Shakespeare and Generation Y.

The young members of Generation Y are certainly the most cynical, world-weary and hard-bitten upcoming generation society has ever known. Having come of age during an era of media-related celebrity lawsuits, increased numbers of nuclear family break-ups, enormous humanitarian disasters and most of all, unspeakable acts of terror, they crave to be challenged but largely refuse to give the time of day to “the classics” – like every preceding generation since the 1950s, the majority of them look contemptuously at anything old that may be deemed archaic or even conservative. With the Shakespearean universe, scholars and teachers of Shakespeare’s works in recent years have increasingly turned to modern filmic renderings of the Bard’s work in order to get at least some members of Generation Y interested and even excited about Shakespeare’s work, to hopefully make them see the eternal thematic resonance in his plays that lies underneath the old-fashioned dialogue.

In this essay I shall analyze three of the more popular (albeit loose) modern cinematic adaptations of three of Shakespeare’s most important works: My Own Private Idaho (based on Henry IV, Part I), 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew) and The Lion King (inspired by Hamlet). All three of these films are 1990s releases that remain very popular with Generation Y audiences.

In many of his darker and most mature works, among Shakespeare’s favourite themes were alienation, betrayal and unrequited love. These translate into the real world as feelings that affect each of us, but arguably none more so than youth.

The 1991 cult film My Own Private Idaho, a loose adaptation of Henry IV, Part I. It tracks the adventures of Mike, a gay narcoleptic hustler, and his best friend Scott (based on Prince Hal in Henry IV), a rich young man who is deliberately living his life in the slums until he is able to receive his inheritance and thus, detach himself from his father, who he detests. Together, they embark on a road trip from Portland, Oregon to Idaho in search of Mike’s long-lost mother, all the while remaining lost souls on the tattered fringe of society.

Outside the central plot, My Own Private Idaho is filled with allusions to Shakespeare; for example, early in the film, Mike, Scott and other members of a group of outcasts they frequently socialize give a performance in a park of a play with certain Shakespearean airs, and there is a dream sequence in which Mike and Scott appear on covers of gay pornographic magazines, one of which has the dubious name of King Leer. However, smuggled in amongst these references are two ingredients that occupy polar opposites in the film: psychological visions of the past, and a Shakespearean look at the transition from boyhood to manhood (Burt, et al, p. 201). The eerie presence of allusions to Henry IV is utilized to address the emptiness in the characters’ lives and what they desperately need to fill that emptiness: somebody or something to show them the way to adulthood. Although My Own Private Idaho is unmistakably an art-house film, it remains one of the truest filmic depictions of the experiences of troubled, disaffected youth, and its allusions to Henry IV are what enhances its accuracy on this issue. Furthermore, they help the film connect Shakespeare’s works to contemporary America – in fact, most of the contemporary Western world – and through this the viewer can see how the hardships that people of all ages and creeds face today are little different to those faced by people from Shakespeare’s time.

Rebellion and nonconformity are like job requirements for many a teenager. Disaffected and feeling angry at the world they live in, they often decide to go against the grain without a hint of self-consciousness or thinking things through. The film 10 Things I Hate About You takes Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and transplants the play’s scenario and character clichés into a teen film formula.

Bianca Stratford is the most popular girl in school, but as a result of a family rule implemented by her father, she cannot date until her antisocial, independent and feminist older sister Kat does. With the help of two male students – one whom is madly in love with her – Bianca is finally allowed to date when Kat is set up with Patrick, the token school bad-boy. Despite the fact that 10 Things I Hate About You’s humour and narrative is largely derived from the play, the ways in which these elements are constructed to form the plot of the movie are based teen comedy conventions, specifically from the films of John Hughes. But outside the central plot of Bianca being unable to date until her sister does, there are some parts of the play that do not translate so easily into the context of a teen film, mainly because of how much social customs have changed over time. By far the most obvious of these is the shrew-taming which collides with modern views on the proper treatment and consideration of women (Friedman, 2004).

To show how much of Shakespeare’s play has been updated in this film, we should compare it with one of the most renowned filmic adaptations of the work: Franco Zeffirelli’s 1967 purist adaptation of the The Taming of the Shrew, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. (Zeffirelli, 1967) Zeffirelli’s picture has little of the original Shakespearean dialogue, but the director has retained the 1590s Italian setting, even hiring noted Italian film composer Nino Rota to write the score for the film. Zeffirelli’s picture received a great deal of acclaim and criticism at the time of its release mainly with regards to his heavy use of sound, which was at that time uncommon in a filmic rendering of a stage play, notably during argument scenes (Elizabeth’s Kate shouts very loudly) (Kranz, 2008.) On the other hand, 10 Things I Hate About You is interestingly lacking in dramatic sound effects, with the arguments between Kat and Patrick almost being subdued in comparison to those between Kate and Petruchio in Zeffirelli’s film.

