You know how you get a bunch of reluctant, antsy teenagers to pay attention to the Bard in their English class? You make it more relatable. Instead of expecting a bunch of horny adolescents obsessed with the state of their skin to sympathise with the floridly written problems of some old, dead folks in Verona, try putting it in terms they understand. That's how you end up with a bunch of fresh-faced so-and-sos re-enacting romance's most infamous tragedy with Baz Lurhmann's Romeo + Juliet, The Taming Of The Shrew made more palatable with the inclusion of Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You, and Othello literally on steroids in O. In fact, why stop with Shakespeare? Why not update Jane Austen's Emma so it's set in a Californian high school, or bring the Pygmalion into the modern day by making it about jocks and nerds falling in love? You see, the romance and tragedy of classic literature and theatre aren't all that different than the melodrama and histrionics that characterise your adolescence. Especially when it involves romance. The only people as emotionally stunted as the repressed lovebirds of the past are teenagers who don't know any better, apparently. So would you look at that: high school is exactly the same as Shakespeare! No, it isn't. For one thing, not nearly as many people die. Nobody ever exits the premises whilst being pursued by a bear, either. The adaptations of classics to the nineties teen movie tend to be pretty loose, and they're stretching credulity as it is. Our teenage years were nothing like Macbeth. They weren't even like Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
