I have failed

My friends.

My fellow blogspotarians.

I have failed you.

My bid- nay, my conquest to eradicate the world from parodying the classic literary novels of our time has been thwarted. All my efforts have thus been futile. My hopes and dreams of demoting 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' have been all for nothing.

...

Okay, fine, I admit, I didn't do much to eradicate the world of satire and parody. I admit to my laziness and my lack of motivation in the matter. But hey! Where else is a Melbournian teen meant to start from if it isn't in the confines of blogspot?

Regardless of my blog however, the parodies march onward. THE SATIRE PREVAILS AND MOCKS US! Literary spinoffs are at an all time high and are advancing at a gargantuan rate. MORE of these parodies are hitting the shelves and, worse than that, are being made into films. If seeing it on paper isn't enough, they're hitting the big screen for all the world to see!

Yes, that's right folks - If zombies weren't enough, let me introduce you all into the world of sea monsters.

I give to you, the latest trailer of the one, the only:

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jZVE5uF24Q

Shockfusion over 19th century zombies

I'm... I'm looking for the right word to describe what I'm feeling at the moment...

Shock? Well, a little bit, but not so much... Maybe confusion? Shockfusion? I'm not quite sure.

This shockfusion resides over the image of Elizabeth Bennet roundhouse kicking a zombie in the head.

Okay, okay, maybe it's best to start from the beginning:

The other week or so I was with a friend of mine at Doncaster, going through Borders. Now I have a love-hate relationship with Borders. I love it for its wide range of literature... I hate it for the many store staff politely telling me off for reading books I have not yet bought. The love outweighs the hate however and soon, I was dragging my friend to the fantasy section and shoving books for him to read into his (perhaps frightened) hands.

So we're in the fantasy section, laughing at the fact that Edward Cullen now comes in doll form with sunglasses (I earned a few hard glares from the many girls who were swooning over his autobiography) when all of a sudden, something catches my eye...

What pray tell, captures my gaze?

This.

Yep. You read right.

If the struggle between social expectations wasn't enough, Elizabeth Bennet must now struggle against a horde of zombies raiding Hertfordshire. She's not alone though. She has her zombie fighting musket-armed sisters (who, apparently, are trained in martial arts) and a cadre of ninjas to join the onslaught.

I was befuddled, nay - dumbfounded even. I turned to my friend Francis, holding up the novel and reading over the blog.

Me: ...What!

Francis: What?

Me: What would Jane Austen think of this?

Francis: ...?

Me: Seriously. If Jane Austen just came back to life and thought to herself 'I want to read some modern literature just to see how literature has evolved through my passing' and walks into a bookstore and sees this - what would she think?

Francis: Well I s'pose that would make her a zombie then, wouldn't it?

I just... I don't know what to think! What would Jane think? What would YOU feel if you were an author and your novel was parodied in such a way? Isn't this copyright? When I opened the novel, it literally has huge chunks of writing from Austin, with a few intercepting zombie paragraphs here and there.

Perhaps its my zombie-related prejudice that has unsettled me (I have always thought that zombie-related killing would [in a hypothetical world] be impossible. I mean, they are dead already - how do you kill something that can't die?). Perhaps I just can't handle the image of Darcy holding a katana sword against a zombies head whilst trying to win over Elizabeth. Perhaps I should just accept parodies for what they are. Because if this bestseller says something, it is that classic literature might change in the future...

Who knows what the next installment will be. The Bronte sisters might have their novels turned into 'Wuthering Heights and Withering Bodies' or 'Jane Eyre and the Vampire Lair'. 'Great Expectations' might be remade into 'Great Exterminations' - the possibilities are endless. I just hope that people don't begin to forget about the classics from where these parodies derived from.