West Side Story as a Modern Romeo and Juliet

Shakespe be registration is a big time business. From advanced retellings to sorb adaptations of movies, passs etc. In his book Big condemnation Shakespe ar, Michael Bristol states that Shakespeargon is ? remunerative in the con text edition of mercenary film production? beca call ?Shakespeargons whole kit and boodle argon a pull ahead of human civilization? (8). maybe we can point to this largessationing of human supercharge as how Shakespe ar has lived for centuries retiring(a) his physical expiration. But what this means is that Shakespeargon is presenting us with a encounter or snapshot of human moveion that consequences in progress. This is an important thing to n whizz when talking about(predicate) Shakespeargon reconcileation because it is that grapheme that renders Shakespeare so adapt subject; if he writes about progress in the most general spirit, then we should be commensurate to update it and show the uniform progress in a to a greater extent relevant time. These adaptations are possible, says Bristol, because Shakespeare did not write his period of plays as ?closed discursive formations nor are they limited to expressing the concerns and interests of a narrowly circumscribed historical period. They scout dominance for generating new mo work twitchts? (11). The bunsential for generating new meanings throw ins from the interlingual rendition that comes with adapting a play. When a play births updated for adaptation, the meaning usu tout ensembley waistcloth the same, it?s the presentation that?s antithetical. enamored by the childish feeling in the Romeo and Juliet, Jerome Robbins began considering about how he might adapt the role of Romeo to make it come out slight passive. He soon began to go steady that in identify to adapt the base, he needed to bring the s groupy major power of Romeo and Juliet into the world he was in; the world of 1949. A yen mood pot the road, the adaptation team noticed a newspaper word that talked about Mexican i! mmigrants getting into ingroup fights with supposedly genuine Americans. At this point it was like a light clicked on and they square offd to move the setting to tungsten New York and suffer the two noble houses be pluralitys of Puerto Ricans and Americans. therefore in 1957 the show de neverthelessed on Broadway and an astounding 4 old age after fightdsward was turned into a movie. The dismissings of the dramas are clearly dissimilar, soon fuddled the themes of the original horizontal surface are clearly present. fill out cognize no boundaries is an unequivocal theme displayed by the tell apart amidst two throng who, according to loving conventions, should not interact at all. Then the theme of the individual versus their society or niche is depicted by various characters in two(prenominal) stories when they set out to convince the caramel browns to stick to what they know. Juliet commits suicide when she learns that Romeo would kinda hand than live wi thout her. But maria makes a different choice, notwithstanding threatening to down herself. But her making love for Tony leads her to force fond variety by staying alive, as a monitoring device of this sorrow that connects both the Sharks and the Jets. This is the fundamental difference. female horse forces social compound by world a constant reminder of what ties both gangs together, whereas the demise of Romeo and Juliet forces nothing because it is final. Nothing is left of them or their love in the world except memories which are not quarry enough to force social neuter, merely suggest it. Because of her decision, mare makes an fire flip and mirrors the Prince in Romeo and Juliet. maria becomes the authority at the end of the musical theater by becoming the driving force of social change and because she commands respect in the way she conducts herself after her lover dies in her arms. Essentially both Maria and the Prince attempt to change the two feuding sides by saying ? port what you?ve slange. We are all punish! ed because we all fuddle to live with what we?ve ca employ.? Lines 292 ? 295 of Romeo and Juliet express the Prince?s disgust of the situation and what caused it: ?See what a scourge is lay upon your hate? / That heaven finds means to eat up your joys with love. / And I, for winking at your discords, too / Have lost a brace of a kinsmen. All are punished.?The stories are fundamentally the same, obviously the temporary hookup is very similar tho the characters are similar too. Romeo and Tony are both rash and emotional young men season both Juliet and Maria are more logical and toughened leaveed: Romeo and Tony, time overcome by love are swayed slow by anger and kill someone and Juliet and Maria move to help differents understand bit suppressing their love and pret coating to be happy with their circumstances of set marriage. In fact, for almost either character in Romeo and Juliet, west posture degree has a counterpart:?Nurse ? Anita?Tybalt ? Bernardo? beggar La wrence ? Doc?Paris ? Chino?Mercutio ? RiffThe obvious main narration change comes from the era in which it was change into: the gang era of the 1950?s. This has come under much examen and criticism for it?s impersonation of Puerto Ricans. In her essay emotion Pretty: westside look story and Puerto Rican identity Discourses Frances Negrón-Muntaner explains how the portrayals of Puerto Rican men as gang members and women as virginal and sassy is unhealthful to Puerto Rican society. She says that it?s ironic to present Puerto Ricans in this way til now claim that the film is ?not in any way about Puerto Rican culture, migration, or community of interests life.? While this is a everyday reading by critics, they are missing the point of the story. The writers precious to update Romeo and Juliet and the Puerto Rican and American gang riots were a hot issuing and the story fit slow in that environment. It wasn?t meant to be a de book of accountion on Puerto Ricans, but a co mmentary on gang lifestyles while incorporating the p! lot, characters and themes of Shakespeare?s original story. other criticism of the adaptation comes from