Anybody Want a Piece of Pie?

I was going to insert a Hannibal joke here, but I'm better than that. Actual screenshot from the film.

There’s a part very early in the 1999 film Shakespeare in Love with William Shakespeare is talking to a street urchin playing with mice named John Webster. While they’re talking, John Webster mentions that he really enjoyed one of Shakespeare’s earlier plays, Titus Andronicus. 

This is a little in-joke in the world of Theatre. John Webster is a famous Jacobean playwright known for his extremely bloody and violent plays... and thus probably would enjoy something like Titus Andronicus. And the Saw movies. He’d find those hilarious.

For the past two days I have talked about Shakespearean adaptations that have taken plays and updated them for modern audiences, which included the dialogue. Today I’m going to talk about one of the more disturbing Shakespearean plays that was adapted, none of the dialogue changed and took full advantage of “adaptation” part of  William Shakespeare. 

Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins and directed by Julie Taymor takes the idea of an adaptation and runs with it, while using the dialogue from the original play and creating a world where this play can actually exist.

I’ve discussed Titus Andronicus several times on this blog, but never really took the time to talk about what it was all about. They’re from New Jersey and were formed in 2005 who’s first album, The Airing of Grievances... wait. Nope, that’s the band. My bad.

Titus Andronicus was one of William Shakespeare’s first plays, and it’s believed that it was written to capitalize on the popularity of bloody revenge plays. It is actually one of his bloodiest and most graphically violent plays with most of the blood and gore happening on stage. That’s saying something coming from a man that killed a kid in one play, and then randomly had another character killed off stage by a bear. It was popular in it’s day, then it lost popularity as people lost a taste of graphic violence, but has started to earn back respect thanks to works like Titus. 

The play is a revenge cycle about a fictional general named Titus Andronicus (because duh, but he did fool us with the whole Ciaus Marius/Coriolanus thing) who seeks revenge against Tamora, Queen of the Goths during the latter days of the Roman Empire. The Emperor has died and his two sons are fighting for the throne, when Titus comes home with prisoners, including Tamora and her three sons. You see, despite the fact that the Emperor had kids, everyone wants Titus to be the new Emperor. He refuses and kills one of Tamora’s kids, then refuses the throne. Later, one of the Emperor’s kids, Saturninus marries Tamora, despite the fact that he said he wanted to marry Lavinia, Titus’ daughter. She had been engaged to the other son Bassianus, and wanted to refuse, so everyone gets accused of treason, and it’s Tamora who says to pardon them all.

Later, Aaron, Tamora’s son and secret lover (yep.) convinces his brothers to go kill Bassianus, then rape Lavinia, cutting off her hands and her tongue. 

Did I mention this play had strong, graphic violence? and that Julie Taymore doesn’t shy away from it? Good. Because she doesn’t

Where was I? Aaron the secret son/lover frames Titus’ kids for the killing, and the rape, Tamora gives birth to Aaron’s kid (Aaron kills the nurse who delivered the infant) Titus pretends to go insane, then Tamora and the two sons who raped Lavina dress up as ghosts to play into his madness. Turns out he was faking the madness thing (like Hamlet!) , kills the sons, bakes them into a pie and serves it to Tamora, then Titus kills his own daughter. Titus kills Tamora, Saturnius kills Titus, then Lucius (Titus’ oldest kid) kills Saturnius and is named Emperor, mostly because everyone else is dead (Or all up in chalk, as Thug Notes would say.) Aaron is then buried alive up to his neck and left to starve to death, giving one of the best/most disturbing speeches in Shakespearean history where he laments that he just wishes he could have done more evil. (This is where Shakespeare leaves us. In Julie Taymor’s version, Lucius adopts the infant son of Aaron and Tamora. Well. The movie. In the play she originally directed, he dies too because why not?)

Titus pretty much follows this, but Titus gets to wear a pretty rockin’ chef’s outfit while serving up the pies.

Like I said, this is a pretty disturbing play, and there’s a reason you hear about Macbeth, Hamlet, or King Lear, and not about this one when talking about tragedies. Your other fun detail about this is that while Shakespeare’s other works about Rome, such as: Julius Caesar, Corolanius, and Anthony and Cleopatra, this is not based at least partly on a real Emperor, nor does it specify a time other than “The End of the Roman Empire.” Julie Taymor really plays with this timelessness aspect, and it works in setting a believable play that takes place in a real world, but doesn’t.

Titus has no real sense of time. Swords are used next to pistols. Microphones are used to talk to groups of people in togas. Motorcycles and horses. It works because this play is so dis jointed, so many strange things happen in it, this sort of leads everyone into a fantastical land where you can’t question it. Rome was brutal. Not serving your enemy’s kids a pie brutal. (Or maybe it was. We need to be in the right mindset to accept it, though. The soundtrack can go back and forth between epic and Jazzy. This movie makes everything feel out of place.

