Mouthpiece: Is Jane Austen only for poshos?
Sense And Sensibility is being adapted, yet again, for a new generation. Kevin Fullerton has a few questionable suggestions to zhoosh up the Austen industry
Elinor saw, with great uneasiness, the low spirits of her friend. His visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident Kevin was unhappy.
‘I am ever so worried about your melancholy,’ said she. ‘What ails you so?’
‘Hing is,’ he replied, ‘how come every Jane Austen lad in these films is a posh hunk wearing crisp linen shirts? Is there not some equalities law that means one in every five Austen movies has to feature a manky guy? For instance, why isn’t there an Austen where a squat, bald, bearded 36-year-old with lumbar issues and a minor facial twitch gets to play the leading man?’
‘I suspect,’ replied Elinor, blushing, ‘that to avoid the dilution of physical bedazzlement, one must maintain an integrity of charm, finesse and picturesque beauty.’
‘You calling me ugly like?’ said he with enthusiastic ejaculations. ‘Are you saying that a squat, bald, bearded 36-year-old man with lumbar issues, a minor facial twitch, a front tooth denture and accompanying gingivitis can’t go toe-to-toe with Colin Firth? Discrimination! I could wade in and out of a pond as well as any floppy haired Rada radge.’
Elinor met his eye and remained thoughtfully silent, watching his countenance grow uneasy until he arose from their picnic blanket, discarded his Radiohead t-shirt in favour of a loose-fitting white nightie and loped towards the nearby Sackingham Lake of Toffington. This excursion is going just dreadfully, thought Elinor.
By the time he was knee-deep in the lake, Kevin turned to Elinor and ejaculated: ‘See! Just like Colin Firth or one of the other ones; Cumbersnitch or Ruddymayne, or that one who’ll probably be accused of something dodgy any time soon (you know the one). It’s all a heritage industry designed to maintain a specific social class of actors and their coterie of trust fund hangers on. If Danny Dyer stood in a lake in a white shirt, he’d probably be shot to death by a Daily Mail columnist.’
Most unwilling was Elinor to bear witness to Kevin’s protruding stomach, for which he insisted he was the ‘victim of a UPF conspiracy and probably beer’, and his curious pallor, which grew ever more ghastly when submerged halfway in a lake, particularly as he now appeared to be drowning. Unaccountable in his incompetence though he was, Kevin’s foot had become trapped in the knotted rushes at the lake’s edge. ‘Help!’ he ejaculated repeatedly. ‘Colin Firth! Help!’
Elinor, her cheeks reddened from the undeniable folly of the flailing specimen before her, turned away to examine the Dashwood house, considering the fate of the heritage drama and her place in it. Was it really a cynical studio creation which siphoned money away from stories of everyday contemporary Britain, like Richard Curtis in a fleecy bonnet? And did that matter if people enjoyed the fantasy? She glanced back at Kevin, still ejaculating wildly as water filled his lungs, and muttered: ‘What a ghoulish adaptation.’