Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies REWRITE

I would like to expand on the idea of pop culture and fiction with my post on Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies.

In my previous post, I wrote that I appreciated the idea of pop culture within Jane Austen's work, but I feel like that's an opinion I need to take back. While pop culture is a great way to give people something to grasp onto within a story to keep them from getting lost, it also takes away the timelessness of any novel, play, or movie. For example, there is a great debate among my classmates on Dreamworks versus Pixar. Dreamworks has always been second best in my eyes, and part of the reason for this is that they always use pop culture references, along with crude humor and adult jokes. Pixar, on the other hand, relies purely on the timelessness of the story they are telling and, usually, it's one that can last much longer than Dreamworks' films.

Pop culture is temporal. While we are indeed going through a zombie phase at the moment, that won't last. Sooner or later, Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies is going to end up forgotten, but Jane Austen's original work will still be around. I suppose that, in this aspect, I'm glad that Grahame-Smith chose something so modern to reshape this novel, because he wasn't trying to choose something that would really compete with Austen's work; he was making it purely for the present time, and nothing beyond that.

I would also like to say that this is the first mashup I've ever really experienced. I honestly didn't even know there was anything like it until I took this class. I thought that remolding something like Jane Austen would be illegal in at least a few ways, but I guess I was wrong. I can't say that the novel wasn't amusing, because I think it was. The humor just didn't appeal to me. This could also be my personal tastes alone coming into play. I think back about the novels where the humor really made me want to continue reading, like Equal Rites, or Oryx and Crake and I can see that I'm a fan of really dry, sarcastic humor. Maybe the idea of zombies and ninjas was just too ridiculous for me. But, going back to pop culture in timeless fiction, maybe a “ridiculous” idea like that is just what the general population needs to get back into reading. I certainly understand that reading is dying, and I wholeheartedly support any attempt to get it back on its feet. Even if the work in question doesn't appeal to me.

This is one of the only novels that I thought should be cut from the Required Readings list, but maybe I'm being a little closed-minded. Over the summer, I'd like to reread the novel, this time more willingly, and see if that was my only problem. If not, that's fine. I'm happy to say that I've experienced the crazily innovative idea that is the mashup.