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Welcome to Jane Austen Remixed!
40 Plays9 days ago
What if Pride & Prejudice wasn't set in Regency England? What if there was a whole literary world out there dedicated to adaptations of this beloved story? And what if there was a podcast exploring them?
Your hosts Stefanie and Melinda introduce themselves, why they love Pride & Prejudice so much, and outline what you can expect from this podcast.
Links & Mentions
If you need subtitles or a transcript, these are available through the Apple Podcasts app. Please note they are auto generated so we apologise in advance for it not correctly understanding our accents on certain words.
You can find us (and our memes) on Instagram @janeaustenremixed and you can contact us via janeaustenremixed@gmail.com.
Join us every second Monday to hear all about a new adaptation of our favourite classic novel. In our first episode, already live in the feed, we will be reading Undeceived: Pride & Prejudice in the Spy Game by Karen M Cox. If you're reading along, we encourage you to buy secondhand or support your local independent bookshop, where possible.
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Transcript
The Idea of a Pride and Prejudice Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey Stephanie. Hey Melinda. Do you want maybe start a podcast? That sounds like a great idea. what do you reckon we should talk about? We should definitely talk about Pride and Prejudice.
00:00:12
Speaker
Maybe not just Pride and Prejudice, but like the zombie version. Yes, you know I love Pride and Prejudice and zombies. The Egyptian version. Yes. What about that really unhinged version that involves time travel and the other one that has ghosts?
00:00:27
Speaker
Okay, I think we've got a podcast idea. I think we've got a great idea for a podcast. Music
00:00:44
Speaker
Okay, so I guess we should start from the beginning then.
Introduction and Love for Pride and Prejudice
00:00:47
Speaker
I'm Stephanie. I love Jane Austen. I love Pride and Prejudice. And you are? I'm Melinda. I am also the same. Probably no point repeating the exact same thing, but yes, I also love Pride and Prejudice.
00:00:58
Speaker
And the idea of this podcast came kind of came about pretty much how you heard in the introduction. We both love Pride and Prejudice. We both have a tendency to read adaptations, no matter how unhinged or crazy or amazing.
00:01:11
Speaker
um And we kept talking about them and realised actually this could be a really cool idea to share with all of you. So welcome. We hope you like it here in our little corner of the world.
00:01:22
Speaker
It's a very fun corner of the world, we promise. Steph.
Stephanie's First Encounter with Pride and Prejudice
00:01:25
Speaker
de How did you come across Pride and Prejudice for the first time? Well, um I've been a massive Jane Austen, and particularly Pride Prejudice fan, since I was really young.
00:01:38
Speaker
I remember watching the 1995 version with my mum when it was first on TV. So here in Australia, it came out on the ABC. And I watched it every week with my mum. I don't remember that much about it. I remember the ending and I remember thinking it was really cool.
00:01:54
Speaker
And then my mum recommended that I read the book. so she gave me my first copy of Pride and Prejudice when I was probably, God, showing my age here, I think I was 10.
00:02:05
Speaker
It was my grandma's old copy. It's still in my collection. Yes, I have a collection of copies of Pride and Prejudice. We'll get into that later. um And I absolutely loved it. I thought it was fantastic. It was so different to all the other books that I'd read.
00:02:17
Speaker
And that was the start of my journey into Pride and Prejudice. How about you?
Melinda's Introduction through Bridget Jones
00:02:22
Speaker
So my journey is little bit different. um I think I was too young to watch the original version when it aired on TV. Thanks.
00:02:30
Speaker
Sorry. um um But so my first encounter with Pride and Prejudice was actually Bridget Jones's diary. um I remember seeing that at the movies when I was in early high school.
00:02:43
Speaker
And I remember knowing at the time that it was an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. So I'm sure at that point I had read the book prior it to that, but I don't actually remember reading it at that point. So there's a bit of a, yeah I don't really know.
00:02:58
Speaker
But yeah, that's kind of where we ended up. um But I did study it at school Oh, right. Yeah. So my first actual memory of reading Pride and Prejudice was in year 11, which is the second last year of high school ah for anyone in a place that isn't New South Wales.
00:03:15
Speaker
Basically, we did a course on it. It was our English text. We then at that point watched the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice. Excellent. The cultural artefact and the really important adaptation of Mr Darcy in the Lake was reroute rewound several times.
00:03:34
Speaker
I think I just broke Steph. Just please hold. No, please continue. Okay. So we um we studied the book then. i remember really liking it and just kind of went on from there. I also did a Jane Austen course at uni.
00:03:51
Speaker
Of you It was part of my English Lit major. um So I read the book then and it was kind of around that time I thought, hey, let's reread a book every year. And that's kind of how I ended up sort of falling in love with the story. What about you, Steph? Did you study it at school?
Stephanie's School Project: A Modern Adaptation
00:04:09
Speaker
So, and I'm going to show my nerd credentials here. I did an uncredited extension English class after school in year 10. ah So for again, for the non-Australians, I was probably 16 at the time.
