West Side Story
Mar. 30th, 2011 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm watching West Side Story. Like the ballet is a whole lot of dancing. But it makes more sense to me. Now I'm wondering why.
Everyone dances like they live in their whole bodies and nobody has pins stuck anywhere unusual.
Also the fights are still stylised but they build up to movements that proper look like they're trying to kill each other.
I like the songs too. I like the snark in the America song.
In class we'll study up on which bits are and aren't like Romeo and Juliet.
Thus far they've cut the older generation stuff, it's just kids having argue with each other, not an old inherited problem. Except it's sort of structural inherited.
There's a bit more range of roles for women. No, there's a smaller range of ages, a different range of roles. Action stuff with Anybodys trying to get in the gang. And outspoken women, the America song as well as other stuff. But more creepy mistreatment of Anita. Plain nasty, pushing her around. Makes a solid reason for the message though.
"Why do you kids live like there's a war on" is a bit different from the old dude trying to grab his longsword. Doc is more the Friar of course but it changes the whole generational Thing they've got in R&J.
The plot follows more easily than Shakespeare's, there's emotional reasons and consistency for all the things.
Also, unlike with R&J, my reaction was never just *facepalm* at how juvenile R&J were being. Dead of tragic is different than dead of stupid.
And Maria survives and tells them off? "All of you, you all killed him, and my brother, and Riff." Powerful speech there. I think I like it rather a lot better than Juliet's ending.
And it does that thing where musicals spent the most of the time saying everything with a song, so when it's just plain words at the end it has an impact.
It kind of spreads the action and hurt across genders more and different to R&J. Women's actions lead to that ending as well as men's. Actively.
Is interesting cause I was thinking for the rewrite assignment about what the options of women in R&J are. Nurse, mother, Juliet. That's it, that's all.
West Side Story, there's guys saying 'you're a girl, be a girl and beat it', they're telling girls to get gone before meetings, they're trying to push them out and silence them, but it don't work. Women still push the plot around. And they've got more options, employment, celebrating in song all the stuff they can do in this country, and no shouting fathers, though brothers try and put their foot down. Different when its same age people, not so much boxed in? So is interesting to watch possibility change.
Also Juliet getting dead and whatsername, Lady Montague is it? The reaction after the tragedy in R&J is pretty much men standing around. Here a woman gets to be all judging and having the last word.
Still nobody gets a good option.
... and now the closing credits have just annoyed me by listing characters as 'Jets' or 'Sharks' and 'Their Girls'. I can see how it's a description of how they're organised and yet...
/tiny tangent thing.
If you're looking at the differences there's really a lot of them. But the connections are also interesting.
It's like extract of Romeo and Juliet involves two teams who hate each other, two lovers, and a balcony. Plus death.
Next I shall watch either something that is not Romeo and Juliet, or something with vampires that I vaguely recall went R&J ish.
Does Buffy and Angel count as a R&J transformation? Two teams, no balcony, but she does have a window to climb up to.
I think Vampire the Masquerade went there, but I only have that on American DVD so I have to watch on a different box.
Which one was the vampires and werewolves?
I'm not watching anything Twilight, even though teach has added to Blackboard a link to an interview where the writer says it was all R&J.
Also from the college library I got Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood', because it keeps on coming up in writing about Shakespeare transformations. And a BBC 'Midsummer Night's Dream', because there is such a thing as too much dead.
Everyone dances like they live in their whole bodies and nobody has pins stuck anywhere unusual.
Also the fights are still stylised but they build up to movements that proper look like they're trying to kill each other.
I like the songs too. I like the snark in the America song.
In class we'll study up on which bits are and aren't like Romeo and Juliet.
Thus far they've cut the older generation stuff, it's just kids having argue with each other, not an old inherited problem. Except it's sort of structural inherited.
There's a bit more range of roles for women. No, there's a smaller range of ages, a different range of roles. Action stuff with Anybodys trying to get in the gang. And outspoken women, the America song as well as other stuff. But more creepy mistreatment of Anita. Plain nasty, pushing her around. Makes a solid reason for the message though.
"Why do you kids live like there's a war on" is a bit different from the old dude trying to grab his longsword. Doc is more the Friar of course but it changes the whole generational Thing they've got in R&J.
