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In his famous volume Culture and Imperialism Said proffers a robust argument
against those conservative elements of Austen's narratives which, he argues
embody the expansionist drives of colonialism. "I think Austen sees
what Fanny does as a domestic or small-scale movement in space that corresponds
to the larger, more openly colonial movements of Sir Thomas, her mentor,
the man whose estate she inherits. The two movements depend on each other"
(Said 1994: 106).
Patricia Rozema's new version of Mansfield Park opened 19 November 1999
but failed to make the same impact as Thompson's version of Sense and
Sensibility in 1997. Box office takings for the first UK weekend managed
only £103,266. Mansfield Park has been digested as mostly art house cinema.
Rozema's reading of Mansfield Park within a post-colonial context
has provoked much criticism and debate around the status of Austen and the
licence of film-makers to adapt literary texts. Critical reviews of Rozema's
production of Mansfield Park share a common thesis. They reject the intrusion
of a sub-plot concerned with slavery on the grounds that it is not commensurate
with Austen's narrative. In this paper I want to explore the discursive
interplay of slavery within the diegesis and in particular the visual clues
which Rozema weaves into the mise-en-scene. |
