skygiants | (no subject)

I've talked about the brain-candy books I read and loved on my trip, so let's talk about one I didn't like so much: Shannon Hale's Austenland.

To be fair I was unfairly biased against Austenland from the beginning when the close-third narration made an offhand comment about loving all the books except Northanger Abbey which nobody likes like I was expected to agree and identify with it, when: how dare you, Northanger Abbey is a comic masterpiece and beautiful literary treasure.

Anyway, the basic premise of Austenland is: our heroine Jane has been Ruined for Real Love by the fact that no real humans can live up to her fantasies of Mr. Darcy, Ruined! So in her will her great-aunt leaves her an all-expenses-paid trip to a secret luxury Austen LARP where women can go to role-play out an Austen romance with hot paid actors in Regency costume.

Hypothetically, this premise could have been a pretty interesting exploration of the boundaries between fantasy and reality and the inherent weirdness and squickiness of role-playing out a romance with someone who's being paid to feign passionate suppressed Regency attraction, which ... is sort of what we get, except in the end it follows the same pattern of basically all prostitute romance: yes of course it's kind of gross for other people, but our protagonist, who is doing exactly the same thing as all the other women that she has withering contempt for that except we're in her head so we know that she's self-aware and ironical about it on the inside, manages to kindle TRUE LOVE in the heart of the jaded paid romance role-player! for the first time ever!! SHE'S DIFFERENT FROM ALL THE OTHERS, SHE MADE HIM BELIEVE.

OK, well, nice for you, but you definitely did not make me believe.

(Also, I wanted to take a drink every time the heroine is hanging out with the love interest, noticing his broodiness/sarcasm/lack of sociability/tendency to say condescending things, and thinking 'wow, so different from Mr. Darcy!' GIRL.)

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/442130.html

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kore

how dare you, Northanger Abbey is a comic masterpiece and beautiful literary treasure.

!!! It is funny! Also, HENRY TILNEY.

the basic premise of Austenland is: our heroine Jane has been Ruined for Real Love by the fact that no real humans can live up to her fantasies of Mr. Darcy, Ruined!

....man, I never get this. I can see being ruined by Henry Tilney or Frederick Wentworth or maybe Cnl Brandon, Rickman Flavour, but Darcy?? We grow to love him, but he's....such a dick. And often a hilarious dick (THAT AWFUL PROPOSAL).

So in her will her great-aunt leaves her an all-expenses-paid trip to a secret luxury Austen LARP where women can go to role-play out an Austen romance with hot paid actors in Regency costume.

DDD:

also now I'm thinking of Exit to Eden. But with Regency outfits.

From:

frith_in_thorns

That's a really weird thing to leave someone in your will.

From:

newredshoes

I didn't realize it was a book first! The movie is way more delightful than I'd expected going in.

From:

agonistes

Amazing. That's very close to exactly what makes me hate Emma so much. Also Mansfield Park but for other reasons.

From:

evewithanapple

It's actually kind of funny that the movie- which was directed by Stephenie Meyer, of all people (I think she's BFF with Shannon Hale)- ended up being 100% more delightful and female-friendly than the book was. Like, it has Jennifer Coolidge! And her love interest is Gaius Baltar! And it gave us the whole cast dancing to Hot In Here! Wheras the book was this kind of . . . sad slog.

(Are we entirely sure the "SO unlike Mr. Darcy!" thoughts weren't meant to be meta/ironic? I mean . . .)

Edited (I somehow managed to mix up Jennifer Saunders and Jennifer Coolidge AGAIN.) Date: 2016-04-30 05:11 pm (UTC)

From:

bookblather

YES I was coming to say EXACTLY THIS. The movie is charming and delightful and the book is like... um? Meh. MEH, I say.

Also I'm pretty sure the love interest in the movie is actually PLAYED by Henry Tilney which makes it 100% funnier to me.

eta ALSO there's a bit where Henry Tilney tells the stablehand dude to go get a job in the Hobbit which is 100% funnier because that actor does have a job in the Hobbit.

Edited Date: 2016-04-30 06:18 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

....man, I never get this. I can see being ruined by Henry Tilney or Frederick Wentworth or maybe Cnl Brandon, Rickman Flavour, but Darcy?? We grow to love him, but he's....such a dick. And often a hilarious dick (THAT AWFUL PROPOSAL).

Yes, I came in to say exactly this! I mean, the whole point of the book was that he came across (at least at first) as super unlikeable!

From:

kore

He's rude! He's lolarious! Lizzie thinks he's a TOSSER! I loved Jennifer Ehle's imitation of him in the BBC adaptation when she drawls ""I find her....tolerable,'" it's so clear she thinks of him as a giant tool.

Rochester in Jane Eyre is another example -- he's not meant to be a Romantic Hero, he's like this antiromantic antihero (he's not even pretty!), and part of why he falls in love with Jane is she stands up to him and mocks him and just won't take his shit. I think it's not quite the "love of a good woman tames the asshole" trope, it's more like Beatrice and Benedick, two equals jousting.

