Kerry Parnell: Why are there so many bums in Jane Austen films?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with a little nudity on screen. But in the time of Jane Austen and chaste morality? One hardly thinks so, writes Kerry Parnell.

It seems we can’t have an Austen adaptation without a bloke stripping off and I’m getting a little bummed out.

It’s all very thrilling, but I can’t help feeling modern screen versions are turning the classic novels into bodice rippers.

First we had Sanditon – the recent series of Jane Austen’s unfinished book, which took her first few chapters and ran away with them so far it was like Mills and Austen with plots even Home and Away fans would find a stretch.

The first episode had three men striding starkers into the sea and the second saw antihero Sidney Parker, aka Theo James, emerge from a swim and give innocent Charlotte Heywood a lesson in the male anatomy. And where in the book, Charlotte catches sight of Clara sitting close to Sir Edward Denham through the trees, the TV series had them doing something much crasser. It’s enough to blow your bonnet off.

And now we have the new Emma movie, by hip director Autumn de Wilde, which also features Mr Knightley, aka Johnny Flynn, stripping off.

Colin Firth’s iconic wet shirt scene in Pride and Prejudice as Mr Darcy. Picture: supplied

It all started with Colin Firth and that wet shirt scene, when Mr Darcy emerged from a lake in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice. This scene was written by Andrew Davies, who also penned Sanditon, and got viewers in a lather. He said he’d wanted Darcy to be swimming naked (as men did in those days) but it had been vetoed back then. Now it’s shocking if they keep their pants on.

It’s all very aesthetic and titillating and I understand it’s about reversing the traditional male gaze. We’ve had decades of unnecessary boobs, so it’s buttock time, folks. Emma actor Anya Taylor-Joy recently told me, “It was something that Autumn really wanted. We have so much of the male gaze in films and she really wanted to employ the female gaze, just to contrast.

Sanditon’s Andrew Davies also previously said, “We do know that when men bathed in those days, they did used to go in naked. We didn’t quite manage that in Pride and Prejudice, so it was good to set this straight in this show.”

Anya Taylor-Joy (right) as Emma Woodhouse. Picture: Universal Pictures

It’s just a bit Magic Mike for my liking; a little “something for the laydees,” to steam up our specs and pop our popcorn.

The beauty of Austen’s early 19th century novels is their tension. In such a polite restrained period, it was all about a stray look, a lingering touch. Not willies. The entire plot of Persuasion is built around this concept. As Captain Wentworth wrote, “A word, a look, will be enough.”

That’s why Austen’s still loved 200 years later. Sometimes an hors d’oeuvre is much more satisfying than an all-you-can-eat buffet.

It wasn’t for another 100 years in 1908’s A Room with a View that E.M. Forster wrote a female character who did clap eyes on her love interest as he bathed nude in a pond and didn’t much mind. Plus, there has been plenty of ribald literature through the ages, from Chaucer to Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding to D.H. Lawrence. Adapt those if you want a romp.

Just leave Jane. We like her plain.

@KerryParnell

Originally published as Kerry Parnell: Why are there so many bums in Jane Austen films?