We've already trademarked the phrase Uptight Purist Janeites, so back off, Zombie Boy
And it is only to be used in connection with reviews of The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. The Editrix Hath Spoken.*
We’ve been following all the excitement about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with much bemusement. In fact, there’s been so much interest that we heard from Quirk Books today that they’re moving up the publication date to April. There haven’t been a whole lot of comments on the various posts we’ve made about it here, but they’ve been mostly positive, or at least taking a wait-and-see attitude; there are even a few Janeite zombie fans who are pretty excited about it. We’ve seen a few less positive comments around the ‘nets, but as in most things in the Janeite diaspora, we’re not speaking with one voice; opinions are all over the spectrum, because we Janeites really don’t march in lockstep.
However, Seth Grahame-Smith, the author, seems to see it as an “us vs. them” situation: people either love it or hate it, and clearly the haters are the Uptight Purist Janeite types. So in the interest of fellowship among authors (especially those with the same publisher), we would like to gently point out to Mr. Grahame-Smith that the Janeites are his audience, too, and to marginalize us or dismiss us en masse as Uptight Purist Janeites would be to invite us to ask ourselves: What Would Jane Do?
Since you think P&P is about “uptight aristocrats”, we’ll give you a hint: she would probably, well, eat your brain.
(By the bye, we’ll have a few copies of P&P and Zombies to give away on AustenBlog, so stay tuned).
Thanks to Alert Janeite Laurel Ann for the link.
*Which reminds us, PaperCuts–”Jane Austen Ate My Brain” is OUR band name. You back off, too!
ETA: Mr. Grahame-Smith has sent us a little valentine.
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OK, so you wed a literary classic to a contemporary horror genre, and the concept is maybe good for a chuckle. But I’ll tell you what offends me. It’s that the blogosphere collectively has bitten *hard* on this thing. I have received more than a hundred posts about P&P&Z in my RSS feed in the last week — I’m not exaggerating. It is simply not worth that amount of attention. If that’s all it takes to get people going these days these days, civilized discourse is in even worse shape than I thought.
What Would Jane Do? She would undoubtedly caution Mr. Grahame-Smith that it’s never a good idea to bite the hand that might feed you–even if you are a zombie.
Agree, I respect other people’s opinion. My opinion is, I can not consive, my favorite author’s stories, the one that fill my heart with happines as “Horror Genre?”, so I’m just not going to read it, and that’s it. Good luck to the author, and as Mark Harris says, I’m not going to spend more time on this. I prefer to talk about who is going to be the next Mr. Knightley =)
Well, I’m not going to begrudge a fellow author any publicity, and indeed it’s been amusing at times to see it all snowball. What troubles me is the mean-spiritedness of some of the blog comments, like, “Jane Austen sucks and therefore this will be awesome because it makes fun of Jane Austen, who sucks.” I’m not so sure it makes fun of Jane Austen, and it’s not like she needs the help to be funny. The haters need help reading. Jane Austen was a wickedly funny parodist herself (see link above to Henry Tilney’s Gothic parody in NA). In P&P itself, Mr. Collins is a parody, Mrs. Bennet is a parody. To me, this project has a sort of 18th-century flavor to it, though it remains to be seen if the finished product rivals Swift and Fielding, of course.
Though I still think ninjas > zombies.
Let me expand a bit (cross-posting from comments I made at AustenProse). I can illustrate my problem by reference to another modern Austen adaptation. When Clueless was released, it was entirely a stealth adaptation. Writer-director Amy Heckerling didn’t flag her source. She was caught out (immediately) and ‘fessed up (immediately). That was delicious, and Clueless is in fact a brilliant re-imagining of Emma.
But Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is purely “high concept,” concocted solely for the attention it can draw: no stealth maneuvers here! It is like the manufactured mini-scandals of 24-hour cable news. And that is what depresses me, that the blogosphere has so dutifully played its role in the process of the manufacture of attention. It is so very predictable.
P&P&Z, in short, is what Daniel Boorstin calls a “pseudo-event” in his brilliant survey of modern America called “The Image” (published in 1961, it is still the first book I would recommend to anyone who wants a better understanding of the media and political world we live in). The Wikipedia definition of pseudo-events is pithily accurate: “events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity.” I would add that one of the defining elements of pseudo-events is the build-up of anticipation, the endless discussion (“pre-hash,” a friend of mine wittily calls it) before an actual experience that proves to be nothing much. The Super Bowl and the Academy Awards are perfect examples of this. But who would have thought that Jane Austen would be pressed into service, not of zombies (who cares), but of the modern machinery of simulacra (also well described by French theorists, but Boorstin got there first)? Chew her up, spit her out, indeed. Contemporary media and public relations is the real zombie.
Yes, lets discuss who’ll be the next Mr. Knightley – (after all I’m an uptight purist Jameite) and of course ¨what the next Emma should look like.
That’s a super idea of having a hazel eyed Emma with hair not dark or light!
Two other characters that I’m praying hard to be well cast are Mrs Elton and Mr Woodhouse.
Considering the inspiration for Northanger Abbey, I don’t see the big deal about some zombies mixed in to Pride and Prejudice. Some of the Jane Austen-inspired work that comes out tries to be serious, but comes up short. Some tries to be funny, but isn’t. How can I have a criticism of Zombies? If done well, it sounds like a lot of fun.
I just wonder if my library system will buy it because I want to put it on hold.
I agree with Mags that the truly irksome part is not that someone may want to have some silly fun with P&P, but that the project seems to be drawing out the Jane-haters who for some odd reason are taking this as an invitation to bash Austen. From some of the comments I’ve seen, I suspect, many of them have never even read an Austen novel.