00:04:23
Speaker
And one of the texts that we studied was Pride and Prejudice. And... I was stoked because I'd already read it a thousand times at this point. And ah it actually involved us having to write our own adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. We just had to pick one scene and rewrite it in a modern context and give all the background and sort of flesh out all the characters and all that sort of thing.
00:04:46
Speaker
And I, as an extremely white 16-year-old, decided that it would be a really great idea me to write it from the perspective of Elizabeth and Mr. Collins being from families that were first-generation Indian-Australian.
00:05:05
Speaker
This was before the masterpiece that is Pride and Pride... Bride and Prejudiced came out. That was a couple of years later. So this was a very original idea to me at the time. And ah so I did write Mr. Collins as a much more sympathetic figure because I think I felt sorry for him.
00:05:21
Speaker
And because I was a budding feminist, I switched the roles of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett. So Mr. Bennett was the one really driving for Elizabeth to get married. um And Mrs. Bennett was like the cool mom.
00:05:33
Speaker
Cool. That was sort of my first ah go at studying Jane Austen. It was fascinating. I really loved it. It was really interesting to watch the other girls I was at school with experience and a text written in a different century for for for a lot of them for the first time, which was really fun. And it was a really fun class and really fun experience.
00:05:55
Speaker
My first experience with an actual... adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was the utterly unhinged continuation of the story written, I think, in the 80s.
00:06:07
Speaker
And it was just called Pemberley. Right. It's insane. We will cover that at some point. um It's like what happens after Elizabeth and Darcy get married.
00:06:18
Speaker
And there is a point in the book where someone uses the phrase blue balls. So, um... nope nope nope No, no, no, no, no. ah Which is actually a really good side note at this point. There are a lot of erotica versions of Pride and Prejudice out there that we will be avoiding.
00:06:38
Speaker
It's not something that any of us need to experience, particularly in a shared environment. um If you guys are into reading those, absolutely go for it. We don't have a problem with that, but we won't be covering them on the podcast. I really don't think the point of those books is to explore the themes of the original Pride and Prejudice in any sort of depth.
00:06:58
Speaker
How could you say that? but Okay, maybe. you No. No. Still no. I was going to say maybe I should read one to find out. No, it it's not happening. No, neither of us need to experience that. the Reading the blurbs on Goodreads is horrifying enough for both of us. Oh, yeah.
00:07:15
Speaker
That was not Anyway, why did Pride and Proaches appeal to
Why Pride and Prejudice Remains Popular
00:07:20
Speaker
you so much? So it's become like a really strong part of your life and think something that you really enjoy. Why is that? Why do you think that this text that was written so long ago still has so much modern appeal to us?
00:07:30
Speaker
I think it has such an enduring appeal. it became one of my favourite books because you can literally get anything out of it that you would like to get out of it on whatever reading you happen to be reading. Those X-rated versions, they really focus in on the romance.
00:07:44
Speaker
That's great. If that's what you get out of Pride and Prejudice and you love it because it is a beautiful love story between two people who grow together and become worthy of each other, awesome.
00:07:55
Speaker
Go for it. Then there's the things with the parental interplay between Mr and Mrs Bennett. What society should have been expecting of them and things like that. um How Mrs Bennett, I think, Steph, you've got a really good rant at some point about how Mrs Bennett was the only one really looking out for those girls. She is misunderstood. She's not a good person, but she is misunderstood. Yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
So we'll get into that. um But then there's things like how reputation is actually probably still quite as important as it was in 18th century England. Totally. You've got, um you know, it's not just about Lydia, it's about Wickham and how he's spread and so how people so easily sort of believed his lies because they were coded in that like sheen of truth. And I think...
00:08:39
Speaker
The more I read it the more different things I get out of it. And it's actually an incredibly complex piece of work. And yes, it has a happy ending. And I think that's great. But yeah, I think depending on how I'm feeling will depend on what I get out of it, which is really cool.
00:08:53
Speaker
What about you, Steph? I totally agree on a lot of those points. um I think as I have gotten older, I've gotten a lot of different things out of the book. um As I mentioned, I had my feminist awakening in high school. So it went from, I really love this because, you know, it's like the fairy tale romance. When I was really young, when I first read it, fairy tale, love it, big wedding at the end.
00:09:18
Speaker
And then it developed into Elizabeth was one of the first characters I read that was completely well-rounded as a person. yeah She wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but she didn't need to be.
00:09:31
Speaker
She had hopes. She had dreams. She stood up for those. She refused to compromise on a lot of things. And i think that really spoke to me when I was younger. And, you know, also being a teenage girl, I was like, oh, my God, her mom is such a drag. Yeah.
00:09:46
Speaker
um it's And as I've gotten older, again, we can touch on my obsession with ah Mrs. Bennett being completely misunderstood. And I will caveat that with this doesn't make her a good person. This doesn't make the way she goes about certain things...
00:10:03
Speaker
good. yeah But it shows that every character is so well thought through and it grows with you as you get older. So now I think I get a lot out of um the depth of the male characters as well and how they are reflections um and subversions of a lot of cultural mores that, as you say, we still have.
