The persuasion has only been available on Netflix for a few hours, so there’s no real way to know if Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge has seen it yet. I hope it’s not too late to stop her, because the wave of horror all over her body that will overwhelm her in a matter of seconds after pressing the game is bound to hurt.
Because, if it weren’t for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, this new version of Persuasion would never have been made. Of all the adaptations that Jane Austen’s novel has undergone, this is by far Fleabaggy’s most ostentatious. It’s not just that Dakota Johnson’s Anne Elliott is talking to the camera, or even that she seems pathologically inclined to look at us whenever something happens. No, he does all this while drinking wine from the bottle, crying in the bathroom and hugging a small pet in the home. It is, hand in hand, a haircut in pencil far from entering the territory of copyright infringement.
Persuasion’s criticisms have been horrible in every way. One described the film as a disaster of all time, while another suggested the blunt imprisonment of anyone involved in its production. And while many of the reviews (especially the British ones) have an element of territorial outrage, they also contain a lot of truth. It’s the kind of unelegant modernization that allows a character to describe himself as empathetic, and his comic ambition reaches its peak during a scene where Johnson says with a sigh, “There’s nothing worse than thinking your life is ruined and then realize you have so much more to fall for, ”before literally falling in your face immediately.
Honestly, imagine yourself being Phoebe Waller-Bridge right now. You spent years of your life diligently creating one of the best and most accurate comedies of all time, and now you’re bound to see how all your struggling sensibilities are wasted like this. The closest equivalent I can think of is J Robert Oppenheimer, whose impressive work in the field of fast neutron calculus led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb. As Oppenheimer observed the first nuclear detonation in July 1945, the terrifying explosion that dominated the New Mexico skyline before his eyes reminded him of a quote from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I have become death, destroyer of worlds.” If Phoebe Waller-Bridge ever has the misfortune of seeing Persuasion, she should probably go get this leg tattooed on her leg.
Of course, that’s how comedy works. A new and daring voice enters the arena and then everyone has ripped it off for years and years after. Look at the deluge of irony that seeped into the culture after David Letterman first aired, or the way everyone started introducing Gervaisy’s sarcastic “Yes” into every sentence during the years after the release. of The Office. That’s natural, though, if you’ve ever come across a gang of bastards still making 50-year-old pieces of Monty Python between them, you’ll understand that it ages quickly.
The press doesn’t help much either, really. As soon as Fleabag reached its cultural capacity, every new show a woman had was called “The New Fleabag.” Back to Life, Run, Mood, I May Destroy You, This Way Up, The Duchess, Everything I Know About Love, Out of Her Mind: All of these shows (and many others, including the French remake Mouche) have labeled with the same lazy label. There have been so many new Fleabags in recent years that we are all in danger of forgetting what we liked about the old Fleabag.
And yet there is something so aggressively unpleasant in the way Persuasion raises Fleabag that it feels like the death of something. It seems like the Persuasion creative team made this film specifically to poison the land where Fleabag was. If this is the case, they were a total success. I just saw Persuasion 25 minutes ago, and if I ever see another character looking ironically at the camera, I’ll lose my head. More than that: I don’t want anyone to look at me, in real life, with their eyes, just in case it triggers some sort of Dakota Johnson PTSD episode.
Listen, Fleabag is great. It remains an almost perfect TV piece. But it may be time to take it away from everything else now, before you eliminate all entertainment.