Pride, prejudice, zombies, sea monsters, Lincoln... it's a mash-up culture

I've fallen in love with so many movie Elizabeth Bennets, I've lost count.

The heroine of Jane Austen's perennial book-club favorite, Pride and Prejudice, has been portrayed by more than a dozen actors, including Greer Garson, Jennifer Ehle, and Keira Knightly.

Inspiring all, every one of these Elizabeths has reached heights of sublimity in sex appeal, coyness, or wit. But none knows her way around a katana or a karate kick like Lily James, star of the mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which opened Friday.

James' Elizabeth not only has the power to steal your heart, she can decapitate you with a single stroke of her blade.

Now that is sexy.

A breezy, enjoyable, and delightfully vacuous horror comedy from Igby Goes Down director Burr Steers, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features a terrific turn by Sam Riley (On the Road) as Elizabeth's suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy. It was adapted from the insanely successful 2009 book by Los Angeles author Seth Grahame-Smith, who sets the story in an alternative version of Regency England that is under attack by zombies.

Grahame-Smith's novel was the brainchild of Philadelphia publisher Jason Rekulak, who conceived of the parody as a modest release for his small indie house, Quirk Books.

Within weeks of its release, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies had become a publishing sensation and launched a mash-up book craze.

With a name that suggests boiled potatoes and car crashes, the genre called mash-up takes a classic story - preferably set in a costume-rich environment, such as 18th-or 19th-century England - and combines it with an incongruous contemporary pop-culture theme, usually taken from the horror or sci-fi genre.

The result is effective if hardly subtle: The ironic contrast between the decorum and repressed sexuality of the world of Austen or Brontë makes for a ticklish contrast with the blood-spurting, sexually explicit, screaming goings-on of the typical horror story.

Grahame-Smith's yarn retains most of Austen's storyline and much of her language, with one exception - instead of playing out their romance over tea and scones or during leisurely walks through the countryside, the lovers in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies flirt and spar with one another while disemboweling monsters.

In the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies universe, Elizabeth and her sisters didn't grow up studying poetry and music. No, the Bennet girls were schooled by their parents (Charles Dance and Sally Phillips) in hand-to-hand combat, fencing, and gunplay.

Sure, the young ladies in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies still like to dress up, go to society functions, and dance the night away at lavish balls - but they know each minuet could be their last.

In one of the novel's best scenes, the sisters are at a ball overrun by a horde of zombies. The girls band together in formation and launch a formidable coordinated attack with knives and swords called the "Pentagram of Death."

It's a wonderful mishmash of a monster mash.

Grahame-Smith's book became such a hit that publishers went haywire, commissioning dozens of mash-ups, including Vampire Darcy's Desire; Mr. Darcy, Vampyre; Emma and the Vampires; Jane Bites Back; Mrs. Darcy versus the Aliens; and Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons.

Rekulak said he quickly grew tired of the fad after Quirk released a handful of titles, including Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Android Karenina (based on Tolstoy), and Dawn of the Dreadfuls.

The mash-up film has yet to catch on. Two previous attempts failed miserably. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a 2012 gothic adventure adapted by Grahame-Smith from his own novel, featured Benjamin Walker as an ax-wielding version of the 16th president. And Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters of 2013 starred Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as a mildly incestuous version of the siblings.

Call it mash-up or collage, the bric-a-brac mode of expression that combines found materials to create something new has been around at least since Dada, and it has become one of the most prevalent forms of self-expression in our age of sampled music and fan videos.

Rekulak said he was inspired to create the Austen novel after watching hours of YouTube, where mash-up film trailers, fan films, and video-game loops prevail.

"I was watching YouTube and getting really jealous of all the creative work I saw," the publisher said in a recent chat. "People were taking copyrighted things like The Office and Lost and mashing them up.

"It's a mash-up culture and everyone is playing with everything. There are Red vs. Blue fan films by Halo fans [and] movie trailers made from mashing a piece of Mrs. Doubtfire with a slasher."

These homemade vids allow fans to play an active role in consuming - indeed, creating - pop culture. Fans win a sense of ownership over the material.

On the other side of the spectrum, the big film studios roll out big-budget superhero movies that mash up characters from different comic book franchises.

Rekulak didn't own his own franchise. His problem was simple: How to create mash-ups that did not infringe on copyright laws. That's when he began playing around with classic books.

"Anything published before 1923 is fair game," he said, "so I put together two columns: one with a list of books, the other with crazy ideas like monkeys, aliens, zombies, and ninjas. And all these absurd combinations came out. One thing I noticed is that the one column contained all the books you have to read in high school - and I realized that pretty much everyone has a familiarity with them."

Grahame-Smith said we grow up being told by parents and teachers that the classics are good for us - which makes us suspect they're dry, boring, and unpleasant.

The mash-up appeals to the adolescent rebel in us.

"There's something inherently funny," said Grahame-Smith, "about taking such rigid prose, those very prim and proper young ladies from the Regency era, and putting them in these absurd situations."

tirdad@phillynews.com
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