Critical Theory in a Digital Age, CCU, ENGL 483 2017

Pride and Prejudice

        The novel, Pride and Prejudice, written in the late 1700's, focuses on the Bennet family and their quest to find gentleman suitors for their five daughters. A task that proves to be much more difficult than intended when the eldest, Elizabeth, refuses to settle down with just anybody. She is strong willed, ahead of her time, and an intelligent young woman that stands apart from the rest of female society by choosing her own path and having a voice. It is these qualities of Elizabeth Bennet that controlled the plot of the story, and these characteristics have to be retained in order for the reproductions to resemble anything close to the original work. To showcase how the authenticity of a text can be retained when reproduced into a film adaptation, the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice will be analyzed. A movie with modern technology but with most, if not all, of the Elizabethan verbiage brings the true words of Jane Austen to a culture who has grown accustomed to slang language. This steadfast technique in keeping the proper English words as correct as possible, allows for the idea of the story to remain intact while keeping the connotations as well. 
       
        It is these little aspects of the film which are the constant reminders of the novel.  When lines such as this "Perhaps these offences might have been overlooked had not your pride been hurt by my honest.." are kept the same, it helps for the "aura" and for the meanings to still ring true in the reproductions. However, just as there are word for word lines throughout the movie, there are also lines that have been altered for the modern audience to understand the meaning. For example, from the original novel the following line read as, "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you," while the 2005 movie version states it as, "All these things I am willing to put aside and ask you to end my agony." These two lines are very different but still have the same idea of expressing Mr. Darcy's feelings towards Elizabeth but the 2005 version is talking about the agony he has been, while the original makes no mention of pain. This is where the reproduction can affect the understandings of the piece because by changing one line, the drive behind Mr. Darcy's confession does not seem as passionately genuine anymore.



 

"The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this."




      What the film does differently than the novel is that it invites us into a world, laid out in front of us, without having to use effort to imagine it in our minds. Not only does the movie stick to the turn of the 18th century with the proper wardrobe and obsession over achieving a proper marriage, it invokes the true sense of the "aura." Walter Benjamin explains the "aura" as "the symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art," and this is just what Jane Austen did with this novel. Pride and Prejudice has been remediated multiple times since the mid 1900's because of its universal appeal, clearly stating that it's meanings or connotations stretch past the limits of time. It is this special aspect that has to be kept in the reproductions or else they will lose the authenticity. If the authenticity is lost, then the history is questioned; therefore leading to the power or "authority" of the novel being dismantled.  Thus suggesting that “the authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning.”
 

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