Bride and Prejudice and Adaptations

As a senior English major, I didn’t know there was anything new I could be taught about reading critically. Since freshman year of high school I’ve been reading books – both popular and “literary” – critically. A lot of my friends (especially my mom) point out how I don’t ever “enjoy” movies anymore. I leave a theatre, talking about how the story line was messy or how one of the female characters was portrayed as weak. As an English major, writing has to be your strong suit, but thinking critically has to be ingrained into your psyche to survive.

Which is why, when a professor of mine presented a new way to think about reading critically, I was shocked (and yes, downright impressed). He told us that instead of thinking about themes, he liked to think about preoccupations – what is the text preoccupied with? What does it talk about over and over again? Where does it linger, and where does it skim? This method has been time and time again perfect for the type of analysis we do in this class. By reading popular (genre) fiction, we’re engaging with the type of material I’m not used to in a classroom – usually boring, pre-1900 texts, and we’re lucky if we get to read something in the 1920s. Modernism, Romanticism – these are familiar topics. Most English majors have a favorite Shakespeare play, just because they’ve read so much of it. So it makes sense that with a new type of text come a new type of strategy – though obviously for this professor, it isn’t new.

Tonight, instead of reading or watching a movie for my film class like I should have, I decided to surf Netflix and sprawl out on my couch. I had the TV to myself for a few hours and I wanted to take advantage of it. I didn’t want to watch the show I’m currently watching with my roommate (Jane The Virgin, by the way, and 10/10 would recommend – I’m obsessed) and not something I’d get too attached to – I wanted to relax, not pay attention and be completely absorbed until midnight.

I settled on Bride and Prejudice – a film masterpiece, if I do say so myself. I actually started it a long time ago, but I never actually finished it. It’s light, it’s fun, it’s Bollywood – what’s not to love? And I did love it.

But I also constantly compared it to my absolute, all time favorite adaptation, the Kiera Knightly Pride and Prejudice from 2005 (sorry Lizzy Bennet Diaries –  you’re a close second). And it wasn’t in a bad way – I kept trying to place each scene, since Bride is set in modern times, and seeing how each scene corresponded. I kept wondering how and why they made the choice to make Darcy American/white. It wasn’t a bad decision, and in a way it made sense – Darcy as the outsider to an Indian family and tradition – but it could have made sense if they insulated the story completely in India, substituting London with New Delhi or Mumbai.

But then I kept watching – wondering why the writers emphasized love story between Darcy and Lizzie (Lalita, in this adaptation – seeing the new names was particularly exciting to me), why Wickham didn’t end up with Lakhi, and why the ending felt so compressed. As I thought about these differences, I realized that Bride and Prejudice was preoccupied with different things than the Kiera Knightly adaptation was preoccupied with. Bride wanted fun, lighthearted happiness – focusing on song and dance numbers, and cutting too much drama that would have dragged down the script. It was preoccupied with showing two cultures coming together, an added layer to the socioeconomic issues Lizzy and Darcy usually deal with.

I will be the first to say that I generally love adaptations. Sure, will I criticize them? Of course. Do I hate some of them? You bet *cough* Percy Jackson *cough*. But do I give them a chance, and appreciate what they do? Always.

When engaging with Bride and Prejudice, I realized preoccupations were something that drove it to be what it is – why not for other adaptations? Immediately Baz Luhrmann’s fantastic The Great Gatsby comes to mind. The film was highly polarizing, but it was preoccupied with things some people didn’t agree with. It created a visual spectacle that hasn’t been seen on screen in a long time, if ever, and it located the story in 2013 even while keeping it a period piece, something I’d posit would be almost impossible if not for Luhrmann’s genius.

Adaptations hold an interesting place for someone like me, a book lover and a film nerd – and I’d always been torn on how to address them. But now, I think I get it. It’s not really anything special, but I realized that I look at the world differently because of one professor. And I think that’s really cool.