Modern Applicability

PBS/Masterpiece Theater came out with a new version of Little Women a year or two ago and I finally got to watch it.  It was amazing!  I've never seen a movie version of this particular book and they did an excellent job.  I'm rather amazed that they could be so true to the book and the mores of classic literature in this 'enlightened' day and age.  Apparently the new 'Anne of Green Gables' had an episode that delved into a modern issue that had no place in the books and I'm glad I haven't started watching that only to rue it six hours in.  They are coming out with a 6 hour Les Miserables too, I read a blurb about it somewhere that was excited about the 'modern applicability' of the new version of the tale, which may be just the spin the writer of the blurb put on it or it may be a very scary thing indeed, but they did a good job with Little Women so maybe Jean val Jean will be in good hands?

It was rather hilarious watching the extras on the musical version of Les Mis that came out a few years back.  The cast and crew was going on and on about how applicable it was to modern sentiments (occupy wallstreet!) and completely missed the entire point of the story, they even waxed long about civil war soldiers carrying the book with them, 'Lee's Miserables' they were called, but not seeming to realize that Lee was on the pro-slavery side of the Civil War, oops!  They are right that these tales do have modern applicability, but not in the way they think.  Human nature does not change, the virtues and vices are unchanged since the dawn of time, though what occupies our cultural attention at any given moment certainly does.

Sending Anne Shirley to a drag ball isn't going to become a timeless tale like the original books because it is a mere cultural moment, not a glimpse of what it is to be human, regardless of your race, gender, sexual orientation, religious creed, culture, time period, hair style, income, education...those are all externals, like clothes or makeup, things that adorn us but it is not Who we are.  Modern culture likes to make What we are, Who.  But classic literature, like God, looks past all that, to the very heart of a person, to know who each and every one of us is.  Anne Shirley, Jo March, and Jean val Jean have endured for over a century because they are human, or rather were written so well we can identify with their struggles, rejoice in their triumphs, and find hope for our own growth in their adventures.  We see ourselves in them, rather than finding just another vehicle to push a political, social, or cultural agenda.

C.S. Lewis has it right when he says humans are immortal though kingdoms, cultures, even the earth itself, will fade away, of all this we currently call 'reality,' only human souls will endure, and it is the development and growth of that soul with which classic literature is concerned, while most modern storytellers are content with cheap and shallow cultural thrills, and their tales pass away as swiftly as leaves upon the wind, while the classics endure, generation after generation, even if the storytellers of the age don't fully comprehend their source material, still light and good shine through for those that have eyes to see, ears to hear, and the open, wonder seeking hearts of little children.