tumblr just made me happy

[elizabeth_hoot]

This is a thing that just happened!

Anonymous asked: Oh my gosh, yes. Why do filmmakers think that Darcy never smiled? He thinks Elizabeth's hilarious, and laughs with her (while she thinks he's laughing at her). WHY DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND DARCY?

Bless you, anon. He smiles more than anyone except Elizabeth. He’s even smiling in his portrait, and

Comments

uh, hi

[themonkeytwin]

So, I've lurked/browsed around here, on and off, for a while now, because I love your Austen thoughts and enjoy your passion for SW, plus interesting commentary on sexuality and whatnot. (I even recently came across the thirty days of female characters meme you did here, and am having a lot of fun doing it myself, so thanks for ... I guess doing it? And being interesting? Idk. But anyway :))

BUT I saw this and just wanted to pipe up in solidarity because WHYYYYY. Who do we have to petition to get IC Darcy in an adaptation? Just one? (Plus OOC Darcy distorts Lizzie, too. Maybe that's why? A Lizzie across from a brooding, awkward Darcymuffin is more palatable to modern audiences? Much like why we will apparently never get a real Mansfield Park?)

I'm not a purist, not by a very long shot. I like works that play with Austen's characters and plots, within (my own arbitrary) limits. (For example, I'll stab my eyes out with a spork rather than watch Lost In Austen again.) I'm following the Lizzie Bennet Diaries with a great deal of

Re: uh, hi

[elizabeth_hoot]

Hi! Thanks for delurking :)

And yay, someone who's here for both Austen and SW, that's pretty awesome. And I'm glad you're enjoying the meme!

I think you put your thumb on the frustration. It isn't that one, or several of the onscreen Darcys are significantly off from his canon characterization. They all are. Ugh.

And yes, I tend to think it's like with MP - people think that he/it wouldn't appeal as written, so it has to be changed into something more marketable.

I think of myself as tending to the purist (though tbh much less of one with Austen than other things) - I totally agree about LIA, and I really enjoyed LBD for about the first 2/3.

I don't like their Darcy, though, and I was really hoping they'd do something interesting and risky with him. He's both too unlike Austen's Darcy for me and too much like it, all at the same time. I think keeping his lines and preoccupations as near to canon as they did when everyone else was updated seemed itself an odd misapprehension of his character, as if Darcy's period mannerisms and

Re: uh, hi

[themonkeytwin]

As far as being purist goes, I figure I have the pure originals, and that frees me to enjoy works that play around with them. If a derivative piece works on its own merits, not just whatever goodwill it borrows from the original, that can be all it takes to make me happy. Basically, if you know what you're doing, I can roll with it. When it actually manages to interact intelligently or accurately with the source, that's when I actually get excited.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but one adaptation I thought managed to get a partial Darcy to its credit was Bride&Prejudice, where they manage to get some of the assured arrogance of him by virtue of making him American, which is interesting on a whole bunch of levels. (Or horrific, depending on personal views ;)) And yet even they played the fish-out-of-water card to soften his rough edges. Mind you, they softened pretty much everything to modernise it and fit it into a movie run-time.

I think keeping his lines and preoccupations as near to canon as they did when everyone else was

Re: uh, hi

[elizabeth_hoot]

It's Orlando Seale from the Mormon P&P, ha. He's the one that physically resembles Darcy-in-my-head most closely.

a fan

[anonymous]

Yes! I have to admit that your blogs and rants and meta were one of the keys that awoke me from Darcy is angsty haze and made me really look at the text. (And that is when your Season of Courtship became one of my go to reads any time I was depressed and frustrated by brooding Darcy who would cavalierly seduce Elizabeth or ask her to be his mistress etc) It's so much more fun to read about a Darcy who smiles - the Darcy of the books. While I love most Austen adaptations for just existing (sadly the Mansfield Park let's make Fanny into Austen versions interfere with my ability to watch calmly but I can ignore most other deviations and almost ignore Anne running down the streets of Bath ugh), it is frustrating that there is no Darcy I can really get behind. I like the Davies version simply because we get to see Wickham and Lydia. I like the Rintoul version because so much of the actual text is kept when they are arguing. I like the film mostly because of that awesome dance scene where everyone else fades away. But in all of those

Re: a fan

[elizabeth_hoot]

Sorry, I just saw this!

Thank you very much, that's - really the nicest compliment I can get! Both on the meta and Courtship :)

I do think it's much more enjoyable to get a Darcy who still has those sharp edges, but is reasonably good-natured and has a wry sense of humour. And I'm with you - I can never put the text behind me, but there's always a certain enjoyment from just seeing Austen onscreen (even if it quickly devolves into rage for me, ha). And yeah, total agreement on how MP is always so spectacularly bad that it just drowns out the basic enjoyment. I also agree with your frustration over the lack of a Darcy who particularly matches up with the book - with most of the other characters, there might be versions I like more or less, there's version is off but this one is okay, while Darcy is just ... eh.

[atenais_pala]

Thank you for this post! Why everybody thinks that Mr. Darcy has no sense of humor?