Back with the first post of the new semester, and true to form it’s late and hurried and rushed. Some things never change. Rather apropros given the nature of our course. These sentences are blatant padding. I am going to obligatorily bitch and moan about how far behind I am on things and how overworked I am. I’m starting up a theatre company. Its hard work.

Unfortunately I didn’t go to the lectures, so I’m working from a place of (relative) ignorance, particularly regarding the connection between Northanger Abbey and Shaun of the Dead (Shaun with a ‘u’!).

I found Northanger Abbey to be a complete slog. Like it was a total chore, I couldn’t get through it. There’s something particularly alienating about Jane Austen’s narration style. I talked in seminar a while ago how reading The Kingdom of This World was strange after not reading a novel for so long; that the novel had become defamiliarized, and alienating for me. I find it particularly amusing that I found this novel in particular alienating because we always talked about the High Victorian concept of a novel, which is probably very much typified by Austen.

I get that Austen’s works rely on subtlety and parody, and that they’re comedies of manners, and that Northanger Abbey says some interesting things about the relationships between the real and the fictional, but for the life of me I can’t bring myself to care. Everything is so dull, and flat. The characters are boring and unlikable, and I just don’t care about what the novel is saying. I don’t even think the things it says are particularly interesting. Other works take up similar subjects and do it better, in my opinion. At one point reading the novel I actually fell asleep.

In my mind, the most interesting part is Austen’s lengthy digression at the end of Chapter 5 on the public opinion on novels. I feel like there’s a lot to be read into that passage but I haven’t the inclination to do so.

Shaun of the Dead on the other hand is one of my favourite films ever. It’s well-written, excellently paced, inventively shot, and excellently plays with its own genre conventions. I love the whole Cornetto Trilogy, really.

Zombies are such a great monster, because like all good monsters, they’re reflections of ourselves. Probably why they are both so disturbing and fun to kill. They’re us with the likable bits taken out. The savage other. They stand in for every dehumanizing force we’re afraid of.

A lot of the inspiration for the movie comes from an episode of Spaced (the TV show that Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost all previously worked on) where Pegg’s (who plays Shaun in the film) character takes amphetamines and hallucinates he’s in Resident Evil 2. The very same media panic we talk about in the context of romanticism. Even Wright’s hyper-kinetic directing style lends itself to this, bombarding you with cuts, information, dialogue, etc. News reports are always cutting, music is always playing, there are loud arcade noises and videogames, Shaun works in a consumer electronics store. At one point in the film when Ed and Shaun are drunk and singing a Grandmaster Flash song, they mistake a zombie as some drunk sod singing along with them. Throughout the first half of the film Shaun fails to notice all the very clear signs of the zombie apocalypse. A case of media-induced ‘savage torpor’, or are the zombies simply indistinguishable from the people?  At the end of the film, the zombies are just another media trend to be exploited.

A blog post from another seminar said that at the end of the film, Shaun is back where he started, and I have to disagree. Shaun is actually the only character in the entire film who changes (everyone else is dead, though). He survives the zombies, and in them sees the reflection of his own life. At the end of it, he’s matured, taken responsibility for his life instead of cruising through on auto-pilot. What’s interesting though, is that the rest of the world doesn’t change.

Back with the first post of the new semester, and true to form it’s late and hurried and rushed. Some things never change. Rather apropros given the nature of our course. These sentences are blatant padding. I am going to obligatorily bitch and moan about how far behind I am on things and how overworked I am. I’m starting up a theatre company. Its hard work.

Unfortunately I didn’t go to the lectures, so I’m working from a place of (relative) ignorance, particularly regarding the connection between Northanger Abbey and Shaun of the Dead (Shaun with a ‘u’!).

I found Northanger Abbey to be a complete slog. Like it was a total chore, I couldn’t get through it. There’s something particularly alienating about Jane Austen’s narration style. I talked in seminar a while ago how reading The Kingdom of This World was strange after not reading a novel for so long; that the novel had become defamiliarized, and alienating for me. I find it particularly amusing that I found this novel in particular alienating because we always talked about the High Victorian concept of a novel, which is probably very much typified by Austen.

