Racebent J&W

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

If any of you've heard of dark_agenda's Racebending Revenge challenge, it's been on my mind to do something like that. I know that Bertie's dialogue is very much reflective of his status as rich and white, but what about a black Jeeves? That's the closest I can keep it in the time period; obviously in most other fandoms we could transplant them to other times or place, but in this case it'd be made more difficult because of Wodehouse's slang.

Link (for those who need screenreaders): http://dark-agenda.dreamwidth.org/7371.html

Thoughts?

Comments

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

Jeeves could quite easily be from the Indian Subcontinent. I think this is my new headcanon.

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Yes, India was the other place I thought of. Or another Asian country perhaps... but I can clearly picture an Indian Jeeves during the Raj, and Bertie as a British aristocrat.

[squeeful.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't even have to change time and place. I don't think you'd have to change anything as I don't remember Wodehouse mentioning anything other than dark hair and possibly eyes for Jeeves.

[schreckschraube.livejournal.com]

Well, Wodehouse did write Coneybear's speech into his stories, so there's some "black slang" in canon... but if you want to use THAT slang, that's a different question...

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I meant Bertie's usual slang rather than the black slang... I don't know if I could get away with making Bertie black or even mixed-race, as that would (AFAIK) take away much of his status and therefore the Beetie-Jeeves dynamic.

[schreckschraube.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I get it! I thought it was just about making Jeeves black, which is of course a smaller challenge.

[krisreinke.livejournal.com]

Given that Jeeves is never described in detail?
Given that it is utterly possible, in the time of the Empire, for a valet to be from any of the colonies?
Given that any valet would be expected to speak according to the job requirements? (IE -- indistinguishably from his employer - save that the employer can be less of a 'gentleman'.)
I think it would make little difference re: Jeeves/Bertie.
Might make a difference re" Mabel/Bingo - but those two have very little screen time.

[softestbullet (from livejournal.com)]

There's a Wodehouse/Avatar: the Last Airbender fusion: http://archiveofourown.org/works/489259 :D It works b/c the Avatar world has tea, rich layabouts, and manservants, and canonically has a mysterious amount of modern American vernacular, so the language isn't too big of a stretch. I could see a lot of fantastic settings working with the slang if you hand-wave it. (In spaaaace with Bertie played by Siddig El Fadil???)

And of course Stephen Fry is Jewish, although I only recall that fact showing up in fic once. One of the non-WWII-avoiding ones.

For me the difficulty of the canon setting is that I wouldn't want everyone to be disgustingly racist -- but I can't really think of a way of them not being disgustingly racist. :< As much as Jeeves gets to take revenge for slights against him, he doesn't really have the power to make them stop, you know? Maybe if you went the "Bertie's an unreliable narrator and in reality, he's less flippant and the Jeeves/Wooster relationship is more equal" route. They could spend even more time in jazz clubs...