This week the Secret Victorianist
went to see what should have been this Valentine’s Day’s greatest compromise
film (were it not for the clever marketing of Deadpool)—Pride and Prejudice
and Zombies (hereafter PPZ).
Based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 ‘mash-up’ novel,
PPZ is fan fic for the big screen, bodice ripping with bite and, potentially,
the point at which we reached peak Austen adaptation. In this blog I’ll be
covering off the main questions I’m sure you were left asking once the final
credits rolled.
Warning: Spoilers abound.
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| The Bennet sisters, led by Lily James as Elizabeth |
What can PPZ tell us about the modern cliché of the strong female
protagonist?
Speaking about the inspiration
behind his novel, Grahame-Smith said the following:
“You have this fiercely independent
heroine, you have this dashing heroic gentleman, you have a militia camped out
for seemingly no reason whatsoever nearby, and people are always walking here
and there and taking carriage rides here and there . . . It was just ripe for
gore and senseless violence.”
The independence of Austen’s
Elizabeth Bennet then is central to the conception of PPZ, just as it has been
to Pride and Prejudice’s enduring
popularity. What’s more, how this comes to life in Lily James’s rendition of
the character is more revealing of 21st-century attitudes to the
strong female protagonist, than 19th-century ones.
Lizzie is a warrior trained in
martial arts, but she hacks the undead to pieces, saves Mr Darcy several times
and delivers crushing put downs in Chinese all without a blood splatter to be
seen or a hair falling out of place.
She flashes her garters and has
no time for riding side saddle but she’s still indisputably virginal, and
invested in keeping it that way until she has a ring on her finger and an
estate in the bag.
Today’s strong female protagonist
must fight with the men, while preserving her sexual allure and virtue. And she
must find accord with other strong female characters. Lena Headey’s eye-patch
wearing Lady Catherine de Bourgh comes onside when she sees Lizzie defeat a man
double her size in hand-to-hand combat.
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| Sam Riley as Mr Darcy |
What is PPZ’s stance on 19th-century classism?
The undead masses are largely
poor—the inmates of overrun orphanages, a group of servants lurking in the
kitchens, a terrifying tribe of Cockneys making for the Home Counties.
Early in the film, you might have
thought PPZ had the potential to play out as a riotous allegory, an answer to
Austen’s elision of issues regarding social justice. You would have been wrong.
The
only voice pleading for the zombies is Jack Huston's Wickham—a character who is here even
worse than in the original. Wickham—the women kidnapping, benefactor killing,
undead-herding maniac, who turns out to have been a zombie all along—argues that
the infected need only religious education and a healthy diet of pigs’ brains
to keep them in line. But when they get a taste of blood (thanks, Darcy), it
all goes wrong.
The
only moral I could detect? Feed the starving and you’ll have a rebellion on your
hands, show compassion to the people and your beautiful estates will soon be
overrun.
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| Lena Headey as Lady Catherine |
What does Lily James’s cleavage tell us about intertextuality in
21st-century costume drama?
PPZ is an homage to other filmic
retellings of Austen and to the costume drama genre more widely, regardless of
its violence and gore.
Sam Riley’s Darcy has his dive
into the lake for absolutely no plot reason (he’s not even interrupted by the
arrival of Elizabeth). Lizzie’s dresses are lower cut than those of anyone else
in the country—a clear nod to Jennifer Ehle in the 1995 TV adaptation.
And Darcy’s first proposal features a sword fight between the romantic
pair that channels the run in between Catherine Zeta Jones and Antonio Banderas
in 1998 drama The Mask of Zorro (although
here both characters end up in a state of partial undress).
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| Bella Heathcote as Jane and Lily James as Elizabeth |
What makes PPZ a truly radical addition to the zombie canon?
But what if you went to see PPZ
as an aficionado of the zombie genre? Does this movie offer anything new?
I’d argue, yes. This is one of
the few zombie flicks I’ve seen where no major character dies, something I initially
struggled with since Matt Smith’s brilliantly irritating Mr Collins was a clear
candidate.
My conclusion? In the world of
Regency England the very existence of zombies is enough of a shock factor—the
joy here is in seeing how this particular society responds to the infection. Zombies
cause problems but they also make the lives of the Bennet sisters a hell of a
lot more interesting, while, in our own world, the only difference they would bring
is even more widespread destruction.
What did you think of PPZ? What
dissertation titles do you think it will inspire in the future? Let me
know—here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist!
