I just ran across this trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Bronte's "Jane Eyre". I'm kind of excited about this new adaptation as it seems to make use of the gothic elements of the story rather than focusing on the love story. Although, why they need to make another film version is beyond me--there are so many wonderful ones already. I really enjoyed the Charlotte Gainsbourg version with William Hurt as Rochester from 1997.
In anycase, I feel this directly relates to how these Romantic/Gothic stories keep being retold and how they are still excessible to the modern reader and viewer. I think this speaks to the universality of what of the characters' journies and the writers' visions. It will interesting to revisit this classic in the year 2011.
This is just a post to clarify many of my thoughts. Some of these thoughts have haunted me for such a long time. Firstly, I'm terrified that people of my generation have no idea how to communicate with one another. In fact, maybe I can even state that young people (teens and 20s) don't want to communicate. The ME culture has destroyed playing outside, interacting with friends, family, partners and future employers, and any others one would come into contact with. I remember sometime in high school when all I needed was a connection to something or someone and finding my friends lost in their ipods and cell phones. This sad state of affairs is horrifying as we live in an ever increasingly GLOBAL world where we HAVE to interact with people from around the world. If children and young people are the future then I fear for the future and how we are going to handle issues (like Global Warming and a WAR)when we can't see past our facebook status. I do realize the irony of writing about human to human communication on a blog!
In my British Literature course we are currently discussing the Romantics and the shift in Western Literature from the confines of Neoclassicism to the wild Romantic period. I adore the Romantics and seem to have found solace in the words of Wordsworth and Blake. It seems as if they have the ability to create music in their words and transport the reader to the realms of their dreams which in turn become one's own.
A while later....
Today we talked about the power of words to transport you to places and states of mind, of states in the mind--to transcend. In that classroom something happened that perhaps only I could feel as the words washed over me. The Lake District didn't seem so far away interspirced with the colors of Africa. Wordsworth suddenly gave us his words that became ours and took us to that place where everything is overflowing with goodness. It was his, but light years away it became ours.
But, what is all of this is lost forever in the voids that exist today. The screens of ipods, cell phones, and in the screen of my computer. I hate this screen that I seem all too often to get lost in when I can't face myself or others. I can't be the only wandering lost youth who feels for this connection. As my teachers says, "a place of transcendence" is perhaps what every human searches for. In our world today where is that place? Who is making that space for the young? Who will make that space for the ones to come after us? What if we never get to that afterwards?
So, I sit here on a frozen Winter's evening thinking the same universal thoughts of all of these poets and all of the youths before me. Who are we? Where are we going? Why are we here?
