There have been many remixes of Pride and Prejudice, in movies and books. Kiera gives an example in her post of the popular novel Pride and Prejudice Zombies. Another remix is a contemporary young adult romance novel called Epic Fail, by Claire LaZebnik. It was published by Harper Collins in August of 2011. I was obsessed with Pride and Prejudice after reading it last year in AP Lit, and was looking to read more books like Jane Austen’s classic. The novel Epic Fail is set in contemporary Massachusetts in a high school setting. Other than that the entire of the plot of the novel follows Pride and Prejudice, from the character’s (Elizabeth Benet changed to Elise Benton and Charles Darcy changed to Derek Edwards), and their reactions to situations mostly through a large misunderstanding which is then resolved. Even though I loved Jane Austen’s classic, I found myself disappointed that Claire LaZebnik did not add elements beyond the constraints on Austen’s plot.
Jordyn mentioned in her post how she was surprised that The Lunar Chronicles did not raise controversy copyright infringement, and that got me thinking about Pride and Prejudice. With classics such as Shakespeare, there are many remixes of the works that often bring those works into contemporary (for the time) perspectives, which updates the ideas of the work. I think that copyright infringement seems to occur less often with classics that have been around so long that they are part of public domain. If anything, remixes of classics seem to be encouraged in literature. Also, remixes do allow the work’s ideas to reach a larger audience, for those who would rather read a contemporary novel rather than the actual original work.
Dustin Edwards, “Framing Remix Rhetorically: Toward A Typology of Transformative Work” talks a lot of remixes serve many times through imitation of works and can be a tool that can be used as a tool in the classroom to interpret works such as classics. He says that imitation today, “…is often stripped of its rhetorical, social, and inventive heritage” and I have to agree. A lot of times with classics especially the same plot and ideas have just been thrown into a modern or different rhetorical situation, which seems to serve only to entertain an audience. In the case of Epic Fail many of the interpretations of Austen’s novel have been turned into surface level social concepts that barely acknowledge the deeper truths the work has. Publisher Weekly’s review of Epic Fail said,”LaZebnik’s story has the feel of a summery teen rom-com…” and continues to talk about how it doesn’t go beyond these genre conventions to hold the meanings associated with Austen’s work.
I think that with digital publishing the number of remixes made particularly of classics like Pride and Prejudice will increase, especially in self-publishing. With digital platforms it’s much easier to self-publish and for readers to access these works. As media producers remixes allow us to see how the same ideas are used over and over again, at times to show an interpretation or simply for entertainment. This equips us to know that remixes are going to be an ongoing part of digital publishing’s marketing.
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Works Cited
“Children’s Book Review: Epic Fail by Claire LaZebnik. HarperTeen, $9.99 Trade Paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-1921261.” PublishersWeekly.com, www.publishersweekly.com/9780061921261.
Edwards, Dustin W. Framing Remix Rhetorically: Toward A Typology of Transformative Work. Science Direct, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S875546151500095X.