tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6630355680050775256.post1188790405914492987..comments2024-01-19T22:42:41.602+00:00Comments on Gidday from the UK: Frisson Folly...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09420852941644763293noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6630355680050775256.post-58097234261841989032010-10-03T01:14:22.992+01:002010-10-03T01:14:22.992+01:00Funny you mention this. I just got done watching a...Funny you mention this. I just got done watching a BBC 5-part mini-series of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Wharton" rel="nofollow">Edith Wharton</a>'s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Buccaneers-Penguin-Great-Books-Century/dp/0140232028" rel="nofollow"><i>The Buccaneers,</i></a> which I ordered from Netflix. It was made over 10 years ago (1995), when I was living in Tokyo. (I'm still catching up!)<br /><br />In any event, I loved the first three episodes (on Disc One). But the last two, which I just got done watching on Disc Two, were a let-down--didn't hold my attention.<br /><br />Why? The ending, which has the protagonist running off to South Africa with the love of her life, simply didn't ring true to Wharton. Though herself divorced in real life, Wharton suggests in her books that few women are free enough to write their own scripts and in any case there's usually a high price to pay. (Wharton is of course a member of the pre-WWI group of Americans who expatriated to Paris in search of personal fulfillment in ways not possible in America.)<br /><br />I did some investigation, and it turns out I'm not the only one who felt this way about the series. (Thanks to the Web, it's possible to reconstruct how the chattering classes responded.) Here's what a <a href="http://www.current.org/prog/prog516b.html#summary" rel="nofollow">writer in <i>The Current</i></a> had to say:<br /><br />*****<br /><i>The Buccaneers</i>, with a "ride into the sunset" ending that contrasts sharply with the desperation, despair and resignation of Wharton's other novels, readily appears to be a victim of "Americanization" and the tidy, cheerful Hollywood endings that Europeans mock.<br /><br />In addition, the production came along at a time when the BBC was under rising pressure to support more of its costs through program sales overseas. <br />*****<br /><br />To be fair, Wharton never finished the book, which left open the possibility of giving it a happier ending than those found in her earlier works. (That said, I don't think it justifies giving it the elements of homosexuality and marital rape that weren't in the book.)<br /><br />Now, being partial to fiction that was written by women around a hundred years ago, I don't know anything about Boyd Morrison, but dare I suggest that he (like so many of our contemporary writers) is anticipating that his work may someday be adapted for the big screen--so is already writing in the ending that Hollywood will insist on anyway?!ML Awanoharahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16238451984653386278noreply@blogger.com