I get that Austen’s works rely on subtlety and parody, and that they’re comedies of manners, and that Northanger Abbey says some interesting things about the relationships between the real and the fictional, but for the life of me I can’t bring myself to care. Everything is so dull, and flat. The characters are boring and unlikable, and I just don’t care about what the novel is saying. I don’t even think the things it says are particularly interesting. Other works take up similar subjects and do it better, in my opinion. At one point reading the novel I actually fell asleep.

In my mind, the most interesting part is Austen’s lengthy digression at the end of Chapter 5 on the public opinion on novels. I feel like there’s a lot to be read into that passage but I haven’t the inclination to do so.

Shaun of the Dead on the other hand is one of my favourite films ever. It’s well-written, excellently paced, inventively shot, and excellently plays with its own genre conventions. I love the whole Cornetto Trilogy, really.

Zombies are such a great monster, because like all good monsters, they’re reflections of ourselves. Probably why they are both so disturbing and fun to kill. They’re us with the likable bits taken out. The savage other. They stand in for every dehumanizing force we’re afraid of.

A lot of the inspiration for the movie comes from an episode of Spaced (the TV show that Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost all previously worked on) where Pegg’s (who plays Shaun in the film) character takes amphetamines and hallucinates he’s in Resident Evil 2. The very same media panic we talk about in the context of romanticism. Even Wright’s hyper-kinetic directing style lends itself to this, bombarding you with cuts, information, dialogue, etc. News reports are always cutting, music is always playing, there are loud arcade noises and videogames, Shaun works in a consumer electronics store. At one point in the film when Ed and Shaun are drunk and singing a Grandmaster Flash song, they mistake a zombie as some drunk sod singing along with them. Throughout the first half of the film Shaun fails to notice all the very clear signs of the zombie apocalypse. A case of media-induced ‘savage torpor’, or are the zombies simply indistinguishable from the people?  At the end of the film, the zombies are just another media trend to be exploited.

A blog post from another seminar said that at the end of the film, Shaun is back where he started, and I have to disagree. Shaun is actually the only character in the entire film who changes (everyone else is dead, though). He survives the zombies, and in them sees the reflection of his own life. At the end of it, he’s matured, taken responsibility for his life instead of cruising through on auto-pilot. What’s interesting though, is that the rest of the world doesn’t change.

Shaun’s mundane, underachieved middle aged character braves the zombie crisis that infects London and in attempt to save his closed ones he becomes more or less the hero of the story (well, he saves the girl at the end at least.) Shaun of the Dead creates itself a new category of “rom-zom-com” because although emotionally eventful and momentarily terrifying, the movie itself never takes itself too seriously. Sometimes spoofs don’t work out well but Shaun of the Dead proved witty and mimics the awkward moments to be laughed we can identify with. The success of anticipation and thrill to the viewer, mastered by the sudden fast angles and zooms are identifiable to Edgar Wright’s production style are used similarly in his other film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (one of my favourite films!) Edgar’s motifs in Shaun of the Dead are also well produced. The reused far joke by Ed, the Winchester Pub, Shaun’s morning stretch and routine, with the second reappearance being affected by the zombie crisis creates a familiarity and joy for the viewer. Though it is my second time watching the movie, I again enjoyed it, and watching a movie for class….who can complain!

Want to start off with a quick personal note here – didn’t know parody was so central to Austen’s work. Enjoyed Northanger Abbey much more than I expected.

A couple of things really interest me about the work. One involves the indirectness of the novel,in the sense that it does an excellent job at conveying meaning without being reductionist. It entreats the complexities of the real and the romantic/the imagined. Although I believe the work can be seen as an attempt to dismantle the excesses of the Gothic genre, the way that fiction becomes just as much a part of the “real” (because it is a novel, after all) world of Northanger Abbey is really provocative. The lines are blurred, there is no clear-cut binary. In fact, it presents an intriguing “other side” to the same coin – the “real” world that Austen tries to capture in this novel is exactly that, in a novel, in a fictional work. The real is a part of the fictional just as the fictional (lies, stories, reveries, novels, perhaps even the whole notion of a high society)  is part of the real in the world of Northanger Abbey.

I realize that I’ve gone on about the real and the unreal/imagined/fictional at length before, and also that Austen is addressing a very complex notion of a “romanticized” or “gothicized” unreal. I’ll try to work out these kinks in the next few days.

