Linking Austen and Hugo in the Digital Age

Ok, Whitney Simons's posts about Pride and Prejudice, relationships, and the digital age got me thinking about some of my own ideas with my research on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, namely how these works of classic literature are being represented and retold in the media.  In order to better delve into the ideas behind the media and literature, I watched a bit of the Bollywood movie Bride and Prejudice.

I had anticipated cringing throughout the movie and feeling like it was an insult to Jane Austen's memory to have her work so utterly perverted.  However, because I have become more inculcated into the digital world, and have formed my own ideas about its merit, I actually found myself enjoying it.  Though this rendition doesn't hold a candle to the original, and though you can hardly keep from laughing during the whole of the movie, I kind of liked seeing the general story of Pride and Prejudice taken totally out of it's original context and applied to a world so completely different (i.e. India).  It was fun, colorful, and playful, typical Bollywood.  It gave the original story a fiery, Indian spice to it, and not an unpleasant one at that.

Ok, now, how does that apply to Hunchback?  Well, I have had the same kinds of ideas as I have explored the different ways that The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been infiltrated into different forms of media.  Being a passionate advocate of the original (well, translated) text, I didn't think that I could ever accept the other forms of media's renditions/interpretations of the story if they did not exactly correspond with what I thought.  However, my ideas have changed.

Not only do these different forms of media give a new light into the story itself (both for Hunchback and Pride and Prejudice), but maybe the most important and useful thing these mediums, these "translations" if you will, have done is make these great works of literature more accessible to a larger populous.  Someone may not have any interest in 19th century British customs and traditions (though I can't imagine why), but maybe they have a passion for Indian culture and dance.  Bride and Prejudice may then introduce this person to the original book in a way that would get them excited about reading it, and the same thing goes for the Hunchback.  All these things tie back to one another.  Maybe the digital humanities is not so detrimental to classic literature as I once thought it to be.