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Balzac Paper
Balzac Paper
I am writing this proposal to produce the French classic novel Pere Goriot as a new Netflix Original series. Pere Goriot is going to be a hot drama-filled family reality television show. It will hook its audience with panoramic characters and views. It will have what people want the most: love and money. The Netflix Original series will have all the amazing multidimensional characters but instead of being set in post revolution Paris, it is going to be set in Macau also known as the Las Vegas of the East Asian World. Macau is filled with lights, bling, casinos, and Rastignac’s study of choice - women.
Netflix has so many different films: documentaries, movies, television shows, spanning a multitude of genres: romance, science fiction, murder mystery, nature etc.. But what Netflix doesn’t have is a bomb reality television show that hooks its audience in and one that is filled with more drama than romance. Pere Goriot will be a new reality television with fresh characters, yet connectable characters. Viewers will connect to Pere Goriot because Balzac’s characters aren’t 100% good or bad - they are human. So the viewers would want to discuss with friends the moral dilemmas in the book, who is in the right, what would they do, etc.? The discussion aspect of Pere Goriot will help its publicity i.e. if you aren’t watching it but your friends are and they talk about it, you will most likely watch it too.
Viewers will connect to Pere Goriot because of its similarity to other popular shows. When they see Madame Vanquer’s boarding house with all the odds and ends people of society living together, having family style meals, and inside jokes. The viewers will connect it to the Friends hit television show. When they watch Delphine and Anastasie spending ridiculous amounts of money on the latest fashion trends the viewers will be reminded of The Real Housewives shoes and Keeping up with the Kardashians. But, Pere Goriot is different and original. Pere Goriot is a fast paced story asking the age old question: is unconditional love really the best thing? Old Goriot loves his daughters to the point of him living in poverty only for them to not care for him on his deathbed. This is what the film will focus on, in addition to focusing on Rastignac’s thorough study of women. He will study Madame Beauseant who is a bored housewife with ample time to show him the luxury lifestyle. She will focus on what to wear, and take on the role of Rastignac’s personal stylist. He will attempt to study Anastasie, who indirectly teaches him the social hierarchy. He will then study Delphine, his love. He will study the role of being her boyfriend-escort even though she is married. Rastignac will definitely not be studying Sensei Vanquer’s hospitality and cooking skills.
I am going to switch the setting from post French Revolution France to modern day Macau - the Las Vegas of East Asia. This switch will bring in people who have already read the classic French novel and people who haven’t read it but are interested in Korean television shows, East Asia, romance, friends, parenthood, and drama. Fans of Crazy Rich Asians and Keeping up with the Kardashians will love this new series. Netflix’s audience have shown they love watching modern dilemmas set in a structured society with set social rules. For example, the hit series Bridgerton, a love story set in 1800s England, did exceptionally well for Netflix. Pere Goriot is the next Bridgerton.
Macau, the new and improved setting for the Netflix series, is a place of lights, action, and - most interesting to watch on TV - impulsive decision making. The poker tables almost begging for Eugene to take a seat, and the bartenders weary of Vautrin’s cunningness. Macau is the perfect place to set up the ambitious student Eugene de Rastignac and poor old Father Goriot. They are two sides of the same coin, the money lender and the money borrower. Goriot makes money for his daughters, while Rastignac is never hesitant to gamble with other people’s fortunes.
Eugene de Rastignac’s adventure will start when Rastignac becomes of gambling age and finds his way into a casino and bar. There, under the influence of Vautrin, he orders a drink for Anastasie. She doesn’t drink it. She is too cool to accept drinks from the lowly Rastignac. With Rastignac sad, he tries to leave, only to be thwarted by Vautrin. He informs Eugene that he bought the wrong girl a drink, that Anastasie wasn’t going to date someone with less money and status than her.
