F**k You, Colin Firth

Dear Colin Firth,  

Fair enough - you have the right to look perplexed. And I hope you won't take too much offense, as you seem like a perfectly nice person. You’ve been married to your Italian wife for a long time and you have two cute kids (plus that one you had earlier with the lesser Tilly sister) and seem pretty low key. Plus you’re self-deprecating in that fabulous British way. But still, I have to say: Fuck You.

Why such strong language, you might ask? Three words: Pride and Prejudice.  

But Cailey, you might say, Jane Austen is your favorite author. You wrote your undergraduate thesis on her and, need I remind you, you also do love me as Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice.  

And in the hypothetical world in which we're having this conversation, I would reply: that’s the problem. When you strode onto the scene with your wet shirt and your smoldering looks and your method erections, you changed Jane Austen.  

Before you say anything more, you overly-chatty Hypothetical Colin Firth (HCF), I know that, of course, anyone and everyone has the right to love Jane Austen. More power to them, etc, etc. But you’ve helped turn saying that you love Jane Austen into something akin to saying you love Twilight. (In fact...) People look at you like you’re an insipid girl who only cares about balls, tea parties and marriage.

Actually, most Jane Austen fans care about the best prose styling in the English language, masterful irony and some of the greatest characters in literature. Just for starters.  

Maybe this says more about my own insecurities than anything else, but I've actually almost entirely stopped talking about Jane Austen because I'm tired of defending her books to people who will clearly never appreciate them. How do you explain to someone who has never read Austen (or maaaybe skimmed one of her novels and missed all the nuances) why she's such a brilliant and important author? I just end up getting angry and frustrated, and am nowhere near as biting and eloquent as an Austen character - let alone Austen herself - would be.*

Now stop giving me that pert look HCF! While Amy Heckerling's re-imagining of Emma (aka: Clueless) and Emma Thompson's Oscar-deserving adaptation of Sense and Sensibility may have nudged Austen back into the public imagination, your sultry Mr. Darcy is what kicked hearts, minds and production schedules into overdrive on both sides of the Atlantic. And for every intelligent reflection on Austen (eg: Patricia Rozema's Mansfield Park) this might have engendered, there were at least twice as many truly embarrassing adaptations, homages, or shameless-but-terrible knock-offs. (I'm holding you indirectly responsible for at least this travesty - oh and this one!) And don't even get me started on the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, where visitors are welcomed with - wait for it - a picture of you.

And that's only the half of it! Not only did you forever change the way people read (if they do) and consider Austen, but you also fucked with A LOT of women's expectations. By calling Elizabeth Bennet "not handsome enough to tempt me," then ignoring her - all while falling in love with her - you have raised the hopes of countless women who now believe that when a man is rude and standoffish it means that he a) is in love with her; b) will surely propose to her not once but twice; and c) will rescue her family's honor by laying out a bunch o' benjamins to prevent her impetuous sister from becoming a fallen woman. 

Multiple re-readings of He's Just Not That Into You might still be inadequate to the counteract the damage you've done to our collective romantic psyches. Yes - it could be argued that Austen's Mr. Darcy got there first, given that Andrew Davies' screenplay was a very faithful adaptation. But you made Mr. Darcy flesh and blood and wet shirt...and the world will never be the same. 

And so I say....

Yours &c,
Cailey

*Actually, Austen would probably subtly insult them by seemingly marginalizing her own work in a claiming of the upper hand so deft that it leaves you reeling (see: "How could I join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?" or "I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in.")