Reading Record 6

 Okay, so I have now finished this month's book for the book club I am in:  Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne.

Hmm.

How do I put this?

This situation is a weird one, both simple and complex at the same time.  I've watched three different adaptations of this book over the years:  the movie starring David Niven, the TV miniseries starring Pierce Brosnan and the TV miniseries starting David Tennant.  I don't really remember much about the movie (except that their Passpartout was Spanish and so they sidetracked to Spain so he could take part in a bullfight 🤢🤮 (and that the female lead was Shirley MacLaine instead of someone, you know, Indian)), but I've seen the earlier miniseries many times (it was actually released on DVD, and I have a copy, ya see) and have always enjoyed it, despite some inherent problems.  But after watching the newer miniseries, which had abandoned the majority of the plot in favor of a new one, I was like "okay, time to see what the real thing was like, 'cause what the heck even was this I just watched?"

And so at that time I bought a copy of the book.  A hardback Penguin Classics edition, with a modern translation, an introduction, and even end notes.  At the time I bought it, I sat down to read it, and decided I might as well read the introduction, since it could hardly spoil the plot for me, since I already knew the plot!  I wasn't very far into the introduction before it got to mentioning that Verne had (later in life) made an enemy of Emile Zola by joining a right-wing anti-Dreyfus organization.

And that was when I said "nope!" and put the book back on the shelf.

It would have stayed there if the book club hadn't decided to make it the book for May.

Fortunately, the author's anti-Semitism didn't have many opportunities to show up in the course of the novel.

Unfortunately, the author's general racism, misogyny, classism, and conviction that everyone is inferior to the French were all on nearly constant display.

It's like, "if you hate everyone outside France, why would you even write a book about traveling around the world?!"

Ugh.  But reading it really put in context and made me appreciate the series with David Tennant:  clearly, what happened was that someone decided they wanted to tell the story without any of the unpleasant baggage of the original.  So they looked at its core essence, added some racial and gender diversity (while actually addressing same, rather than just pretending it was normal for the period), stuck in some drama (because everything seems to require drama these days), and discarded all the racism, classism, misogyny, and nationality-based stereotypes...only to realize that there wasn't really much of anything left once they had tossed out the unacceptable aspects of the story.  Hence, most of the miniseries was invented out of whole cloth.

I get it now, and I appreciate it a lot more.  I think I'd like to rewatch it, in fact, only I have no idea how I watched it in the first place (maybe it was run on PBS and someone recorded it?) or if it's available on any streaming platform available to me.  (I think the answer to the latter is "no," unfortunately...)

...and I seem to be talking more about adaptations than the book... 😅

Well, may as well continue that.  🤣  If we're talking an actual adaptation of the plot of the novel, the Brosnan miniseries is probably the best it will ever get.  Sure, it dropped in a bunch of real people inappropriately (and shifted the timing back a year so they would have to cross Paris during the Commune de Paris), but it kept most of the story intact, and in some places the dialogue was so close that it was basically quoted right out of the novel (accounting for different translations, anyway).  More importantly, it did away with most of the racism (sadly not quite all), misogyny and classism, and added some commentary on British foreign policy in the Victorian era.

Particularly noteworthy is a pair of incidents in the US section of the story.  In the novel, Fogg and co witness a "political rally" in San Francisco that turns into a massive brawl (for literally no reason, esp. considering the position under dispute was "justice of the peace") and causes a grudge between Fogg and a hulking brute of a colonel.  In the Brosnan miniseries, while they are in San Francisco, they end up going to eat at a place with a ballroom, and Fogg agrees to share a dance with Aoda; her great beauty attracts the attention of Jesse James, who tries to cut in, and swears revenge on Fogg when he won't cooperate.  Later on, Fogg meets the antagonistic figure again on the train headed east:  in the book, because the colonel is also a passenger, and in the miniseries, because James is robbing the train.  They decide to have a duel on the moving train in both versions, and in both cases it's interrupted by an attack on the train by...hmm.  In the book they're specified as Sioux, whereas I think the miniseries was vague about what tribe of Native Americans they were supposed to represent.  In any case, it's what comes next that is where the miniseries really improved on the situation.  I was horrified by the novel's version of the attack on the train, which had dozens of the attackers slain, many by being run over by the train itself, and had Aoda shooting them down heartlessly with the guns Passpartout had bought in San Francisco.  In the miniseries, Aoda had hidden all those guns (aside from the pistol Fogg was using for his aborted duel) so that they would not have "the blood of Indians" on their hands.  Passpartout thinks she is confusing "India Indians" and "American Indians" and she retorts that she thinks they have been shot at quite enough already, likens their situation to the situation her own people face at home against the British invaders occupying India, and concludes that "I do not blame the Indian for defending his home."  It was a great speech, and a great moment, especially since Fogg, on hearing it, agrees with her that they should seek a non-violent way out of the predicament.

Overall, in fact, beyond all the racism and classism, my biggest complaint about the book is how thoroughly and utterly Fogg refused to grow or change even the slightest bit despite his lengthy travels!  Admittedly, being inflexible is part of his core character, but...ugh.  In the novel, Aoda is forced to propose to him, and only after she does so does he spontaneously claim to love her, despite never showing the slightest interest!  At least in the Brosnan miniseries, he shows a slight but growing distraction, and has a long, passionate (for him) speech to propose to her, which included summing up himself by pointing to the clock on the mantel and saying that he and it are essentially one and the same, only he had failed the crucial test of a clock by failing to be punctual when it counted.  I had always assumed that speech was straight out of the novel, but nope!  No self-reflection or introspection for the novel's version of Fogg!  Argh!  So freaking frustrating to read!

