THE HANDMAID'S EMMA

I sat and watched the latest version of Emma tonight.  It had a paper thin cutting edge to it which previous adaptations lacked.  Margaret Atwood was walking across each scene in hobnailed boots.  The image of girls wearing red, aka handmaidens, ready to be at the bidding of the men, was ever present as they walked across the screen, against the backdrop of the most exquisite countryside.  Every image was exquisitely framed, like a huge expensive expansive one dimensional work of art. And the trees, magnificent, the most romantic thing about it.   And then the relationship itself, and plot which seemed to show the shallow spiteful snobbery and class system and elitism of identifying who would be suited to whom.  This was a more honest version and closer to what Austen was describing when she wrote her 'romantic' novels. They were not romantic.  They were not romanced. They were calculated swipes at the ugly gentrified sneering society.  The societies of Bath she abhorred in much the same way Virginia Woolf abhorred the affected society of Richmond.  How women were at the beck and call of men, just as they are in the Handmaid's Tale.   Margaret Atwood famously took a swipe at Austen for allowing women to put themselves in situations, allowing them to believe and seek out arrogant men who they could somehow 'fix'. But actually I feel Austen was all to aware her heroes were nothing of the sort, she just chose to illustrate the status quo within the confines of what she was permitted at the time.

There is oddly or perhaps not so oddly a connection between this adaptation of Emma and the film Parasite.  The same acceptance of class system applies. And the working classes are used as spare parts for the upper classes. The parasitic nature of those who have money to those who have less.  Everyone accepts their place, and is put in their place.  Teachers tell me how the education system is designed and structure to keep everyone in their place. How despite the huge slogans writ large about kindness and honesty in schools, even public ones, it is cunning and connection, not talent nor intellect, which allows those to get to the top. It annoys me that those in the public eye at the moment spouting out about being kind should realise that those at the top of their profession, in every profession have not got where they are because they are 'kind'.  Even the eleven year olds I teach realise that. They are telling the populace to be kind, when actually they already are.  They should look at themselves before spouting off about kindness to those who've spent too much time people pleasing.  Only those at the top have used their time pleasing themselves.  If someone tries to step out of their place, we call it revolution, chaos, disruption, anarchy.  Actually its not.  Its just not playing the game.  Just stepping out of the frame.