#romeo and juliet adaptation

[buzzingbeepboop]

This may be too niche but one of the reasons that the 2011 queer cinematic masterpiece private romeo is my favourite romeo and Juliet adaptation of all time is that the so called balcony scene doesn't take place on a goddamn balcony I love it

[zylphiacrowley]

"Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged." "Then have my lips the sin that they have took?" "Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again." - William Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet" Act 1, Scene 5

[russellius]

GEORGE: There was a rogue Australian fan in the pit lane as well at some point. When I was, don't know what it was, he stuck his finger up at me or something when I was waiting to go out. It was around the Red Bull area, so they need to check the video, see if an investigation should go into this.

[edit: evidence actually shows that this gentleman was the one to initiate it]

I.

II.

[gayest-classiclit]

ROUND 2; classic literature adaptation bracket

MUCH ADO:

based on: much ado about nothing, william shakespeare

medium: filmed production

propaganda: none because it was automatically in. however, david tennant and catherine tate were great in it. there is a golf cart also

ROMEO + JULIET:

based on: romeo and juliet, william shakespeare

medium: movie

propaganda:

'this adaptation absolutely deserves the top spot bc of mercutio. like have y'all seen him?!?! he killed it! nobody will ever do it like him again. nothing compares. 10000/10. plus the shootout at the fucking gas station is hilarious'

(propaganda is widely accepted btw!!!)

[maraudersbitchesassemble]

I just watched Ramleela and well I just

Ram and Leela both are just so, uh, HOT?!

Like, I was bi panicking through the entire movie lol

Like bro do I want to be Leela or do I want to be with Leela?

[heavenextdoor]

claire danes as juliet in ' romeo + juliet ' 1996, dir. by baz luhrmann 🪽

[shakespearenews]

As she dug into the text, Jung realized that just because most audience members know some lines in Romeo and Juliet, it doesn’t mean they understand everything that is spoken on stage. For example, she points out that the play is filled with humor, but most of those comedic moments fly by the audience. In Act 4, Scene 5, when Juliet takes the poison in the play, and everyone begins weeping, a band of musicians enter. That part is always cut, but Jung dug into why Shakespeare included that scene, what that scene was meant to do.

In the original, the musicians ask each other the meaning behind the song lyrics, "music with her silver sound." The punchline is, “It is ‘music with her silver sound’ because musicians have no gold for sounding.” In Jung’s version, the musicians debate the meaning of a song with lyrics that are more well-known to modern American audiences: "Purple Rain." So the question then becomes, "Why is the rain purple?" The punchline: “The rain is purple because your music is so shit, the heavens feel violated!” The night this writer went to the show, that exchange got a hearty laugh from the audience.

Why did Shakespeare include such an ostensibly pointless scene? Answers Jung: “I feel like structurally, I'm always looking at where's the tension, where's the release? I find it really hard to stay in tension for an entire story. And what I found in what Shakespeare did, with the interchanging of comedic bits and the tragic bits, was it gives release even when someone just died. You get a release out of it with this beautiful language…And so it feels like those were releases where he's like, ‘I'm still here, and I'll take care of you.’”

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Secret Shangahi Universe

When Stephen Marche said that "Shakespeare is better in English but he's willing to negotiate," he was talking about the English language. Chloe Gong's Secret Shanghai universe takes that Marche quote and extends it to show that Shakespeare might have started in England, but he is just as good if not better in other places. Shakespeare in Shanghai worked beautifully, and Gong's characters are clear, complex, and compelling.

Juliette Cai and Roma Montagova low-key mix the red and white roses of the Yorks and Lancasters with the Capulets and Montagues as the heirs apparent to the Sacrlet Gang and White Flowers, respectively. And as a sidebar...I know that Romeo and Juliet is set up to translate to warring gangs really easily, but I think now everyone has done it? Like Hollywood has done it, Bollywood has done it, and now the book world has done it. That's a lot of gangsters...

Roma and Juliette also get a delightful mini-story in novella form in Last Violent Call, but so do Benedikt and Marshall! One of the things I love about Gong's Shanghai Secrets universe is that while the straight couples in Shakespeare are present, she also includes couples of other sexual orientations and identities--and celebrates them. They get time and space to be themselves, they are accepted, loved, and valued, and they live and thrive at the end of the story. There are no buried gays in the Shanghai Secrets Universe.

We also get some fantastic transgender representation with Celia Lang, and her relationship and romance with Oliver was the STANDOUT romantic subplot in the entire universe for me. They are awkward and adorable, and they SO CLEARLY love each other that honestly it's amazing how long it took for them to get on the same page about it. Although in fairness, being communist spies would make a romantic relationship fairly challenging, especially with siblings who are nationalist spies.

Which brings us to the As You Like It-inspired Foul Lady Fortune and Foul Heart Huntsman. Names and identities in spy stories are complex, and they get even more complex when you're also dealing with shifting identities from parents and shifting national loyalties and influences, so whether you're calling the protagonists by their code names, Chinese names, or anglicized names, Rosalind and Orion are complicated figures who get shuttled together by a fake marriage trope and then just...roll with it. Honestly, Rosalind and Orion are an incredible pair, and reading them was never not fun.

No spoilers here, because overall my recommendation for this series is GO READ IT. Like right now. I'll wait.

[rainmidnight]

CHAT IS THIS REAL????

[troythecatfish]

Source: Mattxiv on instagram

[lovl3igh]

"i can excuse gnome juliet but i draw the line at black one" that's how i see you

[pink-evilette]

♡ original × modern adaptation ♡

[harlequinchaos]

Now that I'm older, every time some form of media is adapted in a new format (book to movie, videogame to tv series, animation to live action, etc.) I always take the criticisms of it with a grain of salt because I feel like what it means to adapt successfully means something different to everyone.

I always feel like people want an exact 1:1 adaptation but fail to realize the nuance that comes with each form of adaptation. Sure you can break every piece of media down by like, setting, character, and plot, or specific story beats or even down to specific physical details but people fail to realize how this is going to read to the consumer across different forms.

Scenes that are in a first person point of view in say, a book, are going to read different than a scene of a movie, which similar to a play or show on a stage need to be designed in a way the consumer can digest.

In a book, you can slowly be fed information as it is deemed necessary to the story. Details can be intentionally left out, leading to inaccurate judgements that can snowball into larger consequences. With movies or television, as soon as you see the scene or characters, you're seeing them as the whole bigger picture. The details are either there or they aren't, a faster judgment can be made, more meaning can be inferred by visuals, so a character's motivation becomes more of a driving point. A plot element intentionally left out in a book, can alienate the consumer if not properly handled in a movie or television setting, and part of adapting that piece of media is ensuring it's done properly, and I feel like people don't understand that. The art of adaptation is how consistent purpose can be conveyed while adhering to the rules of the established media.

It seems people just want, "the same thing" as a book, tv show, or a movie, videogame, comic, animated version, or in a live action version and it just Doesn't Work Like That.

Each form of media has their own rules of what 'works' and a good story will utilize those unique aspects of that form of media to tell the story; but the method of how that story is told has to change in order for it to be a successful adaptation.

[khaleesi-rose]

✨Juliet Capulet aesthetic:✨

“O Romeo, Romeo where for art thou Romeo?”

[azrantimes]

Was telling my mom about Lorna Courtney's department from & Juliet on Broadway and she was like "Wait is that the one with the actors changing as the characters age?"

The Notebook. She was confusing & Juliet with The Notebook Musical.

[00ff00]