I’ve just watched the recent movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Clueless, which is a loose adaptation of Austen’s Emma. First, I want to comment very briefly on the Girardian nature of both plots and then offer some comments on adaptation.
Mimetic desire in the films
For whatever reason I didn’t watch Persuasion in a single sitting. I forget whether it was late in the first sitting or during the second sitting that I noticed, Hey! this story is steeped in mimetic desire. The heroine, Anne, doesn’t realize that she’s still in love with an old flame until he is both pursued by and pursues her best friend. That’s classic Girard, and in the medium in which he did his original research, the novel.
A couple days later I decided to watch Clueless, though I have a vague sense that I may have seen it in theaters on original release in 1995. Sure enough, about two-thirds of the way through or so the heroine, Cher, realizes that she’s in love with Josh when she realizes that she’s jealous of Tai’s interest in him (Tai is a new friend).
In both films we see mimesis working in other relationship pairings as well, but I have no intention of working any of this out. This is mostly a note to myself.
I will observer, however, that I’ve never been a Girardian. I became aware of his ideas about mimetic desire and sacrifice from lectures he gave a Johns Hopkins when I was an undergraduate. Later I read Violence and the Sacred with some care when the English translation came out in 1977, but I’ve forgotten it. Girard never made it into my working repertoire until earlier this year I decided to write about Jaws, and there I called on my friend, David Porush, to validate my Girardian interpretation as David knows Girard’s thought much better than I do.
Here's the thing: If I’m to do much work with Girard’s ideas I’m going to have to recast them into a more contemporary intellectual form. I have no idea what that would look like or how much apparatus building it will require. As it is, Girard is just another humanist with his feet in the 19th century.
Adaptation: Clueless
Since I’ve not read Emma, I have no idea just how loose the adaptation is. Obviously the setting has changed enormously. Mores have as well; there’s a fair amount of talk about virginity that wouldn’t have happened in Austen. But it’s the plot that matters most and I have no way of judging that.
However, I’m pretty sure that the film makers were not counting on an audience familiar with Emma, any more than the makers of Forbidden Planet were counting on an audience familiar with The Tempest. They’re just doing what story tellers have always done, borrow, steal, and adapt.
Adaptation: Persuasion
Persuasion is a different story. Here I think there is some presumption that viewers will at least know that this is an adaptation of an early 19th century novel and even that a significant portion of the audience will have read the novel. I have not, but I do know that it is a 19th century novel. Apparently it has received quite a bit of criticism for anachronism. I supposed I could care less about “breaking the fourth wall,” nor am I so much concerned that Anne apparently is a bit more free-spirited that Jane depicted her, though perhaps this should bother me.
But I am somewhat puzzled that the film offers up black aristocrats in early 19th century England, which is certainly an anachronism. Surely they don’t think any viewers will believe that this is authentic. I have a vague general idea about why this is being done – something about egalitarianism – but that general idea collapses upon inspection. For the same general sensibility argues against so-called “color blind” casting on the grounds that only black people can pretend to be other black people with full depth and authenticity, only East Asians can pretend to be and so forth and so on. Except in this case, 21st century black actors can play early 19th century white English aristocrats.
In this case I suppose one can resort to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Somehow, though, I don’t think this is what he had in mind.
What are the chances we’ll outgrow this?
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