Posted on 12/14/2005 2:32:05 PM PST by cougar_mccxxi
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Hamlet's father runs a club -- not a kingdom -- and the "sweet prince" drunkenly raps a version of his "To be or not to be" soliloquy in an urban teenage take on the Shakespearean play.
Brainstorming ideas for a project promoting nonviolence, the students chose a work in which almost all the main characters are dead by the time the curtain falls. But in their version, Hamlet openly discusses his troubles with his mother and friends, and his murderous uncle ends up in jail instead of dead at Hamlet's hands in a second, "rewind" ending.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Ebonics strikes again...
Why don't they just re-make Conrad's Heart of Darkness, where Marlow's a traveling insurance salesman and Kurtz is a corrupt CEO, but rather than dying he just goes to jail for extortion or some other crime rather than some violent atrocity in the ivory trade....
Altering....nay, butchering classic literature makes me a sad panda.
Translation: a dumbed-down, pathetic attempt to be hip.
While not happy with rewrites, and song re-dos, I'll admit that the remake of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet movie in 1996 with Clair Danes and "Leo" encouraged me to pick up the complete works and read it cover to cover.
That was the beginning of my love for literature.
Here's hoping that something like this opens some eyes that there's more to entertainment than hip-hop, and whatever Spike Lee churns out.
Did Leo play Juliet?
"Aw Hell man, it's Yorick. I knew dis Nigga' Yo. That MOFO would crack you up. All the time he was carrying my a$$..."
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times...
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