When Shakespeare Got Cool
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- What's so bad about "low culture" anyway?
Thumbnail by Nick Woodcock
Set by Hannah Raine
/ broeydeschanel
Music in this vid:
When Doves Cry - Orgy
• Orgy - When Doves Cry ...
System of a Down - Toxicity - Medieval Style - Bardcore
• System of a Down - Tox...
Lovefool - Iconique
• Iconique - Lovefool (T...
Lovefool - New Found Glory
• Lovefool
I Want You to Want Me - Chantal Claret
• I Want You to Want Me ...
Scholarly sources:
French
books.google.c...
Marche
books.google.c...
Nunes
journals.opene...
York
books.google.c...
Unnamed Films Shown (In Order of Appearance):
As You Like It (1936)
Macbeth (1961)
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (1935)
Romeo and Juliet (1954)
Chimes at Midnight (1966)
Throne of Blood (1957)
West Side Story (1961)
Hamlet (1996)
Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Instagram: / broey_deschanel
Twitter: / deschanelbroey
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If you didn't see your favourite Shakey film here, it's because it didn't fit with the thesis of the vid + deserves a video all on its own! So expect to see stuff about Titus, Maqbool, My Own Private Idaho... or even Much Ado About Nothing in the future :) Thanks for watching guys
Hello! Thank you for the vids you make
The latest tempest film is gorg
Yo, even Maqbool! That's amazing! Also, I'm wondering which Much Ado About Nothing you'll feature in your next video.
Yes, please! I'd love videos about Haider, Omkara and other Indian Shakespeare adaptations.
My Own Private Idaho is a video I look forward to
Honestly having the opening of Romeo + Juliet being read by a newscaster is brilliant.
Indeed
I agree that is kind of iconic
Pretty garbage
Troma one-upped them with Lemmy Kilmister in their version.
That what make’s it great
My favourite Shakespeare adaptation is the Mean Girls... Let's not pretend it's not basically the plot of Julius Caesar for a moment.
you're right lol.
Mean girls is julius ceasar, but with hot girls lmao.
puts cady's betrayal on a whole new perspective.
why should caesar get to stomp around like a giant while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet?
What's so great about Caesar? Brutus is just a cute as Caesar, okay? Brutus is just as smart as Caesar. People totally like Brutus as much as they like Caesar. And when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody? Huh? Because that's NOT was Rome was about! WE SHOULD TOTALLY JUST. STAB. CAESAR!
@@joselocalau123 Gretchen Weiners has cracked....
@@joselocalau123 did you just write it all by heart or did u jump back to the video every few seconds? 😂
@@joselocalau123 you deserve flowers for this comment 💐🌺🌷🌺💐
The way you talk about shakespeare being reinterpreted as high culture reminds me of the way that beatles got reinterpreted as "classic" when it was original popular music. Great pop music, but still teen girl art.
A "classic" doesn't have to be high culture right? Most classics were popular music at some point.
I was literally just thinking about this. I remember when One Direction was a huge thing people would get pissy when someone else compared them to The Beatles, but like, I think there's validity to that.
Are you calling The Beatles "teen girl art"? Really? Yes they were insanely popular with teens when they started, but they didn't tailor their music to teens once they stopped touring.
Totally! The Beatles were a boy band with lots of teenage girls as part of their fan base and now they're considered a classic for older men.
@@Sishel yeah so in other words they were initially teen girl art
Technologically incompetent teacher teaching Shakespeare story: My sophomore English teacher once projected Othello (1995) onto the screen, and all was going well until we made it to the love scene. Apparently she had never seen it before, and she was typing on her laptop when she heard some of us laughing, and then she looked up to see some R rated content happening in front of her class of 15 year olds. She jumped in front of the screen thinking that would stop it, but the projector just played the movie on her body. She proceeded to shout, “They’re doing it *on my stomach* !!!” And when she realized what she had said she shut the projector off and walked back to her desk in shame. We still laugh about it to this day, and I consider it to have been an educational experience, because if a good old fashioned sex joke isn’t in the true spirit of Shakespeare I don’t know what is
i would've paid good money to see that
Thanks for this story! Needed a laugh today 😂
Amazing
@@rikkTV go back to Reddit loser
She didn’t glean that would happen in the play where “the beast with two backs “ is one of the most famous lines?
The sentence "Why is Shakespeare so notoriously boring?" slapped me in the face. Like I was so caught up in my love for Shakespeare that I forgot high school English classes exist
I loved Shakespeare even before the modern adaptations came out even though I was just a kid. But then they casted Leo as Romeo. For a tween in the 90s a movie with Leo in it was golden😄
Maybe I was lucky but in my school we had a lot of field trips because I lived near Stratford Ontario so 3 trips a yr made a huge difference; live theatre is always going make a difference. After watch a performance of King Lear I was in a daze for a week; The Taming of the Shrew was set in the Fellini era and everyone was whizzing around the stage in mini Ferraris it was a hoot. After that the text was no longer so rebarbative.
