Reader to viewer
Jane Eyre is number 12 in the Observer’s top 100 novels, and Robert McCrum explains why here. As I’d been watching a lot of The Autobiography of Jane Eyre over the weekend, this jumped out at me:
Charlotte Bronte takes her audience by the throat with a fierce narrative of great immediacy. Jane Eyre's voice on the page is almost hypnotic. The reader can hardly resist turning the next page, and the next…
In an extraordinary breakthrough for the English novel, borrowing the intimacy of the 18th-century epistolary tradition, Charlotte Brontë had found a way to mesmerise the reader through an intensely private communion with her audience. We, the author, and Jane Eyre become one. For this, she can be claimed as the forerunner of the novel of interior consciousness.
The adaptation was having a similar pull on me, as did LBD at times - my tendency is to watch these vids in blocks that are as long as television shows. It’s partly the format - ‘diarist’ speaking to viewer, but it’s also wondering how they'll adapt a beloved story factor.
Anyway, thoughts about episodes 21 to 30.
I was a little disappointed by most of the episodes in this block, (a block arbitrarily decided by me). It covers our meeting Blanche to Jane learning that her Aunt Reed is dying.
I commend the webseries for its ambition, and I very much like a lot of how it breaks away from LBD, but I think it’s thought less about what it means to be a fake video diary as the means for retelling the story, and maybe the inexperience of the people involved in making it has made them not always find the best ways of telling the story within their budgetary and formal constraints. It wouldn’t work for Jane to...I don’t know...use her stuffed cat to recreate conversations, because, well, Rochester is about the only character she can have an open conversation with, with the caveat that he’s playing games and she doesn’t know everything. But changing that would have huge ramifications for the big reveal.
I probably need to give specific examples of what I mean. The Charades bit, with Jane as a reluctant amateur camerawoman worked. Also, I totally rewound, not just because of the poor lighting, but to check, and Rochester was looking straight at Jane before pulling Blanche in for a hug. Having Jane and Rochester’s ensuing ‘I want to see you smile’ conversation be mostly audible (in the previous episode, they hid Rochester’s face, which is fine thematically, but not when the mike barely picks up his dialogue) while we couldn’t see them, just his awesome socks, worked.
But ‘A New Age of Aluminium’? Ack, ack, ack no. What company would post all of that as a promotional video? The ideas were good in terms of updating what happens in the book to the modern day setting, any adaptation that references Rochester dressing up as the gypsy gets bonus points from me, and I thought that the actor carried off the theatrical, cruel clowning and the moment Jane snapped him out of it really well. But the decor and trying to capture the whole thing showed up the lack of budget, so they totally should have handled it differently. Not to mention the weird dance, what was that, Bertha's POV?
Sometimes I get scared that it will turn out that Bertha is going to turn out to be the editor, which MAKES NO SENSE.
Also, I was really confused by episode 23. How did Jane’s vlog become public? On which platform? Because it wasn’t in any of the vids.
The ramifications of that have been nothing like as big as they might be. Rochester is conveniently relaxed (although Adele didn't give informed consent. A) because she couldn’t, being a child B) because Jane fudged the truth and didn’t say the Q&A was going to be posted online and, really, in what world would Jane have posted 'The Dinner' with no comment other than ‘Adele stole my camera before dinner the other night?’ ) Every time that Jane has raised the camera being on hasn’t made up for all the times that she hasn’t, that is, when she knows it's on, but ‘she’ is meant to be the one posting the videos. We haven’t seen much of her guilty conscience of posting vids of people without their informed consent or about talking about her job etc on the vids. Rochester claims to be fine with it, which speaks to his recklessness (I mean, he let Jane record him being in breach of contract!), but really? I wish I could trust that they’d fully thought through how Rochester was letting Jane use the vlogs. (And I know I grouched about this with LBD, but there’s even less foregrounding of the issues here, and Jane should be aware of them.)
Taking the camera outside for ‘The Walk’, however, was great. I took it that Rochester wanted the camera as a witness to this conversation/check from his doing something he shouldn’t. Because that was an interesting conversation, letting her think he was talking about Blanche, but arguably, trying to warn Jane off with some of the truth about him.
But jumping back, I had big issues with Episode 25. They should have come up with a better reason for the camera being on - Jane could be practicing an intro and trying to build up for a new entry because she couldn’t sleep than - randomly having it on. Also, there should have been at least two cuts to suggest a credible amount of time to have passed when Jane was elsewhere, watching Mr Mason bleed or comforting Adele.
Episode 30 didn’t quite work for me either; it didn’t hit all the notes the scene should do, hand-holding aside. She was basically flirting, if not entirely consciously, and where was the light and shade of his response to Jane deciding to leave, proclaiming that other people have a claim on her? I wanted a little more than staring from him.
But then, but then, I’m still rooting for Jane (even if she’s not book!Jane), particularly in ep 26 and when we had the return of reader!Jane at the start of ep 27, when she was simply talking to her audience on camera, coming close to that communion mentioned in that quote up top.
