BBC Little Women, episode 1

[osprey_archer]

The room is lit with a soft golden light; the camera is in soft focus. Young women in white Victorian undergarments frolic before the camera, which is set too close for us to catch more than glimpses of their faces.

"Is this softcore Victorian porn?" Julie asked.

This is actually the beginning of the new BBC adaptation of Little Women. It has not devolved into softcore Victorian porn - yet, at least; we've only watched the first of three episodes - although it does devote a certain amount of time to the March sisters in their undergarments. I would accuse it of being male-gazey, but both the writer (Heidi Thomas) and the director (Vanessa Caswill) are women, so I guess I'm just going to have to call it baffling.

A lot of the adaptation choices are baffling. Some of the issues may come out right over the next two episodes, so I will restrain myself right now to two complaints.

First: they got Marmee all wrong. She's supposed to be a pillar of loving strength, and instead she's weepy and irritable and ineffective. When Jo attacks Amy after discovering that Amy has burned her book, Marmee flees the room. Marmee would never flee when her girls needed her!

The second problem is Amy herself, and in particular, the miniseries' handling of the scene where Amy burns Jo's treasured manuscript because Jo refuses to take her to a play. In the book, this is the impulsive action of a vengeful and perhaps slightly spoiled child, who is filled with remorse once she sees how badly she's hurt Jo. In the miniseries...

Well, first of all, in the miniseries Amy's actress is in her twenties. We may be supposed to believe that she's twelve, but even in pigtails she doesn't look a day younger than seventeen. She's older, so the action seems even more monstrous, and the direction really leans that monstrousness.

We don't just hear about the book-burning after the fact: we see her feed it into Hannah's stove page by page, her face gleaming demonically in the firelight. When Jo discovers that her manuscript has been burned, Amy slinks - positively slinks, like a sexy cartoon villainous - across the room to gloat about her evil deed. "I told you that you'd be sorry," she says, deeply satisfied with herself. Marmee eventually gets Amy to apologize, but it's grudging and fake, and when Jo refuses to accept it, Amy flounces down the stairs with her nose in the air.

Marmee's attempt to talk Jo into instant forgiveness is hard to take at the best of times, but in this adaptation, it makes absolutely no sense. Why should Jo forgive Amy when Amy feels no remorse?

Are they trying to make Amy a psychopath? If that's what they're aiming for, I guess they succeeded, but I'm not sure how they're going to make the Amy/Laurie endgame palatable when Psychopath Amy March would undoubtedly ruin Laurie's life. And Amy/Laurie is already a difficult sell for many people. Why make this harder than it has to be?

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

when Psychopath Amy March would undoubtedly ruin Laurie's life.

Well, it'd make for an interesting AU, I suppose!

[osprey_archer]

Psychopath Amy March ought to have a slinky black cat that she carries in her arms while sashaying toward Jo to own up to burning her book. She should also pet it while telling Laurie that she's spent his entire fortune on booze and hookers. "We said we were going to give our money to charity!" Laurie howls.

"We did," Amy says, smiling angelically. "The charity was me."

[kore]

(I WANT THIS FIC NOW. YOUR FAULT)

[osprey_archer]

Evil Amy March wears a black dress with red piping. Or maybe a red dress with black piping. Possibly she has one of each and switches it up depending on the occasion.

[kore]

She languidly drapes herself across the piano while Laurie is trying to compose. "Play Misty that chaconne I like," she lazily commands. Laurie obeys, hypnotized but screaming for help in his eyes.

[osprey_archer]

Every time Jo sees Laurie, he seems thinner and smaller somehow, and his eyes seem larger in his face. "How are you?" Jo asks, and he opens his mouth, but then his eyes flicker over toward Evil Amy March and then to the floor. "I'm fine," he says. "I only wish I were good enough for her."

Evil Amy snaps open her black fan with its peacock feather plumes and fans herself for an Evil Wind Machine effect.

[kore]

Desperate, one late midnight Jo sneaks over to Amy and Laurie's enormous mansion and climbs up twining ivy vines to Laurie's private studio. She gazes in the open window to see him slumped in a chair, frail and thin, gazing mournfully at a picture of -- her! "Oh, Jo," he sighs, "if only I could tell you the truth -- " Jo raps on the glass. "Jo!" Laurie ejaculates as she swings herself in. "Laurie! You know you can tell me anything, dear boy. What on earth is the matter?" Laurie's voice grows choked and hoarse but he struggles to speak. "It's -- she's -- there's something terribly -- " he manages to get out. The door flies open with an almighty crash! Evil Amy stands there dressed in a tightly fitting black silk wrapper. "My husband -- and my sister!" she cries in tones loud enough to wake the household.


(Amy has a Dorian Gray-esque evil aging portrait she painted herself hidden in the attic, Y/N)

[osprey_archer]

Amy is going to cause a SCANDAL, isn't she? At least if Jo tries to make trouble.

And ABSOLUTELY Amy has a Dorian Gray type portrait of herself in the attic. In fact, this is the real reason she stopped painting: further paintings would simply dilute the portrait's power, so reluctantly she set aside her brushes forever.

[asakiyume]

LOL you guys. This is a great thread.

[brigdh]

This whole thread is AMAZING: I stand and applaud.

[thisbluespirit]

LOL, yes!

[asakiyume]

"We did," Amy says, smiling angelically. "The charity was me." --Hahaha! You've got the AU pretty much down in this elevator pitch sketch.