The plot follows more easily than Shakespeare's, there's emotional reasons and consistency for all the things.
Also, unlike with R&J, my reaction was never just *facepalm* at how juvenile R&J were being. Dead of tragic is different than dead of stupid.
And Maria survives and tells them off? "All of you, you all killed him, and my brother, and Riff." Powerful speech there. I think I like it rather a lot better than Juliet's ending.
And it does that thing where musicals spent the most of the time saying everything with a song, so when it's just plain words at the end it has an impact.
It kind of spreads the action and hurt across genders more and different to R&J. Women's actions lead to that ending as well as men's. Actively.
Is interesting cause I was thinking for the rewrite assignment about what the options of women in R&J are. Nurse, mother, Juliet. That's it, that's all.
West Side Story, there's guys saying 'you're a girl, be a girl and beat it', they're telling girls to get gone before meetings, they're trying to push them out and silence them, but it don't work. Women still push the plot around. And they've got more options, employment, celebrating in song all the stuff they can do in this country, and no shouting fathers, though brothers try and put their foot down. Different when its same age people, not so much boxed in? So is interesting to watch possibility change.
Also Juliet getting dead and whatsername, Lady Montague is it? The reaction after the tragedy in R&J is pretty much men standing around. Here a woman gets to be all judging and having the last word.
Still nobody gets a good option.
... and now the closing credits have just annoyed me by listing characters as 'Jets' or 'Sharks' and 'Their Girls'. I can see how it's a description of how they're organised and yet...
/tiny tangent thing.
If you're looking at the differences there's really a lot of them. But the connections are also interesting.
It's like extract of Romeo and Juliet involves two teams who hate each other, two lovers, and a balcony. Plus death.
Next I shall watch either something that is not Romeo and Juliet, or something with vampires that I vaguely recall went R&J ish.
Does Buffy and Angel count as a R&J transformation? Two teams, no balcony, but she does have a window to climb up to.
I think Vampire the Masquerade went there, but I only have that on American DVD so I have to watch on a different box.
Which one was the vampires and werewolves?
I'm not watching anything Twilight, even though teach has added to Blackboard a link to an interview where the writer says it was all R&J.
Also from the college library I got Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood', because it keeps on coming up in writing about Shakespeare transformations. And a BBC 'Midsummer Night's Dream', because there is such a thing as too much dead.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 03:09 pm (UTC)Something I remember from a documentary or a TV special or something years ago (sorry I can't cite more accurately) is that West Side Story was actually quite revolutionary in filmmaking (or at least Hollywood filmmaking) for this reason. It was the first movie-musical to have the dancing based on the individual characters and what was happening in the plot and their lives more than just an over-all "and here is a snappy dance number!" thing. Before that dancing in movies was a break in the storytelling more than part of it. And that Rita Moreno was instrumental to or inspired that shift somehow -- maybe just by being a damn good dancer. (Of course, it was years ago, so I could be misremembering most of these details.)
~ c.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 03:33 pm (UTC)After seeing how much rehearsal went into the dances I went back and watched bits again because they're just that much more impressive.
Although the bit where one guy got pneumonia and collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital made me want to slap someone. Health first, art later!
I'm currently trying to figure out how all the moving can be (a) totally not like anything else and (b) using I think some of the same moves from the ballet thing I saw, only they're different. I think I need more dance vocabulary to figure that one out, I never seen enough dance to figure what's same and different that I'm noticing.
Is all much impressive.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 04:56 pm (UTC)The Kindred: The Embraced episode actually was called "Romeo and Juliet", but it had even less in common with the original story - the two are already lovers and *then* find themselves placed on opposite sides.
Underworld was the vampire/werewolf movie that was an expy of the World of Darkness setting. I didn't see it, though. I certainly didn't see (or read) Twilight; the fact that my highly intelligent teenage sister loved the books makes me want to weep and wail things like "oh, the humanity!"
I highly recommend Throne of Blood. It's the best movie adaptation of the Accursed Scottish Play I've ever seen (despite not using any lines from the actual play). Kurosawa's treatments of King Lear (Ran) and Hamlet (The Bad Sleep Well) are worth seeing too...but you might want to have something cheery close at hand to watch afterwards, especially after seeing The Bad Sleep Well. It manages to be *darker* than Hamlet, which is quite an accomplishment.