Orgullo y prejuicio

Bricks and Cement to construct any behaviour
English, Indian, and American people inside their own context

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Student: Claudia Edith Olano
Subject: Language and ulture III
Teacher: Maria Cristina Llorente
Año: 2008

Abstract

This paper argues that human beings are a consecuence of the culture which they live inside and the time that they have to live,and how these aspects influence deeply the way that they behave. The focus of the present analysis is, mainly, the exploration of the main characters of the two female and male charactrers, which are the similarities and differences that are observable, in both the Holywood and Bolywood film versions of the book Pride and Prejudice written by Jane Austeen, even when they are analysed inside thesame plot.

Introduction
The corpus of this essay are the two film versions of the book “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austeen. The original book was published in l813 and as most of her books reflects the social atmosphere and the moral life of her times.
The Hollywood version is called “Pride and Prejudice”, the same as the book, it was produced by Working Title Films anddirected by Joe Wright, the screenplay was written by Deborah Moggach it was filmed entirely in the UK, the film was released in that country in September, 2005. The Bollywood Version was directed by Gurinder Chadha and the screenplay was written by Paul Mayeda Berges, this version was relased in February, 2005.
The aim of this essay is to demostrate how human beings are constructed by theculture, since the settings of the two versions are very different. The Hollywood version respects the text, the main characters live in England in the eighteenth century whereas the other shows a different society, one living the twenty first century in India and besides the male character is born in the USA. Therefore it explores the similarities and differences of the main characters’ behaviour.The present paper is informed by Reception Studies, Critical Theory and Film studies.

Theoretical Framework

Reception studies
This field is primarily concern with how a cannonical text is interpretated depending on some important factors. Literature can not be studied without knowledge of the social and cultural context in which a book was written, we also have toconsidered the different forms that it is going to be received and the comprenhension of the diagetic of fictional world that the writer creates. The meaning of a text is constructed through the interaccion between the text and the reader, the same interaction takes place when a film is being analysed.
Bronislaw Malinowski developed the concept of Context of culture which defines culture assomething that is born from the most basic biological needs of the human beings, who respond to them creating an artificial enviroment called culture. This culture must be organized into institutons that function into a time and space and these two aspects constitute the context. This context of culture is part of the fictional world created in a text.
To do clearer the intention of thispaper is is also necesary to define the term Culture in itself and in doing this, it seems important to establish some concepts related to it. First of all culture must be cosidered as a not static thing, culture suffers changes. There are new cultural traits that replace the old ones because they are not necessary any more and they affect all the human beings inside the same society. In aditionto this it can be said that culture is directly related to the concepts of status and roles. The status is our social position and the role shows an individual the part that the society expects him to perform inside a determined status. If all this is considered it can be said that culture constructs a human being behaviour. This idea is reflected in the definition of culture given by Edward...