[osprey_archer]

I've just signed up for a bingo card for LadiesBingo (about relationships of all kinds between women) so... if I get an appropriate square I may have to flesh out this crackfic.

[kore]

We don't just hear about the book-burning after the fact: we see her feed it into Hannah's stove page by page, her face gleaming demonically in the firelight. When Jo discovers that her manuscript has been burned, Amy slinks - positively slinks, like a sexy cartoon villainous - across the room to gloat about her evil deed. "I told you that you'd be sorry," she says, deeply satisfied with herself.

OMG, she's the Bad Seed? Hilarious!

[osprey_archer]

She is! We also see her pre-book-burning, when she's lying facedown on the floor, holding a paintbrush in her hand in exactly the pose of a femme fatale with one of those long cigarette holder.

[kore]

....I MUST SEE THIS. (A friend of mine recently showed me the adaptation where Susan Dey is Jo!)

[sovay]

"I told you that you'd be sorry," she says, deeply satisfied with herself. Marmee eventually gets Amy to apologize, but it's grudging and fake, and when Jo refuses to accept it, Amy flounces down the stairs with her nose in the air.

Aaaaaargh.

[osprey_archer]

It's such a bizarre reading of the character. I don't understand.

[sovay]

It's such a bizarre reading of the character. I don't understand.

Here, as an antidote if you have not seen it: Joan Acocella on Little Women. She ships Jo/Friedrich big time and I am delighted to see it in The New Yorker.

[osprey_archer]

Her father, Bronson Alcott (1795-1888), was an intellectual, or, in any case, a man who had thoughts

Joan Acocella tells it like it is.

[brigdh]

Wow, thanks an excellent article! Thank you for linking it.

[silverusagi]

I don't even really like Little Women (sacrilege, I know), and this adaptation bugged me. All the sisters are teenagers (OR LOOK LIKE IT), and I feel like everything is just happening incredibly slowly.

[osprey_archer]

They all look the same age! They are the March Quadruplets, except Amy for some reason is still in school while Jo and Meg work for a living.

Possibly her femme fatale scheming has driven them out of the school. And the house. Soon she will reign alone, surrounded by piles of limes on all sides.

[silverusagi]

I just have to say, apparently there is yet ANOTHER Little Women adaptation coming up? Yet set in modern times? And all the sisters look the same age!

[osprey_archer]

And now Greta Gerwig's planning an adaptation, too!

But honestly given the many failures of this adaptation, we might as well have a few more. At least the modern one doesn't appear to have femme fatale Amy.

[ladyherenya]

Amy's actress is in her twenties. We may be supposed to believe that she's twelve, but even in pigtails she doesn't look a day younger than seventeen. She's older, so the action seems even more monstrous, and the direction really leans that monstrousness.

I realise that there are very good reasons for not wanting to work with children, but if that's the case, maybe they should have chosen a different story instead?

This sounds disappointing.

[osprey_archer]

Right? If a director doesn't want to work with children, then... don't adapt a children's book. Honestly!

[asakiyume]

Making Amy a psychopath is the ridiculously easy choice that they have to **avoid**. I can just hear Louisa May Alcott shouting, "No, stupid; that's exactly NOT the point!"

The point of making a somewhat (or very) unpleasant girl who's **not** a psychopath is because most ordinary people who are unpleasant aren't psychopaths. A lot of books spend times puzzling over and examining this, and some of those get it wrong in different ways (like trying to make their actions virtuous for some reason--that, too, is not the point: if you make what a character does excusable, then you've drained it of a lot of its unpleasantness).

But ordinary people can be mean! They can have character traits that are dislikable--without necessarily being entirely disliked by everyone! How does that work? **That's** the interesting, harder thing to examine.

Destroying something that took years of work is a terrible, terrible thing. People--especially kids--sometimes are so overcome by emotion (even petty emotion) that they act with no sense of proportion or consequence. The fact that Amy felt terrible remorse is what shows she's not a psychopath... she's just garden-variety unpleasant, and not always even that. That's MORE of a trial to learn to deal with. Are you obligated to insta-forgive, like Marmee wanted? (No) How can you nudge them into better behavior--if you're even supposed to? (Are you maybe not supposed to? What are your responsibilities in that? Probably depends on your relationship to the person and how old they are)

It's also interesting, or can be, to see how that type of person views the world and struggles to reform (like Eustace Scrubb, for instance), whereas psychopaths.... well, I was going to say there's not much interest in getting inside their heads, but I realize some people love that stuff.

[osprey_archer]

I think part of the reason people find psychopaths interesting is because the rest of us are just boggled by how little is going on inside their heads. Not in the sense that they're stupid, but in the sense that their motives are actually quite simple, and the rest of us are generally wandering around acting on motivations so tangled and baffling that the idea of someone who just goes after what they wants without regard for anything or anyone else is sort of baffling. Surely there's got to be more to it. Mental reservations! Lines they would not cross! But no.

And clearly some people find this attractive, at least in the abstract as a trait in fictional characters.

[sovay]

Destroying something that took years of work is a terrible, terrible thing. People--especially kids--sometimes are so overcome by emotion (even petty emotion) that they act with no sense of proportion or consequence.

Exactly! Amy doesn't burn Jo's book because she is the Bad Sister and everything she does is Bad, she burns the book because she's angry at Jo, she knows it will hurt her, and she has no understanding of what actually goes into the writing of a novel, even a terrible juvenilia novel, so she's done more harm than she even intended. It doesn't point to a future of wanton destruction. It points to being twelve.