I was that kid that got a bit too into it when we were reading Hamlet 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
My english did a great job teaching us. Entire class cried at Othello
Definitely loved Shakespeare in HS
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, and many of the other movies you mentioned, managed to erase the active hatred of Shakespeare's work instilled in me by English teachers and insufferably boring, long-winded old movies. These new, 'postmodern' adaptations helped me understand Shakespeare's writing and inspired me to actually read his works.
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the film critics."
I do love the baz luhrmann version in all its campy glory!!i think because he went all in with the ridiculous aesthetic and accurate dialogue is the reason why it works so well. Only abt 2 mins into the video but these r just my preliminary thoughts
Ehi ehi I am a film critic and I love Romeo + Juliet with all of my "not grown up yet" teenage heart 🤫😉
lets b honest leo being in that film probs helped with that too
@@clarissa1811
I like the movie despite Leo, not because of him.
@@Itcouldbebunnies yeah im talking about teen girls in the 90s who probs watched this bc of him
The '96 version of Romeo and Juliet helped a lot of people understand the language of Shakespeare's time by applying the old English to a modern setting. I really enjoyed it.
This is so true....for me at least! I was in early high school when it came out and it was a game changer. I was obsessed with that movie, and it made me completely engaged in Shakespeare when I started studying his works in school soon after. I have no doubt that wouldn't have happened without that movie.
Yes! Love this movie so much.. it's like a light bulb goes off when you watch it.like "oh that's slang" or "OoOh that was a sick burn!" Because context is everything and you just don't get that reading the dry text in English class while living in a world a hundred years removed from the source material!
I disagree.
Correction, none of Shakespeare's plays are in Old English. They're all in Early Modern English. Old English dates back to the 5th century.
Agreed. Shakespeare is so far removed from modern common vernacular that it should come with a translation on the opposite page the way Chaucer does. Sure, if you sit there twisting your brain around you can understand part of it, but not all of it, and not intuitively (and certainly not most of the jokes). The same-language-modern-setting made it make sense.
Honestly, all anyone could say when we watched the 60s version of Romeo and Juliet was "Is Romeo played by Zac Effron?"
Thank god someone said it, I thought I was the only one !
Right!? South African here and this was my class' first take on that film
Honestly Leonard whiting and Zac Efron must be doppelgängers the similarity is uncanny
Maybe Zac time travelled! haha
Me watching this movie: OOh hi, Michael York!
The existence of a BBC TV movie adaptation of Macbeth where he's a chef played by James McAvoy is a fact I feel everyone should know
There's also a PBS TV movie adaptation starring Patrick Stewart set in WW1 which is fantastic
literally my fave one!! ShakespeaRE-told
u just unlocked a deep memory... sitting in sophomore year english class watching a clip of CHEF macbeth lmao 😭
THANK YOU.
I gotta find this NOW!
i mean... if anyone who experienced the 90s and late 2000s say they didn't monologue in their heads while in the middle of a blockbuster isle they're for sure lying.
Notice it had a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie in the background too? Nostalgia!
That Deep Impact poster, yo! You want a monologue? Two words: Morgan Freeman.
I was a small child in blockbuster days yet I still remember wandering the isles in sorrow
@@emmaforde3745 i think it was the fluorescent lightning that made us all feel like the main character in a somber psychological drama.
@@tleilaxu42 I think Morgan Freeman is the nearest an american actor could be to a shakespearean actor. The way he delivers monologue would have been the joy of the Bard.
I honestly think some of the teen era Shakespeare, particularly 10 things, owes a bit of its rise to Clueless, itself a teen pop adaptation of a Jane Austen book. I wonder if you could go back decade by decade to see if the adaptation of public domain works to teen pop culture is a running trend in the industry.
Such a good point!
Yes! I’m currently reading emma and I was maybe the 3rd chapter in when I realised it was literally the original clueless. I’d like to see more of this happen tbh
it's like how She's the Man is basically a movie adaptation of 12th Night
Not only Jane Austen, many classics became teen films. My favorite Cruel Intentions is a 90s teen version of the 18th century book Les Liaisons dangereuses
You can also look at the influence of public domain on pop-music. Many of the most popular songs over the past 20 years are rooted in classical music. I mean, great art is timeless, and perhaps one might wonder if great art even requires a certain form or if the art is more elemental than the form.
To add to your point about how "low culture" is now code for "teen culture," texts popular with girls and women tend to be perceived as "low culture." E.g. the Twilight books, boy bands. You can also see texts shift from high to low culture as it's adopted and celebrated by more and more girls and women, a prime example of that is the shift of perception of BBC's Sherlock from it's premiere where it was critically praised, then as girls and women began to celebrate it more frequently than men and boys, the perception of Sherlock shifted along with it.
