Thursday, September 9, 2010

Love at a Glance

I love a good remake of a prim, English classic. Bridget Jones is Elizabeth Bennet? Yes, please. Clueless is actually Emma? Done and done. So when I saw Jane, a Jane Eyre rewritten and repackaged for a teen audience, well, I couldn't help looking both ways, then shoving it into my bag (relax, I paid for it). Jane takes the classic tale of stoic, quiet love and spins it, the modern Jane being a young nanny who falls in love for her employer, a forty-something weathered rockstar/former addict. Ahhh, much like my own story of first love, but perhaps a story for another time?

While clearly written for your average Pretty Little Liars-watching teen, author April Lindner has definitely made some concessions to the original; the writing surprisingly skews towards the understated and Victorian, and the love remains nurtured by half-glances and phrases loaded with adoration (example: "You are good at your job". Well if that's not an invitation to bed, WHAT IS?). While I took to this seemingly outdated account of love like Chelsea Handler to vodka, my former roommate and soon-to-be colleague had other things to say (keep in mind, she likes Vonnegut and Kerouac. It seems there's no accounting for taste...).

"All of a sudden he's like, I love you, and then he sweeps her out of the woods and they go and she loses her virginity to this old man? And she's obsessed with him? How unrealistic is that?"

And while I tended to agree that love in this sense was a little over-dramatic (the lighting storm at the moment of, uh, first contact doesn't so much suggest mood as hit you over the head with it), I had to disagree in a way. I admit, love in real life is maybe not like this at all. But the love that we watch and groan and obsess over in popular movies/tv/reading, is it really so dissimilar? Today's heroine gets a cup of coffee at the local cafe and the tall dark and handsome stranger behind her in line orders the exact same tall with non-fat whip chai latte? How can she help but instantly know he's the one? On the OC, Ryan casts a squinty, sidelong glance at Marissa through perfectly tousled bangs and we just know. It's going down. On further inspection, I suspect today's narrative on love in popular entertainment speaks of love that is just as foundation-less and stalker-ish, perhaps just a bit less chaste than that found in the pages of Jane.

Why is it that we are so willing to lap up the idea of the brief, empassioned love affair as long as it began with a simple chance encounter involving saving someone's life, but are quick to reject the idea that two people, living together and getting to know one another over months would suddenly realize mutual affection and decide to take it off and get it on? I wish I knew.