Have any of you heard a family member say something so blatantly racist that you actually have to stop and wonder if they actually said what they said? Yeah, I had to deal with that.

Nah, not realy. He spends most of the play wibbling around about punishing people ("I'll execute you next time! I MEAN it!") only to realize at the end that he fucked up and everyone's dead as a result.

Yeah, he's like a really ineffectual parent. If he'd actually whacked or exiled the head Capulets or Montagues (or both) he'd have stopped the fighting dead but he umms and aahs too much.

I think it might if you played it right, you can probably make the case that the shallowness of their relationship acts as a mirror to the shallowness of the feud between their houses. One of the interesting things about Romeo and Juliet is that *everybody* in it behaves like a "teenager" (with the possible exception of the Prince). Pretty much everybody in the play cocks up as a result of being just slightly too caught up in their own idea of themselves to work out that something is going to go seriously wrong and two kids wind up dead as a result.

True--though basically that comes to the same thing. Their love is the mirror of everyone else's hate. It's always possible to look at it and say that it's silly because it is. We don't even know why these people are fighting. But as an actor I don't think you can play it as shallow otherwise it doesn't work. People killing themselves over a love that wouldn't have lasted if they lived longer or wouldn't have happened under different circumstances is one thing--people killing themselves over something they know is those things is a different story.

They tend to involve less suicide and more jokes about genitalia

To be fair, R&J does have a lot of dick jokes.

with the possible exception of the Prince

Nah, not realy. He spends most of the play wibbling around about punishing people ("I'll execute you next time! I MEAN it!") only to realize at the end that he fucked up and everyone's dead as a result.

@Dan: I agree.

Also, when you think about it two people killing themselves over a love affair which, left to their own devices, they might have tired of in a week is arguably even more tragic than two people killing themselves over an attachment which has been unambiguously shown to be true and genuinely lasting. The ambiguity underlines the sheer needlessness of their deaths.

I don't know what it would add to the play to highlight the shallowness of the attachment

I think it might if you played it right, you can probably make the case that the shallowness of their relationship acts as a mirror to the shallowness of the feud between their houses. One of the interesting things about Romeo and Juliet is that *everybody* in it behaves like a "teenager" (with the possible exception of the Prince). Pretty much everybody in the play cocks up as a result of being just slightly too caught up in their own idea of themselves to work out that something is going to go seriously wrong and two kids wind up dead as a result.

Scott Pilgrim trailer.

Andy, aren't you finding that when you go back to it you're able to start again on the last level you got to? (Underneath the picture of the tank on the loading page should be a 'stage select' thingy with arrows and a number indicating what level you're on.) Maybe the crash stops that, but even so I imagine you should be able to effectively save the game periodically by just quitting from time to time.

Argh "Closure" is such a bad name for that game, because it's precisely what I can't get. I've got as far as level 28 before my computer crashes.

If anyone with a more reliable computer has developed an appetite for Flash puzzle platformers, I seriously recommend Flash Portal.

Adèle Blanc-Sec does look fun. Though based on the trailer I'm not sure where the IO9 folks are getting 'steampunk' from, unless that's what we're now calling all stories set between 1800 and 1900.

On the other hand, I agree with you that saying "it's about two hormonal teenagers" is a vast oversimplification, if only because we know darn well what sort of play Shakespeare wrote when he wanted to talk about foolish young persons getting into inappropriate romantic entanglements. They tend to involve less suicide and more jokes about genitalia.

LOL! True. I agree with Dan that basically everyone's right.:-) I remember once reading something where the person said she liked to respond to people who said they or another couple was "like Romeo and Juliet" by asking if they meant they had died throught a tragic mix-up in their fake death scheme.

As I said, I think Shakespeare took the characters' youth into consideration in writing them--they're still unmarried, they're under the orders of their family etc. And also, they're acting on passionate impulses without always thinking them through--and they have boundless energy to act on them and little patience. Could they have wound up a bickering old couple who hated each other? Maybe, maybe not. But they never get that far. When they die they are, by their own definition, wildly in love with each other.

