![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 3rd, 2017 08:26 pm1. Cloudy day, after non-stop pouring rain last night and this morning, and I've spend most of it reading a subversive 1980s romance novel, also watching my favorite season of "The Great British Bake-Off", which is S6 (S3 on PBS) where Nadia won. I love all the people on this one. They are incredibly interesting and diverse. Not all the seasons are this diverse.
Ah the sun just came out, with the clouds rolling back, white and puffy, revealing blue sky at twilight. Only to disappear again behind gray clouds, as it set. The view out my living room window is of rooftops, trees, sky and back yards overtaken by weed. With crickets and cicadas chirping in competition with jet planes and cars whooshing by in the distance.
2. Trying to make up my mind about a two-seater sofa (aka love seat) and armchair at Pottery Barn, neither are part of their Labor Day Promotional sale, but alas what I want.
3. Tried to watch Ann with an E which is a new adaptation, and a relatively grim one of "Anne of Green Gables". Half-way through the first episode, I was angry and talking back to the tv set.
The Huffington Post has a rather clear-eyed review of it... HERE. Wherein the review critiques the series for handling issues in a modern way, that would not have been discussed or handled in that matter 100 years ago.
This brings up an interesting issue or challenge regarding current adaptations, in some respects "politically correct" re-interpretations of old and classical works of fiction. Ignoring the historical context in which the work was written, and the sentiments of the people of the time. I'm not sure it's a good idea to run roughshod or in some cases remove those sentiments or incorrectness, no matter how offensive.
Not that in some cases it hasn't worked to do a modern adaptation, or lent a certain clarity to the work, previously lacking...for example, the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen have had modern interpretations, as have the Brontes and Bram Stoker which have worked rather well.
But, in the case of Anne of Green Gables and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, I'm not so certain. Just as I'm not so certain Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, or say Middlemarch and Tess of the D'Urbvilles work in a modern setting. Nor does All Quiet on the Western Front. Some works have a distinct and important historical context. It's embedded within the work of art.
Also, Anne of Green Gables had a lightness to it, that this adaptations yanks away for prestige purposes or a desire for hyper-realism. I'm not a huge fan of hyper-realism in fiction, paintings, music or anything else. It grates on me for some reason. I prefer an element of fictional whimsy. In short, I prefer metaphor over literal.
Hmm.
There was apparently a kerfuffle recently on twitter and various social media forums and onzines regarding the adaptation or rather reinterpretation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies as all women. ( Read more... )
Frak all that...after flitting around through Netflix and Amazon, I finally settled on Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon, thinking, I'll just watch one episode to see if I like it. And well, seven episodes later (this happens a lot on streaming devices), I realized I love this. It's so comforting.
And it makes me really happy. The music is just...really uplifting and beautiful.
Have you seen this? Shapinglight rec'd it recently as a happy show. So I pondered. And yes, a happy show. Like Great British Bake-Off, except with beautiful music and occasional dance performances.
Ah the sun just came out, with the clouds rolling back, white and puffy, revealing blue sky at twilight. Only to disappear again behind gray clouds, as it set. The view out my living room window is of rooftops, trees, sky and back yards overtaken by weed. With crickets and cicadas chirping in competition with jet planes and cars whooshing by in the distance.
2. Trying to make up my mind about a two-seater sofa (aka love seat) and armchair at Pottery Barn, neither are part of their Labor Day Promotional sale, but alas what I want.
3. Tried to watch Ann with an E which is a new adaptation, and a relatively grim one of "Anne of Green Gables". Half-way through the first episode, I was angry and talking back to the tv set.
The Huffington Post has a rather clear-eyed review of it... HERE. Wherein the review critiques the series for handling issues in a modern way, that would not have been discussed or handled in that matter 100 years ago.
This brings up an interesting issue or challenge regarding current adaptations, in some respects "politically correct" re-interpretations of old and classical works of fiction. Ignoring the historical context in which the work was written, and the sentiments of the people of the time. I'm not sure it's a good idea to run roughshod or in some cases remove those sentiments or incorrectness, no matter how offensive.
Not that in some cases it hasn't worked to do a modern adaptation, or lent a certain clarity to the work, previously lacking...for example, the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen have had modern interpretations, as have the Brontes and Bram Stoker which have worked rather well.
But, in the case of Anne of Green Gables and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, I'm not so certain. Just as I'm not so certain Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, or say Middlemarch and Tess of the D'Urbvilles work in a modern setting. Nor does All Quiet on the Western Front. Some works have a distinct and important historical context. It's embedded within the work of art.
Also, Anne of Green Gables had a lightness to it, that this adaptations yanks away for prestige purposes or a desire for hyper-realism. I'm not a huge fan of hyper-realism in fiction, paintings, music or anything else. It grates on me for some reason. I prefer an element of fictional whimsy. In short, I prefer metaphor over literal.
Hmm.
There was apparently a kerfuffle recently on twitter and various social media forums and onzines regarding the adaptation or rather reinterpretation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies as all women. ( Read more... )
Frak all that...after flitting around through Netflix and Amazon, I finally settled on Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon, thinking, I'll just watch one episode to see if I like it. And well, seven episodes later (this happens a lot on streaming devices), I realized I love this. It's so comforting.
And it makes me really happy. The music is just...really uplifting and beautiful.
Have you seen this? Shapinglight rec'd it recently as a happy show. So I pondered. And yes, a happy show. Like Great British Bake-Off, except with beautiful music and occasional dance performances.