I can’t pretend to have read all of his work, or even that much of it really; but I have read some and what I've read I’ve enjoyed, and then of course there are the films and the TV and radio adaptations which, as I’m sure you’ll be aware by now, I find radio to be the most satisfying. As for the films and TV… well they vary to such a degree but one thing I’m sure of – Disney should not be allowed anywhere near Mr Dickens’ work.
Looking at Google’s header today I was dismayed, nay appalled, to find that they’d Disneyed-Dickensed-up the Google logo with some simpering, cutesy, characters that may or may not be from a Dickens novel. You can vaguely see who these characters might be, but all that sugar and fluffy snow tends to get in the way. All it needs is a few characterised cartoon mice and we’d have a full-blown Disney movie in the making, maybe ‘What the Dickens!’ – see the astounding story of Charlie Dickens’ life (or as they would put it Chuck Dickens’s) with all his original gorgeous characters brought to life and becoming part in the action in this real-life feature length animation…
Oh, noooo… I hope that the Disney people don’t see that, just look what they did to Grimm and Anderson, Pinocchio and Robin Hood, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and mice in general…
Just what gives Disney the right to think that they can retell and reinvent the classics, making them into colourful easy-watching fairy tales for children who will never read the books (unless of course it’s the Disney picture-book) and encouraged by adults who never read the books either.
There’s nothing cosy or twee about Dickens, nothing simpering or gooey. Dickens wrote gritty tales of life and death, hardship and squalor, deceit and retribution, murder and faithlessness. His stories were real, they make you laugh and cry, they make you consider who you are in the light of what he shows you…
And all of this without a cartoon cat in sight.
What if somebody did the same to Mark Twain I ask you?
Oh, they did.
Okay, I’ve made my point. I’ll leave it there. Happy birthday Mr Dickens, I vow to read more of your stuff this year.
Sadly it's all part of this idealised "Merrie Olde Englande" theme park thing that we do far too little to dispel because it brings the tourists in...
ReplyDeleteI think I mentioned to you a few weeks ago about how I really feel disappointed by film adaptations of most of Dickens... but that's another rant for another day.
Meanwhile, I'd say give "Bleak House" a whirl... The roots of most modern detective fiction lie within its covers...
M.
Alastair Sim in a Christmas Carol.
DeleteThe last BBC adaptation of Great Expectations
Those are the only two that have lived up to the pictures in my mind. Radio, now that is quite a different matter.
As a teenager I tried and many times failed to read The Old Curiosity Shop, all too bleak.
ReplyDeleteI must re-read NN.
DeleteI want to live in am upturned boat.
Phil Yeadon on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteWhat the Dickens?!
Mel and myself were lured into the building in Malton today that claims to have been the inspiration for Dickens counting house. It had been owned by his friend Smithson with whom he used to stay. They can't make it into an ongoing exhibition as they can't afford the rent!
ReplyDelete