Podcasts

  • S2 E1: With... Jenny Mitchell - Welcome back to Behind the Glass with this early-release first episode of series 2 ! Sam and new co-host Connie talk to prize-winning poet Jenny Mitchell...
    3 weeks ago

Thursday, August 03, 2017

Thursday, August 03, 2017 1:12 am by M. in , ,    No comments
Two Jane Eyre references found in recent films and TV series:
The Disappointments Room (2016)
Directed by D.J. Caruso
Written by Wentworth Miller

But Dana doesn’t really begin to come apart at the seams until she’s informed that what she found is a “Disappointments Room” — the sort of chamber where wealthy folks used to imprison offspring “born with certain difficulties.” (Or, as Caruso slyly indicates with a clip from the 1943 film of “Jane Eyre,” a place where husbands could lock up their inconveniently crazy wives.) (Joe Leydon in Variety)

A hash of films like The Haunting, The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist (which is even referenced by one of the characters), the movie tries to upgrade its pedigree with a brief excerpt from the Orson Welles version of Jane Eyre, a classic tale of an undesirable person locked in an attic and wreaking havoc on the downstairs tenants. (Stephen Farber in The Hollywood Reporter)

In place of a straight-ahead haunting, Disappointments Room turns out to be a sort-of supernatural sort-of mystery in a sort-of Gothic vein (one tipoff in general vibe if not necessarily style or content: the 1943 movie version of Jane Eyre playing on TV). (Jesse Hassenger in A.V. Club)

Q: I cannot help but notice that the character locked up, remind me Bertha, the woman imprisoned in the attic along with all of her obligations and social conventions, in Jane Eyre - oh, the concept of the attic as a place to hide the stigma and shame... I guess you have an opportunity and permission to publish your draft of the screenplay so that everyone can understand... How much this story have borrowed with your real-life experience? Or how much has influenced your household - with its problems - for the drafting of this story? A: The Jane Eyre reference is spot on. Also "The Yellow Wallpaper." I wrote my senior thesis in college on both texts (plus Wide Sargasso Sea, which reimagines Bertha's story) and they provided inspiration for TDR.
My thesis was about how we're conditioned to conceal certain parts of ourselves, and the characters condemned to the attic in Jane Eyre and "The Yellow Wallpaper" are meant to embody those parts, reflecting back the secret fears, desires, and sins of those below. The characters in the attic also serve as a threat to those below. "This is what happens when you reject the roles dictated to you by class, gender, sexuality, race, and place." (Not a new concept. But as a young, closeted gay man on a conservative college campus, it appealed.) (Wentworth Miller Facebook)


Riverdale
Season 1, Episode 9:  La Grande Illusion (April 6, 2017)
Directed by Lee Rose
Written by James DeWille

Betty Cooper: My parents are unbelievable, Jug. Polly is locked up in that house like a character out of Jane Eyre and what are they doing? Changing each other's login accounts and throwing bricks through windows.

0 comments:

Post a Comment