Do3 - Wuthering Heights

[Anna]

sting, I listened and didn't notice any racist terms in what I thought was a very weak adaptation.

[Eudaimonia]

The offensive racial terms were "white boy", "black bastard", and "gypsy". (I'd forgotten--calling a Rom (Romanichal?) a gypsy is on par with calling a Native American an Indian.) Considering how much was made of his ethnicity in the book, I don't think including them was too far afield at all.

[Anna]

The offensive racial terms were "white boy", "black bastard", and "gypsy". (I'd forgotten--calling a Rom (Romanichal?) a gypsy is on par with calling a Native American an Indian.) Considering how much was made of his ethnicity in the book, I don't think including them was too far afield at all.

Indeed, it would have been offensive to have used the term "pikey" (although I guess that was not known in Victorian times) so, calling someone a gypsy is, in my eyes, not at all racist, because, we all call them that don't we? I know we should all be PC but ........ to call them Roma, rather than Gyppos or Tinkers isn't in our language is it? Same as you call the Welsh Taffies or the Scots Jocks or the Irish Paddies. Some may find that offensive.

[Eudaimonia]

Oh, I don't know...if people are offended by my vocabulary, I try to change. What difference does it make to me? For what it's worth, many people in the Southern United States think nothing of using the word "gypped" to mean "swindled", and as a kid, I often heard police vans referred to as "paddy wagons."

Don't forget--times change: just because a word wasn't offensive when you were young doesn't mean people can't find it absolutely horrible now.

For instance, everybody loves Agatha Christie, but...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/And_Then_There_Were_None_First_Edition_Cover_1939.jpg

[salymap]

Not to mention Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers. I love their detective novels but on re-reading them the amount of racial comment is astounding today.

[DracoM]

This was undoubtedly the least successful adaptation of a novel I have ever heard, with no sense of the architecture and every sense that the adapter was trying to turn it into a spicy edition of Eastenders or similar. But far, far more important than all that tiresome silliness - the book can probably survive Mr Holloway's iconoclasm - was the quite appalling acting - very rare in BBC productions.

The interminable narration of Nellie Dean, which in the book is subtly shifted, inevitably turned the spotlight on her acting skills which were minimal. I wish we'd had a BBC news reader. It lacked variety or the subtlety the book's narrator does have, nor did she show any sense of her status so powerful in the book, nor any sense of KNOWING she was witnessing the unfolding of a tragic and unstoppably self-destructive process - again, very strong in the book and needing the Lockwood interviews to unburden herself, get it into a shape in her head., It simply came across as a bit of prurient gossip over the fence as in a soap opera. Tedious.

But for me, far worse even than that was the critical central role of Cathy. Words almost fail me. I have recently heard and seen school productions with far bmopre committed, accomplished and thoughtful actors in such central roles, and the total lack of any kind of understanding of the tensions / layers of response to her own or Heathcliff's situation, any sense of ecstasy over Heathcliff - she made him sound like her favourite bicycle - and the silly Archers girlie voice - like Alice from that soap and acted like it - all combined to rob this production of any credible centre. The Heathcliff was just a vengeful, misunderstood sort of Toxteth yoof so wearisomely cliched that it made me laugh. Heathcliff's rootlessness, his powerful need to possess and be possessed went for absolutely nothing and simply became a shopping expedition now he's made his fortune. Interesting that many surmise that Bronte meant to indicate that Heathcliff, like Rochester, had made his money in the West Indian slave trade or similar. Did we get much insight into the sources of that wealth?

It was an incoherent shambles of a production. The 'strong language' was risibly ineffective, the racism routine, and the destruction of any credible over-arching wild passion at its heart deprived it of meaning and substance.

[aeolium]

Thanks for that review, Draco. I hadn't been planning to listen as WH is not a particular favourite of mine anyway, and the 'modernisation' of it seemed a pretty unintelligent thing to do. It sounds as though it was one of the poorer dramatisations of recent times.

[french frank]

It does rather prompt the enquiry, Yes, but apart from that ...

I shall still hope to find time to listen.

[Anna]

Draco's review mirrors my thought on the production. What is needed I think is a review by someone who had never read the book and who came to it purely as a piece of drama

[Russ]

The real problem for me, as I suspected it would be, even as someone who hasn't actually read the book but is more or less familiar with the story, was that this production tried to shoehorn far too much into its paltry 90 minutes (shades of, and worse even, than many R4 Classic Serials). The shifts and contrasts that Draco wished to hear simply weren't allowed the time and space to develop: a long (30-plus chapters) gothic melodrama is inevitably going to come over as a hurried soap. In that light, I feel the criticism of the acting is somewhat misplaced. The big problem and big mistake is why and how R3 thought they could 'do this novel' in a single 90-minute slot. The last time I thought the passage of time was conveyed really well on a Do3 was Neil McKay's superb Alone Together (about the poet R S Thomas).

I can see why Do3 takes the opportunity to grab stage productions with good casts when it can, and sometimes they work well on radio, e.g. The Chalk Garden, but the big iconic novels rarely work well on radio.

Time for a play written for radio, Do3.

[Lateralthinking1]

I have read the book so decided not to listen to it. I am disappointed that it hasn't been well-received. That means that we are more rather than less likely to be getting more of the same.

"Gypsy" isn't itself racist but it depends on context. If someone said something you didn't like and you replied "oh well, you're black" then that would be racist whereas "black" in neutral terms, as it were, isn't racist.

The phrase that worries me here is "black bastard". In any other context, this would be a criminal or sacking offence. Ask any hooligan who has been arrested for using that phrase in a football ground. Ask Carol Thatcher who was dismissed for something far less overt.

Much has been said of liberalism's turn to the right fiscally. Obviously, I don't like that much. What concerns me far more is this ongoing trend of liberalism being used as a means to promote ultra right wing concepts. This is a relatively new phenomenon here - the last five years - although its roots might be in the sexism of hip-hop. That has always been more Corporation than ghetto of course.

We know what traditional liberalism is. It is frenchfrank. By contrast, this new strand has something rather dark behind it. Generally brought to us, as here, by producers who sound like Cathy, I suspect that it is their inner Heathcliff coming to the fore. Insisting that they spend a year actually living in Toxteth - to hell with it, let the Arts Council pay - would be a very good way of dealing with it.

[Anna]

I've only seen one review which is in today's Guardian which you may be interested to read

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/mar/27/radio-review-wuthering-heights

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, sad and pathetic isn't it?

[Lateralthinking1]

....on the artistic interpretation, I actually think that this production misses the central point. It has picked up on the earthiness of the novel - he is right of course to say that it has often been served with sugar in film - but this one is equally awry.

In my humble opinion, part of the brilliance of WH is that it manages to have earth at its core while remaining in tone and spirit full of mystery. In fact, that is the romance of it. Its heart and soul.

So while you can say that the effing and blinding is in line with the original grit, actually it isn't because that grit was never intended in the novel to be bedded down in anything as mundane as reality.

[string]

What concerns me far more is this ongoing trend of liberalism being used as a means to promote ultra right wing concepts.

It's Cameron's "robust liberalism" taking over. (Liberalism = you do what you like; Robust Liberalism = you do what I like where I = the prevailing hegemony.) After reading all of the above I shall definitely give this one a miss. I have no desire to add to the LA figures.