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Jul. 6th, 2018 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsAfter reading Musketeer Space I got really nostalgic for nineteenth-century prose, but didn't want to actually reread the original Three Musketeers and start hating all the characters again.
Then I remembered there were like thirty Scarlet Pimpernel books I had never read, and then I remembered I hadn't actually read The Scarlet Pimpernel in many years, and decided I might as well start there. (Yes, I know the Scarlet Pimpernel is technically not nineteenth-century, it's close enough, leave me alone.)
I'd remembered a lot of the important things about the novel -- how much the book is Marguerite's story, mostly thanks toinnerbrat's excellent lesbian AU, and of course the awkward chunk of anti-Semitism towards the end -- but I was somewhat surprised to discover how many scenes had osmosed themselves into my mental canon because they appear in every film and musical version, to the point where I'd forgotten they don't actually happen in the book.
Most prominently, perhaps: the swordfight. Every Scarlet Pimpernel adaptation I've ever seen ends in a climactic swordfight. Percy Blakeney does not swing a sword, or even a punch, in the entire dang novel. Not a single swash was buckled that day. At one point a whole bunch of people swing punches at him, and he placidly rolls over and lets them do it because it's in character at the time. Honestly, I love this. Why should Percy be any good at fighting? He's good at cunning plans and a great actor and that's plenty to go on, there's no reason at all that he needs to be good at anything else. I finished the book and thought, "I hope Percy never picks up a sword ever in the next thirteen volumes."
(Of course then the next Pimpernel book I read centered on a climactic swordfight, but that's for next post.)
The other big scene I'd edited into the book in my head is the one where Marguerite warns the Scarlet Pimpernel in the garden during the party when Chauvelin demands she betrays him -- I can't remember if this is in every other version, but it's definitely in the 1982 film as well as the Wildhorn musical. Also, I'm pretty sure an equivalent of this scene appears in practically every Scarlet Pimpernel-inspired Secret Identity romance plot; what is the point, after all, of My Love Loves The Mask And Not Me if the disguised hero never actually gets to interact with their love interest? But then of course The Scarlet Pimpernel, unlike most of its successors, does not actually center the disguised hero, and the book gets much more angsty mileage out of having Marguerite interact with Percy, not knowing he's the Pimpernel, than interact with the Pimpernel not knowing he's Percy.
(I wonder if the Pimpernel's identity ever was a surprise to the first readers of the book, or if everyone was able to figure it out based on the fact that there really aren't any other characters introduced that it could be? Most adaptations don't even bother trying to throw the audience off the scent; almost invariably they introduce Percy-as-Pimpernel and then play on his angst about Marguerite rather than reversewise.)
Anyway, the other thing of course about reading The Scarlet Pimpernel in this specific historical moment is that I started thinking about how enduring the story is, and about Pimpernel Smith, the 1940s British propaganda film which is a for-the-time-contemporary AU in which the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues people from the Nazis, and how it inspired real-life Raoul Wallenberg to save thousands of people from concentration camps, because there's something about the story of a heroic trickster snatching persecuted people out of the jaws of danger that apparently appeals directly to the id.
A for-the-present-contemporary Pimpernel story about rescuing people from ICE seems like pretty low-hanging fruit here, is what I'm saying. Choose your propaganda tools wisely.
Then I remembered there were like thirty Scarlet Pimpernel books I had never read, and then I remembered I hadn't actually read The Scarlet Pimpernel in many years, and decided I might as well start there. (Yes, I know the Scarlet Pimpernel is technically not nineteenth-century, it's close enough, leave me alone.)
I'd remembered a lot of the important things about the novel -- how much the book is Marguerite's story, mostly thanks to
innerbrat's excellent lesbian AU, and of course the awkward chunk of anti-Semitism towards the end -- but I was somewhat surprised to discover how many scenes had osmosed themselves into my mental canon because they appear in every film and musical version, to the point where I'd forgotten they don't actually happen in the book.Most prominently, perhaps: the swordfight. Every Scarlet Pimpernel adaptation I've ever seen ends in a climactic swordfight. Percy Blakeney does not swing a sword, or even a punch, in the entire dang novel. Not a single swash was buckled that day. At one point a whole bunch of people swing punches at him, and he placidly rolls over and lets them do it because it's in character at the time. Honestly, I love this. Why should Percy be any good at fighting? He's good at cunning plans and a great actor and that's plenty to go on, there's no reason at all that he needs to be good at anything else. I finished the book and thought, "I hope Percy never picks up a sword ever in the next thirteen volumes."
(Of course then the next Pimpernel book I read centered on a climactic swordfight, but that's for next post.)
The other big scene I'd edited into the book in my head is the one where Marguerite warns the Scarlet Pimpernel in the garden during the party when Chauvelin demands she betrays him -- I can't remember if this is in every other version, but it's definitely in the 1982 film as well as the Wildhorn musical. Also, I'm pretty sure an equivalent of this scene appears in practically every Scarlet Pimpernel-inspired Secret Identity romance plot; what is the point, after all, of My Love Loves The Mask And Not Me if the disguised hero never actually gets to interact with their love interest? But then of course The Scarlet Pimpernel, unlike most of its successors, does not actually center the disguised hero, and the book gets much more angsty mileage out of having Marguerite interact with Percy, not knowing he's the Pimpernel, than interact with the Pimpernel not knowing he's Percy.
(I wonder if the Pimpernel's identity ever was a surprise to the first readers of the book, or if everyone was able to figure it out based on the fact that there really aren't any other characters introduced that it could be? Most adaptations don't even bother trying to throw the audience off the scent; almost invariably they introduce Percy-as-Pimpernel and then play on his angst about Marguerite rather than reversewise.)
Anyway, the other thing of course about reading The Scarlet Pimpernel in this specific historical moment is that I started thinking about how enduring the story is, and about Pimpernel Smith, the 1940s British propaganda film which is a for-the-time-contemporary AU in which the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues people from the Nazis, and how it inspired real-life Raoul Wallenberg to save thousands of people from concentration camps, because there's something about the story of a heroic trickster snatching persecuted people out of the jaws of danger that apparently appeals directly to the id.
A for-the-present-contemporary Pimpernel story about rescuing people from ICE seems like pretty low-hanging fruit here, is what I'm saying. Choose your propaganda tools wisely.
