My Thoughts on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a web series. It is not a:
- feminist manifesto
- guide for abuse victims
- documentary
It’s a fictional web series attempting to update Pride & Prejudice by bringing the characters and situations into the modern day. It doesn’t have a responsibility to follow modern feminist ideology on how to portray fictional abuse victims or others’ reactions to them.
Everyone is different, and every fictional character as well as real life person will deal with situations differently. It is neither fair nor reasonable to rant against the show for not adhering to your own personal sense of what these characters should or should not do or say in these situations. People are in a huff because, to date, no one has called Wickham an abuser, they’ve just said he was manipulative. So what? Maybe Lizzie and Jane haven’t said the word “abuse”, but their visceral reactions have been enough to show me that they recognized his behavior.
The show hasn’t been irresponsible is portraying these situations, in fact I’m fairly impressed with the modern portrait of the whole Wickham and Lydia situation. LBD and its various spinoffs don’t glorify emotional abuse, slut shaming or whatever else seems to offend so many people. People are flawed and we are just seeing that on screen. People are chauvinists, sexually conservative, snobby, judgmental, and even abusive and sometimes they change and grow (these are called character arcs) and sometimes they don’t.
I think the writers, producers, actors and everyone else involved have created a terrific piece of entertainment that has completely captivated me. They’ve chosen to tackle some tough issues and I think they’ve done a good job.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43166979481.
