CBC News reported today that Emma Thompson has been hired by the publishers of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit story to write a new Peter Rabbit story to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the Peter Rabbit tale.
What a horrible idea.
Now, don't get me wrong - I love Emma Thompson. She is a fabulous actor and those who like literary film adaptations should check out her radiant turn as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. I believe she's even won an Oscar writing so she has the chops. But she is not Beatrix Potter! It's not that I'm mad about Emma in particular writing a new tale - I would be mad about anyone writing a new Peter Rabbit story.
Beatrix Potter wrote beautiful tales about animals for children. Published in small books with extraordinarily lovely illustrations, they were a comforting and familiar part of my childhood. I used to fall asleep to book tapes of The Tailor of Gloucester, The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, and The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck.
Beatrix Potter wrote 23 lovely little books. Can't we just leave her legacy as it is? No, of course not. The publisher isn't interested in preserving literary heritage: they just want to milk more money out of the Peter Rabbit story and have some other author demean the original creation by trying to write her own story. If Emma Thompson and the publishers are such fans, why don't the publishers have Emma Thompson write her own Beatrix-Potter-inspired story, instead of taking Beatrix Potter's original characters and putting them in situations that Beatrix Potter never would have intended for them to be in. Beatrix Potter created Peter Rabbit - Emma Thompson should create her own characters and write her own book - not use some other author's characters in a story not their own.
It just makes me mad that we can't leave well enough alone but have to go back to other authors' original creations and characters and use them just to increase the profit for some publishing house. Beatrix Potter isn't here anymore, but she left her legacy in book form. Don't tamper with it on the grounds of "celebration" when all you are doing is trying to make more money. Let children enjoy her stories as they are, without adding "knock-offs" to the mix.
hmm, I see your point. I've never read Potter (I know, shocking!) so I don't feel strongly one way or another. I agree, in principle, that certain authors are best left alone ... but look at the whole Jane Austen cottage industry. No one is sacred these days.
ReplyDeleteI can't help it -- I love Emma Thompson (even though I disagree with her recent assessment of Audrey Hepburn) and I think she's brilliant. I wonder why she's doing this...
I figured you probably hadn't read Beatrix Potter. I grew up with it, and they're a very important part of my childhood. They're a quick read though - you should check them out! ;)
ReplyDeleteStrangely, I'm not as incensed by the Jane Austen "sequels". Most of them are not very good, but they don't make me mad in the same way this does. Maybe because I'm getting the sense that it's being advertised as a new "Beatrix Potter tale". It's not a new Beatrix Potter tale. She's dead. It's by Emma Thompson. I just don't like the fact that to me, I feel that they're trying to include this in the official "canon" of Potter works, when it should stand outside the canon as part of fan-fiction.
Do you see what I mean? For example, with Jane Austen, the novels she wrote are the canon. They are official. Anything else is fan-fiction and not definitive as to what happened to the characters. If they came out with something like "Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice 2" written by Thompson, I would be enraged. As long as the fan-fiction isn't trying to be official or authoritative, then I'm okay. But this new Peter Rabbit tale looks like it's trying to be official. I just don't want readers to be turned off from Beatrix Potter by reading an Emma Thompson knock-off instead of the beautiful originals.