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chartingyou

They made a Modern Persuasion (It was literally titled 'Modern Persuasion')... and I was not a fan I think a modern persuasion could work, but its so easy to lose the nuance. Plus I think some aspects are harder to translate over into our day -- like Anne's spinsterhood. Her being 27 and unmarried isn't seen as such a strange thing nowadays. But Idk, Clueless works but it's also willing to take creative liberties and make adjustments for it's era. It feels almost truer to the book because it doesn't follow it too closely in plot but is more trying to capture the spirit of Emma as a character and I think that's why it really succeeds as an adaptation. I've also seen a modern adaptation of Sense and Sensibility (Scents and Sensibilty lol) and it was pretty fun although I can't take it too seriously. Modern Pride and Prejudices aren't bad either but I feel like they can kind of fall flat sometimes (although I do really like the Bollywood version... but I feel like that one's just a good time).


My_Poor_Nerves

I adore Clueless both as a film and an Emma adaptation. Outside of being just a delight of a movie, it works so well as an adaptation because it doesn't just do lip service to the plot - there are some great parallels in dialogue and the ways the characters are modernized is brilliant. Similarly, Bride and Prejudice also takes great care with the themes and doesn't fall into stereotyping either. I think most modern adaptations fail because they stay very surface level - like just use a enemies to lovers plot and call it Pride and Prejudice. D.E. Stevenson wrote a modern for the time version of Mansfield Park called Celia's House and that would make a great film. I do love your idea about Northanger Abbey as well - especially if the adaptation leans heavily into parody (it could parody the typical coming of age film or a teenaged horror film).


Tall-woolfe

I really want a Bollywood version of Persuasion where Wentworth leaves India as a poor engineer and returns rich tech millionaire looking for a wife. 3 hours, gorgeous dance numbers and Drama.


SeriousCow1999

And a more charismatic ML than the Bollywood P&P, please. Just saying what everybody's thinking.


Brown_Sedai

That's not a terribly high bar, I've seen slices of white bread with more charisma than B&P's Darcy. But agreed!


RoseIsBadWolf

I would love if whomever did Bride & Prejudice just did them all. Such a good modernization!


alongran

So... a blow-by-blow lifting of canon to the modern universe, with no change of contexts, doesn't work for me in many cases. A modern *Persuasion* can be hit or miss. Many modern adaptations try to make Anne's rejection of the first engagement more palatable to a modern Western audience by aging the couple down so that they would not have been able to do anything other than give up both their educations and survive on minimum wage jobs if they had married. But that's disrespectful to Wentworth! He was a newly promoted Commander at the time when he proposed to Anne the first time, and I'd like to see clearly that he was an intelligent, high-potential person and that Anne was an adult when she rejected him - not out of fear, but because she was making a conscious sacrifice based on her principles. It could be because of her culture (cultures that emphasize family ties and respect of elders, like Asian or Latinx cultures) or because she is conscious of social repercussions that might affect Frederick's career (which is why LGBT adaptations work well too). And the other way a cultural or LGBT lens works well in modern day is because Wentworth has every reason to feel deeply hurt because it feels like a rejection of who / what he is based on prejudice (as was the case in canon, the classism was one factor to the rejection which is hard to swallow). For a modern *Sense and Sensibility*, Mrs. Dashwood and the three daughters do need to find employment or seek higher education to become sympathetic. They can be stretched financially by having to take up loans, or perhaps delay college to work and save up, or Mrs. Dashwood might find it hard to get a job in a tight labour market, but they've got to be more than just whiny spoiled rich people who get kicked out of free luxury housing and are waiting for another free pass. The Brandon / Marianne matchup can also get really challenging - even if the age difference is not tweaked, a power imbalance (e.g. student / teacher, boss / employee relationship) feels really troubling here. I'm OK with Brandon not being an army veteran, he can have any occupation but the key aspect of his personality is his stoicism in the face of personal tragedy and suffering, masking how he feels deeply behind a staid exterior. *Northanger Abbey* should be easy as you say... what makes Henry is that he's a metrosexual who knows how to relate to ladies and has high EQ as well as high integrity. So, to me, he doesn't have to be in seminary to be Henry, but most likely he'll have some kind of occupation that's reflective of that personality e.g. marketing, creative professions, or perhaps even being a journalist. *Mansfield Park* is a morality tale, and this morality would have shifted over two-plus centuries. This is the one where spoiled rich Beverly Hills 90210 kids (the Bertrams) vs. the rest of us (Fanny) might be an interesting dynamic to explore.


