was posting about this elsewhere, but it genuinely drives me up the fucking wall how many "retellings" of classic myths and novels are just "the same story but we have all the characters talking like therapy tiktokers now."
I think "feminist retellings" "racebent retellings" etc are popular at the moment because they are reassuring to the reader - you won't have to encounter any distasteful attitudes or bygone social structures except through a lens of cartoon villainy, all our heroes will be right-thinking and their obstacles easily vanquished by a stern lecture. But the thing about these retellings is that they have nothing at all to say about the original text they're ostensibly engaging with; in fact, they're usually quite smug about the fact that they are not engaged with the text, that they are smarter and more progressive than a book written in 1840 and therefore that it is more moral to read them than it is to read the originals and grapple with how to approach them in a world where the values they present are no longer applicable. (See also: my review of Kalynn Barron's My Dear Henry, a book which set my hair on fire and not in a good way.) And it truly does not have to be like this: there are retellings that have something meaningful to say about the original, that are in an active dialogue with the past instead of snobbily dismissing everything that came before them out of hand. Wide Sargasso Sea. Wrath Goddess Sing. Mary Reilly. James. The Chosen and the Beautiful. But in order to do this well, you need to have the humility and readiness to admit that the classics still have something to teach, instead of the conviction that any book that isn't easily digestible and agreeable is just dumb and bad and you can do it better.