Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

It is now over two hundred years since the beloved British author Jane Austen published her romantic novel Pride and Prejudice (1813), a milestone in the English literature that proves itself to be exciting and creative enough to continue to become ubiquitous. In 2009, the American novelist and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (1976- ), seeking to appeal to a diverse audience, introduces to Austen’s masterpiece elements of horror in his parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Retaining most of Austin’s original text (she is included as a co-author), Grahame-Smith protrudes many scenes of zombie battles resulting from a plague that falls upon England in the early 19th century. To confront such danger, Darcy is portrayed as a monster hunter and the Bennet sisters are trained by their father to defeat the undead. This mashed-up novel aims at combining the pre-existing classic work of Jane Austen with zombie hordes and ninja assassins to entertain a new consumer generation that embraces a different taste. This study, by applying David Gunkel’s Remixology theory, aims at tracing such change of the ideation of aesthetic taste that leads to the cultural obsession with zombies and dystopias. Such an aim may lead to a better understanding of modern society.