00:10:28
Speaker
So Wickham is believed because he's really good looking. And that's a tradition that goes back to like the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans. They thought that someone couldn't possibly be a bad person if they had a beautiful face because they've had a beautiful face.
00:10:39
Speaker
They were blessed by the gods. People who are extremely extremely good looking ah really valued in our society. So I think that really continues through. um And, yeah, it's a lot of cultural ah touchstones that are still super important to this day.
00:10:55
Speaker
And, yeah, the fabric of it, you know, how Lydia is treated, how Wickham is treated, how Darcy sees everyone around him and then comes to the realisation that actually, wow, he's been acting like a jerk this entire time.
00:11:11
Speaker
The fact that a woman tells a man what is wrong with him and he fixes himself – He believes her and he fixes himself. yeah Show me a modern romance that is not an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that does that.
00:11:27
Speaker
Agreed. Okay, please don't write in and tell me all of the ones that do because I'm really not a big romance reader. So I'll be like, oh okay, cool. It's still a thing that happens. i I challenge you to find one that isn't...
00:11:41
Speaker
isn't inspired by Pride and Prejudice yeah in any way, shape or form, yeah but does that as a story. So yeah, I think as I've gotten older, definitely what I get out of the text has changed. It's the TLDR of that. Agreed. And also Charlotte rules.
00:11:56
Speaker
Oh, Charlotte is the best. yeah She is amazing. And we are going to get into how the 2005 version did her dirty. Oh, are we? Did her dirty. Okay. I'll get on i'll get it to it at some point. Yeah. Fair enough.
Podcast Format and First Episode
00:12:11
Speaker
we should probably explain how the podcast is going to roll out, what you can expect from an episode from us. Yeah, sure. Okay. um So basically... At the moment, we are focusing on the adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. So if there is a story, a movie, a web series, whatever it happens whatever medium it happens to be in, and it is based on Pride and Prejudice in some way,
00:12:37
Speaker
you'll probably hear about it from us. ah Basically, we're going to start every episode with a spoiler-free summary. Essentially, here's the blurb. This is the concept. If this is something that is interesting to you, please go read it.
00:12:49
Speaker
ah Join us in that conversation, and then we'll get into more depth about the plot, how well the adaptation actually works. um There are some that work really well. There are some that do not. And yes, we will get into both sides of that spectrum, which will be really cool.
00:13:05
Speaker
um And we'll also go through the themes and how those themes are adapted to whatever audience and whatever era the story is set in, which will be cool. So, um yeah, we are actually starting with the story that inspired the podcast, which is a book called Undeceived by Karen M. Cox.
00:13:25
Speaker
It's Pride and Prejudice, but they're spies. I'm just going to leave it at that. The episode has already dropped. You can listen
Favorite Adaptations
00:13:33
Speaker
to that after you finish this one. But speaking of adaptations, other than Pemberley, what are your other favourite adaptations, Steph?
00:13:40
Speaker
Obviously, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Oh, yes. we Absolutely thrilling. You got me on that bandwagon. Yes, I did. You did not believe me that it was as good as it was. not believe you, yeah. Yeah. You gifted me undeceived, which is how I read it, and it was fabulous. Absolutely loved it. So it's one of the few adaptations that are on this list that both of us have read. Yes. Most of the time it will be either myself or Melinda experiencing an adaptation for the first time. Yes, which will be exciting. You've got a couple that you keep teasing me about that I am both terrified and excited to hear about.
00:14:14
Speaker
So my first episode, which will drop in two weeks, is called Me and Mr. Darcy. If you have read it, excellent. If you haven't, oh boy, do I have some unhinged madness for you. This is one of the adaptations that really made me want to throw the book across the room.
00:14:33
Speaker
Oh, good. I'll need to duck out of frustration. So we'll get into that in more detail. Other than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, again, i really loved Bridget Jones's Diary. I'm not a big fan of movies that induce a lot of like cringe and make me want to like crawl inside myself and die a little.
00:14:51
Speaker
And yeah Bridget Jones's Diary, the movie, does have that. And we will touch on both the books later. of both the book and the movie. I've read two of the books, watched all the movies.
00:15:01
Speaker
So there is ah rich vein of stuff to talk through on that one. But we didn't want to start with that one because, you know, you guys know it you guys know that one. We were starting some unexpected places. Well, I think that probably does it for our opening episode.
Invitation to Follow on Instagram
00:15:17
Speaker
think you're right. Welcome to our little corner of the world.
00:15:20
Speaker
ah We hope you like it here and have fun. um And go listen to episode one now and we will see you in two weeks. Yep. We'll see you in two weeks. And also you can follow us on social media. We are at... We are at Jane Austen Remixed on Instagram.
00:15:36
Speaker
And that's it. ah It's just Instagram. We don't do Facebook and we aren't touching Twitter. We are absolutely touching the dumpster fire that is Twitter. So Instagram is it. Jane Austen Remixed, all one word, all lowercase. And we'll see you next week. See you on the next episode.
00:16:03
Speaker
Thank you.