A truth universally acknowledged: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies lacks brains
By Marc Z. Grub
Issue date: 10/29/09 Section: Arts and Culture
I have never been tempted to read Jane Austen's masterpiece Pride and Prejudice, until zombies were thrown in.
The general perception of zombies in popular culture associates them with camp horror and gore-phoria. This may be selling zombies short. In George A. Romero's Of The Dead film series, the director finds inventive ways over the course of six films (of varying quality, admittedly) to use zombies to put forward thoughtful social commentaries regarding human nature, consumer culture, government power, and unregulated mass communications.
They go to balls, flirt, fall in love with this guy, reject that one, and then there are zombies.
Robert Kirkman, Romero's intellectual heir of zombie allegory and writer of The Walking Dead series, theorized that popular culture's fascination with zombies stemmed from how zombies represent death in animation. Kirkman uses his series to explore in exacting detail the effect a zombie apocalypse might have on survivors.
The co-author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith, does not appear to be as ambitious. Grahame-Smith's novel delivers on its promise. It is Pride and Prejudice with zombies. Otherwise, Austen's original story remains unchanged. Mrs. Bennet wants to marry off her elder daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, to men with money. They go to balls, flirt, fall in love with this guy, reject that one, and then there are zombies.
The biggest change is that everyone is concerned with how many "unmentionable" people have "felled." In the story, a character's skill in combat is a large factor in his or her attraction. All the Bennet daughters have been thoroughly trained in martial arts, to which there is constant reference in the novel: "She thought often of striking Charlotte down - of donning her tabbi boots and slipping into her bedchamber under cover of darkness, where she would mercifully end her friend's misery with the Panther's Kiss." Despite this, characters spend way more time talking about killing zombies than killing them.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is clearly meant to be ridiculous, but even given this, the tone is still too juvenile. The novel never manages to reach a point where the outrageous would be funny or exciting. Neither is the novel serious enough to be scary or dramatic.
I was expecting neither sense nor sensibility from the book. However, with such a great premise I was at least expecting something with a little more brains.
The general perception of zombies in popular culture associates them with camp horror and gore-phoria. This may be selling zombies short. In George A. Romero's Of The Dead film series, the director finds inventive ways over the course of six films (of varying quality, admittedly) to use zombies to put forward thoughtful social commentaries regarding human nature, consumer culture, government power, and unregulated mass communications.
They go to balls, flirt, fall in love with this guy, reject that one, and then there are zombies.
Robert Kirkman, Romero's intellectual heir of zombie allegory and writer of The Walking Dead series, theorized that popular culture's fascination with zombies stemmed from how zombies represent death in animation. Kirkman uses his series to explore in exacting detail the effect a zombie apocalypse might have on survivors.
The co-author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith, does not appear to be as ambitious. Grahame-Smith's novel delivers on its promise. It is Pride and Prejudice with zombies. Otherwise, Austen's original story remains unchanged. Mrs. Bennet wants to marry off her elder daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, to men with money. They go to balls, flirt, fall in love with this guy, reject that one, and then there are zombies.
The biggest change is that everyone is concerned with how many "unmentionable" people have "felled." In the story, a character's skill in combat is a large factor in his or her attraction. All the Bennet daughters have been thoroughly trained in martial arts, to which there is constant reference in the novel: "She thought often of striking Charlotte down - of donning her tabbi boots and slipping into her bedchamber under cover of darkness, where she would mercifully end her friend's misery with the Panther's Kiss." Despite this, characters spend way more time talking about killing zombies than killing them.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is clearly meant to be ridiculous, but even given this, the tone is still too juvenile. The novel never manages to reach a point where the outrageous would be funny or exciting. Neither is the novel serious enough to be scary or dramatic.
I was expecting neither sense nor sensibility from the book. However, with such a great premise I was at least expecting something with a little more brains.
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