Or maybe the show just got bad
Please, Twilight was just a bad story and an even worse movie. Fact is: much of the so-called "girly" works are a concentrated mix of sentimental, horny and cheesy emotions, without any depth or maturity. And so could be said about "boyish" works, too, only in other kinds of emotions and visuals.
There are WAY more subtle and deep works about childhood and youth than the "popular" ones.
Or an example in other direction, where bands like the Beatles and Rolling Stones (with their fanbases mostly consisting of young women at first) became increasingly perceived as "real, good music" as the amount of men in their fanbases increased. I guess the aging of the fanbase contributed too
@@Laurelin70 The "Fast" movies are legit a meme of being "trashy" yet they still sell somehow very well. Then there's the whole '70-'90s action genre which goes from just awful to some classics like Heat. There's an ebb and flow to these movies and shows. Sometimes the clearly gendered movies are just BAD like zero excuses, just full of stereotypes, set pieces other movies used over and over. Like when my mom watched Lifetime I noticed a lot of movies seemed like a low-grade horror movie with some abusive plot angles. Men's action movies normally full of death/explosions, saving the girl and or regaining some sort of lost honor.
@@thesalanian the show also got worse over time, but the fanbase being primarily teenage girls did have a factor in some ppl disliking it
to be honest, I find the trend of self serious shakespeare to be quite annoying. I couldn't really put a finger on why until I saw this video. lol. It's like they think they're being more faithful to the text, but really they're not... It's like they're afraid to go all in.
Even the comedies can be utterly ridiculous (Twelfth Night, Much ado about nothing, The Tempest, and A Midsomer Night's Dream anyone?) Some of them don't need a seriously serious adaptation, have fun with it, Billy Shakes style.
Couldn't you say the same of something like the Bible. Stern believers bemoan unorthodox sacred text interpretation, while praying to images of a white, blonde Christ that doesn't resemble the appearance of a middle-eastern man. Or they uphold images of angels as benevolent and beautiful winged humans. When the very bible actually states they're absolutely terrifying monsters, capable of destroying entire cities in a single night.
@@fedearbelaez4912 Regardless of your interpretation, Bible adaptation is usually an attempt to convey a true story accurately. When you start monkeying with the interpretation you run the risk of betraying the author’s intent, which is pretty bad when the author is assumed to be God.
Really great presentation and comments - re self serious shakespeare it does depend on when you were young. I'm a prof who was young in the '90s and one of my colleagues seriously referred to all of Branagh's project as 'that populist shit'. Similarly, Depardieu's Cyrano de Bergerac - I'm in the French Dept. -- was dismissed by all. And these guys were ALL teaching post modernist approaches to criticism and semiotics, deconstructionist theory, the mind reels.
Gary Medlock This is perhaps why many Bible adaptations tend to be of the New Testament. All of the books in NT are human-written interpretations of what is presumed to be the will of God. The Old Testament’s books, though, even secularly, are of unknown to dubious authorship.
I think If Shakespeare was active during our time he wouldn’t creat his plays the same exact way he did during his time. He wrote based on what was modern to him, his art is timeless because it’s open to interpretations that can fit the modernity of every era. To everyone.
Macbeth is pretty contemporary idk what you mean
he would probably write for Marvel movies or something
CrateofStolenDirt He might. I’d like to see what the Shakespeare version of Avengers would be like
@CrateofStolenDirt why on earth not?
@@McDonaldsCalifornia i feel like he would write for Grey's anatomy
On the topic of Shakespeare not originally being particularly highbrow, it's worth mentioning that Titus Andronicus was probably his most popular and profitable work within his lifetime, and definitely what launched him to 'stardom' at the time. Which I find fascinating, given the later centuries-long backlash against it that buried the play until well into the 20th Century. Apparently past critics couldn't handle the idea that their idol got his start doing trashy exploitation. ;-)
Also, I just have to say: Ethan Hawke delivering the Hamlet soliloquy while glumly moping through a Blockbuster is one of the most unintentionally funny things I've seen in awhile. That's so pomo I not sure even the movie grasps its own pomoness. (and that HAT!)
Not to mention, many critics to this day cite Titus Andronicus as potential evidence that William Shakespeare may have has ghostwriters making plays under his name, the argument being that since Titus Andronicus is so much more viscerally violent than all the other plays, it must be someone else’s work
@@ianbyrne465 I know, it's so funny. That's like a Lord Of The Rings fan trying to claim Peter Jackson didn't actually write/direct Meet The Feebles.
