So I was watching the end of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries last week, and I was thinking about adaptation—as you do—and I came up with one very simple principle: We can never allow Joss Whedon to adapt Pride and Prejudice.
I want to be clear: I love me some Joss. It’s not that. Buffy, Firefly/Serenity, Dr. Horrible, whatever. I’m in. It’s just that I can’t allow any of Jane’s characters to end up in Joss Heaven.
You see, there is a tiny room in heaven that I like to believe is reserved for the fictional characters created and then killed by Joss Whedon. If you’ve seen his work, you know what I mean: it’s the nicest, most patient, and most loving characters who tend to die, nearly always unexpectedly and in gruesome fashion. In my mind, these fictional darlings—Tara, Wash (WAAAAAASH!), Felicia Day in Dr. Horrible—spend fictional eternity together, being nice and noble and agreeing about things. And it’s pleasant! But it’s always, always too soon. And in the Jane Austen canon, I can think of exactly two characters clearly destined for Joss Heaven:
Jane Bennet
Mr. Bingley
That’s it. Just the two of them. (Other Austen characters tend in that direction, but I think the Bingleys-to-be are the height of it.) It happens just as Bingley’s approaching Longbourne to propose, too, so that neither of them will ever know the happiness that was approaching, and readers’ hearts are pierced at the moment of peak fullness. (Don’t you think so? I think so. Yes, this is definitely how it happens.)
And so you see, readers, that we must be vigilant. We must protect these sweet characters from shocking moments of impalement, which are sure to come even in a canon-compliant adaptation. (I don’t know how. But I DON’T TRUST HIM.) Save the future Bingleys!
See you in Joss Heaven.
austenacious 