Weekly Journal #5 (September 29, 2016)

     Austen's stories are influential and still read. The general form of some of her stories, like Pride and Prejudice, can be recognized in countless romantic comedies. Some popular television shows, like Downton Abbey, have similar forms and thematic concerns. Direct adaptions, parodies, and sequels to Austen's novels denote a continued interest by popular culture in her works. Examples of this include the 2005 adaption of Pride and Prejudice, as well as the more recent (and more comedic) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016).  Jo Baker's companion novel to Pride and Prejudice, called Longbourn, tells the same story from the point of view of the servants of the Bennet household. All of this activity shows that modern readers are still interested not just in the romance or themes, but also in the specific characters and the settings of Austen's works. 

Weekly Journal #4 (September 22, 2016)

     
     Humor is a major part of Pride and Prejudice. Most of this humor is derived from dialogue and social interaction throughout the book, and many jokes come from interactions within the Bennet family, many of these made at the expense of Mrs. Bennet. Mrs. Bennet is in the habit of embarrassing her daughters with some of her remarks. While these moments are not generally centered around political views, as in this SNL skit, the embarrassing and humorous nature of such family conflict is a recurring motif in Pride and Prejudice. The idea of sometimes being self-conscious of or embarrassed by one's family is universal, and a common theme of much comedy today. In the novel, it actually ends up having some serious implications; the way the Bennet sisters and Mrs. Bennet carried themselves was one of the reasons why Mr. Darcy originally convinced Mr. Bingley not to marry Jane.

Weekly Journal #3 (September 15, 2016)

     Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey are both comprised of short chapters, some of which do not break even two full pages. Each tends to deal with one specific event, like a conversation, or a dinner, or a ball, so that the story is told in an almost episodic way. At the time that Austen wrote her books, the novel was itself a novel genre, and her decision to tell her stories in this way was an innovative and overt one that took advantage of the novel's format and influenced what it has become. Modern web series, like Carmilla (a comedic, modern retelling of Sheridan Le Fanu's novel of the same name, featured above), are a particularly new and contemporary genre of storytelling. They follow a very similar format, with episodes that last only a few minutes and tend to deal with one event at a time. This format may very well have been influenced by the format which Austen's novels helped establish. Austen's novels shares similarities with web series like Carmilla in that both are early examples of new genres that served to pioneer their respective genre's format and structure. 

Weekly Journal #2 (September 8, 2016)

     This clip from the news satire show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver ended a larger 2014 segment on the Miss America Beauty Pageant (here). The segment criticized the unethical practices, sexist ideas, double standards, and unrealistic expectations set by these events. The popularity of beauty pageants shows that many of the 18th and 19th century values surrounding gender roles that Austen criticized, such as the supposed importance of physical beauty to a woman's value as a person, still exist today.

 

Weekly Journal #1 (September 1, 2016)

    

   

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, as a coming-of-age story, echoes some themes and ideas from Northanger Abbey and 18^th and 19^th century values and behavior. Both stories feature a high degree of self-awareness, and both mock the attitudes of certain adults. For example, Austen mocks the shallow and vain outlook of people like Mrs. Allen and Thorpe, while the film mocks the overly-critical and unsympathetic attitudes of people like Ed Rooney. While the teenage characters may not find themselves in the same situation as Catherine, they are pressured by similar forces. Both find themselves pushed by parents, authority figures, and society to aspire to some social expectation; for Catherine, this expectation is the 18^th to 19^th century feminine ideal, for Bueller and his friends, this expectation is the late 20^th century ideal of the obedient and academically successful teen. These pressures lead Catherine to become someone she might not have been and is not suited to be, and lead the cast of the film to rebel. In both stories, the teenage characters are naïve and have a limited understanding of the world, and by the end of their stories they have reached a higher level of maturity.