Jane Austen in popular culture
[8] Irvine noted that film adaptations of Austen's work often used the physicality of the actors to show the sexual desires of the characters that Austen herself only hinted at, with Irving calling a "particularly notorious" example of this being the scene from Andrew Davies' 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, where Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth) dives into a pond and emerges with wet clothes clinging to his body before a clearly interested Miss Bennet (Jennifer Ehle).
[9] Rebecca Dickson has complained that "strong and self-sufficient Elinor" of Sense and Sensibility became "a girl woman with unexpressed emotions who must learn to demonstrate them" in the Ang Lee film.
[9] Cheryl Nixon defended Mr. Darcy's precipitous plunge into the pond as necessary to show the viewer that he was capable of depths of emotional and physical passion that the novel only implied to help explain why Miss Bennet falls in love with him.
[10] Irvine described the Austen films as a fantasy for women, with, for example, the character of Mr. Darcy displaying an "absolute and unconditioned male need for a woman".
[14] Afterwards, it became more common for Austen films to be visually sumptuous, expensiev productions while the National Trust billed Lyme Park as the centrepiece of the "Pemberley Trail" for Janeites to go on a pilgrimage.
[20] Diane Sadoff noted that Austen films are popular with a wide female audience that ranges in age from teenage girls to middle-aged women, instead of appealing to a narrow demographic.
[21] Part of the appeal of Austen films in the United States is that they deal directly with the subject of class, which American filmmakers generally prefer to avoid.
[24] Only with the minor character of the put-upon El Salvadoran maid who works for the Horowitz family, whom Cher keeps calling a "Mexican", does Clueless imply that there might be some inequality in modern America.
[24] Irvine argued that Austen offers a particular appeal to American conservatives in that the sort of ordered society that they used to openly admire and were nostalgic for, namely that of the antebellum Southern, the economy of which was based on slavery.
[34] Sōseki followed Austen in using everyday life and apparently banal conversations to trace how the mutual pride of Tsuda and O-Nobu push them apart despite the fact that they both love each other.
[33][35] Unlike Pride and Prejudice where the war with France only exists in the background, Machiko deals directly with turmoil of Taishō era Japan where strikes were frequent, much of the younger intelligentsia were questioning the kokutai and admired the Russian Revolution, and the police waged a vigorous campaign against those accused of "thought crimes".
[35] Austen went out of favour in Japan during the militarist period in the early Showa era (1931–1945) when a xenophobic, ultra-nationalist mood prevailed, and the government discouraged people from reading foreign books.
[36] Hiroshi wrote in Yume no ukihashi Kurahashi created a heroine, Keiko, who is a many ways an Austen heroine with her quiet nature and calm dignity that hides a passionate, romantic side while at the same time the book was concerned with the mystical "other side", a supernatural world of power, mystery and dread that can only be glimpsed which co-exists alongside our world, a uniquely Japanese concern that would have been alien to Austen.
[37] Initially, Turks only read Austen in the English original, and the first novel to be translated into Turkish was Sense and Sensibility as Sağduyu ve Duyarlık in two volumes in 1946 and 1948.
[37] Gurur ve Önyargı sold out in its first year, and a second edition was issued in 2007, which Tekcan used to argue that many Turks wanted a proper version of Austen in their own language.
[39] In A Faltering Afternoon, three sisters from a lower-middle-class background who resemble Elizabeth, Jane and Lydia Bennet respectively find that their only hope of social-economic success comes with marrying the right men.
During Park's rule, he applied the same methods he learned in Japanese service to his own people, and in the 1960s-70s, South Korea was one of the world's worst human rights abusers.
[28] One Iranian woman, living in the United States, called in to say she had first read Austen after her teenage daughter brought home Sense and Sensibility, which made her cry as she had experienced nothing like this in her own culture, where dating is forbidden and marriages are arranged.
[51] In 1965 Dong Hengxun, an academic, condemned Austen in an article titled "The Description of Love in Pride and Prejudice" in the Guangming Daily as "artistically insignificant".
"[59] When asked why so many American Janeites write fan fiction, Robens stated: "Quite frankly, I think a lot of people want more sex, particularly with Elizabeth and Darcy.
"[59] Another American Janeite, Laurel Ann Nattress explained the appeal of Austen fan fiction in the U.S. as: "People just love her characters and they don't want to give them up.
"[61] The American journalist Jennifer Schuessler reported this appropriation of Austen is very common, citing the remarks of a graduate student Tracey Hutchings-Goetz, who was surprised to see the Wikipedia article about Pride and Prejudice describe the novel as celebrating traditional marriage supported by citations to an on-line article from the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis, saying to Schuessler: "It was a version of the novel that didn't make any sense to us as scholars, supported by a completely unscholarly source".
Smith was at first concerned that the type of novels that Austen chose to wrote would not be popular in Guatemala, where most of the people are Maya Indians, being both Spanish-speakers and unfamiliar with her work.
[62] But she found Austen fitted in well with the Maya, intensely family-oriented people who criticized her for not taking her own family with her to Guatemala, saying how could she possibly leave her parents behind in America.
[69] The Ecuadorans tended to regard Austen as more of a fantasy writer, describing life in Regency England that was simply inconceivable in modern Ecuador, with one reader of Pride and Prejudice telling Smith that none of the characters from that book would last a day in Guayaquil.
The musical, directed by Geetika Lizardi, focuses on Austen as a modern heroine, a woman who chose art and integrity over the security of a loveless marriage.
In the BBC Radio series Old Harry's Game, written by and starring Andy Hamilton, Jane Austen is depicted as an unhinged, ultraviolent denizen of Hell.
Jane Austen, voiced by Eden Riegel, is revealed as the narrator of 2013's Saints Row IV in a bonus cutscene, and the game's antagonist Zinyak reads the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice on an in-game radio station.
In an unexpected plot deviation, the nineteenth-century characters confront the twenty-first century playwright (also called Laura) to complain of her fictional manipulation of their actions and to demand their freedom and autonomy.
[123] Austen's writing was the inspiration for the 2013 video game Regency Love, a visual novel in which the player interacts with townspeople, friends, family, and potential suitors, looking for a suitable match.
