"A flaw in the romantic imagination" is how Woody Allen defined nostalgia in "Midnight in Paris"w (2011). This week, we see an attempt to trump such quixotism with the premiere of the BBC's "Call the Midwife," a British export that premiered last night.
Overlapping with the third season of "Downton Abbey" which will premiere in the United States in January "Midwife" takes post-World War II Britain from the hallways of an earl's estate to the slums of London's East End. The first season of "Midwife" even had more British viewers than the first season of "Downton."
Audiences will always preference an idealized time period over their own. With the success of "Downton," creator Julian Fellows recently announced that he would turn to the question of how the Earl of Grantham and the American Countess Cora met in a prequel of the series to broadcast following "Downton."
This week, an adaptation of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" (2012) will also be released in the United States, and echoing recent scholarship, it casts black actor James Howson as Heathcliff. The new film version, however, like versions before it, focuses on the love story, ignoring the latter half and central conflict of the book. In preference of romanticism, the darker story of an old Heathcliff manipulating the fate of Cathy's child for reasons of power and inheritance is ignored in the new adaptation.
By contrast, books released this week follow the trend of the "Midwife" with "Neil Young's Wandering Journey," focusing on the man behind Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and "Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot," revealing the shocking events surrounding the assassination.
The arts will continue to revere traditional ideals. Kennedy is still a Camelot-like figure, reviving Arthurian romances, and many still prefer to imagine an English country estate over the slums of London. As Allen has proven, there is always a place for nostalgia and the ideal.
