Here at Grizzly Bomb, we know that many of our readers are men. Most of you are not married, don’t have kids, and are under age 35. Based on all these criteria, I’m going to take a wild guess and say many of you don’t read. Those of you who do read probably grab the latest Tom Clancy novel or at the very least a comic book.
I highly doubt any of you have or want to read Jane Austen.
In some sense, I don’t disagree with you. I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time in my life last month and there were times I wished I didn’t have to keep flipping back to the chapter notes to figure out what that word meant in Austen’s time. However, in the end, I felt like I had not wasted any time and felt deeply satisfied, even rewarded, with finishing a classic story.
But how often do your mothers or sisters reference Austen, and they brush you aside as illiterate because you don’t know what they’re talking about? What about your girlfriend who keeps nagging you to watch the 5-hour BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but you’d rather prefer watching Keira Knightley if you had to watch a version at all? Don’t worry; I know how to save you from further situations like these.
Now I’m not here to argue that you must sit down and read Pride and Prejudice (though it really wouldn’t hurt); what I am proposing is you give at least the basic Austen storyline a chance by watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube.
The Lizzie Bennett Diaries takes the characters, concept, and plot of Austen’s much-beloved classic and converts it into modern-day, relevant videos. That’s right – you won’t need to read about how the word engaged actually means busy because the Diaries use updated language to explain the same themes of Pride and Prejudice. In fact, the web series is written in the form of vlogs, where Lizzie reports on the goings-about of her life, just like we’re used to seeing with people like iJustine.
Here are some other perks to watching the Lizzie Bennett Diaries:
1. There are attractive actresses playing the roles of the three sisters, Lizzie, Jane, and Lydia. Not to mention they are just plain good actresses, too.
2. The videos are short, around five minutes long at maximum, which is way easier time to commit than a whole 5-hour sitting.
3. Like the modern-day language used, references are made to popular culture to help make the series even more relevant. For example, in episode 45, George Wickham calls himself Batman. You can’t get much more relevant than that.
4. If you’re on Twitter, the show creators have set up Twitter accounts for the characters, who regularly interact with each other outside of the show to make the experience more realistic. Yes, you can tweet to Lizzie if you want to.
5. And as already mentioned, of course, you’ll have gained knowledge so you can get your female friends and family off your back.
Sure, there is some drama involved because when it’s a young woman’s vlog based on Austen it’s pretty hard to leave out her hatred of Mr. Darcy or her little sister’s boisterous, sometimes obnoxious, party attitude. However, each show does tend to cover only what is necessary to follow the storyline, and each episode tends to leave you with a “what will happen next?” moment.
Now it’s time for you to go watch the Lizzie Bennett Diaries instead of just reading about them. The worst that can happen is that you feel that you wasted five minutes of your life. The best that can happen is that you can get some personal satisfaction knowing you can now beguile women with your Austen smarts (or, like I said before, just get them off your back).
Grizzly Bomb 