For this blog post I have chosen to look at the YouTube series "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" created by Hank Green and Bernie Su. This show is a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen set in America wherein Elizabeth, "Lizzie," Bennet uploaded twice weekly vlogs to her YouTube channel between April 9, 2012 and March 28, 2013.
This show is a modern example of the epistolary form because it is told in vlogs, video diaries. However, instead of having Lizzie, played by Ashley Clements, merely upload videos about her life, she uploaded them specifically to share and interact with viewers on YouTube.
The "author" of this story is obviously Lizzie. She is literally positioned in front of her camera which makes the experience very personal and individualized. Lizzie does not only share her videos with the general population, but within the story she also turns it into a project for her grad school thesis. She seems to hold nothing back in her videos, sharing with her viewers both the mundane and the intimately dramatic, such as family and financial struggles. One of the central conflicts in the show, besides the famously complicated relationship between Lizzie and Mr. Darcy, is between Lizzie and her mother. According to Lizzie, all her mother wants is for her to be married, while all Lizzie wants is to graduate school and be a successful and independent woman, reminiscent of Clarissa herself (Ep. 1). Also similar to Clarissa, Lizzie is not the only contributor. Throughout the series there is a large recurring cast of characters that continuously joins her in many of her vlogs, the main ones being her sisters Jane and Lydia, her best friend Charlotte, and of course the infamous Mr. Darcy. The multiple voices give the show an added sense of intimacy and reality. Each of the characters, as with Clarissa, have their own distinct personalities and story lines that are as much fun to follow along with as Lizzie's. Of course central to all of this is Lizzie and her story.
Viewers of this series were invited to have a very intimate relationship with not only the story itself but the characters as well. Not only was there the idea that Lizzie was making the videos to share with you and her other viewers, but within the rich illusion of reality that was created around this show you as the viewer were given several opportunities through the epistolary form to literally interact with the characters. Mainly this could be achieved through commenting on Lizzie's videos and responding to her tweets on twitter, but there were also several Q&A videos that were uploaded in which Lizzie, and sometimes other characters as well, filmed herself responding to various questions and comments from viewers. The creators did a wonderful job of making this show seem as real as possible and it was a really unique and cool experience to be able to interact with such a beloved piece of classic literature as if it were not only reality but currently happening.
Obviously because the series is an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice it has a very structured narrative. However, by telling the story in a video epistolary format it gave the narrative a sense of immediacy and true realness. The show itself won several awards, including a Creative Arts Emmy in Interactive Media, for its achievements. The epistolary nature of the story also made it extremely approachable for viewers, and it attracted a huge audience of Austen and non-Austen fans alike. Whether or not viewers were familiar with the original story, everyone seemed to love being able to feel like they knew Lizzie on a personal level, and not simply as a character in a story.
If you think about it, really any YouTuber with a vlog channel is creating an epistolary story, what is particularly interesting and unique about “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” is that it blended the modern format of video blogging with a classic piece of literature, to create a uniquely interactive epistolary style series. Currently, Hank Green and Bernie Su are doing the same thing with Austen’s Emma, which can be followed on the Pemberley Digital YouTube channel.
“The Lizzie Bennet Diaries”- http://www.youtube.com/user/LizzieBennet
“Emma Approved”- http://www.youtube.com/user/PemberleyDigital
Very interesting. The fact that they chose to base this series off of Pride & Prejudice is particularly intriguing as it shows how the same ideas and expectations of the past can prevail in modern times. It almost seems bizarre to hear Lizzie's account of what her family expects of her, as finding a wealthy man to depend on is not something I would typically attribute to the counsel of parents in the 21st century. Now that women can receive proper educations and contribute independently in the workplace and society in general, many parents urge their daughters to become self-sufficient, seeing personal growth and success as more significant than marriage or child-rearing. However, perhaps I am merely tainted by my own familial experiences. It is true that there are many families who adhere to more traditional views, in that women should inhabit the domestic sphere while men should be the primary breadwinners. Neither view is necessarily wrong, in my opinion. A woman can decide whether she wants to subscribe to either side of the spectrum, or somewhere in between the two. I do feel it is wrong, however, for a woman's family to force her in either direction. An individual should retain the right to decide of his or her own life.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth / Lizzie is certainly very similar to Clarissa's character. She does not want to disappoint her family, or deviate from society's perception of virtue. At the same time, she longs to forge her own path in life in pursuing her own free will. The letters in Clarissa's case, and the vlogs in Lizzie's case, exhibit this internal conflict that we might not otherwise be aware of. For instance, a story that is written in third person narrative could never offer such a personal glimpse into the lives of these characters. Even a story written in non-epistolary first person has its limitations. In using the epistolary form, we are transported directly into the life of that character. We are not outside looking in, but rather, inside looking out. We identify with the mystical quality of letters / diary entries / vlogs as we recognize our own propensity to produce such things. Surely everyone has written in a journal or diary at least once in their life. The way that the filmmakers chose the modern platform of vlogs in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries makes it more accessible to a younger audience. It is a great way to introduce them to classic literature such as Austen in a fun and interactive way.
This post also gets us to think about how new media formats (here, video vs. written letters) intensifies the experience of epistolary form. Alex, you say that Lizzie's videos are very personal and frank--and this is what Clarissa's letters are like, too. But I wonder about how we have become accustomed to multimedia as a way of establishing immediate and intimate connections. That is, does a video in which we can see our speaker/author resonate with us in a way that the personal letter might have in the 18th century? Is this because we are accustomed to telepresence (Skype, Face Time, etc) as a way of communicating with people, just as 18c readers would have felt intimately connected to the written letter because they used it so much themselves?
ReplyDeleteWe've talked about how the novel is a form that incorporates many different kinds of writing, and these remarks about video epistolary forms make me wonder what the "novel" will incorporate next, or where and how the genre will change and evolve.