Can we treat a youtube series based on Pride and Prejudice as a piece of literature in its own right?

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are the brainchild of Hank Green (of Vlogbrothers fame) and Bernie Su and aim to re-tell the story of Jane Austen’s famously unwed Bennet sisters. Lizzie is now a 24 year-old grad student in mass communications, living at home and filming a semi-weekly video blog with the help of her best friend and classmate Charlotte Wu. The episodes, averaging about 4 minutes each, follow the basic plot of the novel with a few tweaks: Mary Bennet is their cousin, Kitty Bennet is a Lydia’s cat, Mr. Bingley is now Bing Lee, handsome doctor-to-be, and Mr. Collin’s proposal is a job offer.  That said, I’m not terribly interested in the actual content of the videos or how it has to change from the original to make sense in a 21^st century context. Mrs. Bennet is still overly concerned with eligibility of her daughters and George Wickham is still a bit of a smarmy prick.

The shift of platform, medium and genre, while telling essentially the same story, accommodates interaction in a way the previous re-imaginings of this work, however true to the original or wildly off-script, simply cannot. Using Youtube’s established comment system, the audience interacts with the narrative (and with other audience members) in the comment section. Responses range from warnings to this Lizzie not to trust Wickham’s version of events to viewers who have not read Pride and Prejudice and are responding with Lizzie to the plot as it unfolds. Within the context/structure of the video blog-as-narrative-tool, the audience asks questions of Lizzie, which Lizzie occasionally answers in special episodes. Suddenly this sequestered, canonized fiction recreates itself as mutable reality. No where does the artificiality of the performance reveal itself (except under the narrative, where a production list indicates to the audience that this is a performance…Interestingly, one of the characters is played by Lonelygirl15 cast member, Maxwell Glick. That early web series caused a stir when it was revealed that it wasn’t an actual video blog, but a scripted show.)

In the medium of the video blog as personal diary, the perspective of the work shifts from third-person omniscient(ish) to first-person (fairly) limited. The technology of webcam affords the audience only a narrow glimpse into the girls’ lives and the show creators exploit that limitation for narrative effect. Outside a brief foray to vidcon (where the actress as Lizzie fangirls her series creator…playing himself) and a somewhat more extended stay at the Lee’s while the Bennet house is renovated, we do not see the girls outside Lizzie’s bedroom. This in itself functions as a comment on Austen’s own limited scope. While Austen excelled at capturing family life for women of a certain class in England in the early 19^th century, her male characters lack that same richness and typically fall into three camps: good, good but brusque, and awful. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries drastically limits the appearance of all the other characters. Instead, we get them though Lizzie’s retellings and reenactments (with the help of Charlotte, Jane, and Lydia.)

Surely, no one would say that watching this series is identical to reading Pride and Prejudice. But it does force us to ask how this is different. In many ways, the comment section suggests that this re-telling mimics the earlier experience of the text: the viewers want Lizzie to be happy and are hurt by Bing Lee’s sudden departure. The comment section could even be said to function as an online book club. No one there is “reading” this text as we would for a class…but how many people read analytically outside an academic or professional setting? If the book is its story, this is not fundamentally different. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries doesn’t replace Pride and Prejudice any more than any of the other countless retellings and adaptations If anything, the changes in medium and genre that force the narrative’s interactivity interrogate what it is to experience a book and what it means to be a text.