Rastignac leaves the bar aware of what he was missing his whole life. He was missing the luxury life. He was missing the snazzy clothes, fancy cars, and the attention of women. Rastignac starts to gamble. He becomes addicted. He becomes so addicted to gambling that he forgets to change his clothes, he just stumbles into his bed in the wee hours of the morning. Never mind calling his protective family who funded the start of his gambling career and new clothes. Eugene, having never sat down and studied game theory, rather just assumed he will win by trial and error at the poker table, ends up homeless in Macau. He enrolls in a gamblers anonymous support group and starts to live in a group home, Sensei Vanquer’s Boarding House. It is a class of misfits, yet he is surprised to learn that the all-knowing Vautrin also resides there. Vautrin doesn’t seem particularly in need of company, so why he chose to live amongst great personalities stupefied Eugene, yet being Eugene, he thought about Vautrin for a moment or two and then thought about himself and how is going to get rich. Rastignac is now a homeless gambler with hope. In Sensei Vanquer’s group home, he befriends an older man by the name of Old Goriot, only to later learn that he is the father of Anastasie, the ice princess who refused his drink, and Delphine, who accepted his drink and supports his gambling ways.
The rest of the story follows suit, but I will add the aforementioned prequel tidbit to the new Netflix original series. Macau, like Paris, has been affected by Haussmannisation, as seen in Figure 1. Macau has the lights of New York City and architectural design like Paris. The film will have many scenes shot from the point of view of a bird, as reflected in Figure 2. This bird’s eye view of the characters will allow the viewer to see things in a different light and focus. They will be able to feel like a fly on the wall, or better yet a spectator watching the story unfold. By looking down and seeing Rastignac carry out conversations with Delphine, the viewers gain a new advantage point that lets them see the characters body language and surroundings; it’s a panoramic immersion of the scene. That’s what’s going to make this drama so popular, because it is so different, it is the dream film for the people watchers of the world.
The characters remain true to themselves in the novel, however some of their personalities are amped up a notch. Madame de Beauseant, Delphine, and Anastasie are fashionable women. They wear garments hot off the runway. Obviously they won't be caught dead wearing the same thing twice. They have VIP access to Macau’s exclusive clubs and casinos. They regularly attend Fashion Week in Milan, Paris, and New York City. They have so much clothes they have multiple closets. But don’t be fooled like Rastignac by mistaking fashion for favorable. For every piece of garment they own they have an insult for you. They are more dimensional than your average mean girl because the show will go through how they were brought up, how their father treats them, and what he expects or doesn’t expect from them. The audience is going to be confused about what to feel. They might have solid thoughts on Anastasie but Delphine in some scenes tries to connect with her love struck father. The sisters were brought up spoiled, the viewer is going to be faced with the dilemma of how can I judge them, they weren’t taught any better. Goriot has not instilled a smidge of gratitude in his daughters and he is the one who suffers, he is living in a boarding house, instead of Macau’s beautifully designed apartments with windows overlooking the sea. Unlike the majority of the East Asian elderly population, Father Goriot isn’t respected in the slightest by his daughters. Anastasie and Delphine only talk to their father when they need money. At the casinos and clubs when they are asked who their father is they say he is nothing of importance.
At the end of the series there will be major character development for Rastignac. He now cares for Goriot but Goriot doesn’t notice how Eugene goes into debt and sells his possessions to pay the doctor to heal him. Goriot is unappreciative at his deathbed and keeps crying out for his daughters. Unconditional love blinded Goriot, he thought that he loves them enough and gives them everything he can, they would care for him, he was wrong. Unconditional love is controversial, people automatically assume it is the better alternative to conditional love. Balzac shows us a different view: that unconditional love can be misguided and can end up driving the other person away.
Eugene is starry eyed when he starts out at the casinos and he is misty eyed when he returns to them following the death of his male teacher Goriot. Rastignac loved spending money on extravagant things, he doesn’t enjoy the luxury per se, he enjoys acquiring it. He studied women throughout the novel and that will be the focus throughout the Netflix series. There is so much to learn about relationships, whether they be a parent-child, teacher-student, or two lovers. With the new Pere Goriot Netflix Original series, viewers around the world can learn about what Balzac thought of the new Parisian personalities with a whole new setting, amped up characters, and panoramic views to mesmerize. With the double themes, Goriot’s unconditional love and Rastignac’s quest for womanly knowledge, the viewers will be pulled in different directions making certain they will watch the next episode! \
Figure 1 (Top); Macau skyscrapers with Haussmannisation on the bottom right
Figure 2 (Bottom); Bird’s eye view of a casino in Macau
Exotic Democracy
Exotic Democracy
“First of all, the ceiling was covered with carpets from Smyrna, their complicated designs standing out on red backgrounds. Then, on all four sides, were hung door-curtains: door curtains from Kerman and Syria, striped with green, yellow, and vermillion; door-curations from Diabekir, of a commoner type, rough to the touch, like shepherds’ cloaks: and still more carpets which could be used as hangings, long carpets from Ispahan, Teernan, and Kermanshah, broader carpets from Schoumaka and Madras, a strange blossoming of peonies and palms, imagination running riot in a dream garden.”