Hmm, might as well have posted my response episode by episode, as that jumped a little all over the place.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/84877.html.
Charlotte Bronte takes her audience by the throat with a fierce narrative of great immediacy. Jane Eyre's voice on the page is almost hypnotic. The reader can hardly resist turning the next page, and the next…
In an extraordinary breakthrough for the English novel, borrowing the intimacy of the 18th-century epistolary tradition, Charlotte Brontë had found a way to mesmerise the reader through an intensely private communion with her audience. We, the author, and Jane Eyre become one. For this, she can be claimed as the forerunner of the novel of interior consciousness.
The adaptation was having a similar pull on me, as did LBD at times - my tendency is to watch these vids in blocks that are as long as television shows. It’s partly the format - ‘diarist’ speaking to viewer, but it’s also wondering how they'll adapt a beloved story factor.
Anyway, thoughts about episodes 21 to 30.
I was a little disappointed by most of the episodes in this block, (a block arbitrarily decided by me). It covers our meeting Blanche to Jane learning that her Aunt Reed is dying.
I commend the webseries for its ambition, and I very much like a lot of how it breaks away from LBD, but I think it’s thought less about what it means to be a fake video diary as the means for retelling the story, and maybe the inexperience of the people involved in making it has made them not always find the best ways of telling the story within their budgetary and formal constraints. It wouldn’t work for Jane to...I don’t know...use her stuffed cat to recreate conversations, because, well, Rochester is about the only character she can have an open conversation with, with the caveat that he’s playing games and she doesn’t know everything. But changing that would have huge ramifications for the big reveal.
I probably need to give specific examples of what I mean. The Charades bit, with Jane as a reluctant amateur camerawoman worked. Also, I totally rewound, not just because of the poor lighting, but to check, and Rochester was looking straight at Jane before pulling Blanche in for a hug. Having Jane and Rochester’s ensuing ‘I want to see you smile’ conversation be mostly audible (in the previous episode, they hid Rochester’s face, which is fine thematically, but not when the mike barely picks up his dialogue) while we couldn’t see them, just his awesome socks, worked.
But ‘A New Age of Aluminium’? Ack, ack, ack no. What company would post all of that as a promotional video? The ideas were good in terms of updating what happens in the book to the modern day setting, any adaptation that references Rochester dressing up as the gypsy gets bonus points from me, and I thought that the actor carried off the theatrical, cruel clowning and the moment Jane snapped him out of it really well. But the decor and trying to capture the whole thing showed up the lack of budget, so they totally should have handled it differently. Not to mention the weird dance, what was that, Bertha's POV?
Sometimes I get scared that it will turn out that Bertha is going to turn out to be the editor, which MAKES NO SENSE.
Also, I was really confused by episode 23. How did Jane’s vlog become public? On which platform? Because it wasn’t in any of the vids.
The ramifications of that have been nothing like as big as they might be. Rochester is conveniently relaxed (although Adele didn't give informed consent. A) because she couldn’t, being a child B) because Jane fudged the truth and didn’t say the Q&A was going to be posted online and, really, in what world would Jane have posted 'The Dinner' with no comment other than ‘Adele stole my camera before dinner the other night?’ ) Every time that Jane has raised the camera being on hasn’t made up for all the times that she hasn’t, that is, when she knows it's on, but ‘she’ is meant to be the one posting the videos. We haven’t seen much of her guilty conscience of posting vids of people without their informed consent or about talking about her job etc on the vids. Rochester claims to be fine with it, which speaks to his recklessness (I mean, he let Jane record him being in breach of contract!), but really? I wish I could trust that they’d fully thought through how Rochester was letting Jane use the vlogs. (And I know I grouched about this with LBD, but there’s even less foregrounding of the issues here, and Jane should be aware of them.)
Taking the camera outside for ‘The Walk’, however, was great. I took it that Rochester wanted the camera as a witness to this conversation/check from his doing something he shouldn’t. Because that was an interesting conversation, letting her think he was talking about Blanche, but arguably, trying to warn Jane off with some of the truth about him.
But jumping back, I had big issues with Episode 25. They should have come up with a better reason for the camera being on - Jane could be practicing an intro and trying to build up for a new entry because she couldn’t sleep than - randomly having it on. Also, there should have been at least two cuts to suggest a credible amount of time to have passed when Jane was elsewhere, watching Mr Mason bleed or comforting Adele.
Episode 30 didn’t quite work for me either; it didn’t hit all the notes the scene should do, hand-holding aside. She was basically flirting, if not entirely consciously, and where was the light and shade of his response to Jane deciding to leave, proclaiming that other people have a claim on her? I wanted a little more than staring from him.
But then, but then, I’m still rooting for Jane (even if she’s not book!Jane), particularly in ep 26 and when we had the return of reader!Jane at the start of ep 27, when she was simply talking to her audience on camera, coming close to that communion mentioned in that quote up top.
Hmm, might as well have posted my response episode by episode, as that jumped a little all over the place.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/84877.html.