Titus Andronicus was the OG slasher film
I don't trust anyone who doesn't find She's the Man hilarious
Yesss
I don't know. I don't think I would trust someone who thinks it IS hilarious. Cross-dressing comedies are pretty lowbrow. Drag jokes are too obvious
The only thing that was funny was the guy putting a tampon in his nose
I've mostly used liking The Mummy (Brendan Fraser version, obviously) to figure out if I can trust someone, but She's the Man would work too. I definitely still sing 'Welcome to Illyria'
eh. too many obvious jokes that make me cringe more than laugh
When my English teacher taught us Romeo and Juliet she put on Baz Luhrmann’s film and had us analysis the differences between the two. Honestly it was amazing and as someone who struggled in English it was the one time I actually enjoyed English. We spend half a year analysing that film and script and even 9 years later I still remember those lessons. I managed to go from the bottom of my class to the top and it inspired my love for Shakespeare.
My teacher showed both to teach us this lesson about how Shakespeare was “low culture” back in the day
I love that Americans can spend months on one thing in literature class. We covered Shakespeare in 2 weeks. Which was slow since we often did 2-3 poems a class.
@@IzzysTravelDiaries no, I'm British. it was for my GCSE
@@kateg1355 We have about 10-20 novels to read every year in high school.
@@IzzysTravelDiaries we had 2 books for the exams and the whole exams would be about each book so it went very in-depth
By the same margin, I think Hip Hop (which still holds the stigma of being lowclass by many) might become regarded as high class music in the future like how Beatles and Jazz used to be viewed as trashy at the time.
Hindsight
As a Beatles fan that happens to be black, one can only hope. People still call rap “low brow” while only listening to the more shallow songs played in the top 40 Hits on the radio. I like that those songs sell and the artists know their market so well, there’s a time and place for cool beats with generic lyrics. Just as there is for poetry set to a beat. As much as I’d love for hip hop to be taken more seriously, it seems like we’re in for a wait. Thanks though!
@@darylesells19 heh, i totally feel that, a lotta people usually bring up people like cardi B and 6ix9ine ( their music isn't even bad imo they have bangers) when criticizing/ dismissing the genre but fail to mention poets and storytellers like Lupe or Kendrick. Not to mention the countless other subgenres that don't get the spotlight, I'm also hoping (and expecting) that the stigma against hip hop will slowly fade away with time 🙏
we're already getting there tbh
Yeah, no way. If the hood keeps playing it, it’ll never become high class. Funk and blues isn’t high class yet, neither is old American folk. Plus, unless it’s Kendrick Lamar or someone like him, it won’t fly at all.
I always imagine when people at the globe first heard the first "your mama joke" in Titus Andronicus ("Villian, I have done thy mother") someone went and screamed "ooooooohhhh" and then everyone laughed... XP
That is almost certainly what happened. Despite what people may think, we haven’t changed much.
my own private idaho (1991) starrung river phoenix and keanu reeves was also inspired in a play by Shakespeare (Henry IV)
i was looking for this comment!! mopi is my favorite movie of all time and it’s always so overlooked
@@em-cj2zw It's literally SO GOOD!! I love it so much
LOVE My Own Private Idaho, and River Phoenix
@@stephaniel2850 the campfire scene is my daily dose of happiness
@@stephaniel2850 living w/o the campfire scene = not living
There's a hindi movie named "Haider" which is loosely adapted from hamlet. It's a beautiful adaption,I'd suggest it to anyone who likes Shakespeare.
Yes, the adaptations that target "Youth Culture" are so much more memorable and accessible. It probably even got more teens to engage with the original text than those other "High Brow" films.
@CrateofStolenDirt It's not resentment, adaptations are quite frequently difficult to pull off. It's about capturing the tone and spirit of the ideas presented.
You don't need a stuffy, unimaginative, one to one translation of the original work. This was always meant for the masses, thanks for teaching me a new word m8. 👍
@CrateofStolenDirt My overall point was that if it helps others to appreciate "classic" work. What harm is it to you?
10 Things I Hate About You is a masterpiece and made me love Shakespeare
Agreed, it’s a classic 😁
I remember our theater and English teacher booked a local cinema for us to watch Romeo+Juliet on a big screen. Honestly can't remember at all why or the reasoning but I'll never forget "Put down your sword *crash zoom into 'sword' branded hand gun*" of any shakespeare adaptation I'm probably most nostalgic about it. More ganzo Billy adaptations.
That bit of the movie’s got to me my favourite piece of editing ever
There were other classical adaptations like Clueless (1995) that was adapted from Emma and Cruel Intensions (1999) that was adapted from Dangerous Liaisons.
wanna make young people hate reading and classics? explain it in the most bland way possible and act all high and mighty about it.
the modern, not as serious adaptations, make what one would see as boring and tedious, fun and interesting.
IT WASNT EVEN MEANT TO BE EFFING HIGH ART! gosh, the educated elite are full of themselves.
Okay but Romeo + Juliet was eye opening to me as a kid, mostly because the modern setting, costumes and sets and editing but mostly - the modern line delivery helped me understand the context of the story.
10 Things is great but in high school drama class, we were shown Shakespeare Abridged.
Oh boy.
