#play rant

[thatweirdenby]

Hi I went on a big rant about Shakespeare and Macbeth and I thought y’all should see it

You know what I don’t like Shakespeare’s writing. No not because I’m a grumpy teen who hates his literature in class. No I dislike it because of the messages he supports through it.

Like Macbeth is about the coincidences of have the “wrong” kinda of ambition. And if you’re a woman through lady Macbeth you should not challenge the patriarchy or defy social norms.

Gods The Thing I hate about English class is that they say Shakespeare was a feminist and plays with how gender isn’t binary, but no only media illiterate fools would say that!

It’s a tragedy Lady Macbeth goes mad and dies!? (To her own hands might I add) (ok I can’t remember if that is cannon)

The witches who have sort of undefined genders are seen as villains/ scary background forces

The foil to Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, is shown as stereotypically feminine with the whole mother thing and worried/ annoyed wife.

Fuck sakes the whole point is the protagonists are bad and defy this imposed rules of class/ hierarchy/ religion so get punished. The protagonists aren’t the heroes that’s why it’s a tragedy, the antagonists are the heroes. The only reason why Shakespeare did this was to get a better view on who not to be so the audience connects to them then fully absorbs the message that you shouldn’t rise above your status, be the wrong person and have a “wrong” kind of ambition, and seek to change anything without dammed coincidences.

I’m furious

Ggggrrrrrrr..

[rantingchannel2001-blog]

Romeo and Juliet

I can say that I appreciate the plays that Shakespeare wrote and I would want to watch them or read them on my own time. I've only read The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet while I've watched a Midsummer Night's Dream (a very comedic play). Romeo and Juliet was the first Shakespeare play I've read, and it wasn't the best story I've experienced. It's a very popular play in which everyone knows that two teenagers from families that hate each other fall in "love" with each other excessively. Nearing the end of the story Juliet fakes her death and Romeo thinks she legitimately dies, so he kills himself; Juliet wakes up, finds her lover dead, and she kills herself as well. 

What Romeo and Juliet experience is not love, it's lust. I felt that Romeo in particular represented a teenage boy that just wants to bang any girl that he finds beautiful. He first admires Rosaline and even says that she is his only true love, but ten minutes later he takes one glance at Juliet at a party and basically forgets that Rosaline even existed. Now that Romeo knows of Juliet's existence, he says that he's in love, when in reality he's only sexually attracted to her. 

Juliet seemed a little too suicidal. Even before she had chosen to kill herself because of Romeo, she had threatened [if I remember correctly] a family member or at least one of her people that she would kill herself if she knew she couldn't live with Romeo (who, at this point in the play was banished and in another city.. still alive and well). I felt that she actually tried to find excuses to kill herself, because that's the only way she dealt with any problem no matter how big or small. Romeo's lust for women was joked about among his friends, who had actually asked Romeo if he basically had sex with Rosaline yet, as if that was his only goal all along. Romeo was too distracted to know that they meant Rosaline, so he thought they were talking about Juliet. Which also means that he wanted to bang her for bragging rights. 

My English teacher said they loved Romeo and Juliet when they read it in high school, and they tried to tell me it was about love and that is high schoolers don't understand it which is why we all 'hate it'. I argued that it was lust, and that there wasn't any elements of true love; their argument was that teenagers don't know the difference between the two, which was the point I was basically trying to make. My argument against their point, however, does not mean that I don’t accept it; I just don’t agree with it.

Romeo and Juliet wasn’t my most favorable Shakespeare play, or at least out of the few that I’ve seen or read. What people see as love between the two teenagers is actually lust at first sight; Romeo was a tradition teenage boy with hormones, and Juliet was a teenage girl who had to find excuses to kill herself, as she only uses this method to “fix” her problems. Again, I may disagree with some opposite points, but I will still listen and accept them. If you liked the play, great; if you didn’t, great.