Travel Writing: “mirroring” Edith Wharton

For Travel Journalism class, which is run by experienced travel journalist Susan Grossman, we were given a passage by travel writer Edith Wharton and told to take a few introductory words from one of her sentences and “mirror” her style of writing.

You can find some of her travel writings here.

This is what I eventually produced… 

 

Travel Writing a la Edith Wharton

And nowhere in the world in this century could one still see something so awkwardly sophisticated. In this darkened light of muted glamour, amidst mismatched chairs and chandeliers hung too low, men sit tapping cigarettes into grimy ashtrays, leering at the ladies sitting cross-legged on the sofas across from them, their lipstick pressed onto napkins beside them, the abandoned remnants of food smeared onto plates perched precariously on tablecloths between their elbows.

Moonlight filters across their faces from the small cracked windowpanes embedded high into walls, and as the tired clock chimes an hour far behind its schedule, someone exerts a hearty guffaw, attracting nearby eyes to watch her head thrown back in triumphant glee. The laughing woman lowers her head and stamps her heeled knee-high boot on the wooden flooring, causing the men in the basement below her to startle and jerk their heads nervously to the ceiling, almost spilling their cards onto the oblong holed table of green felt. A relieved sigh murmurs through the room, dissipating ever so slightly the pervading haze of cigar smoke, liquor and tension.

Ye old ‘speakeasy’

….. Does it remind you of anywhere, or of anything?

If you’re a fan of old films, this may come to mind: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakeasy

 

Do you know of anywhere that still has something similar to them?  

 

 

The script on teenage pregnancy

 

For the first time in five years, the number of teenage pregnancies in England and Wales has risen, prompting the UK government to pump an extra £20m into schemes to help teenagers get better access to contraception and information.

But it’s already too late for Alfie Patten, the 13-year-old daddy who has become a branded symbol of the nation’s shame – of Broken Britain.

His story, coupled with the recently-released statistics, has reignited the political debate about sex education in schools, parental responsibility, and the media’s influence.

In Hollywood, teen pregnancy is sometimes given the ‘feel-good’ comedy treatment, as in Oscar award-winning Juno (2007).

But has laughter overshadowed reality?

Granted, Juno never pretends to be an accurate depiction of teenage life.

But it is a pregnant teen’s fantasy… supportive parents, a successful adoption, and a happy ending with her boyfriend.

Abstinence-only Hollywood

To be fair, some movies have presented harsher realities of young parenthood, like the autobiographical Riding In Cars With Boys(2001), Where The Heart Is (2000), and the made-for-television film Fifteen And Pregnant (1998).

Where Hollywood falls short, however, is in making movies children can view: the duality of the situation makes it hard to produce “family-friendly” teen-pregnancy films.

This is particularly problematic because of the predominantly abstinence-only education in the US and other countries.

While Juno managed to get nods from both pro-life and pro-choice groups, most films and television shows never quite make it clear whether a condom was involved.

As Newsweek quotes Jane Brown, professor at the University of North Carolina, “What’s missing in the media’s sexual script is what happens before and after.”

Small-screen teen pregnancy

However, notably, in the teen drama One Tree Hill, Nathan is adamant about using birth control, but still gets Hayley pregnant.

And when Peyton and Lucas are finally about to have sex, she murmurs: “You have protection, right?”

Lucas, whose dad fathered both him and Nathan at 17 with two 17-year-old girls, replies: “Have you met my father?”

So Hollywood may be getting somewhere. Maybe.

Statistically speaking

With an estimated 750,000 teenage pregnancies a year (44 per 1000 women), in the US, according to the Guttmacher Institute, it is about time that Hollywood begins to tackle the issue.

Though far behind the US, the UK leads Western Europe in the rate of teenage pregnancy, with twice as many teen births as both Germany and France, the BBC reports.

The media’s approach in UK has been mainly in soaps and documentaries such as Kizzy: Mum at 14 (2007, BBC3).

Bollywood, famous for producing films with virtually no physical contact between lovers, is now tackling the subject in films like Tere Sang (With You).

In Tere Sang, the pregnant 15-year-old girlfriend pregnant refuses to abort the baby – echoing a real-life situation when a 13-year-old girl in Italy was forced to have an abortion in February 2007.

The lovemaking scenes in Tere Sang follow the same trend as in Hong Kong, where the film 2 Young (2005) merely implied the sexual act responsible for the teenage pregnancy.

Art imitating life or vice versa?

Many blame Hollywood for high rates of teenage pregnancies.

But regarding the fact that Alfie’s and Chantelle’s families are cashing in on their story, we can say that reality also encourages such behaviour.

So where does responsibility begin and end? How much blame do we put on the teenagers, their parents… or that omnipotent media monster we all love to hate?