Still waiting for a Midsummer Night's Dream in the same style of Romeo + Juliet. God, how rad would that be? Zendaya would be the best Helena
Edit: Ethan Hawke having an existential breakdown monologue in blockbuster is absolutely a mood forever.
In Alec Guinness' diary, he wrote about Romeo + Juliet which he didn't like. But he found himself going back with his wife and concentrating more on the performances. He ultimately decided that Harold Perrineau was the best Mercutio he'd ever seen. This is someone who'd seen Gielgud and Olivier play the role.
❤️ Harold Perrineau
I find that Shakespeare's work is also a result of nostalgia to an extent. He invented a lot of words and phrases we still use today and gives the impression that this was "peak" English or something along those lines. He has so much work that had a mass audience so its kind of understandable how so many people were familiar with the stories and hence kept getting remakes etc and that enhances the sense of "high culture", esp as time goes on and we become more and more divorced from the reality of who he wrote for. btw love the set up you have!! you look beautiful
I went to the premiere of Branagh's 4 hr Hamlet on Jan 1 1996 in an almost empty small screening room and 2 older women would not shut up about all the idioms we think of as contemporary -- probably more in that play than any other -- I was SO frustrated I sat in my seat and watched it all over again so 8 hours later ... It was worth it. And your point is well taken!
I’m a diehard Shakespeare girl and I love seeing films and renditions done in traditional elizabethan style. That being said, the 90s/2000s versions of shakespeare are so creative and captivating, I have grown to love them as my favorites. It’s not about line for line accuracy. It’s about making Shakespeare known as the genius he was at not letting his work get dusty and pretentious, but interesting and astonishing as it was in his time.
In high school, we got to watch Scotland, PA, where Joe McBeth and his wife take over a MacDonald's-esque fast food restaurant in the town of Scotland, PA. It was fantastic. The "blood" on Lady Mcbeth's hand was a splatter of deep fryer oil from when she and McBeth pushed Duncan in the deep fryer.
I absolutely adored Romeo + Juliet when it came out, and I continue to now. Plus, I love Baz Lurhmann's style in general. It was extremely difficult to go from that and then try to was the '60"s version in English class. Also, much love for 10 Things I Hate About You.
I agreed with pretty much everything you said here. I’m a theatre student currently taking a class on Shakespeare in film and I think the only not ‘self-important’ movie we’ve seen was Romeo + Juliet (we also saw the 60s version) and I was surprised at the amount of people that disliked it. I personally loved how earnest it was in its own ridiculousness and thought it was a fascinating exercise in recontextualizing the text. I also love that you mentioned the detail of historical accuracy and the mish-mash of costume and setting that the Elizabethans had because I remember learning about that in my theatre history class, and thought it fascinating. Shakespeare’s plays have always been for the masses, it’s time we remember that!
I grew up on gansta' rap and Nintendo, and I found modern interpretations an easy way in to what Shakespeare had to offer. I found that Shakespeare is like modern rap today. And like most of today's pop-culture, Shakespeare rebooted stories and borrowed styles to give us something unforgettable. He actually wasnt that original but damn he had game!
Currently dreaming of one day putting on a version of Midsummer set in an early 2000s rave so this video was just perfect for me ♡♡
I' m assuming this comment means you've seen A Midsummer Night's Rave? I love that movie.
Go check out Rave Macbeth as well :)
look up bright summer night on youtube for a version set in a houseparty!
"post-modernist" is essentially the "I can't count higher than ten so I stopped counting" of art movement names.
I recently watched Romeo + Juliet with my 15yr old nephew. At first he was a wary but as we continued watching he really got into it & by the end he had moved right up to TV screen. I really think the camp & MTV-ness of the movie act as a great way to allow anyone to traverse the difficulty of the unfamiliar verse
I SPENT ABOUT THREE HOURS DEALING WITH HOW SLOW PHOTOSHOP IS ON MY LAPTOP SO YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW WONDERFUL IT WAS TO SEE THIS VIDEO.
you truly hit the nail on the head with "youth culture is the new low culture" omg
So, how old were you guys when you realized that the way they spoke in Shakespeare plays wasn't the social norm back in the 1500s?
Ah yes ... that good old iambic pentameter .....
@@evelynbaron2004 Wish we could go back to the good old days, when people spoke proper. Not like these kids with there new fangled way of talking. Any verse longer then 5 metrical feet is too long for me.
Romeo + Juliet in English class in 2020. The students say, "it's so old!" Ten minutes later a hand goes up and a girl says, " Miss, is that Leo....something face?" And then there is an audible sound of admiration and bewilderment.
OMG, I'm old. 😫
That’s literally how most people respond to that movie. 🤣
Before even watching past the intro my take:
Shakespeare wrote for the stage, it is meant for a visual and interactive performance...not to be read.
Edit: yes changing the adaptations to bring back the "low brow" elements makes it fun and more digestible again.
