‘Culture improves us – it gives us sweetness and light – it makes us better people’. What contemporary media text, then, can provide us with this thing known as culture?
A little while ago I began watching the BBC’s newest adaptation of Tess and the D’Urbervilles. Now knowing that Hardy was on the Leavis’ approved list, will a contemporary version still provide us with the same meanings as it once did?
The heroin of the story, Tess, is from a rural, working class family, who struggle to make ends meet financially. Pretty Tess finds herself in a tragic tale of love, missed opportunities, and of course, loss.
I believe this text to still offer us a sense of culture in the way that Tess still makes mistakes, she isn’t portrayed as being totally innocent, naive, yes, and that something we can all relate to, and importantly, learn from.
It is the best that is thought or said because it tells a story and keeps the audience gripped from start to end. Morals and integrity play a huge part in this story, and these are attributes that we should aspire to have as human beings.
What is also interesting about our heroin is that even though she is from a working class background, she seeks to better herself, although feeling uncomfortable and slightly awkward at being catapulted into a higher class by the love of her life, she handles herself with dignity.
Being set in Somerset, the scenery in the programme is breathtaking. With spectacular views such as these it makes us value who we are, and where we are from, and what higher pastures we can concur with hard-work and nobility.
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