I mean if we go for the "X ruined Y for any other man" setup in P&P, that'd be more like Jane and Bingley. Or Marianne and Willoughby. But both Lizzie and Elinor are intrigued by other dudes and I am sure I had a point but I think it is bounding away off the hills and over fences like a little bucolic sheep.

From:

kore

Like, it has Jennifer Coolidge! And her love interest is Gaius Baltar! And it gave us the whole cast dancing to Hot In Here!

....okay you've just gotten me actually interested in this. It sounds like that time-travel-to-Austen's-period story which I think was also a crummy book that got turned into a good movie.

From:

alias_sqbr

I wanted to take a drink every time the heroine is hanging out with the love interest, noticing his broodiness/sarcasm/lack of sociability/tendency to say condescending things, and thinking 'wow, so different from Mr. Darcy!'

This sort of thing always makes me wonder what exactly these characters do like about Mr Darcy, asides from the general "Handsome man in a cravat" aspect, which the love interest here presumably has in his favour as well.

From:

skygiants

Henry Tilney is my FAVORITE Austen hero hands down, he reads gothics! and understands muslin!! good-natured, charming and USEFUL!!! I'm so confused

From:

skygiants

True, though it is the kind of contrived thing that people often leave people in their wills in fiction and especially romance-novel-land (along the lines of 'here is a bequest you can only have if you MARRY' or 'here is a bequest you can only have if you TAKE A YEAR IN EUROPE')

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I've heard the movie is much more charming! And admittedly a lot of the annoyance is what's going on inside the heroine's internal narration, so I believe it.

From:

skygiants

Elaborate? I mean, I have many issues with Emma and I don't like Mansfield Park at ALL but I'm not sure they align with my issues with this book in particular.

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I've heard really good things about the movie! Though I did NOT know Gaius Baltar was in it and lolololol. I may still try to watch it out of compare/contrast curiosity.

(I think maybe they were meant to be meta/ironic on the author's part, but it did nothing to endear me to the heroine -- I just wanted to grab her by the shoulders and teach her about genre-savvy. Well, and internalized misogyny.)

From:

skygiants

Henry Tilney DOES improve everything.

From:

skygiants

'Looks like Colin Firth with his shirt wet'? I mean....

From:

kore

So flirty! So smart! But not mean! WHY CAN'T MORE HEROES BE LIKE HENRY TILNEY.

From:

sapote

I read this! About a year back, and I enjoyed shouting at it very much.

Jane: Does he love me? Like, really really love me?
Me: NO HE HAS DONE NOTHING THAT HE IS NOT BEING EXPLICITLY PAID TO DO WHY WOULD YOU EVEN BOTHER THINKING THAT

I also enjoyed, for a certain value of enjoyed, how it was apparently taken for granted that everyone's Austen fantasies were sufficiently pure and chaste that no one ever needed to specify whether these guys were doing sex work? I might be forgetting something.

From:

alias_sqbr

I guess there's "is madly in love with me", but it's a bit unfair to expect that right off the bat.

From:

agonistes

It's real general and not specific -- people who think they're smart and ~great masterminds~ being insufferable wrt the lives and fortunes of others while not checking themselves first. Insufferable people need their comeuppance, dammit! And that comeuppance needs to not be a nice marriage!

From:

tree_and_leaf

I thought "The One Everyone Hates" was Mansfield Park?

From:

skygiants

Right? RIGHT. No, no, it's fine, he's just working as a male escort in LARPland because he's getting over his ex-wife issues and now he's ready to fall in real love again!

I think there's some stuff in the beginning about 'REMEMBER HOW IN REGENCY TIME ROMANCE WAS JUST A KISS ON THE HAND, REMEMBER THIS' but like ... it's very much not clear that anyone does remember this ........

From:

skygiants

I mean it's the one I hate but there are ... people out there who like it ...... I'M SURE IT HAS VIRTUES. (But yes, yes it is.)

From:

skygiants

lololol Sweeney please never read Miss Marjoribanks

From:

agonistes

...done! :D

From:

antisoppist

That is sort of why I don't like Emma too, except that mine has added can't-look embarrassment because she is wrong about everything and is going to wreck everyone's lives and eeeeekk stop it stop it stop it!

I enjoy it when it's Flora Poste organising everyone else's lives in Cold Comfort Farm but she is working out what would make each of them happy rather than continuing in grim agricultural misery, and encouraging them to go and do that instead, whereas Emma is just "my best friend needs a posh husband because she is my best friend even if she doesn't want one, because I know better" and I think that's a different thing.

Does this mean I should read Miss Marjoribanks or not?

From:

skygiants

Hmmmm, I am torn! Lucilla Marjoribanks probably sits somewhere in between Emma and Flora Poste -- she's frequently quite ruthless about using people for her own convenience, but she's also generally correct about what will work out best for people overall. Most frequently she is compared to a general who is coolly willing to make sacrifices!