I love She's The Man 😍⚽
ha, yes thank you for making the point that Shakespeare needs to be red aloud at least. It makes it so much more accessible
@@paraboo8994 exactly. Once I figured that out I would read out loud passages I had difficulty understanding and watched film adaptations (yes even Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet) to better understand the emotion and the importance of the scene. Macbeth was probably the most fun to "act out" while I was reading it for 11th grade.
I was fortunate enough to see Sir Patrick Stewart in a stage performance of The Tempest around 2006/2007, and also many talented smaller theater productions of Midsommer and Romeo and Juliet to finally appreciate the timeless themes in Shakespeare's plays.
honestly? this. i only figured out what was missing from my enjoyment of his work when i watched a production of the midsummer night's dream somewhere on youtube instead of just reading the lines off the books.
i completely agree. when i was reading r+j in 9th grade english class, i found i understood the language used so much better when i read it aloud. i even acted out the balcony scene with my friend at my house because act 2 scene 2 was homework for that night and it was a lot easier to understand both the actions and the emotions taking place in the scene than it was when i was sitting in a quiet classroom and simply reading in my head while trying not to fall asleep because i couldn't concentrate.
Yesss this video reminds me of contrapoints videos, in the best way possible!
My teacher instead of showing us some old dusty Romeo and Juliet, she played
Romeo + Juliet
My teacher showed us both lmao
My first exposure to Shakespeare as a child was Gnomeo and Juliet.
I'm reminded of the 30+ post Facebook brawl I had with an astrophysicist friend about Shakespeare as pop culture. His repeated stance was that Shakespeare writing for mass consumption was "my interpretation", as opposed to the "documented historical fact" that it is. Tell you what, buddy, I'll defer to you regarding the relative velocity necessary to cause red shift if you trust the cat with a lit degree on The Bard.
Sounds like he was arguing from the perspective of a hard scientist? Don’t get me wrong, you’re in the right, but looking through the lens of scientific theory, the fact that he was a populist writer can’t be proven.
@@totorod I mean, from the very limited perspective of someone with zero understanding of the text and the time, sure, but that's hardly scientific.
Elizabethan London isn't some vague prehistory. We know how The Globe functioned. We have critical reviews, actor's diaries. The surviving plays themselves. This isn't conjecture.
The 90s Romeo + Juliet was the only version I didn’t fall asleep 15 minutes into.
Loved it. I'll add that Romeo + Juliet isn't particularly a Post Modern interpretation, it's reverence for the original places it closer to Modern than Post Modern. My interpretation of the cycle you've described so well is that Post Modern Shakespeare didn't take root until teen inspired movies let go of the source material.
(Romeo+Juliet = Clunky Beautiful Modernism, 10 Things I Hate About You = Post Modern Perfection).
(Modernist Structuralism puts together classic values with modern structures Vs. Post-Structuralism smashing the classic to pieces but keeping what meant the most to the characters who seem to have either read or are reenacting the source).
This is the first I've seen her face, it's quite cute. ❣️
I will love Romeo + Juliet with all my heart until the day I die no matter how many people tell me they hate it.
Your outfit/background in the beginning is so cute!!
I read Shakespeare in school (like most people), and was always a bit put off by the inaccessible language. But I really appreciate films like 10 Things I Hate About You or She's The Man, because those were easily accessible Shakespearan adaptations. It made learning more about Shakespeare and his work fun, and actually enjoyable
I like the on camera set up ya got going on
Gotta love how cyclical things are. I was in high school in ‘96; right in the Gen X target demo for R+J. We all thought it was cool, and our parents and teachers thought it was ridiculous. Now, we’re in our forties and fifties and some of my fellow Xers act like today’s pop culture is an affront to everything.
I think there are a lot of people who form an idea of what cool is, and hold onto it despite time flying by.
Listening to Romeo + Julie made me appreciate the poetic language in a way just reading them never could. And hey, young Leonardo 💕
I always hope these kind of adaptations make a comeback
I really appreciate seeing a smaller/medium sized channel put subtitles on the videos :)
That description of watching the 1960's movie in school was super accurate for me except my whole class was flipping out that Romeo looked like Zac Efron and all the girls were comparing which actor was the hottest. It was a very popular film in my high school
Why is nobody talking about Tromeo and Juliet? Coolest adaptation of shakespeare as far as I'm concerned
Ok, bell is on. It's almost like having a cinema degree without the bs&t.
Me seeing this title: finally someone calling out Shakespeare as B-movie hack populist writer
Wow, this intersects so many of my personal interests; my Love for Shakespeare, my millenialism, my postmodern sensibilities, and my work discussing cultural capital and high/low art! I vividly remember watching a VHS of Much Ado About Nothing as a child of about 8 at my grandmothers and loving it despite only barely keeping up with the swedish subtitles.
