[For this year’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool” in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word, for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]
First, repeating
yesterday’s a bit of inside baseball: I haven’t yet had a chance to check out either
of the texts on which my last two posts in this series will focus. I don’t want
to pretend to have specific things to say about them, but I did want to both highlight
them and use them as a lens for broader AmericanStudies questions. So in honor
of Christopher
Moore’s 2009 novel reframing King Lear from the Fool’s perspective,
here are AmericanStudies takeaways from a trio of similar such Shakespearean
adaptations:
1)
Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966): Tom Stoppard’s play is quite simply one
of the most unique and compelling cultural works I’ve ever encountered, and I’d
say the 1990 film adaptation
captures its essence (if you’re able to check that out more easily than the
play). There are a lot of reasons why, from the philosophical debates to the witty
wordplay to the ultimate pathos, but I’d say a significant element in the play’s
success is integral to this broader genre of cultural text: it reminds us that
many of our greatest literary works (especially from earlier centuries,
although the trend undoubtedly continues) focus too fully on elite characters
and worlds, and that it’s worth stopping to consider how different the story and
our takeaways from it alike might look from the perspective of others (to foreshadow
next week’s series, Myrtle Wilson, anyone?).
2)
Shakespeare
in Love (1998): Look, I know there are people who think this film (co-written
by Tom Stoppard!) is one of the most overrated ever, not least because it beat out
Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Oscar. Maybe all I need
to say here is that I 1000% support that Oscar win, and think this is one of the
most clever, funny, and ultimately moving films I’ve ever seen. But even if you
don’t agree with all of that, I think it’s undeniable that Shakespeare
offers a unique and thoughtful perspective on both the creative process and how
it intersects with broader historical events. Given how much we tend to think
of plays like Romeo and Juliet as timeless or universal, I very much
appreciate this film’s reminder that it was created in one time and place, by a
playwright and a group of collaborators fully and importantly immersed in that
world.
3)
Opheliamachine (2013): I’ve
only had the chance to read that Google Books excerpt of Magda Romanska’s
postmodern drama (which as you can see only features peripheral materials for
and about the play), and so will mostly direct you to check out that excerpt as
well as the Wikipedia
entry on what sounds like a fascinating attempt to adapt Shakespeare’s
characters in a 21st century world. While there are lots of reasons
to create such adaptations, as just these few examples of the genre clearly
reflect, I’d say their most important effect is precisely Romanska’s goal: to
help us think further about both the original work and our own moment, on their
own terms but also and especially in conversation with each other. I love this
genre for both those reasons, and look forward to reading Fool soon to
add another example!
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one
more time: what do you think? Foolish texts you’d share?
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