Home | Blog | Becoming Jane satire

Becoming Jane satire

I simply had to share some recent news I've been reading on AustenBlog about the new Jane Austen movie, Becoming Jane.

First is a great review by Anne Wagner of The Stranger:

There isn't one irritating thing about Becoming Jane, there are about fifty. Even if you don't care that Anne Hathaway is way too pretty to play Jane Austen--who in the most flattering of her alleged portraits is shown with squinty little eyes--there is the fact that the erstwhile star of The Princess Diaries is grating. You may find it disturbing that Jane wears empire-waisted styles not yet popularized; it is also possible that you will disapprove when Jane Austen's chumpish father performs oral sex on her unimpressed mother. (No, I'm not kidding.) And if you've seen a single other Austen adaptation in the last 10 years, particularly 2005's Pride & Prejudice, you'll be appalled at director Julian Jarrold's shameless pilfering--shots, situations... The very plot of Pride & Prejudice is lifted wholesale and wedged between the known facts of Jane Austen's life. Of course, that dimwitted strategy is stolen too, from 1998's Shakespeare in Love. Thanks, Tom Stoppard.

Why do we need to believe that authors lived their own stories? Are we so envious of their towering talents that we have to deny their ability to fabricate plot? (It's especially ridiculous that we've done this to Jane Austen and William Shakespeare--of all writers in the English language, they are perhaps least known for simply devising plotlines.) Whatever the motivation, the result is dull. And if you can imagine Jane Austen falling in love with a man who seduces her with a description of mating chickadees--well, let me put it this way: You must be thinking of the other Brontë.

Now read this hilarious satire. I have to say that at first I was a little curious about seeing this movie--but after reading the satire, I think I know too much already!