The other night I watched Bride and Prejudice, and my primary response is that they should have cast someone else as the lead male character. Darcy is supposed to smolder, not annoy.
Also, in the book Lydia ran away and had sex with a nefarious soldier, thus ruining her own life and the prospects of her sisters. In the movie the Lydia character surreptitiously sneaks out to ride the London Eye with a fellow we are to believe is disreputable because he lives on a narrowboat.
This is the second movie I’ve seen recently that equates life on the water with moral turpitude. The other one was bad enough I forget the name but coincidentally cast Jennifer Ehle in the role of a woman who lives on a narrowboat. We are notified that she is bad news with the following additional clues: she is a single mother, she has dreadlocks, and she has a tattoo. She has a posh accent and rich parents but insists on living precariously. And, in a movie about the dating habits of a bohemian London crowd, she is the one who has the worst sex life. Until she hooks up with the slutty bad boy character.
Historically, the people who made lives on the rivers and canals of this country were disparaged. There were even, for a time, laws that restricted children living with their parents on the boats. This is a classic example of the way an autonomous subculture that fulfills a significant, and dirty, public need is depicted by the cultural elite. For other examples see: coal miners and migrant farmworkers.
But come on, people. Industry and technology have changed the world.
We narrowboaters are not the gypsies of the Philip Pullman books, the immoral wastrels of dumb romantic comedies, nor are we any different than any other neighborhood in this town.
Here in Cambridge, and from what I can tell in Oxford and London too, we’re a representative mix of retired folk, sporty types who like the outdoors, and professionals from various respectable fields.
That may not be sexy but it is the truth.