I guess as a kid I would have agreed with those "modernist intelectuals" and said that Romeo + Juliet was low art trash just because of that experience. Now as an adult who's seen multiple plays (translated to more or less modern swedish) I think I must confess that the more post modern an adaptation is, the higher the chances are that I will like it. My favourite so far has been Romeo & Juliet, where Juliet was mute and communicated through sign language!
This makes me think of how The Candle Waster have created multiple webseries on yt all based on different shakespeare plays. Nothing Much to do, their adaptation of Much ado about Nothing, manages to follow the story so well while also making it incredibly easy to forget you aren't watching real teenagers from new zealand mess around on their vlog channels. The writing and acting is just amazing, and I'd much rather watch it then an "accurate" portrayl of the play. Definetly one of my favorite things on youtube
omg I love nmtd!!
I've never found Shakespeare boring, but that might just be me (plus I live in Southern Oregon and have parents who are members of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival who get me tickets for plays for my birthday, so that may be a part of it too).
This comment made me a little sad. I'm in Central Oregon and had plans to see A Misdummer Night's Dream this year before everything that's happened. I've never gotten to see an in person performance.
@@Aster_Risk the sun’ll come out, tomorrow. And OSF will always be here for you when you next get a chance :)
same. the old “high brow” movies didn’t really distance me. Like, hamlet, macbeth (and my favorite) titus andronicus can’t really be made preppy and aimed at teens unless it follows this weird trend of the teenage murder mystery that has yielded not great results
i feel like the clueless and cruel intentions fit into this category as well, tho they are not based on shakespeare but other classic works
That "monologuing in Blockbuster" scene gave me a sudden and shockingly tactile flashback to the video rental shops of my childhood and adolescence. For a second I could feel the texture of the outer surface of old VHS tape boxes.
Edit: Also, great video!
RUclips just recommended this right after I cried over an assignment about Macbeth
I have been waiting for someone to make a video like this and I’m quite frankly blown away. The editing, script-writing and delivery are top-notch, and this video made me think about Shakespeare in a way I hadn’t before. Thank you for making this.
I unionically started loving shakespeare once I started watching it on my own out of school.
Honestly I feel this way about almost everything I read in english class!
@@ediecote1466 school really has a way of sucking the life and art out of everything, especially literature.
@@nowhereman6019 part of me wonders now if my opinion of Othello will have changed, but hating that play is kind of foundational to my entire being so I'm not gonna risk it.
@@sanityisrelative why?
@@sanityisrelative That's hilarious. I get where you're coming from. I've had stuff in my life like that where it's some ridiculous part of my personality that I'm too stubborn to fix. Like, I hated the book The Island of the Blue Dolphins. It's been 21 years since I tried to read it, and yet I still tell people I hate it.
I was 16 when this movie came out and I loved it. The soundtrack was always playing, carried the CD with me everywhere. Had a poster of Leo in his Hawaiian shirt. Good times.
If that 'To Be or Not To Be' speech in the action section of a Blockbuster didn't end with Hawke picking out a copy of Die Hard to watch, the screenwriters need to give back their salaries.
I absolutely adored R+J when I was young and feared that going back to it would be a cringey experience replete with embarrassing confessions of loving scenes that now play as cheesy or corny or at least more so than intended. I was pleasantly shocked at how well it holds up as a, well, you said it.
Also, O is a surprisingly faithful retooling of the play. It's low key one of the best of the bunch.
Immediately after seeing this video I knew I had to go and watch R+J and I was not disappointed, I probably would have never given it a second thought. Idk what your opinions on the National Theatre productions/recordings but you should check out the show they just did for Midsummers. I think it's so great to change and evolve Shakespeare even though there will always be those fuddy duddies.
Also neat to see your face!
Neat trivia: they risked death of the cast and crew in order to get a neat shot during a hurricane.
It's the scene on the beach when Mercutio dies I think.
LOVE YOUR WORK! Thank you for articulating this. Baz's R+J forever invited me to curiously find my way into Shakespear's work.
I mean, when we watched Romeo + Juliet in class I was reading Hamlet so the general air of "ugh Shakespeare" among my classmates was pretty jarring.
My 9th grade English teacher was a movie buff and showed us the Cukor, Zeffirelli, and Luhrmann versions of Romeo and Juliet. We spent literal months on the play between reading it aloud in class, watching it, and discussing it. The guy taught a movie-based elective for upper classmen. He was very serious about film adaptations of fiction.
I love Romeo + Juliet... But I was a pre-teen starting middle school when it came out, so there's a lot of nostalgia wrapped in it
I actually enjoyed Shakespeare modules during high school. I (gratefully) had teachers who helped make the material palatable and who were actually awesome people.
I'm loving the evolution of your videos! This is probably one of my favourites so far. Keep up the great work!
Scotland, PA from 2001 is a Macbeth set in a fast food restaurant in the 1970’s and if that sounds crazy, you should see the bikes and hippie witches on LSD. This is the movie our English teacher showed us when we read the play lol.
