Imagine a man writes a series of books that sells over 16 million copies. They become best-sellers praised around the world for their complexity, nuance and richly explored issues. In fact, they become so popular HBO turns them into a TV show with a series for each book. The reviews come out and they’re glowing, but reduce the adaptation to one theme - male friendship. As the series continues, the little hype that this show had ends and it never takes off like the books did, retaining niche audiences and limited press attention. Even fans of the books fail to realise it exists because of a lack of promotion. The show is branded one of the best shows ever made by the small number of critics who write about it, but mainstream audiences are still unaware.
It’s hard to imagine because it wouldn’t happen. If a male author wrote a hugely popular, critically acclaimed book that was turned into a major HBO show, it would be poured over with the same level of hype as Mad Men or The Sopranos. Its stars would have appeared in national publications and in big fashion campaigns. There would be countless features and opinion pieces about the show’s themes, and fashion musings on the style of the characters. And yet, such attention has bypassed the TV adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, a set of four books set in Naples, Italy, that were published in the UK between 2012 and 2015 after first launching in Italy. These novels, which follow the lives of two intelligent girls from childhood to middle age, were a big success, sparking what has been dubbed ‘Ferrante fever’.
The author’s uncompromising tone of voice and willingness to say the unsaid, whether it be about the class system and privilege, the ambivalence of motherhood or the toxicity and intensity that can occur between two female best friends who complete each other made for seriously compelling reading. These are books you can’t put down or stop thinking about, a female-led story told with unflinching, often uncomfortable honesty. Both Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton were gripped. HBO decided to bring it to the small screen, creating one of the largest sets in Europe spreading over two hectares. The casting process took eight months after 9,000 Neapolitans auditioned; this was a large-scale production of epic proportions.
After it first aired, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, but tended to focus on the same theme - female friendship. In other pieces that I’ve written about the books, it’s what I focused on too. Ferrante’s take on the all-consuming and charged nature on this subject is fresh and perfectly observed, but it wasn’t all that the books, nor the show is about - and, in focusing on one very gendered aspect of it, the rest of the material was diminished.
A Brilliant Friend deals with sexism, violence both political and misogynistic, family, love, shame and oppression. It’s as much a piece of social commentary as it is a revolutionary look at the way women are silenced and trapped by the patriarchy, as well as a nuanced look at class struggle and privilege. So why isn’t bigger? One answer could be the show’s subtitles, although the popularity of Squid Game indicated foreign languages aren’t a deterrent to audiences. That said, the Korean thriller has an English dub option, My Brilliant Friend doesn’t. Part of it is related to its billing as a show simply about female friendship. We can’t help but reduce culture about women down to gender in a way we simply don’t for men. We also see culture where women lead the story as primarily for women, regardless of whether the themes explored are universal. It is simply valued less. If the Neapolitan novels were authored by a man about the lives of two boys it would have been described differently. The focus of the reviews and the scale of the hype would have been dramatically changed. It would be valued more.
Of course, all this is part of a much wider cultural issue and the way in which we diminish culture that is perceived to be aimed at women. Take Marian Keyes, the wildly popular Irish author who has sold over 35 million books. Her novels deal with domestic violence, addiction, depression, abortion and bereavement with an impressive lightness of touch that would signal out a male counterpart as a literary genius. Instead, her stories are packaged, sold and dismissed as ‘chick-lit’, which makes women (let alone men) feel embarrassed about buying them.
Compare this treatment to David Nicholls, who wrote One Day and Us, both books about love and family, and it’s a very different game: he was long listed for the Booker Prize. The same goes for Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for her memoir Eat Pray Love, and Cheryl Strayed, who wrote memoir Wild - both of which were made into films. When a man puts pen to paper about how he went to find himself, he’s seen as a free spirited, adventurous iconoclast. When a woman writes a female version of the same story, it’s self-indulgent and tragic. So far-reaching is this problem that author Caroline O’Donoghue launched a podcast to right some of these wrongs - Sentimental Garbage takes culture aimed at women and gives it the critical respect and discussion it deserves.
The issue is society still values the stories and work of men above women. Somehow we still see male art as meaningful and profound when we see women’s culture as emotional, domestic and light. There are still so many stereotypes and biases about women that we expect a story written by women about women to either be sentimental, melodramatic or unsubstantial. Despite the abundance of so much great art written and made by women (I give you Fleabag, I May Destroy You and Mood to name but a few), we still don’t expect female story-tellers to be experimental or high-thinkers. We are endlessly, in my opinion overly, receptive to the idea of male genius, but we often fail to see even the biggest most obvious signs of it in female artistry and, in doing so, we’re missing out on so much great TV, film and books. Let’s hope that My Brilliant Friend has slow-burn potential, and that, in time, it will slowly receive the respect and audience numbers it deserves.
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