The fact that someone is using Austen to make a buck–well ho-hum, that’s not exactly new.
If it’s campy, it could be good fun. However, if the author is already approaching it from the mindset that P&P is about a bunch of uptight aristocrats, then it may not be very clever at all. Mark Harris’ comments about the mind-numbing proliferation of “pseudo-events” and the hype that never quite lives up to the realization are interesting.
I suppose those of us who are obsessing about the casting of the new BBC Emma are creating a little “pseudo-event” of our own, for which the BBC should be suitably grateful. Guilty as charged–but damn, its fun. Let’s just hope the hype in this case meets our admittedly high expectations.
Back to the important stuff, yes Reeba, I agree wholeheartedly that an excellent Mrs. Elton and Mr. Woodhouse are called for. Mrs. Elton, especially, is one of my favorite Austen characters.
Hello my name is Jessica Karla most everyone calls me Karlinha, I am Brazilian and I have 17 years!
I started reading the works of Jane Austen when I was 15 years of age.
I am passionate for their works, and also love the movies and series produced by BBC! I love your blog is a great pleasure for me to be on your blog!
Congratulations!
Mark, in many ways that’s kind of what this blog is about–Jane Austen in popular culture. That includes movies, books, action figures, handcrafts, all kinds of things that we’ve come across in the nearly five years we’ve been doing it. Hype is part of popular culture now, for good and bad. But I hear you on the lack of proportion. It’s a hobbyhorse of mine as well–that the lesser-quality items sometimes get a lot more attention than the quality items. Movie-wise, Clueless and Bride and Prejudice and The Jane Austen Book Club, which are fresh and original and funny, should be much more celebrated than Becoming Jane and most of the latest batch of adaptations and especially Lost in Austen (which, admittedly, didn’t get that much attention). A lot of that has to do with publicity and it mystifies me why bad projects get so much and good projects so little, as least as far as the films go. It extends to other projects, too. But in the present case, a lot of people get to think they’re being hilarious for five minutes, and egoboos will always be popular on the Internets.
Talking about a “pseudo event”, one is reminded of another hype-o-rama in the 1980′s the television special The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault. From Wikipeida “The term “Al Capone’s vault” has become slang for a heavily expected event with disappointing results.” Will P&P&Z become a new euphemism for blown up hype not delivering?
Our society is driven my anticipation. It is the great motivator. Life would be pretty boring without it. I do agree with Mags and Maria L. The “uptight aristocrat mindset” is a low blow by the author pitting enthusiasts of Austen against those who hate her even though they may not have ever read her works?. Is this his marketing plan? Will this sell books? Not smart.
Well count me amongst the mindless hype-driven drones because I am still rather excited/curious about this little project and am happy to hear it will be available earlier than originally planned. (Although I totally agree with Maria L…the author should go a little easier on the people who have helped to build said hype for his book). I have always been a proud geek and rather like that someone thought to combine two totally different interests of mine: Jane Austen and Zombies. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone since I am the girl who once posted a picture of her Jane Austen and Doctor Who action figures together. Why should I stop with time-traveling aliens? In fact, I can see this becoming a series…
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Book 1)
Northanger Abbey Vampire Slayers (totally stole that one from Mags)
Persuasion of Pirates (Captain Wentworth and Admiral Croft to the rescue!)
The Werewolves of Mansfield Park (Henry Crawford’s bite worse than his bark?)
Emma: Ninja Warrior (Matching-making is just a red herring)
And finally…Sense & Sensibility: The Dashwood Sisters’ Guide to Ghost Hunting
I’d read them all
Ho-hum…snore. There must be more intelligent food for thought than zombies and the close-minded “creator’s” opinion of Janeites.
If this book is as good as the Twilight series (I stopped reading 1/3 into the second book), then I’ll take a pass. Yawn. These gimmicky plots leave me cold. I’ll wait to purchase the novel when its paperback version shows up at Goodwill Store book bin.
If it includes a scene of Darcy staggering all wet out of that lake, IN SEARCH OF HUMAN FLESH, then I’ll buy it! (And he likes Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner SO MUCH that he EATS THEIR BRAINS!)
…and then he drags Elizabeth into the Dungeons of Pemberley to BE HIS BRIDE. She reappears with frizzy white hair and lots of scars, IN SEARCH OF HUMAN FLESH. Together, they eat Lydia and wholly eliminate that little problem!
They visit Darcy’s family, and snack on Mr. Collins (because even as a zombie, Darcy has a true Englishman’s sense of justice.) Then Darcy drags Charlotte back to the Dungeons of Pemberley to BE HIS SECOND BRIDE, which is fine with her because she never was romantic, and he still has all his money due to having eaten the housekeeper and anybody else who realizes that he didn’t use to LURCH like that.
There. Tell Zombie Boy I already did it, and did it better. He can go play somewhere else now.
Valeria, I definitive love your story, with this story of yours I’m more than satisfied and close this chapter/event/whatever it is zombie-mania
Yes, and it’s even a free download! Kudos, Valerie
>Together, they eat Lydia and wholly eliminate that little problem!
LOL!!
I too am more than satisfied with this story.
Wondeful, Valeria!!
I must say that I wrote about this book Jane Austen Club (blog in portuguese) and many of janeites fans hated this version!
Adriana
This was even featured on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” this weekend! (In the segment where there are 3 totally unbelievable stories and you have to pick the real one!)
I laughed and was v. proud that I knew about P, P & Z.
(Even if my friend Shem on the DWG wrote Zombies in P&P first!)