I was a teen when all those movies came out and loved them all, especially Romeo+Juliet. We had an English teacher that would explain all the sex jokes and take us to the Shakespeare theater in downtown Chicago. That plus the movies made Shakespeare actually very cool in high school.
We watched the 90s version of Romeo and Juliet in freshman English class. The class was the highlight of my week and I looked forward to that class every single day. This was mainly because I thought it was so bad. It actually made me enjoy the story. Plus the teacher knew what he was doing and actually understood Shakespeare
Now THIS is the kind of content I come to RUclips for
Took my fiesty young daughter to a showing of Romeo and Juliette, and upon hearing the first line of script in Elizabethan English -- she spontaneously erupted in chuckles equalling the skillful actors' power of projection. And her voice tone was unusually melifluous, too. Although frozen in embarrassed horror and desperately wishing I could hide under the seats, I couldn't help but notice that everyone else in the theater, including the actors who'd been upstaged by a kid -- were fairly amused by the disruption, holding back their own laughter. The audience was very courteous and discreet, thank goodness. And the actors, who also froze momentarily, eyes darting around in search of the source of that wild sound, barely skipped one or two heartbeats before...the show continued on.
Romeo +Juliet was the movie we were stuck with in my highschool, and everyone in the class was like "what the hell is this?"
What a great video and thank you for linking the sources. I'll definitely be checking out Marche's book!
My gateway drug was totally Baz Luhrman, but I have a particular soft spot for Branagh's Much Ado because it's just so in your face with all things Tuscany and billowy dresses, as well as Titus because that's just an awesomely weird movie that looks more like it was a filmed stage play than an actual movie.
high school me hated Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet cuz I thought everything was too garish and the 1960s costumes were prettier LOL but now I've come to appreciate luhrmann going all out with his surreal, anachronistic vision
Romeo + Juliet being "anachronistic" is really just an accident of when the play was written. That is, the text was at-the-time contemporary. Zeffirelli's production may be accurate to an Elizabethan production, but Lehrmann's is arguably closer to the intent of the text. He certainly kept more of the actual text intact than Zeff.
Where'd Romeo get the poison, Franco?!
Omg, so did I. We watched both in my high school English class, and we had to write an essay on which one we thought was better and why. I chose the Zeffirelli version and thoroughly eviscerated the Luhrman one in the way only a high school English nerd can. But watching this video makes me think my high school self was being too pretentious and would like to give Romeo + Juliet a chance, especially since I enjoy one of Baz Luhrman's other movies, Moulin Rogue, for its campiness.
The twist on Shakespeares books into films are brilliant
My favourite post-modern teen-focused Shakespeare film is Titus.
As a high schooler I was in a TON of Shakespeare plays, and I was lucky enough to have directors that played them, like, how they were written?? They let it play 'low brow' by, like, telling the actual jokes written in the text? Letting the comedies be funny and absurd?
Having come from that I cannot ABIDE those play-movies. I LOVE Shakespeare, and those ARE SO BORNING.
Great video!
I love Romeo Must Die, but I honestly wouldn’t have known it was an “adaptation” of Romeo and Juliet, if Romeo was not in the title 😭
This was one of my favourite movies in my early 20s. I went through a major Jet Li phase. I'm not sure it ever really ended...
I just imagine a time BTS and One direction become classics.
I kinda hope people will like BTS in the future like people like the Beatles today
I will become a billionaire and invest my fortune into genetics and nanorobotics so I can put myself into stasis, just so I can wake up centuries into the future and slap the shit out of anyone who puts BTS and One Direction in a Museum
@@cowmoo5596
What a square
@@cowmoo5596 what a loser let ppl like what they like
@@freindmaker4473 Question
I’m happy “O” was mentioned! We did Shakespeare in my freshman English class and we read the plays + watched adaptations. Othello was my favorite play we read and when we watched O , I was captivated.
in my humble opinion the only shakespeare adaptation that matters to me is the lion king, sorry not sorry 🤷🏾♀️
you should do a video on robert ebert’s career-like his favs, most notable reviews, his website, etc. cause i’d love to learn more and u seem to really love him and i think a youtube video on that would be so interesting in your style!! super great vid as always
You can still go to the Globe (now on the Southbank in London), and pay a fiver to stand on the floor (open air).
phenomenal video that makes me reconsider things I’d previously not thought about too much, as always. I love this channel lmao
Contrapoint vibes 👍
Exactly the same vibe I got from this video.
the one good thing about social media is it broke through the uniform feedback loop of the friends around me talking at bars or parties about what a movie looks like/ I didn't see the film until recently and overall what is good about it is good, and what is bad about it is fun.
Thoroughly enjoy your videos!
Great video! You did forget Jawbreaker staring Rose McGowan or as I like to call it MacBeth in high school.