“In Luhrmann's Romeo it is hard to believe that Harold Perdneau even understands most of Mercutio's lines”. Various reviewers expressed their concern about the combination of modern popular culture and Shakespeare. Luhrmann’s adaptation twists Shakespeare’s “high culture” and elitist status in modern society. Shakespeare who is now considered high culture used to write and stage his plays for the masses. He also expresses his intention to “learn from this guy who lived 400 years ago”. Luhrmann states that he wanted to “tell his (Shakespeare’s) story in such an aggressive, sexy, noisy, rambunctious way that he could shut them up and at the same time reach out and touch every kind of background”. They both factored in their respective zeitgeist. Luhrmann and Shakespeare both staged the storyline of Romeo and Juliet for a broad audience of their time. His aspiration was to convert what he assumed Shakespeare would have staged: “he would have low comedy, high drama, action, popular songs”. He updated the play to modern popular culture. Luhrmann captured Shakespeare’s status as popular culture and writer for the masses.
The fear of undermining Shakespeare’s cultural value overshadows the asset a modern adaptation can have to familiarize more people to the classic story. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet also appealed to a younger teenage audience due to the choice of cast and style of filming. Cinema is an important medium of popular culture as it is affordable and easily accessible (the films get even more accessible when the films are shown on TV). Moreover, popular culture is aimed to be comprehensible for non-specialists. As the term already implies popular culture is well-liked and also relatable to the general public. Popular culture is appealing to a wide range of people. He combines the high cultural status, which Shakespeare’s plays are ranked among, and Shakespeare original “Elizabethan” cultural status of popular culture. Luhrmann intends to make Shakespeare accessible for the masses. Intermediality served as an instrument to portrait both postmodern features as well as popular culture.īaz Luhrmann neglected the interpretation of “Club Shakespeare” in order to “violence, direct, passionate, musical (…), free, energetic, boardy, savage, rambunctious storytelling that it was when this author brought it to the stage”. Postmodern characteristic such as hyperreality and the ascription of Shakespeare as part of Elizabethan popular culture play an important role in Luhrmann’s depiction of the classical plot of the star-crossed lovers. So the question arises: Can a postmodern interpretation be an “Elizabethan interpretation” at the same time? This does not seem to coincide with Luhrmann’s aspiration of an “Elizabethan adaptation” of the classic dramatic love story. The adaptation is widely recognized to be postmodern. The combination of the Elizabethan English language and the recontextualisation of the classic love story with news, TV, swords as guns, advertisements, and ecstasy led Jane Maslin, a reviewer form the NY Times, to remark “his is headache Shakespeare, but there's method to its madness“. The adaptation lets the cast speak the Shakespeare’s original text and combines it with fast modern video art.
Adapted to the modern Zeitgeist Luhrmann staged a combination of an updated version of the classic in a multimedia time and preserved traditional essential elements such as the language and main themes.
Due to the juxtaposition of Shakespeare’s words, fast colourful pictures and teenage stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes the director Baz Luhrmann claims this adaptation to be an “Elizabethan interpretation of Shakespeare”. In many English literature lessons this film adaptation is popular to familiarize people with William Shakespeare’s plays and language. William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet-A (postmodern) Elizabethan interpretationīaz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) retells the famous story of Romeo and Juliet who fall in love but cannot be together due to their families’ old feud.
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