Teening Shakespeare

1
Teening Shakespeare

• Mediated Shakespeare 20th century adaptations

2
Teening

• A teenage audience
• Teenage actors
• Inclusion of youth culture taste?
• Plus general adaptation techniques

3
The films

• Baz Luhrmann, William Shakespeares Romeo
  Juliet, 1996
• Gil Junger, 10 Things I Hate about You, 1999
• Tim Blake Nelson, O, 2001
• Michael Almereyda, Hamlet, 2000

4
Adapting for postmodern youth?

• Young (actors) speaking long passages of blank
  verse? cutting and using visuals
• Employing intertextuality
• Employing metafiction
• Characters
• Themes

5
Adapting for postmodern youth?

• Choosing plays with themes connected to
  adolescence (Romeo and Juliet)
• Kinship relations
• Finding ones adult identity
• Seeking independence from parents and other
  socializing agencies

6
Adapting for postmodern youth?

• Converting plays to adolescent themes and
  characters (The Taming of the Shrew 10 Things I
  Hate about You)
• American high schools romance
• Inclusion of traditional high school dichotomies
• Nerds and jocks
• Introverts and extroverts
• Popularity vs. sincerity
• Exclusion of blocking and comic
• characters the gynecologist father,
• the sex-obsessed student counselor

7
Adapting for postmodern youth?

• Converting plays to contemporary themes and
  characters (Othello O)
• Totally contemporary idiom
• Teenage jealousies with a racial background
• War in Venice and Turkey in Othello basketball
  in high school in O
• Inclusion of parents
• Inclusion of metaphor of
• black hawks and white doves

8
Adapting for postmodern youth?

• Choosing plays with themes connected to youth and
  transforming them (Hamlet)
• Elsinores court Contemporary New Yorks
  corporate world
• Original text, but cut
• Metafiction video shop and
• Hamlets obsession with media
• technologies
• Oedipal theme is mediated
• with old footage of parents

9
You(th) and Shakespeare?

• Discuss
• Is Shakespeare for young people?
• How well do you know Shakespeare?
• Do you like Shakespeare? Your favourite
  Shakespeare experience?
• What media forms have you met Shakespeare in?
• Unmediated Shakespeare The University
  Shakespeare Company do you go there?

10
Literature
Michael Skovmand, Teening Shakespeare in Kyle
Nicholas and Jørgen Riber Christensen, eds., Open
Windows Remediation Strategies in Global Film
Adaptations, Aalborg University Press, 2005, pp.
157-171