Zola is painting. Emile Zola writes The Ladies Paradise with a plethora of over descriptions to mimic The Ladies Paradise, a fictional overcrowded department store in 19th century Paris. In the beginning of the fourth chapter in The Ladies Paradise there is a paragraph about the extravagant over-the-top carpet display in Mouret’s department store. Zola uses imagery, juxtaposition, irony, and symbolism to emphasize the extravagance and dehumanized nature of the department store.
Carpet displays don’t have an innate excitable quality. They usually are a display a consumer doesn’t even think about, much less an author write about. That’s exactly why Zola chose carpet displays to highlight the genius mind of Mouret. The imagery in this paragraph is similar to that of modern magazines. Zola tells the readers the origin city of the each carpet, the colors, the textures of the fabrics, where the carpets are in the store’s display, how some are unraveled. Zola writes about an over the top carpet display to evoke a certain imagery of glamor to the reader. The Ladies Paradise wasn’t a regular store, it was a department store, you could get clothes, umbrellas, carpets, and more there. It was a new invention. It was an activity, there was a reading room and food stand in the department store, it was a place to spend the entire day. It was a place that celebrated shopping and turned a chore into an experience. The imagery in the text helps the reader understand that and imagine that. A colorful and textural display just for carpets is crazy, and that’s the point, Zola is writing about the transition from boring umbrella mom and pop shops to overwhelming exciting department stores.
Zola says the phrase “imagination running riot in a dream garden.” The word ‘riot’ generally has a negative connotation while ‘imagination’ and ‘dream’ have positive connotations. This juxtaposition of words is deliberate. Zola wants the reader to understand that the Mouret’s department store was a dream, it was new and exciting and a fun place to be. It was the dream of Mouret and the customers, yet in different ways. It was Mouret’s dream because was making money and controlling women. It was the customers dream because they got a good bargain and the latest fashion trends. But it was also a nightmare. The customers are described throughout the book as being powerless to The Ladies Paradise. Its sales, displays, goods, and prices were too much to say no to. They lost their free will, money, and time to The Ladies Paradise, all while thinking it was only a dream.
The setting of this paragraph is weird; it is about a carpet display that covers up the violent origins of paradise. As Zola writes, “the ceiling was covered with carpets…on red backgrounds.” The color red is symbolic to a reoccurring theme throughout the novel. Red symbolizes blood and Zola connects it to the headless mannequins placed throughout the store. Red is the color of the blood that poured out of Mouret’s first wife. Had she not died, The Ladies Paradise would not have existed. Zola keeps on bringing back the color red with images of headless mannequins and bloodstains, an unusual image for a department store. The irony of having a place called paradise built on death is not lost. Zola wants the reader to be conflicted, is death a good thing if it brought about happiness? The carpets in the display cover a stained past, but they are attracting to the consumers. Why did Parisians have a fascination with morgues at the time Zola is writing this? Men, women, and children would often go to morgues as a pastime. They would also go to the new departments stores as a pastime. Red is a symbol of love and death and Zola is bringing that contradiction to the forefront of the reader’s mind throughout the book to show that all the glamor of the department store didn’t come without sacrifices.
Zola writes the cities where the carpets were made throughout this paragraph. Zola writes the city instead of the country, for example “from Beijing” instead of “Made in China.” That extra detail makes some customers believe it is “homemade” or “artisan.” That attention to detail in Zola’s writing mimics Mouret’s attention to detail in his store. Having imported goods from many different places in one store was new to Paris, and Mouret was sure to advertise as such. The customers now have a choice, or so they believe, they can buy carpets from Kerman or Syria. Choice in of itself extravagant, and Mouret capitalizes on it. Imported goods themselves have an aura of exoticness. Zola names the cities the carpets are from to show the level of exotic extravagance the department had.
Zola is writing about the carpet display to show the magnificence of the department store. This seemingly simple paragraph is full of little literary themes and treasures. Zola uses imagery, juxtaposition, irony, and symbolism to show how the department store is entrapping and enticing customers. There is so many distracting sights and colors, they become seduced by the new goods, and don’t question the bloodstains on the floors.
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