{"id":66556,"date":"2021-06-14T03:00:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T07:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=66556"},"modified":"2022-04-07T09:49:19","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:49:19","slug":"movies-based-on-classic-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2021\/06\/14\/movies-based-on-classic-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Movies based on “classic literature”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Severian<\/a> considers the relative glut of movies more-or-less based on the classics of literature from his formative years:<\/p>\n

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When I was a young buck, there was a fad for making movies out of “classic literature”. Scads of chick flicks, of course \u2014 Jane Austen’s complete works, the Bront\u00ebs, and so on \u2014 but they also took a stab at Shakespeare. Mostly they stuck to the comedies \u2014 and trust me, watching Keanu Reeves trying to handle Much Ado About Nothing<\/em> is hilarious, in all the wrong ways \u2014 but they’d occasionally give the tragedies a shot. Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet<\/em> is pretty good despite all the distracting cameos, his Othello<\/em> is at least sincere (ye gods, imagine trying to make that<\/em> today!), I think I’m forgetting a few. Mel Gibson gave Hamlet<\/em> a go back in the early 1990s, and so on. Again, I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting a few.<\/p>\n

It always struck me as odd. Unless they timed the theatrical releases to midterm and finals week, hoping to hoover up the dollars of desperate sophomores who didn’t do the homework, it didn’t make much sense, marketing-wise. We were a much more culturally literate people once, it’s true*, but there’s just not much of an audience for the Bard anymore. Nor was it a case of SJWs trying to destroy something good just on general principles. I’m sure Gwyneth Paltrow was bad as Emma<\/em>, but the idea of retconning every single female in the Western Canon into a Strong, Confident Woman(TM) was still in its infancy. My only other guess was that, since college enrollments were skyrocketing, maybe the parents of all those first-gen college kids were feeling mal-educated and trying to catch up …? Lame, I know, but it was the best I could do.<\/p>\n

Looking back on it now, I see my problem: I was looking at it from the demand side. Silly and naive as I was, I assumed that Hollywood’s primary concern was making money, so they went out and found what the people wanted to see, then gave it to them. For instance, I thought Titanic<\/em> was going to be a huge flop. I mean, the boat sinks. We know that. How do you squeeze any dramatic tension out of it? I should’ve realized they’d be playing it as a doomed-lovers tragedy \u2014 girls love that shit, what with the big flouncy costumes and all. Once I realized that, I thought I had it all figured out \u2014 every girl I, personally, knew found the works of Jane Austen tedious, but that’s because (I reasoned) you have to supply the images for yourself. Put Hunky McBeef up there in breeches and a peruke, Waify Beecup in a Regency dress, and it’s chick crack …<\/p>\n

Or so I thought. Looking back on it now, that’s as dumb as my opinion that Titanic<\/em> would bomb. Hollywood doesn’t care what you want. I doubt if Hollywood has ever cared what you want, but if they ever did, that time probably ended in tandem with Clara Bow’s career<\/a>. Hollywood wants what they want, and so will you, because whaddaya gonna do, not watch it? The reason they made all those “classic literature” films in the 1990s, then, wasn’t because they thought we wanted (or needed) some cultural uplift.<\/p>\n

No, the reason was: By the 1990s, the last of the old guard in Hollywood was dying off, replaced by the new guard, the Baby Boomers. As we know, it’s not enough for Boomers to control everything while making a shitload of money. No no, for them everything has to be deep<\/em> and meaningful<\/em>. They thought of themselves as artistes<\/em>, not entertainers, so they had to put out a bunch of highbrow stuff, and we had to watch it. This is the sole reason goofy-looking Kenneth Branagh and his horse-faced wife (at the time) were a big cultural force. They made Shakespeare sexy, by which I mean, they allowed the studio heads to think of themselves as the arbiters of culture, not the carny trash they were and are. That some decent movies got made because of it, is entirely incidental.**<\/p>\n