Copyright 2002 Lions Gate Entertainment

Poster for Tim Blake Nelson's 2001 film O, starring Mekhi Pfifer, Julia Stiles and Josh Hartnett.

In 2001, when director Tim Blake Nelson wanted to "make a film true and coherent with what's going on in society today," he turned to a 497-year-old script. After culling out the major themes of passion, jealousy and trust, Nelson transported the story to a suburban high school and peppered it with issues central to today's teens: youth violence, racism and sex. In this way, William Shakespeare's Othello, which originally catered to a very adult, mature crowd, became O, a teen genre flick that attracted--in droves--a young audience assumed to be unintellectual, untutored and uninterested in all things literary.

Throughout most of film history, Shakespearean films were considered highbrow, artsy and not very profitable. Around 1989, however, American cinema rediscovered the Bard, a trend that has culminated in the release of several major teenage adaptations. The practical reasons for this are manifold: Shakespeare's name lends instant pedigree; the plots are classic formulas with archetypal conflicts; and the trend has proven lucrative. More important, though perhaps less well known, is the fact that Shakespeare has always been the ultimate pop-culture scribe.

Timeless Shakespearean works
In the era in which the playwright rose to fame--the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries--his dramas, comedies and histories were the original crowd pleasers. The audiences that attended plays at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre ranged from nobles to working class to peasants, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder, the equivalent of the modern sold-out movie house. Packed with murder, sexual transgressions, family rifts and supernatural phenomena, the plays contained the same stimulating, dramatic tensions of today's blockbusters.

Shakespeare's genius lay not only in his intricate wordplay but also in his simple and fundamental stories. According to scholar Paula Nechak, "Every societal and dramatic taboo or impulse or action that has happened in everyday life can be found somewhere in a William Shakespeare play." Because Shakespeare deals with the most basic tenets of human nature--greed, anger, love, passion, ambition, self-destruction, compassion, etc.--his plays remain timeless.

That said, Shakespeare was always very aware of his audience, specifically Queen Elizabeth, for whom he directed his paeans to fidelity, genius, strength and honor. While many of Shakespeare's characters can be characterized as conservative (his lovers must be sanctified by the church, his duelers need to be tempered by the government and his children ought to listen to their elders), he found ways to have his plays and character's values broadly received, even capturing the interest of twenty-first century viewers with his sex- and violence-filled plots. That the current movie climate favors just this kind of mixture of classic values and vulgarity can be seen in a hit film such as American Pie. A 1999 American box office hit, American Pie's nudity and coarse comedy is tempered by its conventional ending, which asserts that the best sex is between two people who love each other and want a committed relationship.

Catering to a teen market
But modern-day audiences aren't just satisfied with literal adaptations of classic Shakespearean plays; they are captivated by the interesting, fast-paced productions made throughout the end of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. While the earlier films hewed fairly closely to the original texts, by the mid-'90s it became acceptable to interpret the plays liberally. And this trend has taken an even more novel turn lately, with the adaptation of the stories to a teen cast and audience.

I>, for instance, a central theme involves the age differences between Iago, a veteran soldier who feels he has been out to pasture; the middle-aged Othello; and the young Desdemona. 2001's O dropped this topic in order to place the three characters together in high school, making the plot more appealing to a younger audience.

Teens might seem to be the least likely audience for Shakespeare, since high schools overflow with students dispiritedly slogging through Julius Caesar or Romeo and Juliet. Watching Shakespeare is entirely different from reading him, however, and filmmakers seem eager to turn otherwise reluctant audiences on to the classic stories. These days, even plays that on the surface have nothing to do with adolescent concerns--such as Macbeth, reconfigured in the movie Scotland, PA--are fodder for the burgeoning teen flick genre. After all, young actors are cheaper than established ones, Shakespeare is a proven product, and the story is already written.

By tracing a quick trajectory of Shakespeare in the movies, this seminar will outline how the playwright has been presented, and perhaps misrepresented, over time. From the early literal adaptations, to revolutionary Shakespeare-inspired plots (such as West Side Story), to today's youth-inspired, often far-out interpretations, the one desire that has remained constant is to stay true to Shakespeare's intent. In this way, even those adaptations that look the most avant-garde can prove to be the most traditional.