But let's talk about the widow Aoda for a moment.  I don't recall anything about her from the Niven version, so we'll set that one aside (with the parenthetical reminder "Shirley MacLaine") and look at the other three versions.

Novel:  a beautiful young woman who was forced to marry an elderly rajah, and is now about to be burned alive on his pyre following his death; this is described as being normal for Hindu culture despite the British trying to put a stop to it.  She had an English education and is especially pale; the text outright says that she is basically European in every way, despite being Indian.  We're told she didn't want to marry the rajah and had tried to escape, but are given no details.  She is basically a passive observer for the rest of the trip, girlishly overwhelmed by "gratitude" that somehow morphs into more than that despite her rescuer's total lack of a personality.  (It would honestly make much more sense for her to fall for Passpartout, since he is more lively, likable, and the one who actually physically rescued her.)  She displays great loyalty to Fogg and very little else in the way of a character.

Brosnan miniseries:  a beautiful young woman who was forced to marry an elderly rajah, and is now about to be burned alive on his pyre following his death; the description of this practice in the miniseries makes it sound like something that was only sometimes practiced even before the British outlawed it.  She clearly still has an English education, but her Indian-ness is embraced; she continues to wear saris the whole time (unlike in the book where she is immediately put in European clothing) and she speaks out against British imperialism on a few occasions.  (She is much more pale than the average Indian, because she's played by a Singaporean actress rather than an Indian one, but...at least she's not white? 😅🤷🏻‍♀️)  She narrates to Fogg the tale of one of her attempts to escape from the rajah, by diving into the river in the middle of the night and swimming across its rapid current only to find guards waiting for her on the far bank.  She has a strong will and saves Fogg's life when they are improbably brought to the Forbidden City (that sequence is one of the biggest problems with the miniseries after that of Aoda's rescue), and shows determination to prevent further violence against the oppressed Native Americans.  Her mutual attraction to Fogg is showed with about as much realism as you can expect from TV in the 1990s.

Tennant miniseries:  a matriarch preparing for the wedding of her daughter (as I recall; I only saw it the once, a few years ago).  She hosts Fogg and his group briefly, then they leave and she stays behind with her family.  She had good chemistry with Tennant's Fogg, but they're from different worlds.  She is a woman of wealth, influence and intellect, with no need to rely on a European man for anything.  (And as I recall she was indeed played by an Indian woman.  Or at least one of Indian ancestry, anyway.)  A very brief role, but one that is 100% an improvement over what was in the novel!

...

I had something else I wanted to say...

...what was it...?

Oh, right!

I mentioned the Commune de Paris earlier, and I wanted to say a bit more on that.  Paris spent basically the entire year of 1871 under siege.  First by the Prussian Army (though it became the German Army partway through the siege, as the king of Prussia had himself crowned the first Kaiser of Germany at Versailles while his army was still laying siege to Paris in the concluding months of the Franco-Prussian War) and then by the French government during the Commune.  Ludicrously, the French government did more damage during its siege of Paris than the Prussian/German Army did.  When I was taking the last course of my MA in History (the course being on Europe in the 19th century), I was told than Verne actually wrote Around the World in 80 Days as part of an attempt to distract the world from that year-long siege that Paris had suffered.  And sure enough, in the novel, everything in France was so perfect that there was nothing to tell and the story jumped straight from Dover to Suez.  😰

Meanwhile!  In the Brosnan version, as I said, they tried to get through the streets of Paris at the height of the siege (in fact, it looked like the storming of the barricades in any given production of Les Miz), allowing Passpartout to catch a stray bullet, necessitating treatment, which he gets from Louis Pasteur. 😅  And in the Tennant version, it turns out Passpartout's brother was one of the leaders of the Commune, so there's a lot of dramatic fallout of that when they pass through Paris.  It seemed like an odd decision to me at the time, but more realistic than what was in the Brosnan version, since your typical siege would not be bloody warfare all the time, because then everyone would end up dead sooner rather than later.

Anyway.

Uh.  I could probably say a lot more, but I should save some of it for the book club meeting, yeah?  🤣  Anyway, long and the short of it is that I cannot and do not recommend reading the book.  Despite its problems, I still feel like the Brosnan version is worth watching, though, as an adaptation that improves on the original.  The Tennant version is probably worth watching (my memory of it is fuzzy enough at the moment that I dare not be more certain than that) but it's less "adapted from" and more "loosely inspired by."

I wonder if anyone at the book club meeting has played the game?  There's a game called 80 Days, sort of at the junction between interactive fiction and a visual novel.  I've heard good things about it, and I picked up a physical copy of the game for the Nintendo Switch when I saw it at a local used game store a while back, but I've never gotten around to playing it.  I should do that at some point...

Oh!

One last point!

The final twist doesn't work in the book!

You know why?  Because he's studying his book of timetables in the harbor in New York!  That should have informed him that they had crossed the international dateline!  Or rather, the discrepancy between the day he thinks it is and the day on which the steamers are leaving should have clued him in.  (In fact, the steamer he had planned to take apparently left a day early, or they would have caught it on time!  At least in the Brosnan version he isn't shown studying timetables, and we just see him and the others asking around on the New York docks after they miss the ship's departure.  As written in the novel, that extra day just sort of materializes while they're crossing the Atlantic.  It's actually quite broken.)