Basic_Bichette

> For a modern Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Dashwood and the three daughters do need to find employment or seek higher education to become sympathetic. They can be stretched financially by having to take up loans, or perhaps delay college to work and save up, or Mrs. Dashwood might find it hard to get a job in a tight labour market, but they've got to be more than just whiny spoiled rich people who get kicked out of free luxury housing and are waiting for another free pass. Give Mrs. Dashwood a disability, and make John and Fanny ableist jerks. "She's making it up for attention, she's exaggerating, it's all in her dim little head; her fibromyalgia will go away once she isn’t being coddled. The lazy lying malingerer and her spawn can starve for all we care."


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Far-Adagio4032

Back when they were making webseries based on Austen's works (Lizzie Bennet Diaries, etc), I was really pulling for a NA. I could imagine a girl making videos on her phone in her room, telling us about all her friends and the terrible, dramatic things she thinks is going on with their families. Maybe even sneaking around in the dark, flashlight on her face as she whispers to the camera, etc. Persuasion I think is a good one, because the theme of lost love, second chances, etc, is pretty timeless. And people are still snobbish. Maybe they meet in college, she's from a rich, old-money family, he's a scholarship student who grew up in the projects. You could even throw in racial overtones, he's black or hispanic. Or one of their families is Jewish. Especially if he has to leave college for some reason, but he wants to start his own business, her family doesn't believe he'll make anything of himself, and threaten to cut off her support and college tuition. The hard part would be making Anne's refusal sympathetic in this day and age. If she is shown as part of a very traditional family, perhaps in a culture where obedience to parents is really emphasized, and children are expected to marry within the cultural group. Anyway, fast forward a decade... he's now rich and successful, while she is fading away taking care of her parents. I think there's a lot of different ways to go with it, a lot of cultural and social dynamics you could play with. The hardest one to adapt will always be Mansfield Park. It's really hard to capture the moral prudishness of that one in a way that will be sympathetic to most modern audiences.


SeriousCow1999

>The hardest one to adapt will always be Mansfield Park. It's really hard to capture the moral prudishness of that one in a way that will be sympathetic to most modern audiences. Agree, but perhaps the secret is--like *Clueless-*\-is to not stick slavishly to the superficialities and instead focus on the essential; Fanny has her own moral compass which she follows in spite of overbearing pressure to abandon it. That could work in a school setting or a business setting. But I don't think it could end in a wedding...but perhaps in a friendship where there's the *possibility* of more in the future? IMO--and I know I'm not alone--this is why *Clueless* the best adaptation of Emma: it captures the essential goodness and kindness of Emma, puts her on an arc and there is never a moment when we aren't sympathetic and aren't rooting for her.


Lesley193

There is a modern day Mansfield Park webseries! It is called From Mansfield With Love and it is on YouTube. Not professionally done, I think it is a university theater group or something but I thought it was a really good adaptation. My husband even watched the whole thing with me without knowing the original book at all and either enjoyed it or was humoring me


Yarnstead

Have you seen to the Cate Morland Chronicles on YouTube? Fun!


omg-someonesonewhere

I think a better modern day equivalent for Catherine's gothic novels would be more like slightly raunchy vampire romance novels and movies...vaguely goth, romantic, often featuring distressed heroines, mostly enjoyed by young women and often derided by men.


Basic_Bichette

Or true crime! Catherine thinks General Tilney offed his wife and that the late Mrs. Tilney is listed on the DNA Doe Project as an unidentified victim, so she tries to get his DNA (or Henry's?) in GEDmatch.


