one sentence can pull the reader out of a sex scene, how some writers want realism - the show danced around the idea of romantic novels as fantasy/escapism, while trying to hook us with its real life effects, though the 'scientific' evidence was not particularly rigorous.
It all came down to money really, we had some figures about how well it sold, the discussion of covers and costs from various publishers and booksellers bewildered me - blurb and word of mouth have more of an effect, and actually, I had a stronger reaction to the old-fashioned M & B covers of the 30s than anything. It didn't help that my naive ideas about a publishing comppany were smashed by the appalling grammar in a discussion about cover designs at one company. There was a discussion about how romantic novels are looked down upon because written by women for women's pleasure, but the programme didn't tackle it, nor did it go after the question of class and the readership.
One rep introducing the presenter to the Mills and Boon lines came across particularly well, smart and laughing, and there was another reader who seemed to have her tongue in cheek that I also liked. I was also fascinated by the necklaces of the contributors, apart from Barbara Cartland, who wore diamonds, of course, a few colourful beads, pearls were by far the favourite choice of attire.
ETA: Two other thing that I forgot to mention. A bookseller was talking about how female writers put off male readers. My hackles automatically rose, but thinking about it, my reading has always been biased towards female authors. Now, this is in part because of genre preferences as well as identification with the heroine etc., but it was a good reminder to myself not to get too happy with my generalised assumptions. Having said that, I don't think the point about gender bias re the looking down at romance as a genre is an invalid point.
The other point raised by the bookseller was that there was more cross-over between romance novels and other genres. She specificaly mentioned a modern 'tec, and I sat there blinking, rather. Romance has always been a fairly imporant element of a lot of mysteries - Sayers, Heyer and Christie to a degree, and definitely Patricia Wentowrth, Maud Silver is as much a match encourager as a sleuth. Just reiterates the lack of thorough historical perspective.
(Edited the Jane Eyre section for punctuation and typos and added a tag, 7/1/22.)