HOW THE BBC DESTROYS GOOD LITERATURE WRITTEN BY MEN
The BBC feminatrics have been at it again. Ruining good literature by men by turning it into a feminist farce. When I saw that a new version of John Buchan’s “Thirty-nine Steps” was to be screened I decided to view it. I’ve seen it on several occasions before and it’s a really good yarn. This version was a bad yawn. It was a thoroughly ludicrous adaptation by a woman called Mickery. She’d completely altered the plot to introduce some marvellous heroine character who was the embodiment of everything a woman is not. She had a photographic memory, was exceedingly brave – naturally – and was a secret agent of unbelievable experience. A pity we don’t have women like this in real life. Needless to say there is no such character in the Buchan story.
I should think that the BBC could legitimately be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act for saying it was by John Buchan. He must be turning in his grave! After the publication of the Thirty-nine Steps, Buchan became the most successful thriller writer for the next twenty years. The sloppy effort presented by the BBC was a travesty. It was more like a badly written soap opera than a thriller.
This is not the first time the BBC has allowed “adaptations” of great literature which have been ruinous to the original. They did the same thing with the remake of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy; once again the plot was altered for no valid reason.
I quote below a piece by David Smith commenting on some alleged “research” by two female academics and draws some rather comical conclusions from it. Naturally he writes for the Observer. Who else?
My comments are in red:
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Women are still a closed book to men. Some would say an “open” book that’s easily read.
Research shows men mainly read works by other men
David Smith The Observer, Sunday May 29 2005
Men have finally realised what they are missing, (Have they? This is just an assumption. No proof whatsoever.) but they still aren’t all that keen to do anything about it.
This is the conclusion of a study (Study? Perhaps they asked a dozen girls in their literature classes??) into sex differences in reading habits, which found that, while women read the works of both sexes, men stick to books written by men. And the boys can no longer use ignorance as an excuse.
‘Men clearly now know that there are some great books by women – such as Andrea Levy’s Small Island – they really ought to have read and ought to consider “great” (or at least good) writing,’ the report said. (See how it takes two women to tell men how they should think!)’They recognise the titles and they’ve read the reviews. They may even have bought, or been given the books, and start reading them. But they probably won’t finish them.’ If a book doesn’t grab you, stop reading it. The author or authoress has failed.
The research was carried out by academics Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins (Both women! The word “bias” just crosses one’s mind!) of Queen Mary College, London, to mark the 10th year of the Orange Prize for Fiction, a literary honour whose women-only rule provoked righteous indignation when the competition was founded. (Obviously it was sexist! Imagine the outcries if Orange had awarded the prize to men only!!) They asked 100 academics, critics and writers and found virtually all now supported the prize. (Which means that, as the prize turned out to be meaningless, men stopped criticizing it.)
But a gender gap remains in what people choose to read, at least among the cultural elite. Four out of five men said the last novel they read was by a man, whereas women were almost as likely to have read a book by a male author as a female. When asked what novel by a woman they had read most recently, a majority of men found it hard to recall or could not answer. Women, however, often gave several titles. The report said: ‘Men who read fiction tend to read fiction by men, while women read fiction by both women and men.
‘Consequently, fiction by women remains “special interest”, while fiction by men still sets the standard for quality, narrative and style.’ (My point exactly!)
In the survey, men were asked to name the ‘most important’ book by a woman written in the last two years. Brick Lane by Monica Ali and Carol Shields’s Unless were frequently among the replies, but many men admitted defeat (Not being able to mention something which doesn’t exist is hardly a defeat.) and confessed they had no idea. At least one who suggested Brick Lane admitted he had not read it. If men don’t think that women write “important” books, why should they recall the titles of any?
The report added: ‘Men’s reading habits have altered very little since the Orange Prize burst onto the fiction scene in 1996. Proving that sexism does not pay dividends.
Although no one would admit that the gender of the author had any influence on their choice of fictional reading-matter, men were still far less likely to have read a novel by a woman than by a man, whereas women read titles by either.
‘Pressed for a preference, many men also found it much more difficult to “like” or “admire” a novel authored by a woman – for them “great” writing was male writing (oh – apart from Jane Austen, of course),’ the report said. (BBC brainwashing regarding Jane Austen has evidently been partially successful.)
‘No wonder, then, that each year when the winner of the Orange Prize is announced a chorus of disappointment goes up from “mainstream” critics: how could such an undistinguished book have won?’ If you limit the competition to undistinguished writers, what else do you expect to happen?
A decade ago the Orange Prize drew the scorn of many leading writers, including Kingsley Amis (‘If I were a woman, I would not want to win this prize. One can hardly take the winner seriously’), and AS Byatt (‘I am against anything which ghettoises women. That is my deepest feminist emotion”).
The prize is now estab lished just behind (Like several miles??) the Man Booker and the Whitbread in the literary hierarchy and had huge support among survey respondents, although some still expressed ambivalence. Julie Burchill said: ‘I see where it’s coming from but totally understand the reasons why women don’t want their novels to be entered for it.’ And Burchill is a rabid feminist!
Jardine said: ‘When pressed, men are likely to say things like: “I believe Monica Ali’s Brick Lane is a really important book – I’m afraid I haven’t read it.” I find it most endearing that in 10 years what male readers of fiction have done is learn to pretend that they’ve read women’s books.’ Men, like everyone else are only able to read a certain number of books. If they don’t read an “important” book it is probably because they are reading a “very important” book.
All this article proves is that BOTH men and women realise that men are better writers than women. There has never been a female writer to equal Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens etc. Even Germaine Greer admitted in her book “Reluctant Sibyls” that women cannot write poetry.
The one genre that is dominated by women writers is “romance”, e.g. Mills and Boon etc. The contents are usually trivial and the books are churned out in large numbers. The readership of these is almost exclusively women. Men are not interested in this sort of trashy fiction; so they read books by men.
Hence: women read books by men and women. Men read books by men. Why on earth should David Smith think that men should do anything about this situation?
FOOTNOTE:
London, 18 June 2009: John Boyne’s novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” has been voted the Penguin Orange Readers’ Group Book of the year.
Votes were collected from people entering the 2009 Penguin Orange Readers’ Group Prize on the Spinebreakers website (overwhelmingly female membership).
Perhaps this and the above article merely mean that women, just like men, are able to discern great writing when they come across it.
Older visitors might remember the Virago publishing company which was set up to publish work by women only. Because they could find so few really good women writers, fewer and fewer women bought the books and the venture failed.
Likewise, the Orange award is doing nothing to advance the cause of serious women writers who will have nothing to do with it.