Lust and Rage
The worst adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, according to affective neuroscience
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It was my birthday last week, so I’m taking the opportunity to write the answer to a question that no one has asked me but I sure do wish they would:
Why, according to affective neuroscience, is the 2005 Keira Knightly Pride & Prejudice the worst adaptation of that book?
I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED.
It’s because of the total incompatibility of lust and rage.
Quick summary for the three readers unfamiliar with the story of Pride & Prejudice:
Lizzie Bennett, age 20, has one delightful older sister, Jane, and three younger sisters who are garbage people. Because she herself is delightful, an extremely rich and handsome but also arrogant, rude guy falls madly in love with her. His name is Fitzwilliam Darcy. He’s also best friends with the guy Lizzie’s delightful older sister Jane loves, but because he is a genuine douchebag, he talks his friend out of trying to marry Jane. By the mid-point of the story, Darcy proposes to Lizzie—which is super-hypocritical, right? He talks his friend out of marrying the sister, then he proposes to Lizzie? Fuck that guy. Also, Lizzie KNOWS all this and confronts him with it like, “You think I’m gonna marry the dude who ruined my sister’s life? Give me a fucking break.” And he’s like, “Yeah I did it and I’m glad I did!”
That’s the first half of the book. There’s some other stuff too, but that’s what matters for the point I want to make here.
Put yourself in Lizzie’s shoes. This dude you genuinely despise, not just because he’s been super-rude to you more or less every time you talk to him, but also because he legit screwed up your sister’s life badly, so that she’s been depressed for months and it really is all his fault. Imagine a guy who has more or less bullied your sister as well as being a total shithead to you. It doesn’t matter how handsome he is, you hate this dude. You HATE him. You can’t understand why he’s even talking to you and then BAM marriage proposal!
Okay. Now. Nearly every adaptation gets this proposal scene right, where Darcy proposes nervously but with every expectation of being accepted, because he’s super-rich and shit, and then Lizzie turns to him and nails him to the wall. “You are the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry” and “do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps forever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”
In other words, “Both NO and you can go fuck yourself.” She HATES him.
And he leaves, embarrassed. Good.
But in the stupid fucking Keira Knightly/Matthew Macfadyen version of the scene, she’s like, “Both NO and you can go fuck yourself,” and then there’s this bizarre moment when the camera circles them and they, like, kinda almost kiss and shit.
And I was like, “I’m out. I’m done. This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen and they’ve ruined the whole story.”
(That’s not quite true. I was already out and done, the story was already ruined because they RUINED CHARLOTTE LUCAS by making her as useless as the gross dude she married, but that’s another story.)
The reason I was out, done is that clearly no one involved in the project had even a passing familiarity with basic affective neuroscience.
Neurologically, what is LUST? It’s a desire to move toward someone you’re attracted to and touch and taste and rubs yourself against them.
And what is RAGE? It’s the desire to move toward someone AND DESTROY THEM. A person you hate is someone who is in your WAY, an obstruction between you and some goal that matters very much to you, and so all your chemistry and physiology is pushing you to tear their face off and make them disappear.
Now, we live in a culture where people who make visual media think it’s visually compelling to tell a story where two people who HATE each other somehow also lust for each other. I get that that’s a story we tell, I get that people find it exciting because there’s all this inherent conflict in wanting both to destroy someone and to fuck them. Cool. It’s fun.
But please. Put yourself in Lizzie’s shoes. She wants to tear his face off. She wants to destroy him. He ruined her beloved sister’s life. It doesn’t matter how handsome or rich he is, if your body and brain are telling you to destroy him, no part of you also wants to put your tongue in his mouth.
Are there times when rage and lust can coexist?
Sure, like when it’s an argument in an established relationship and the conflict creates a threat to the attachment bond. Humans use sex as an attachment behavior, to reinforce and heal damage to attachment, so you might. Break-up sex and make-up sex can fall under this heading. We can also have sex as a form of self-preservation; you hate somebody but in order to placate them, stop them from hurting you, you have sex with them.
There’s also the rage-motivated lust where you want to fuck someone as a way to destroy them. But that’s not sex, that’s sexual violence—using sex as a weapon against someone. And no. Just no. Never try to destroy someone with sex without their consent—and it takes a very particular type of relationship for someone to consent freely to being destroyed with sex. It’s nearly always METAPHORICAL destruction and highly stylized rage. And, as in the other two examples, there’s nearly always a pre-existing relationship grounded in some degree of trust and appreciation.
There are a few other such scenarios where rage and lust can co-exist, but NONE OF THEM are what’s happening in that scene.
I had people superimposing this narrative on me, once. I went on a few dates with somebody who looked really good on paper but was arrogant and know-it-all-y and explained to me that it’s impossible for women to fake orgasm. I didn’t like him very much. We went on like three dates, I wanted to see if he was just nervous or what, but no. He was an arrogant douchebag. I did have a strong urge to CORRECT him all the time, and when I told some friends about my experience they went, “Awwwwwwwww, enemies to lovers!”
And I had to be like, “No. This kind of dislike and resentment DO NOT coexist with lust or attraction.” And it felt really alienating, because people were viewing my experience through a totally fictional lens, instead of putting themselves in my shoes and seeing the world as I truly experienced it. Here was a guy who was definitely into me, kissed me once and tried to kiss me again, explaining my area of expertise to me. Ew. I mean, EW. GROSS. And my friends thought there was a world in which that could be, like, subconsciously arousing to me.
Blech.
So.
If a story goes out of its way to establish that two people actually really like each other AND THEN they get into a terrible argument, I can buy that they both hate and are attracted to each other—when the attraction comes first. But when it’s all just dislike building to actual, full-on hate? No. The hated person has to EARN forgiveness so that they are no longer perceived with hate, which creates space in the hater’s mind and heart for affection.
Otherwise, no.
I hope the next time you see a hate-and-lust-at-the-same-time story, you question what it would feel like for you. And I think you’ll find that unless the lust/attraction/love pre-dates the hatred, it’s really not believable that someone you hate is also someone your body craves to meld with erotically.
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