Never paraphrasing the classics was a given until woke sensibilities became a must. This was brought to mind by the BBC’s adaptation of Great Expectations, in which the convict Magwitch knocks the Empire and Miss Havisham takes opium on the side. What they should have done is have Pip hustling coke for a fellow convict of Magwitch named Escobarian, bringing it daily to the addicted old lady, and Estella sniffing – no pun intended – out the plot and giving young Pip hell.
Never mind. Woke rules supreme, and because of that the scope for future reworkings of the classics seems unlimited. Let’s start at the beginning, with Homer’s Trojan War. No more tired old Menelaus and Helen, and Paris and stuffy chief Agamemnon. The real reason for the war is that Paris has run off with Patroclus, Achilles’s so-called best friend and lover. Achilles is raging against Agamemnon because of a homophobic remark the King of Mycenae makes after the Greeks spend ten years stuck on the beach facing the Trojan gates while Paris and Patroclus are having a rave inside. Achilles slays the noblest Trojan Hector after the latter appears in drag as Achilles during a drunken feast at King Priam’s. I could go on. Helen dreams of being carried away by Odysseus, but he only has eyes for her hubby, and so on. The Odyssey, too, has unlimited possibilities, with trans monsters and seducers along the way to Ithaca. The first Hollywood tycoon to film versions of the epics along these lines will light his cigars with $1,000 bills for the duration.
The Great Gatsby. Now there’s an opportunity to make the fastest buck ever. The Fitzgerald classic has been filmed three times, but this new version will render the Alan Ladd, Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio ones redundant. In it, Gatsby, born Jill Gantz, is a trans male who used to look longingly at a boy called Dick, now Daisy Buchanan, living across the bay. Fitzgerald’s novel has stood the test of time as few others have, and that’s because it’s all about youth. When the trans version comes out, the place will go wild. Sex changes will become the norm, and easier to access than buying aspirin. There is, of course, a dark side to Gatsby the movie. Like Gatsby, all of us want something we can’t have, and in the film Daisy regrets becoming a woman and wants to switch back. I predict that this will be the next movie to make a billion.
And let’s not ignore white male privilege. My close Hollywood friend, the producer Sammy Glick, has an option on Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. The original version of the novel was a bit of a flop; it was meant by Mailer as a preview of the future, its only morality a power morality. General Cummings bullies Lieutenant Hearn, the weak liberal who represents a doomed order of human dignity. In the new Sammy Glick version, the lower-class American troops who are ordered to attack the Japanese-held island of Anopopei revolt and embrace their Japanese enemies. They turn out to be a female army that welcomes the Americans and tells them to lower their hands and be proud of their decision to surrender. The futility of war is well presented, and the idea of a macho male attack is shown to be what it’s always been – a charade. Sammy Glick believes an Oscar is inevitable.
Although the original 11-hour epic of Brideshead was filmed again a few years later, the new politically correct version follows the Waugh version to the letter – as well it should. It depicts Sebastian as an epicene, middle-aged, syphilitic alcoholic who has never done a thing in his life, the Oxbridge snobbery, and the deference for the top people that marked England back then. The only change is the working-class oik Hooper, who is Afro-Caribbean in this new version, and a man who corrects Charles Ryder in religious and historical matters and wears his Victorian Cross with humility.
Last but certainly not least is the new woke version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Orwell classic whose message resonates today. ‘Orwellian’, like ‘Kafkaesque’, is part of the language. As the torturer says to Winston Smith: ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.’ The party is all-powerful both in the novel and in Washington and London, meaning the Deep State and the Blob. This reimagining of Nineteen Eighty-Four will be shown regularly in schools and monthly on TV. Winston and Julia will be portrayed as traitors and out-of-touch heterosexual fools.
And there you have it: countless opportunities for the new generation of writers and directors to paraphrase the classics to their heart’s content. Just imagine what they can do with the likes of The Picture of Dorian Gray, War and Peace or Madame Bovary. Even better, just imagine what a hit The Sisters Karamazov will be, the three sisters plotting to murder their horrible father Fyodor, the celibate youngest sister Ala, a nun, finally seeing the light and hating everyone involved. There’s more hatred in The Sisters Karamazov than in any other remake. It’s a sure hit. Don’t go woke and you’ll go broke, as they say in Hollywood.
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