Which I feel, is necessary for a play like this. Nothing is in it’s place. Remember, I talk often about the fact that while we revere a lot of Shakespeare’s work, a lot of what he does is parody, including parody styles of the time. The Bloody Revenge Tragedy was extremely popular back in his day. This isn’t just a Bloody Revenge Tragedy. This is THE BLOODY REVENGE TRAGEDY. Julie Taymore, through her use of anachronisms and direction, plays on the idea that maybe this was a parody of revenge tragedies of the day. There’s only so much you can inject into a play where one of the main characters just wishes he could do more evil.

Unlike the other two movies I’ve talked about, this one did not do too well int he box office or with critics. O was at least liked by critics. Ten Things I hate About You is a beloved movie I’m going to go watch again right now. But this isn’t an easy movie to watch, not by any stretch of the imagination. I would recommend true fans of Shakespeare to check it out at some point. And if you’re going to watch a version of Titus Andronicus, make it this one. I’m a huge mark for Patrick Stewart, so I love his version of Macbeth. Joss Whedon could sneeze into a napkin and I’d watch it, so I love Much Ado About Nothing directed by him and starring his friends. But if I’m being 100% honest with you, this is probably one of the best Shakespearean adaptations out there. Not just because of a focus on the text, but because it is able to transform a story that is bloody and violent into something the author wanted. Remember how I talked about digging deep, looking past what the play “is about” and figuring out what the play is about? Julie Taymor nails it. Repeatedly. With her version of Titus Andronicus. 

Breaking Bad is Literature

You know, since I started working on this blog while Breaking Bad is airing, I’ve started putting this little tag letting you know that I’ll be covering spoilers. Is it even necessary? I mean, I post these the Friday after the episode aired. That was on Sunday. Did you really manage to avoid everything until then? If you didn’t, then you deserve to have me tell you that the episode ended with Walt turning into a Dragon and attacking Arizona. Grrr. Arrggh.

As you may know, next week is Banned Books Week. Which means we’ll be taking a break from Breaking Bad Shakespeare Fridays. I’ll be doing a special on Monday analyzing if it ended as a Shakespearean piece, or merely as something Marlowe may have slapped together to cover his drinking debts, because screw Marlowe. You heard me.

In the meantime, and in the spirit of Banned Books Week next week, I wanted to take a special look at Breaking Bad in the spirit of banned book weeks. Mostly, this show that I’ve been comparing to a Shakespearean tragedy (because it very much is a Shakespearean tragedy, and there are people with phD’s that agree with me, not just a guy with a blog and three days to fill. (I suppose I could cut back, but here I am...). Many of the themes are the same, the body count is lower than in a lot of Shakespearean Plays, the violence is just about the same, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone to put Breaking Bad in a classroom as an example of great literature. (Never mind that Shakespeare didn’t write a word of his plays to be read, he wrote them to be performed, yet we say how Shakespeare is nothing but literature.) 

Quick note: some of this post is because of last week’s Breaking Bad, in which we poured some Schraderbrau on the curb for ASAC Schrader. However, I hope that people understood that in an episode that contained a shootout between two DEA Agents and a group of Meth-Dealing Nazis, both DEA Agents being murdered, the brutal torture and imprisonment of a guy, a knife fight between a husband and wife, and the kidnapping of a baby, the helpful censored made sure we didn’t hear any naughty words in the form of ASAC Schrader’s final “Fuck” to the bad guys. I’m glad that we got to think of the kids in the audience not hearing any bad words before Walt confesses to letting a woman die because she was getting in the way of his Meth-Cooking.

That brings me to my point of Breaking Bad and Shakespeare, mostly with violence. The body count in Shakespeare’s plays are pretty high. There’s murder (most foul), rape, suicide (oh, my... the suicide), torture, and one instance of a pie that would make the writers of Saw sit down and say, “hey... maybe Shakespeare should have toned it down a little bit.” At what point do we trade off violence (and some language) for the “literary factor.” Let’s face it, there’s symbolism in Shakespeare, there’s symbolism in Breaking Bad. I can’t stress enough: Walter White should be up there with the great pantheon of Shakespearean characters. He’s got pride, jealousy, no matter how far down the rabbit hole he goes, he’s doing it all for his family and can justify it (until his wife pulls a knife on him.)

So what makes something “literary”? Is it because a bunch of guys in wigs decide that something is literary? (That’s how they do it right? Or am I thinking of the British Legal System.) What makes, say, Hamlet more literary than Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, which many consider to be one of the best in the medium? Why is Macbeth great art when Breaking Bad is “just a TV Show”? Again, I’m using Shakespeare not just because this blog is called “Bad Shakespeare” and not just because I’ve been comparing the two for the past however many weeks (I’m too lazy to go back and count. Someone do that for me.) but because Shakespeare wrote PLAYS. Things up on the stage for us to see. Things that would be interpreted a certain way because an actor decided that Hamlet should be played as depressed flimmaker in 2000. (Damn you, Ethan Hawke. Just... damn you.) Or because Wesley from Angel should dive in the grass as much as possible while people try to trick him.

