Response to Course Material 12/22

Hamlet On Screen
 Like many other great pieces of literature, several visual adaptations of Hamlet have taken the liberty of bending and polishing the original story line set by William Shakespeare. The class watched scenes from five films focusing on the following: Claudius and Gertrude's wedding, The sightings of the Ghost, Hamlet and Ophelia's break-up, Hamlet in his mother's closet, Ophelia's slip from reality/innocence, and the final battle scene.
  Kevin Branaugh's 1996 adaptation was the first of the five Hamlet movies we watched. The relationship between Claudius and Gertrude was depicted as something romantic, instead of a political move that I drew from the text. Having been the first visual representation many of us had watched, the class was pretty shocked by the bold acting choices the actors made. Specifically, by Hamlet in his interactions with Ophelia and his mother. I do not think anyone read/listened Hamlet's part and envisioned him throwing Ophelia to the ground and pinning his mother to a bed. This film showed the class right away the different motives of a playwright and a director. Branaugh's film was set in a more recent period, which brought up a discussion in the class if it is appropriate to put Shakespearean plays in modern time.
   Ms. Holmes showed the class two versions of Hamlet set in modern time. My favorite was Micheal Almereyda's version starring Ethan Hawke as Hamlet. I liked this version for the following selfish reasons:  it reminded me of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet, I like late 90's to early 2000's fashion, it took place in New York City, and I enjoy looking at Ethan Hawke. Ethan Hawke's performance was very different from past Hamlets. He was seen more as a deep thinking misfit, and  less of a frustrated momma's boy with a chemical imbalance. His love for Ophelia seemed genuine and he acted more like an expected thirty-something man would if confronted by the ghost of his father.
Compared to the 2009 BBC version starring David Tennant, I am not sure which modern portrayal did the original story the most justice and honestly, I am starting to think that it doesn't matter. When so many movies have been made trying to recapture the tragic tale, I think it is more logical for recent versions to be more "creative" with the original storyline. Many people are bothered when movies stray from the the text they are based off of. However books serve as inspiration to filmmakers--not guidelines. I mean, that is what art is all about. Taking inspiration from another artist and making it work using your preferred mediums and exercising your creative mind. I could dedicate an entire blog post to what I thought about each movie and what new perspectives they offered me, but I will save my fingers and your eyeballs the extra effort.

Forum Post
Listening to the prisoners discuss how reading Hamlet impacted their lives and hearing their personal connection to the main character was exceptional. I hope we will do more activities like this in the future where we can be exposed to real people's perceptions on literature. However, I was most fascinated by the responses my fellow classmates had about Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Ophelia." This was a great example of when you get many people to read the same thing, many opinions and solutions will result. To me, the style of Rimbaud's poem matched the innocence and beauty that the characters in Hamlet saw Ophelia. Many classmates said this lofty language did not do Ophelia justice because Rimbaud depicted her as a child. I agree that Ophelia is not an angel, but she is a child nonetheless. She is a a teenage girl and does not have the means to live on her own. She has the dilemma of having the appearance of purity while having occasional "adult" desires. When I read some critiques students made saying she was "dark" and "impure" it was pretty shocking considering the times (and social climate) we live in. In the hallways we hear the latest "hook-ups" and often they are about people we know and call our friends. Good people. There is a difference between having impure thoughts and acting on them, but in medieval times, it was expected for young girls to marry (that means eventual conception) and start a family before they were 21. So I agree with Rimbaud when he says something in the river drowned Ophelia against her will. Ophelia was just trying to do what she had been assigned to do since birth. The insecurities and judgements of others were what ruined her.

Shakespeare Uncovered Video: David Tennant
 I appreciated this video for the insight it provided on the actor's journey to "becoming" Hamlet. What this video really did for me was emphasize, once again, how people see the play in different ways and appreciate it for different reasons. When Tennant interviewed Jude Law about his experience playing the "Prince of Denmark", Law caught himself talking more about his own emotions during certain scenes and how he personally related to Hamlet. Think about it, an uneducated convict of murder and a noteworthy (undeniably good looking) actor can see themselves in the same character.

Tragic Balance in Hamlet
This essay was long. As I was reading it with half of my brain already logged off for the night, I wondered what kind of discussions we would have about it the following day. To my surprise, it drew up quite the stir. A lot of our discussion focused on the elevated diction used by the author and how it hindered the audience from understanding his intended message. Reading the essay was a challenge for me, but I think I understood the broad message that there is evidence in the text for extreme, contradicting views throughout Hamlet. An respectable argument can be made the Hamlet is crazy and the Ghost is an illusion, but so can one that Hamlet saved Denmark and the Ghost is a message from God. The essay is organized sort of oddly, but the author argues for both sides for each argument he proposes in his essay. For some of the classmates, this was saw this as him being an inadequate writer, and others found him hypocritical. I sided more with people who said he was not necessarily contradicting himself, but showing different perspectives. The idea of "balance", was for readers to appreciate all interpretations of Hamlet because casting an idea aside weakens your understanding and richness of the reading.