One could totally validly interpret them as actually only being in lust with each other and play it like that, but I don't know what it would add to the play to highlight the shallowness of the attachment. Not because there isn't any proof of that in there, but because it doesn't go anywhere. They never get disabused of their notion that they're in love with each other. It just changes the force standing in opposition to the hatred of the families from love to lust. But lust that still kills the hatred they've been brought up to feel for the other, and lust they themselves call love.

On the other hand, seeing it as being about "two homonal teenagers" is completely anachronistic - as Cassie Claire observes, "teenagers" are after all a modern concept.

To be fair, "teenagers" is a modern concept but "youth" isn't. The idea that young persons of a certain age tend to be a bit wild and then mellow out as they get older and settle down isn't new at all, all that's changed is that previously people of Romeo and Juliet's age were considered to be young adults whereas nowadays they're seen as being in this fuzzy transitional stage.

On the other hand, I agree with you that saying "it's about two hormonal teenagers" is a vast oversimplification, if only because we know darn well what sort of play Shakespeare wrote when he wanted to talk about foolish young persons getting into inappropriate romantic entanglements. They tend to involve less suicide and more jokes about genitalia.

Re: Romeo and Juliet

I think both parties are kinda right here. Seeing Romeo and Juliet as a "love story" only really makes sense if you ignore large parts of the actual text and context. On the other hand, seeing it as being about "two homonal teenagers" is completely anachronistic - as Cassie Claire observes, "teenagers" are after all a modern concept.

"It's a love story" is an oversimplistic interpretation of a complex play. "It's not a love story because they're young and act stupid" is an oversimplistic rebuttal of that interpretation.

Personally I think that whether or not R and J were in love is an enormous red herring. The tragedy isn't that they fell in love, it's that they killed themselves because ludicrous social barriers (the feud in the play as written, although pretty much any social barrier could be seen in its place) wouldn't let them be. Maybe if the families hadn't been at war they'd have seen each other for a couple weeks and then realised it wasn't going anywhere and stopped. Or maybe they would have been a perfect match. The point is, we don't know that, and we don't need to know because it honestly doesn't matter; what matters is that their young lives have been snuffed out and it's the grown-ups who are to blame.

Shakespeare wasn't addressing the play to callow youths and encouraging them to stick two fingers up at their parents and elope. He was addressing the play to his peers and saying "Hey, Elizabethans, leave them kids alone!"

Thinking about it again, I suppose whether or not Romeo and Juliet can be considered a love story hinges on a person's definition of "love" or "true love". And there is no *right* definition for those things, I suppose. So I guess I have a problem with Romeo and Juliet being called a love story because their relationship is a complete antithesis to the ways I would define love. But for someone's else's definition, Romeo and Juliet could easily be a love story. And both opinions are equally valid. But I do think that there are other Shakespeare couples that are better than Romeo and Juliet....

I tend to get annoyed because all I hear about people rambling on about how Romeo and Juliet is the epitome of romance and true love and their love was so pure and deep, etc, etc.

Personally, I like Romeo and Juliet as a play. I do. I just tend to run into people who think Romeo and Juliet are a symbol of true and pure love and it's the most romantic thing in the world to kill yourself for someone you've known a total of about a week. I tend to think true love requires a bit more time, and that there's nothing romantic about killing yourself because your lover is dead. Others may disagree.

My point about the play not being focused on that "Romeo and Juliet are OMGOTP4EVA" comes from a few places. The play tells us straight up that Romeo is fickle. He was bemoaning his loss of Rosalyn at the start of the play. He's a romantic, to be sure, but he falls in love (and I use the term loosely) very easily. He and Juliet certainly believed they were in love with each other. Looking at it from the puppy love phase (and they never got past that), it makes perfect sense.

Also, the priest (who iirc acts very much as the narrative voice of reason during the play) acknowledges that they are moving too fast and he probably shouldn't marry them, but he wants to try and stop the families fighting.

I'm sure the interpretation by the actors makes a huge difference. But looking at it from a realistic standpoint makes you boggle a little at how ridiculously stupid these two kids are acting. Yes, fourteen and sixteen were perfectly acceptable ages to get married, that's not an issue. But they were getting married so that they could shag each other. In love, my foot. In lust was more like it.

