02.14.07
Emma Adaptations
David Monaghan’s article “Emma and the art of Adaptation” examines the three most recent films based on Jane Austen’s Emma; the ITV/A&E version directed by Diarmuid Lawrence and written by Andrew Davies, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, and the Miramax version directed by Douglas McGrath. Monaghan has singled out these film versions as the three post-1990 films that, unlike the pre-1990 BBC versions aren’t “unwilling to rethink Austen’s novels in visual terms,” but are works of art in their own right (197).
Monaghan first examines the ITV/A&E mini-series, released in 1996. Monaghan, while criticizing the BBC mini-series for its failure to render Austen’s ideas in a cleaver, unique visual manner, praises Lawrence and Davies for their ability to create visual images that “render the kind of philosophical abstraction – in this case a Burkeian view of the social contract” (200). While the mini-series stays true to many of Austen’s plot lines and period authenticity was a series concern for the filmmakers, Davies and Lawrence pin-point and highlight what they see as the Austen’s major themes. By portraying the connection between courtship and dancing in a visual way, Monaghan believes Davies and Lawrence are able to “persuade the viewer that…[Emma] has the intelligence and moral capacity to overcome her debilitating ‘blindness’ and achieve the kind of maturity that is claimed for her at the end of the film” (202). Even though they show “work-worn and discontented villagers,” Monaghan stipulates Lawrence and Davies still understand and aim to portray the way Austen was aligned with 19th century England’s gentry. Monaghan then moves into a discussion of the film’s opening four scenes, focusing on the opening chicken raid scene which features “a rapidly edited montage of shots taken from a range of distances and angles…and ends with a close up a sleepy and bemused looking Emma peering out of her bedroom window”(205). This emphasizes the Woodhouses lack of motion, and helps develop the film’s visual style communicates what Lawrence and Davies wish to point out as a major theme – “the moribund character of the gentry” (206). Monaghan points out the film’s use of color to set the mood in its mise-en-scene, coordinating the colors of the character’s clothes with the seasons. Monaghan briefly touches on the scene at Box Hill where the characters sit under a tree, seemingly under its shaded and protective branches. However, the characters are separated into two groups by the tree’s trunk; “the Eltons stand to the far left of the frame while Emma, Frank, Jane and Harriet are grouped together to the right…in what is actually a rather modest metaphor for the multiple conflicts that plague the visit to Box Hill” (210).
Monaghan then discusses Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling. He first examines why Auten’s Emma ought to be considered as the film’s primary frame work, citing the character overlaps and many similar, yet updated, plot points. Monaghan says of the film, “not is Heckerling correct to label her film a comedy of manners but she shares Austen’s awareness of the possibilities inherent within the genre for a subtle but unobtrusive exploration of important social/cultural issues” (215). However, Monaghan also names the MTV music video and the high school movie as other genres Heckerling is particularly indebted to. While Monaghan praises Heckerling for the creative way she works with Austen’s Emma, he criticizes her for flaunting the polite codes portrayed in Austen’s novels. For example, performance, rather than being negative as it is in Austen’s Emma, is a part of daily life in Clueless. For Monaghan, the “self-aggrandizing cliques…are the only type of collectivity possible in a society dominated by considerations of personal style,” is in direct opposition to the idea of nuances of class in Austen (217). However, in both cases, the reason for class distinction is economic. Monaghan simply does believe in Cher’s capability to change by the end of the film, chalking up the idea that she inherited a “good soul” from her mother to “pure Hollywood fantasy” (219). And yet, with the inclusion of Cher’s intervention by the end of the film, it is clear to the view that this is merely a stage in her life, not its conclusion.
Next, Monaghan looks at Miramax’s Emma, which is praises for its visual style, but claims that “fidelity to even the surface of Emma is by no means always a priority with [director] McGrath” (220). In contrast to the carefully planned and scene changing of seasons in Emma and the ITV/A&E versions, seasons are almost entirely missing from this version. Monaghan criticizes McGrath, not for staying from Austen’s text, but for failing to actively engage with it as well as its insistence to remove Emma from the “claustrophobic enclosure that helps so much in Austen’s novel…to explain her irresponsible behavior” (222). Monaghan also criticizes McGrath for the inconsistency of his tone, often turning broadly comic, and for permeating the film with the feeling that what the view is watching is a fairy tale, not an example of reality. Monagahn posits that Clueless was, in addition to Austen’s novel, used heavily as a source text for the film.
Monaghan concludes his article by stating that there’s “ no single approach to the problem of adapting a written text for the visual medium of film” (225). He summarizes by saying that “if the ITV/A&E Emma is the kind of film Austen might have made during her actual lifetime, Clueless is, perhaps, the film she would have made has she been alive today” (225).