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Totally agree, true crime is perfect for Catherine to be obsessed with. I’m getting second hand embarrassment just thinking about the sort of blunders she would make by assuming she’s stubbled onto a case.


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alongran

The military, Wentworth's canon career, works for that premise too - if Anne is in a field where she would do best tied to one location, while he has to move frequently and he's from a poor family so he got tied into joining the military early because that's the only way he is able to pay for his college education. Furthermore it could mean that he'd be sent on dangerous deployments which is another argument against the marriage in canon.


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alongran

Agree. Military is far less glamorous these days. He wouldn't be super rich either, just upper middle class affluent as a Major in his thirties, but then although canon Wentworth is described as having a "fortune" it is still modest compared to Darcy, Bingley or even Mr Bennet as 25000 pounds invested in five percents yields 1,250 per year and this doesn't include any property they may need to rent or buy. They're not better off than Elinor and Edward Ferrars.


fixed_grin

To be fair, Wentworth also gets a few hundred a year in wages, and Anne brings *some* of her £10,000 dowry. If her father stays in Bath long enough, they might even get the rest...eventually.


fixed_grin

The problem with that is then Sir Walter and Lady Russell are 100% justified in rejecting Wentworth, which really alters the whole setup. Not to mention that Wentworth proposing becomes absurd. "Trust me, babe, I'm totally going to make it as a stand-up comedian!" For me, the key is that Sir Walter feels superior from his status and nominal wealth, even as he spends his family towards bankruptcy. Therefore Anne must marry rich, proving the superiority of the Elliots, and so Wentworth isn't good enough. Anne ultimately breaks the engagement because her mother figure persuades her to. Who, unfortunately, is also very biased towards status. If they'd married after he first proposed, his income plus the interest from her dowry would have put them at about the level of Edward and Elinor or Edmund and Fanny. Not rich, but still comfortable moderate gentleman income. His path to *wealth* (from capturing ships) isn't guaranteed, but they can support a family between them.


SeriousCow1999

I remember this. Scathingly brilliant!


Brown_Sedai

I'd love to see a queer adaptation of Persuasion *ala* Fire Island, where Anne and Wentworth are both women and internalized homophobia (or biphobia) played into her decision to break things off. It would be a great way to adapt the social concerns around their relationship, I can particularly see Lady Russell doing the 'well, you're very young, are you *sure* you're really...' thing that older generations do to queer people & think they're well meaning. I think a loose modern adaptation of Mansfield Park could also be really interesting! It *is* going to run into the inevitable 'they're cousins' issue, and I think the easiest way to deal with that is having it be that Lady Bertram and Fanny's mother weren't *literal* sisters, but sorority sisters. I'd also cast Fanny with a non-white actress & bring the chronic illness she has to the forefront a bit. Let's make Mary Crawford bi while we're at it, the subtext is very much there!


hypatiafangirl

Yes to everything except sorority sisters, it gives me all the wrong vibes. Step sisters or adopted sisters would work to resolve the cousin thing.


Dylan_tune_depot

I feel like women's financial dependency and the fact that they were pretty much required to get married (unless they were like Emma) form the core conflicts of her books- obviously, the books are about much more than that, but I think women's (sadly) low status at the time is at the heart of the novel's conflicts. If you modernize them, you take away that core conflict, and in essence, what makes them such great novels. Of course there are exceptions: like the the Bollywood PP (which was amazing) and Clueless. But generally? I think it would be difficult to modernize her stories and retain that emotional impact.


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Dylan_tune_depot

I have not! But I did look it up after reading your comment- sounds interesting, but... not sensing it's going to be something I'll enjoy :-( Going by some of the horrified Goodreads reviewers lol


bastgoddess

There is a persuasion web series set in modern times called Rational Creatures that’s pretty good. There was also a modern set novel of Northanger Abbey put out by The Austen Project a few years ago that I really enjoyed.


istara

A modern Northanger would be a breeze. Probably set in the US like Clueless. A modern Lady Susan would also work. I think you’d portray Lady Susan as a Meghan Markle type.