This post is in reaction to a review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This writer describes Jane Austin's work as 'timeless' and 'serious' and, by contrast to the attitude of zombie enthusiasts, implies that it is sacred. In my opinion the only thing timeless about Jane Austin is the experience of reading her - the books never seem to end, nothing changes, nothing important happens. Zombies disrupt the limbo of the drawing room and take lovers of serious literature straight to hell. The rest of us enjoy a better story (for my money, the best way to improve on comedies of manners is not to read them. When I hear the name 'Merchant and Ivory,' I want to shoot an elephant.) Instead of bemoaning the introduction of the undead into the timeless, someone might want to ask why this was done and why zombies are so popular now.
Zombie stories, according to the writer of the review, are a 'fad.' I agree that zombies are quite fashionable these days, but there is more than caprice behind the rise of the zombie. Aren't Darcy and Bennett already zombies, milling about drawing rooms, moaning about manners? It's their worldview that's being killed in the rewrite to Pride and Prejudice.
Manners mean little when monsters are at the door, which they seem to be with increasing frequency these days. Anecdotally, more people have spoken to me about the satire of Austin, which came out in 2009, than about Austin's work, which was sealed, safe in it's drawing room, long before my birth. The world for which Austin's social criticisms were apt has long been in the crypt. Austin fans should be happy for it's reanimation. Before the rise of the zombies, critics were already calling for someone to let a little air into Austin's stuffy rooms. Now a fiend has burst through the wall.
http://www.patrolmag.com/arts/1746/pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies
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