I'm not trying to start an argument here, it's just a huge pet peeve of mine to hear Romeo and Juliet touted as the greatest love story of all time over and over again by people who think they're writing the next greatest love story of all time.

I just get irritated because there seems to be a trend recently of people turning their noses up and the play and saying "Well obviously the play isn't about love like all those silly plebs seem to think. I, being of superior intellect, can understand that." It's a way for people to pat theselves on the back and call themselves revolutionary SHakespeare scholars without actually going beyond a rental of the Luhrman movie. It also lets them conveniently ignore the cultural and social context, wherein most people died young after breeding even younger, and marrying for love was considered ludicrous. It's armchair Shakespearian scholarship mixed with a healthy dose of snobbery. /rant

It can be a love story and a parable about family feuds, though. It all depends on how it's played. It's all in the interpretation. The production I'm in now is playing it as a genuine love story as well as acknowledging that the leads act like idiots.

I agree. I think it's just a matter of trends whether people see it as a love story or not. I mean, yes, the story is more about hate than love. If the family feud wasn't going on the kids wouldn't be driven to do what they do for their own passion. I don't think it matters whether or not one thinks Romeo & Juliet are idiots. Idiots can fall in love. Most of the characters in the play act like idiots. They love as intensely as the rest of their family hates. I'm just not sure Shakespeare would necessarily be writing from the perspective of "they're hormonal teenagers." I think he knew what he was doing when he made them that age, of course. I'm just not sure that means there's an implied understanding that it's not love.

I always thought Romeo and Juliette was originally intended to be true blue love story and then a couple hundred years later--when the culture had significantly changed--people took another look and said "Y'know, when you look at it realistically, this relationship is all manner of screwed up. Any sane reading of the text will show both Juliette and Romeo as shallow, hormonal teenagers who are attracted to each other for all the wrong reasons. Egro, that must be how the story is supposed to be read. QED." But then again, I've not exactly studied the subject in any sort of detail. Was I in error?

And now for something completely different: It seems someone has given Indiana Jones a sex change, thrown him back in time a few decades, and turned him loose in pre-WWI France. I'm excited.

(Escalus...

Is there a word for that type of coincidence, sometimes mistaken for irony, that is neither quite appropriate nor particulary suggestive but is sufficiently unlikely that if it occurred in a work of literature one would spend some time trying to work out why it might be appropriate or suggestive?

... and the chorus. Bascially my job is to pop up every few acts to tell the audience what's going on.)

In gorgeous verse!

That, and the point is the Greek tragedies isn't "make the audience bawl." TheGreeks were not comprised of Joss Whedon. IIRC, most of the Greek tragedies were about failing to escape fate.

(Escalus and the chorus. Bascially my job is to pop up every few acts to tell the audience what's going on.)

The point at which we should stop expecting this guy to have a sound understanding of literary history is when he justifies killing off characters 'to major handkerchief effect' by saying:

The examples were not set out by me. They were set out 2,000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. They were called the Greek tragedies.

'Say, Aeschylus, what are you writing?'
'Oh, this? The kindly ones. It's another one of what I like to call "the Greek tragedies".'
'Cool. Does someone die at the end?'
'No, everything works out okay in the end.'
'Nifty. Is it a love story?'
'Courtroom drama.'
'Awesome. Say, what year is it now?'
'459 BC. Why?'
'I dunno, I just had this feeling like maybe it was around AD 10.'
'Nope.'


(Who're you playing, Viorica?)

It can be a love story and a parable about family feuds, though. It all depends on how it's played. It's all in the interpretation. The production I'm in now is playing it as a genuine love story as well as acknowledging that the leads act like idiots.

Arg, "Romeo and Juliet" is not a love story!!! The guy obviously doesn't understand *his* genre at all if his thinks Romeo and Juliet is a love story! The play makes it quite clear that they are two stupid, hormonal teenagers acting like idiots! That play isn't about love; it's about a meaningless feud between two families that ends up destroying both of them. Romeo and Juliet is NOT a love story!

Sorry, pet peeve of mine.