Restructuring the classics.

[DreamCloud]

A little late for Halloween but I found this intriguing. A completely out-of-the-box romance redo. It made me smile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foo3Vx_ULMg

I apologize if you find it offensive to your literary mind. For the first time in my life, I actually want to read Jane Austen.

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

I'm a peasant.

Hated, hated, HATED...being forced to read outdated (not timeless) stuff in school. If the story has entertainment value or a moral, improve on it. Update it. Don't sit back and sigh, worshipping it.

King Lear.... Booooring

But when Kurosawa got his hands on it. Chaos!

 

[MichaelinChina]

I'm a peasant.

Hated, hated, HATED...being forced to read outdated (not timeless) stuff in school. If the story has entertainment value or a moral, improve on it. Update it. Don't sit back and sigh, worshipping it.

King Lear.... Booooring

But when Kurosawa got his hands on it. Chaos!

Booooring because you didn't get it.

Lear IS timeless.

Read ANYTHING since school?

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

Constantly... I'm a reader. Most of us here are.

 

[rjordan]

For the first time in my life, I actually want to read Jane Austen.

It passes. Stick with the trailer.

rj

 

[NOIRTRASH]

ROBINSON CRUSOE was the first bonafide literary fiction. Readers thought it was non fiction. But the story is interesting and needs to be modernized.

 

[rjordan]

ROBINSON CRUSOE was the first bonafide literary fiction. Readers thought it was non fiction. But the story is interesting and needs to be modernized.

The Martian by Andy Weir, though "literature" might be a stretch. Great book. Haven't seen the movie yet.

rj

 

[Handley_Page]

I'm a peasant.

King Lear.... Booooring
But when Kurosawa got his hands on it. Chaos!

And which of his films is an adaptation of Lear please?

 

[oggbashan]

And which of his films is an adaptation of Lear please?

Ran

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ran_(film)

 

[oggbashan]

I'm a peasant.

Hated, hated, HATED...being forced to read outdated (not timeless) stuff in school. If the story has entertainment value or a moral, improve on it. Update it. Don't sit back and sigh, worshipping it.

King Lear.... Booooring

But when Kurosawa got his hands on it. Chaos!

Shakespeare should be seen, preferably in a theatre, performed by a specialist company such as the Royal Shakespeare, or at The Globe, BEFORE it is read.

Most Shakespeare appreciation requires maturity that most 16-year olds don't have.

I think making Shakespeare a set text at school is a bad idea. Including a visit to a Shakespearean production? Yes. Forcing children to study Shakespeare in depth can destroy the enjoyment they might get later. BUT a good and enthusiastic teacher can make Shakespeare come alive.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm a peasant.

Hated, hated, HATED...being forced to read outdated (not timeless) stuff in school. If the story has entertainment value or a moral, improve on it. Update it. Don't sit back and sigh, worshipping it.

King Lear.... Booooring

But when Kurosawa got his hands on it. Chaos!

Some adaptations/updates work really well. I love Ian McKellen's 1930s Richard III.

But some stories are hard to transplant out of their setting. "Bridget Jones' Diary" is a fun film but as a retelling of "Pride and Prejudice" it's a failure. Jane Austen's women had a pretty awful choice - find a husband by your early twenties or live in poverty off whatever charity you can get from family - and that just doesn't translate to Bridget's situation. She has a job of her own, she doesn't have to compromise just to put food on the table, the worst that's going to happen to her is a sad breakup.

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

Some adaptations/updates work really well. I love Ian McKellen's 1930s Richard III.

But some stories are hard to transplant out of their setting. "Bridget Jones' Diary" is a fun film but as a retelling of "Pride and Prejudice" it's a failure. Jane Austen's women had a pretty awful choice - find a husband by your early twenties or live in poverty off whatever charity you can get from family - and that just doesn't translate to Bridget's situation. She has a job of her own, she doesn't have to compromise just to put food on the table, the worst that's going to happen to her is a sad breakup.

But that is exactly why it worked so well.

Bear with me.

Millions of women LOVE BJD. Love it. Because when you are watching a romance, it breaking up IS the worst thing in their life.

It's the conceit of why they work.

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

Shakespeare should be seen, preferably in a theatre, performed by a specialist company such as the Royal Shakespeare, or at The Globe, BEFORE it is read.

Most Shakespeare appreciation requires maturity that most 16-year olds don't have.

I think making Shakespeare a set text at school is a bad idea. Including a visit to a Shakespearean production? Yes. Forcing children to study Shakespeare in depth can destroy the enjoyment they might get later. BUT a good and enthusiastic teacher can make Shakespeare come alive.

Sure it can... And therein lies my argument that it is time for it to pass on.

It requires a very specialized delivery to make it work.

Good for occasional festivals.

 

[beachbum1958]

Shakespeare should be seen, preferably in a theatre, performed by a specialist company such as the Royal Shakespeare, or at The Globe, BEFORE it is read.

Most Shakespeare appreciation requires maturity that most 16-year olds don't have.

I think making Shakespeare a set text at school is a bad idea. Including a visit to a Shakespearean production? Yes. Forcing children to study Shakespeare in depth can destroy the enjoyment they might get later. BUT a good and enthusiastic teacher can make Shakespeare come alive.

My daughter was always bitching about how they were forced at school to read and dissect play after play of Shakespeare, and her attitude was it was all Elizabethan gibberish, so I made her sit with me and watch Kenneth Branagh's 'Henry V', and she finally got it; Branagh seems to have an instinctive and effortless understanding of the subtleties of Shakespeare's verse structure and metre, his timing is impeccable, and his delivery of the speeches and dialogue, in the metre Shakespeare intended them to be heard, is a joy and a revelation. My 15 year-old daughter was transfixed; she even grinned at the jokes, because she finally got them; afterwards, she zipped down to 'Blockbuster' and took out 'Much Ado About Nothing', the only other 'classics' movie they had, and sat silently through it, her eyes riveted to the screen. So yes, see Shakespeare before read Shakespeare, definitely the right way to appreciate him.

As a sidebar, after opening her eyes and mind to Shakespeare, she discovered Aphra Behn, the first female professional writer, spy, and famously bisexual courtier of Charles II, and her novel, 'Oroonoko', then the Restoration comedies and plays of Sheridan, Congreve, and Etherege, before working her way through Austen, Eliot, and the Bronte family, plus the one book I blew up over, John Fords 'Tis pity she's a whore', from 1629, which includes graphic (for the time) and lurid scenes of rape, incest, bigamy, adultery, and other depraved goings-on I definitely didn't consider suitable for a 15 year-old girl. But the school issued it as a set text, it's regarded as a literary classic, so there was little I could do about it...

 

[oggbashan]

... plus the one book I blew up over, John Fords 'Tis pity she's a whore', from 1629, which includes graphic (for the time) and lurid scenes of rape, incest, bigamy, adultery, and other depraved goings-on I definitely didn't consider suitable for a 15 year-old girl. But the school issued it as a set text, it's regarded as a literary classic, so there was little I could do about it...

I took a date to see a production of 'Tis pity she's a whore'. The production included audience participation including the 'whores' dragging random men on stage for simulated sex.

My date decided I wasn't suitable for her.