Well, I’m sick of politics for a while and I’m sure you are too. Here is one pet peeve: people who use Romeo and Juliet as an example of their true/forbidden love. And by “people”, I mean I only have one example.
Taylor Swift has a song called “Love Story”. It’s about two people named Romeo and Juliet, they love each other, Juliet’s father disapproves, they’re “not supposed to be alone”, and get married, The End.
Well that takes us up to Act Three, out of Five Acts…
<Spoiler Alert>
THEY DIE! AND THEIR FRIENDS! AND ROMEO’S MOM FOR SOME REASON!1
This is not a happy story. The first scene has a guy talking about how he likes to rape women, but you can’t tell due to the crazy language. Although they end up married together, they only live happily ever after in the afterlife. Or not. The Medieval/Renaissance world didn’t take too kindly to suicide. More asinine religious beliefs in Shakespeare’s world: Hamlet’s father went to Hell because he had not confessed his sins before being murdered, yet Claudius (the murder) would have gone to heaven if Hamlet killed him in the confessional as he just confessed his sins!
Shakespeare was a combination of O. Henry’s irony and Hitchcock’s twists and darkness. He was one sick motherf#cker. Making sad plays and killing people off in them was a job he liked way too much.
Taft is another possible result of mixing O. Henry with A. Hitchcock
Tragedy’s usually end tragically. I don’t know if “happily ever after” could fit in a play with murder, talk of rape, exile/banishment, near adultery/polygamy, and underage sex (Juliet was “not quite 14”, Romeo’s age is not given. Should I add statutory rape?).
So please, stop referencing Romeo and Juliet when you talk about true love/forbidden romance ending on a happy note. Or else, you sound like Milhouse from the Simpsons: “We were like Romeo and Juliet, but it ended in tragedy”. It is not a happy play about two young lovers who fall in love and live happily ever after. It is a play in which two people fall in love and half the cast dies.
I think Shakespeare killed more people than Rambo
If you want true love with a happy ending, watch West Side Story. Wait, that ended in tragedy too. Wait a minute; the plot of that movie bears a lot of similarities to Romeo and Juliet…
Fine, then. If you want a happy ending, watch a Disney film…even if the content from the book in which the movie was based on is also pretty dark…
I guess there are no happy endings in life, unless you pay a little extra for a massage! (Or get dessert and Friendly’s)
1She didn’t even die on stage. I don’t even think she was on stage at all! She died from grief after hearing of her son’s exile! Really? That's enough to cause death?
Just to further prove Shakespeare was a sick f#ck when it came to killing off characters...why the HELL did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die in "Hamlet?" They were just two dudes who used to run with Hamlet back in the 'hood and were called in to check in with their homeboy when he started acting all trippy. They didn't know what was going on, other than Hamlet had gotten a bee in his bonnet, and decided to leave AND THEN DIE. They don't even die on stage, some loser comes running in to tell everyone (also all dead) that R & G were victims of a drive-by or something. Really, Billy S, REALLY?!
ReplyDeleteside note, you really hate taylor swift. this is the second time you've bashed her in a post, which i am totally okay with since i think she's annoying.
ReplyDelete