Whereas in Shakespeare’s play “the shrew” is a woman who shows her resistance to male dominance with her resentful tongue, Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You is a modern, free-thinking feminist, reminiscent of Germaine Greer. However, a true-to-life concern about popularity with each character is the other, newer central theme in the film. The majority of teenagers today care about everything from how they look to being accepted in high school society and most importantly, winning their parents’ approval. 10 Things I Hate About You is populated by young, middle-class, suburban, largely white kids preoccupied with fitting in and sensitive to the boundaries that separated many groups in society. The events in the first act of the film culminate in the characters all attending a large, unsupervised house party that Bianca wishes to attend with Joey Donner, a popular but sleazy senior student (serving as a stand-in for Shakespeare’s Grumio) who is also a male model, who she in the end learns from not to go for men who only want her for sex (Friedman, 2004). Moreover, Kat previously learnt this lesson from him when she dated him in secret. By the end, not only is Kat “tamed,” but each of the four lead characters discovers something about themselves and their world. Herein lies where 10 Things I Hate About You keeps to the conventions of traditional teen comedy films, but also enables its teenage audience to realize how they can relate to Shakespeare’s plays if they just give them a try.

The 1994 Disney classic The Lion King is an interesting case. With its colourful musical numbers and its setting in Africa, The Lion King’s Shakespearean connections are buried much more deeply than those in My Own Private Idaho and 10 Things I Hate About You, but when they are found they are too many and too clear to not stick out. The lead character is Simba, a lion cub (with parallels to Hamlet Jr.) whose mischievous and naïve attitude gets him into as much danger as safety. After his father King Mufasa is murdered by his envious and power-hungry uncle Scar, Simba delays his act of revenge for many years (mainly because he himself thinks he was to blame for the tragedy). After the deaths of their fathers, Prince Hamlet and Simba are respectively rendered deeply mournful, and without an important royal mentor and father figure during his formative years (McElveen, 1998).

There are also striking similarities between the characters of Hamlet and Mufasa. In life, they ruled their lands (respectively Denmark and the Pride Lands) in peace and prosperity, only showing worry for their sons and their royal responsibilities. After death, they become even more: spiritual inspirations for their sons, reminding of what they must do and how they can overcome the odds and achieve it (McElveen, 1998). Then we have the villains of each text: Hamlet’s Claudius and The Lion King’s Scar. Each are jealous brothers of kings who decide to usurp the king’s power by murdering him, then ruling their lands with a totalitarian regime, and both are alluded to have homosexual tendencies (McElveen, 1998). To top it all off, Timon and Pumbaa – the comic relief duo who Simba meets in desert whilst in exile – draw parallels with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the comic relief characters featured in Hamlet. Timon and Pumbaa help Simba escape from the hauntings of his past by introducing him to “Hakuna matata” (their motto for a carefree life), whereas Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are used to reassure the audience that Prince Hamlet does have a refreshing social life away from his regal responsibilities (McElveen, 1998).

Perhaps the best Hamlet adaptation to compare The Lion King with would be Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-winning 1948 version Hamlet. Olivier’s film is a shortened though still very faithful filmic rendering of Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy, shot in black and white, that does not update the play in any way (largely because it predates postmodernism, and because Olivier was a luminary of the West End stage). Certainly it is hardly as cheerful and exuberant as The Lion King, which, in true Disney fashion, features several musical numbers and a happy ending, however the themes in each adaptation of Shakespeare’s play are nearly identical – Claudius and Scar, each consumed by envy and ambition, kill their ruler brothers and become corrupt leaders while their brothers did not, Hamlet, Jr. and Simba each feel deep remorse and guilt over the murders of their fathers, and they seek redemption. Redemption borders on religious territory – another subject that is viewed with indifference by many members of Generation Y – so for it to incorporated into the framework of an animated film is to grab them hook, line and sinker and show them again how universally and timelessly relevant and resonant the themes written about the Bard truly remain.

Children and teenagers of the early years of the 21st century can be frustratingly stubborn and difficult to get through to. Once they latch onto a certain text or activity, they can be very unwilling to give something else a chance. Teenagers now are also, more than ever it can be argued, biased towards anything at all that was produced before they were born. Literary enthusiasts, filmmakers and teachers (who are the ones who have to try to make young people read Shakespeare) are well aware of this. As dated or even unpronounceable his words may or may not seem, Shakespeare’s body of work is as thematically resonant as ever. The trick is finding new draws of fans. This is the significance and the wisdom of contemporary cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s works being aimed squarely at both the children’s and youth markets. By editing or completely changing the Shakespearean dialogue, updating the setting and (in the case of The Lion King) throwing a few catchy musical numbers for good measure, all the while without removing any of the powerful themes, My Own Private Idaho, 10 Things I Hate About You and The Lion King all succeeded in taking the old and making it new – taking Shakespeare and making him seem hip.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

· Van Sant, G. 1991, My own private Idaho, Fine Line Features.
· Junger, G. 1999, 10 things I hate about you, Touchstone Pictures.
· Allers, R., Minkoff, R. 1994, The lion king, Walt Disney Pictures.
· Zeffirelli, F. 1967, The taming of the shrew, Columbia Pictures.
· Kranz, D. 2008, Tracking the sounds of Franco Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew, Literature-Film-Quarterly, Infotrac.
· Friedman, M. 2004, The feminist as shrew in 10 Things I Hate About You, Shakespeare Bulletin, Infotrac.
· McElveen, T. 1998, Hamlet and The Lion King: Shakespearean Influences on Modern Entertainment, http://www.lionking.org/text/Hamlet-TM.html.
· Wiseman, S. The family tree motel: subliming Shakespeare in My Own Private Idaho, Burt, R. (Boose, L. (eds.), 2003, Shakespeare: the movie II: popularizing the plays on film, TV and DVD, p. 201, Routledge.
· Olivier, L. 1948, Hamlet, Rank Film Distributors.