"Oh!" cried Elizabeth, "I don't wish to get on Facebook to-day."
"Why not?" said Bingley. "Do you not keep up with your friends?"
"My friends, yes. The people with whom I am intimate, and am comfortable being so. But Mrs. Phillips had a visit from the apothecary, owing to a recent ailment, and like as not will be offering a tour beneath her gown. Wickham will certainly have put forward either an insufferable meme or a picture of some young lady in an unladylike attitude, and Mr. Collins will post twenty links in the space of four minutes, all of them proving him to be as priggish nowadays as ever he was. I had much rather respect my acquaintances from the distance at which circumstance has placed us than despise them familiarly."
"But all of those acquaintances are your relations."
"Worse and worse! Mere acquaintances may be fairly laught at. One cannot laugh at the follies of one's own, and should therefore know as little of them as possible."
"Did you not unsubscribe from Wickham, at least?" said Bingley. "I thought you had."
"Yes, several times; but Facebook has re-fashioned itself again, and now I am forced to see everything he writes."
"Odd! Jane has not complained of it."
"Of course not. She is the sweetest creature in the world. I make no such pretensions."
7.22.2012
Pride and Prejudice and Facebook
Re-posting by request.
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This is getting clipped to my Evernote notebook entitled "Keepers" it is so good... by the way - I'm curious as to your thoughts regarding the Lizzie Bennet Diaries web series...
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it! :D
DeleteActually, I've been watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries with great faithfulness, and loving them for the most part. It seems occasionally overacted and now and then a sloppy line or two of writing creeps in, but overall it's been a blast. The characters are well cast, and I've liked the way the story has been structured, with the mostly-Lizzie narrative and occasional appearances by other characters. What do you think of them?
I'm torn - in general I've been finding them great fun, much better than most "lets set Jane Austen in modern times" (I'm not a fan in general, for no reason I can actually name for you) and if Lydia drives me up the wall, it's because, hello, she's Lydia... she's entirely TOO good at being Lydia... The only one I think is off is Caroline really... well and my disappointment that Mary doesn't sing Karaoke, but I love Mary as she's written too much to be too disappointed in that. But I'm not sure exactly what it is that doesn't seem right about Caroline to me, because I can't put my finger on it, but it's like everything else has been SO SPOT ON that it's like glaringly standing out as soon as she's there... Well and I'm still disturbed by the fact that Jane Bennet wore a mini skirt in one of the first episodes... I'm not convinced that Jane Bennet would wear a miniskirt in ANY universe whatsoever, but that's my own issue, lol, and she is totally Jane otherwise, that's for sure.
DeleteActually, I agree on all counts! What always seems off about Caroline to me is that Caroline in the book was more obviously patronizing to Elizabeth and more obviously in pursuit of Darcy. I think her cool arrogance and shallowness are coming across reasonably well, but her motives are not.
DeleteMary should TOTALLY sing karaoke at some point!
The mini-skirt issue is related to why I don't think Austen often adapts well into modern times, actually. Without the taboos against vulgarity and revealing too much, there's no pride and prejudice--there's just another chick-flick level love story. This one's working, I think, because it's playing up the remaining taboos as much as it can. It's also clever and entertaining, which helps. :)
And I agree on all counts with your analysis as well - Caroline isn't nearly Darcy crazy enough, and yes, modern versions lose everything that make it not just another love story.
ReplyDelete(Speaking of the whole Caroline thing though - it took me multiple viewings of the movie What a Girl Wants for me to catch that it was actually Anna Chancellor in the movie, because I just kept assuming that I was reading the character as a "Miss Bingley-type" character, instead of realizing that she was actually played by the same lady who played Miss Bingley - though as I told someone once - if you can tell me where to sign up to get jobs playing characters obsessed with Colin Firth's characters, it sounds like the perfect job to me!)
Back to the Lizzie Bennet diaries - I pride myself on the fact that PRIOR to cousin Mary getting mentioned AT ALL in the series, I did ask "So do you have a cousin Mary who likes to sing karaoke?" as a question for the question answering episode but it unfortunately didn't get picked. Because it just seems obvious to me that a modern Mary would embarrass them all by singing karaoke...
if you can tell me where to sign up to get jobs playing characters obsessed with Colin Firth's characters, it sounds like the perfect job to me!
DeleteHAHAHA! Seriously. :D And good call regarding cousin Mary! Maybe we should storm the YouTube comments over on Lydia's channel--someone like Lydia is just asking for childish commenter behavior--and beg for a karaoke episode. :P
Love,love,love!!!
ReplyDeleteLove,love,love!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is still *the* funniest thing on the Internet.
ReplyDelete