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Historical Accuracy and Why It Doesn't Matter: MerlinBBC & Lost in Austen
Well, you know, it's not like Merlin is trying to be historically accurate. It's not even disregarding it so much as ignoring the existence of historical accuracy. Even aside from the fact that Arthurian legend is not exactly history, Merlin is rather like, oh, The Flintstones. Your inner medievalist no more need cringe than your inner archaeologist or evolutionary anthropologist need cringe at The Flintstones or BC (that hideously stupid comic strip).
I was trying to apply a similar principle to Lost in Austen, and I found that, as I saw someone else post about Merlin, that was much more enjoyable once my inner Regency-genre fan (to say nothing of my inner P&P fan, because it's not just history but also all semblance of characterisation that went by the wayside - true blue badfic, there. I'd be surprised if the source text didn't include some tittering Author's Notes with missing commas) fainted dead away. In Lost in Austen, of course, one doesn't have to go all the way to Flintstones-esque allegory, since a great deal of evidence seems to point more to the whole thing being set inside the rather dim protagonist's mind (which should explain the lack of historical detail, and her limited reading comprehension can explain the lack of characterisation). (It's as if, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wax_jism said, she's read P&P 50 times but it's the only book she's ever read, and she didn't really understand it very well.) I saw some signs that the Regency world simply represents a blue-collar protagonist's fantasy of a more upper-class and mannerly world, and the surprises she finds there certainly make more sense if it were modern. Of course, people are people (and thus people are assholes) everywhere. Also all the gross changes to Austenian canon introduced - ie the characters of Wickham & Georgiana, Mrs Bennett and Miss Bingley - speak to class, with the upper class (GD, CB) villified at the expense of lower-class characters (W, Mrs B) who are found to be more worthy/substantial than in canon. (The side-effect is to remove any sign, in the text, of the true gender power imbalance in the period - which again makes sense if it merely represents modern life, where women's agency is not such an issue.) Ultimately this still doesn't do much to explain the claim that she's actually been literally in love with Darcy, a fictional character, since childhood; but I suppose that her choice, in the end, to throw aside reason, logic, and everything she's now learned about her chosen world and choose it anyway for the sake of her personal attachment to Darcy - that is the artefact of the romance genre, and probably doesn't need to be explained any other way.
I was trying to apply a similar principle to Lost in Austen, and I found that, as I saw someone else post about Merlin, that was much more enjoyable once my inner Regency-genre fan (to say nothing of my inner P&P fan, because it's not just history but also all semblance of characterisation that went by the wayside - true blue badfic, there. I'd be surprised if the source text didn't include some tittering Author's Notes with missing commas) fainted dead away. In Lost in Austen, of course, one doesn't have to go all the way to Flintstones-esque allegory, since a great deal of evidence seems to point more to the whole thing being set inside the rather dim protagonist's mind (which should explain the lack of historical detail, and her limited reading comprehension can explain the lack of characterisation). (It's as if, as
wax_jism said, she's read P&P 50 times but it's the only book she's ever read, and she didn't really understand it very well.) I saw some signs that the Regency world simply represents a blue-collar protagonist's fantasy of a more upper-class and mannerly world, and the surprises she finds there certainly make more sense if it were modern. Of course, people are people (and thus people are assholes) everywhere. Also all the gross changes to Austenian canon introduced - ie the characters of Wickham & Georgiana, Mrs Bennett and Miss Bingley - speak to class, with the upper class (GD, CB) villified at the expense of lower-class characters (W, Mrs B) who are found to be more worthy/substantial than in canon. (The side-effect is to remove any sign, in the text, of the true gender power imbalance in the period - which again makes sense if it merely represents modern life, where women's agency is not such an issue.) Ultimately this still doesn't do much to explain the claim that she's actually been literally in love with Darcy, a fictional character, since childhood; but I suppose that her choice, in the end, to throw aside reason, logic, and everything she's now learned about her chosen world and choose it anyway for the sake of her personal attachment to Darcy - that is the artefact of the romance genre, and probably doesn't need to be explained any other way.
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Isn't it amazing after so many years of say, Xena and Hercules, and as you point out, cartoons like The Flintstones there's always a group of people making some noise about accuracy regarding shows where the point seems to be inaccuracy? On the other hand, if you love the thing you want to see it achieve the perfect conception in your mind, and you can't easily get past that wish.
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I wrote that and for some reason it's made me grin like a loon!
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