Shocked, shocked, I tell you

[nineveh_uk]

I was going to write something brief and sarcastic to the effect that although it is some time* since I got half-way** through War and Peace, though my memory of it is imperfect I was pretty sure that it didn't contain surprise incestuous undertones, or indeed overtones. Fortunately for my dignity I looked up the character list first, and apparently the incestuous undertones are at least somewhat canon***. I'm not sure that I'm convinced by the adaptation so far: for something set in Russia in 1805 I'm not getting much sense of a fundamentally different society to that of a generic Jane Austen adaptation, or indeed the present day UK, but I'll be watching the second episode.

I note that it so far lacks the extremely tight breeches of the big Russian film version, but it has one thing in common in that forty years from now, anyone who watches it will look at the women's hairstyles and think how much more they look like the period in which it was made than the period when it was set.

*About twenty years.

**I was disappointed it wasn't Anna Karenina II.

***Though I will need to make a second attempt to discover whether the novel had them as totally scurrilous rumour or otherwise. I will make sure I choose a more engaging translation.

ETA: I have just learned that the adaptation was by Andrew Davies, and thus all is explained.

Comments

[white_hart]

I'm not watching it, but it does seem to be a general feature of historical drama that the women's hairstyles and makeup invariably look like the period in which the drama was made and not the period in which it is set.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It was Natasha's fringe that really made me roll my eyes!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I'm not watching it either, but this does seem to be a general - nay, almost universal - feature.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

The only exception that comes to mind is I, Claudius, and even there the men's hair does tend to look just a bit shiny and seventies-like. But the fact that I could watch it thirty years after it was made and not be immediately rolling my eyes at the women's hairstyles is a definite compliment to the costume/hair people. It really is a dilemma, though, especially as you go further back in time. Trying to recreate the real hairstyles on characters who are supposed to be raving beauties means you'll end up with a situation where you're trying to sell a modern audience on a court beauty who has plucked eyebrows and 100% of her possibly lice-containing hair hidden under a giant boxy hood. We just can't see it the way they did. On the other hand, there has to be some sort of middle ground between 100% genuine styles and something like Anne Of The Thousand Days where the styles probably looked dated forty-eight hours after its release.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I think that a balance can be struck. Maybe not always 100% accuracy, but at least not aiming for "current fashion!". I'm sure that the 1995 Pride and Prejudice hairstyles weren't absolutely accurate, but they were the idea of what was accurate, and they didn't give Elizabeth a pony tail. Whereas Natasha's hair in this looked like a 2015 high school pupil's. It under-estimates the audience; weknow people in the past looked different, let them at least a bit!

I thought that the recent Wolf Hall handled the fashion issue very well, not least in that pretty much everyone was wearing a hat/cap/headgear all of the time. I'm sure that they picked some of the ones that look more attractive to modern eyes, but the sheer sigh of relief at "Thank God, they're wearing hats, not all going round bare-headed" gave a big sense of verisimilitude. And though the 1980s Wimsey adaptations suffer make-up fail, I do think they do a good job with making Harriet's clothes. We see her wear the same things repeatedly through the whole series, and we can see she has less money than Wimsey - he wears his nice leather gloves at the beach, but she wears knitted ones.