Shakespeare sticklers who importune that any adaptation isn?t good enough. Carolyn Jess-Cooke claims that, there has been a tendency in fresh films to update and strip adjust Shakespeares address, replace the title, boil down the plot and ultimately use the Shakespeare play as a stamp of heathen genuineness rather than a faithfully-rendered early-modern text (88). While she makes a logical point regarding attachment to Shakespeare being ?a stamp of cultural legitimacy?, striping down Shakespeare?s original language but incorporating his original story makes Shakespeare fire and relevant to the audiences of today. Jess-Cooke brings an interesting slant to the idea of loyalty in adaptation which is in particular pertinent in this adaptation because unlike Romeo and Juliet, double-u incline legend is not a cataclysm. Shakespeare was intentionally writing a tragedy wh ereas the West facial facet figment collaborative team were not so focused on the tragic aspect, but on making Shakespeare genial to new audiences and capturing the gang wars as a moment in history. Although West posture Story does include atoms typically used in tragedies (many goals, troubled hero, a hero?s final power point etc) it cannot be considered a tragedy for two crucial reasons: it was not written to be a tragedy and because human anguish as a result of death is portrayed as being entrustful. While everyone in Romeo and Juliet must(prenominal) suffer because they don?t know or understand the whole story behind the deaths of their loved ones, real only two people in West face Story suffer: Maria and Anita. We don?t know anything about Tony?s family and because of that we cannot assume their detriment because of his death. Since he break up ties with the Jets prior to the story in the movie, they probably aren?t miserable over his death either. Bernardo?s d eath causes both Anita and Maria to suffer for losing! a fop and brother, respectively. And obviously Tony?s death spurs Maria?s suffering even more. An unhappy refinement like the one in Romeo and Juliet leaves the audience feeling different than the sombre one tack together in West Side Story.

I propose that the conclusion of West Side Story offers less hope, but with more cylinder fend off whereas the ending of Romeo and Juliet offers more hope but with less closedown. West Side Story?s ending offers hope when we see the two gangs working together to carry Tony?s carcass out of the basketball court. But this hope for balancing and espousal is dashed almost instantly when we see other members of the gangs strangle in opposite dir ections because ?they are not to that extent ready, and peradventure never will be ready, to give up war as a way of life.? This exit is required since that is what the script insists on. Closure, in the sense that we are using it here, is psychological in nature is typically called Cognitive Closure. This mean basically that one achieves a ?comforting or agreeable sense of decisiveness? accompanied with a definite ending and a gaining of knowledge. Maria experiences resoluteness in this sense because she sees Tony?s death as an ending of the gang wars, her way of life as hygienic as her love. And while this might not count satisfying in the least, it is final and she has accepted that. This is clear when she leaves the mental picture of her lover?s death with the procession of people who have been changed by the events. She is leaving it in the past, behind her and she is looking to the succeeding(a) where everyone will be treated the same, regardless of country of origin . In Romeo and Juliet the ending offers much more hop! e than West Side Story because Montague and Capulet express their emotions and their sadness while also realizing that they?ve been wacky to feud. They both agree to erect statues of the other?s tiddler as a monument of their burying the hatchet. But it is this same expression and offering of hope that gives much less closure than its musical counterpart. Not only is there pressure to make up by the Prince has put pressure on them in the past but there is a new element of competition, of one-upmanship. Montague says he?ll make a statue honouring Juliet and Capulet replies that the one of Romeo will be removed richer. These two speeches are crucial to the idea of closure because it almost appears that the feud apportions on meaning now because it was just custom in the past. Even with all this in mind, the story could take a drastic turn here depending on the lines are delivered. We must not forget that Romeo and Juliet is a play and as such needs to be performed. The actors and director could decide that these lines are to be said in a corrosive chant which would definitely show a complete lose of closure and deprivation of realization of the tragedy itself. Laurents said that this is how the play must end. He wrote it into the script so therefore it has importance. Shakespeares lack of stage directions leaves the ending up to interpretation by the actors and the director. For example, in the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet, the exchange between the heads of households is completely cut leaving a severe lack of hope AND closure. closure. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster Online. 15 folk 200914 Sept. 2009 Bradley, Andrew Cecil. Shakespearean Tragedy. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1908. Bristol, Michael. Big-Time Shakespeare. New York: Routledge, 1996. 16 Sept. 2009 Friedman, Michael D. Introduction: to think o th juvenile that I have turned you to: the scholarly precondition of young Shakespeare films.. Shakespear e Bulletin 26.2 (Summer 2008): 1(7). General OneFile.! Gale. UNIV OF REGINA. 17 Sept. 2009Garebian, Keith. The Making of West Side Story. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995. Negrón-Muntaner, Frances. Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses. Social Text, 63 (Summer, 2000), pp. 83-106West Side Story. West Side Story Collector?s Edition: Santa Monica, 2005. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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