I don’t see it as much of a stretch to draw comparisons between Shaun of the Dead and Austen’s work, as many I have talked to have suggested. This might interest folks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies. Parody is parody, and parody is great, no matter the era. Shaun of the Dead, as an exceptionally clever and enjoyable movie, manages to say as much about the monogamy and dullness of daily life as Northanger Abbey. In fact, I think it’s important to remark that the film finishes more or less where it started – with Shaun sitting on the couch and leading an exceptionally simple and meaningless life – only this time, he’s with a girl. The world has changed around him, but he hasn’t changed all that much.

I’ve tried to read Austen a few times over the years but never had much luck, and I expected Northanger Abbey to be much the same as her other works.

Not so! Although the first few pages were a bit tricky, I got through them and really enjoyed the read. There were a few things about this reading that surprised me right off the bat.

Firstly, I think some of the points Austen is making are really interesting. She chooses to make them as part of a novel, but I think some of the things she is saying would perhaps be better put as some kind of essay? It’s hard to know, though, whether they would have had the same response had they been formatted differently.

For instance, she breaks the fourth wall a lot when writing, especially towards the end. I’m curious as to who the narrator really is in this case – is it Austen herself, or some fictionalized version of her?

Also, the relationship between Catherine and Henry is strange, to say the least. You can’t tell if he likes her for most of the book, and while she’s at Northanger Abbey he pretty much friendzones her. Then, eventually, his sister says, “hey Henry, this girl really likes you so maybe you should like her back?” and he goes “oh yeah, we should get married”. What? This is really confusing.

“I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought.” (p. 180)

Then again, Henry seems to understand the details of female friendship more than most guys do! “You feel, I suppose, that, in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy.” (p. 152) This whole speech pretty much sums up most girls’ feelings when they lose a close female friend, and you can tell that although the speaker at this point is a man, the author is a woman who gets it!

Lastly, I’d just like to comment on the ending of the book. “I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.” (p. 187) This follows a paragraph about whether the General was, in fact, being a good parent by sending Catherine away, etc, and strengthening their knowledge of each other. While I don’t think it was good parenting per se, none of the parenting in this novel seems to be particularly productive. Mrs. Morland tries to console her daughter and fails, so she gives up and starts being critical. Mr. Morland is practically useless. Mrs. Allen only cares about her clothes, and Mr. Allen is also useless. Mrs. Thorpe is just plain annoying and the General seems to order his children around more than he parents them. Is this what parenting was like in Austen’s time?

That’s all for now!

Might I begin this blog post with this statement: Not too shabby Northanger Abbey. (Oh hey, that rhymed!)

At first, not having read the summary on the back, I walked right into that thing without a clue of what to expect. Come to think of it, I’m still uncertain of the era I pictured the story taking place is the one Austen intended us to envision.

On that note, Northanger Abbey reminded me of The Great Gatsby. Here are some of the reasons why:

• the lavish social events they attended resembled Gatsby’s over-the-top parties
• the intriguing Mr.Tilley and/or General Tilley bore loose resemblance to Mr.Gatsby himself
• the entourage that Catherine hung out with behaved quite similarly to Daisy’s group of friends, with the same pompous and carefree manner

This is probably one of the contributing factors as to why I liked this story. Even though it didn’t take place in the 1920’s like The Great Gatsby did, the similarities between the settings sometimes made me picture the plot taking place in the 20’s (yes, I really do love the 20’s and the fact that the pop culture of 2013 saw many revivals of the splendor of that decade).

Another thing I really enjoyed was the roller coaster of frustration it made me feel. Early on, since we were introduced to our main character, I had developed an attachment to her, whether I liked it or not. Every time something went right I would be shared some of her emotion only to be disappointed again by whatever plot twists and misfortunes Catherine had to face. Maybe this is me being an overly sentimental girl but I really liked how there was romance in this story! I’m a sucker for a love story, even if this one wasn’t as epic as Stefan and Elena from the Vampire Diaries (a tv show, for those of you who don’t know) or cheesy (but we love them anyway), like a Nicholas Sparks novel.

Can I also say that the huge paragraphs on the pages where it looked like a brick wall of words were just so horrible to see as soon as you turned the page. I’m guessing it looked like this because of the way the dialogue was written within those paragraphs too. But that’s just what I’m used to.