World Austen: Empowerment and Tradition on the Screen

The term “world cinema”, derived from the more popular “world music”,is traditionally used to indicate “other” film industries, set in “other”countries, inhabiting “other” cultures. Or, to simplify, all that is “non-Hollywood cinema” (Nagib 2006: 30). With the term “World Austen” thepresent essay wishes to indicate those film appropriations (non-Britishand non-Hollywood) which translated Austen’s plots and characters intoother cultures. Over the last century, Austen has become “a commodity, anindustry, a corporation, and a celebrity” (Dryden 2013: 103), renowned allover the world, globalised, canonised and modernised.The article will focus on three films, all modernisations of Austen’s twomost popular novels: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Eventhough these films were produced in North America, they do not belongto the Hollywood world: they embody “other” cultures and mindsetsand look at Austen from different perspectives. In Utah, Mollywood,the film industry of the Mormon church, appropriated Austen with twoadaptations: Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003) and Scentsand Sensibility (2011) while a Latino remediation of Sense and Sensibility setin Los Angeles was released in 2011 with the title From Prada to Nada. Theanalysis will focus on the way these adaptations re-elaborate the textualmaterial using it, as will be explained, as textual archetypes (Eco 1987:2000), suitable for embodying stories about local society and providingteachings to the inhabitants of those cultures. The article will draw attentionto how the Austenian “memes” (Dawkins 2006: 192) “travel to differentcultures and different media” (Hutcheon 2013: 31) sometimes adapting tothe new environment and, at other times, recovering their original essence.The paper will then analyse the mutation or the permanence of thesememes, highlighting the common themes of female empowerment and thepreservation of traditional values.