I guess I’m getting at the central question I’ve asked plenty of times: Is Breaking Bad literature? I’d say yes. Yes it is. But something like this would be banned from classrooms, because of it’s violence and language. (Oh, and Shakespeare LOVED the bad language. He just hid it better than we do today.) But this violence and language... it’s nothing compared to what we’ve seen in the past. It still has all those juicy elements that I would love to tackle in a classroom, and do so in a way that will help kids learn something about revenge tragedies, fatal flaws, symbolism, and everything that Shakespeare would love to teach us. Because Shakespeare loved the bad guy, and show us what made him tick.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Here’s Aaron’s speech at the end of Titus Andronicus, where he curses the fact that he can’t do more evil.

AARON. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.

Even now I curse the day- and yet, I think,

Few come within the compass of my curse-

Wherein I did not some notorious ill;

As kill a man, or else devise his death;

Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;

Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;

Set deadly enmity between two friends;

Make poor men's cattle break their necks;

Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,

And bid the owners quench them with their tears.

Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,

And set them upright at their dear friends' door

Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,

And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,

Have with my knife carved in Roman letters

'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'

Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things

As willingly as one would kill a fly;

And nothing grieves me heartily indeed

But that I cannot do ten thousand more.”

All Aboard the Censor-Ship 2: Die Harder

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that could be described as “thought provoking” and “handsome” by people who describe my posts (me) about censorship and book banning in schools. At the time, I was working on a banned book project. (Which, if tweaked a little bit, could have been an awesome project on band books, but I digress.)

            This is a topic that I really do wish continue to explore. It fascinates me, the idea that we are so afraid of some ideas that we have to flat out ban them because… why? Is there ever a good reason to ban a book?

            I’m still very much in the camp that banning books is a bad idea, and historically, it has never turned out well. Once you ban a book, you give it more power. Then you also run into that problem that you face with kids (and me) where if you tell them NOT to do something, they’re going to run out and do it. (of course in that case, maybe we SHOULD ban all books…) But someone commented on the age appropriateness of books in the classroom… I’ll give you that, but with a bit of a Shyamalanian twist. I think you have to look at the maturity of students before giving out some books, not necessarily the age. There are some fourth graders more mature than 16 year olds out there. There are some 16 year olds more mature than some television news pundits. It’s all relative, and it’s a difficult balance to try and strike. (Like getting a bear to ride a unicycle: If it’s too big, it’s not funny. If it’s too small, it’s not funny enough.)

That fourth grader may not understand the intricate history involved in the killing your enemies and baking them into a pie to serve to their parents that was Titus Andronicus. (Shakespeare was the original author of Saw. Look it up.) Does this mean that we ban this forever? No. I think it means we wait until they are mature enough to handle the material. (Sixth grade, maybe?) I joke and use an extreme example, but there was a book that we read in my class that did divide some of the students.

It was called Perfect and it featured things like date rape, eating disorders, steroid use, and other problems that we would like to pretend that kids don’t have to face today. I will level with you, it is not a happy book, and it does not have a happy ending. It is not an easy read, and I’m… well, let’s just say well over high school age. Should every high schooler be handed this book and told to read it? No. Do I think with the right students, they could get something out of this book and possibly open a dialogue about these issues? I think it could. Will I ask myself questions in every post? I don’t know… maybe. I know this book divided the class on whether or not it should be taught. In the right setting, it could be a powerful, powerful experience. But we have to give our students the opportunity to figure that out. They may read it and think it’s too much. They may read it, devour it, and seek out more books like it.  I could never pull this book so that no student could find it because I was afraid it would offend or because I want to pretend someone isn’t going through this. The “la-la-la-la I can’t hear you” method of going through life rarely works.  

This is your food for thought for today.  And keep in mind, these are just my opinions, not binding arbitration. This is a difficult subject, and there are no easy answers, and a guy wearing a Green Lantern Ring while he types this probably won’t solve all the difficult nuances behind this subject. (But I am willing to solve the problem of the best Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner. You’re welcome, America.)

I still plan do to do more with banned books, doled out thoughtfully over the course of the next few months because it is a heavy subject, and break it up more. Head to the comments section to weigh in, or email me at shakespearebad@gmail.com.

If Cujo Would Have Me King...

         Recently, a letter from Stephen King (who is totally probably writing right now and is not torturing rodents in his basement with a hacksaw) to a fan about what he read to learn to write. He had a lot of classics on there, but the last one caught my eye. He said, “Macbeth.”

            

          Now, as anyone who studies theatre will know that even writing about this play which is believed to be cursed risks bringing a plague upon me. But this is a powerful thought, powerful enough for me to ignore 400 years of history where people have literally died while performing the play. Here is one of this century’s most prominent and/or popular writers (You should agree with the “popular” statement, you know… just in case) and even he goes back to the bard when talking about influences.

            I’ve made no secret in previous postings that Shakespeare was entertainment in the day, and we have remind students of that fact. But then, I haven’t sold millions of books that have been turned into mediocre movies. Go watch “Dreamcatcher” and tell me that statement isn't true. Do it. But if you don't believe me, believe the master of horror himself: Shakespeare rules. Put Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, or even Hamlet against some of the best horror movies of today, and see how they stack up. Those guys that wrote saw WISH they could have written something as disturbing as Titus Andronicus.