Much Ado About Nothing
Sep. 7th, 2013 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThe university screened Joss Whedon’s Much Ado about Nothing for freeeeeeeee, so of course Emma and Rick and I went to see it.
I liked it! As much as I am ever going to like Much Ado about Nothing, anyway. I love Beatrice and Benedick (and how hilarious were they, sneaking around trying to listen as their friends and relations discuss how in love with each other they are? The physical comedy here is great), but Claudio will always be an unmitigated ass.
He’s less physically violent in Whedon’s version than Branagh’s, but he still shames Hero so badly - at the altar, no less! In front of the whole city! - that her only recourse is to pretend to be dead.
I’m always kind of gunning for Hero to throw him over at the end.
However, that is Shakespeare’s fault and not Whedon’s. And, in fact, I think Whedon did mitigate Claudio’s horridness somewhat. In the play, after Hero’s “death”, her father Leonato suggests that he and Claudio should repair their alliance by having Claudio marry Hero’s cousin Beatrice, and Claudio is all “AWESOME,” because apparently women are interchangeable to him provided they are pretty.
And in Whedon’s version, he does agree; but you can see by his acting that he doesn’t really want to. He thinks he has to agree to it in order to make it up to Leonato and head off a feud between their families.
Now, I still think that if Claudio and Beatrice married under those circumstances, it would go badly - well, it would go badly under any circumstances; she would talk rings around him, and he would hate that. But “wanting to avoid a blood feud” is more sympathetic than being happy to marry any pretty and rich girl offered to him.
Otherwise this is a charming and stylish production - although I couldn’t tell if this was the film itself or just our projector, but the characters’ heads kept getting lobbed off by the top of the screen. The modern setting is lovely, although it’s ultimately just set-dressing that’s good for a few gags: there’s very much a sense that these are period people in modern dress.
Possibly that’s necessary for any adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing that hews closely to the last two acts of the play. While there are definitely modern American parents who might tell a daughter they wished she was dead rather than losing her virginity before marriage, I just can’t see a modern American parent being all, “My daughter is dead, but here, marry her cousin instead!” We don’t - even very conservative people like members of the Quiverful movement don’t - see marriage in terms that would make that proposal seem anything but preposterous.
How would you update Much Ado about Nothing to be modern in attitude as well as dress? What could Don John frame Hero for that would make Claudio's publicly shaming her at her own wedding seem like an appropriate response, a mistake that their relationship could recover from? Or - and I am sort of leaning toward this - would you have to change the last two acts so much that the resulting story could hardly be called an adaptation anymore?
Or maybe you could just adapt it so Hero does throw him over at the end. I would be okay with that.
I liked it! As much as I am ever going to like Much Ado about Nothing, anyway. I love Beatrice and Benedick (and how hilarious were they, sneaking around trying to listen as their friends and relations discuss how in love with each other they are? The physical comedy here is great), but Claudio will always be an unmitigated ass.
He’s less physically violent in Whedon’s version than Branagh’s, but he still shames Hero so badly - at the altar, no less! In front of the whole city! - that her only recourse is to pretend to be dead.
I’m always kind of gunning for Hero to throw him over at the end.
However, that is Shakespeare’s fault and not Whedon’s. And, in fact, I think Whedon did mitigate Claudio’s horridness somewhat. In the play, after Hero’s “death”, her father Leonato suggests that he and Claudio should repair their alliance by having Claudio marry Hero’s cousin Beatrice, and Claudio is all “AWESOME,” because apparently women are interchangeable to him provided they are pretty.
And in Whedon’s version, he does agree; but you can see by his acting that he doesn’t really want to. He thinks he has to agree to it in order to make it up to Leonato and head off a feud between their families.
Now, I still think that if Claudio and Beatrice married under those circumstances, it would go badly - well, it would go badly under any circumstances; she would talk rings around him, and he would hate that. But “wanting to avoid a blood feud” is more sympathetic than being happy to marry any pretty and rich girl offered to him.
Otherwise this is a charming and stylish production - although I couldn’t tell if this was the film itself or just our projector, but the characters’ heads kept getting lobbed off by the top of the screen. The modern setting is lovely, although it’s ultimately just set-dressing that’s good for a few gags: there’s very much a sense that these are period people in modern dress.
Possibly that’s necessary for any adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing that hews closely to the last two acts of the play. While there are definitely modern American parents who might tell a daughter they wished she was dead rather than losing her virginity before marriage, I just can’t see a modern American parent being all, “My daughter is dead, but here, marry her cousin instead!” We don’t - even very conservative people like members of the Quiverful movement don’t - see marriage in terms that would make that proposal seem anything but preposterous.
How would you update Much Ado about Nothing to be modern in attitude as well as dress? What could Don John frame Hero for that would make Claudio's publicly shaming her at her own wedding seem like an appropriate response, a mistake that their relationship could recover from? Or - and I am sort of leaning toward this - would you have to change the last two acts so much that the resulting story could hardly be called an adaptation anymore?
Or maybe you could just adapt it so Hero does throw him over at the end. I would be okay with that.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-07 08:09 am (UTC)How about a modern production set somewhere where values about marriage are different? It might not be 'modern' in the sense of fitting in with Western cultural values, but I'm reminded of this news story I read recently about child marriage in Nigeria : http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/02/nigeria-child-brides-religion (warning! disturbing story!)
no subject
Date: 2013-09-08 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-07 09:54 pm (UTC)I loved Joss Whedon's version - I thought all of it was fab and wonderfully produced. But yes Claudio is a shit. I absolutely loathe him, he's a horrible person and the only comfort I get is that everyone knows he's a horrible person and he'll probably have the most awkward Christmas's ever (Hero will be all "Let's visit Beatrice and Benedick!" and he's all "..." and Beatrice and Benedick glare at him the whole time)
In the BBC's "Shakespeare Re-Told" update, Claudio did his shaming because he knew that Hero did have a guy in her room that night - the guy had told him he'd go in and then asked Hero to lie so it wouldn't be uncomfortable. Rather than having any secret marriage, it ended in a fight and Hero had to go to hospital after hitting her head. This helped Claudio realise he was a shit but Hero had also realised Claudio was a shit and they didn't get back together which was AWESOME to me - if I were modernising, I'd probably kick him to the curb too!
no subject
Date: 2013-09-07 10:09 pm (UTC)And their Christmases have to be super awkward. I can just see Benedick being all "Hey, remember that time I was going to kill you, Claudio? Haha, that was a laugh." and Claudio being all *awkward laughter* "I'm super nice to Hero now! No need for killing!"
I'm confused by the sequence of events in "Shakespeare Re-Told." What is Hero lying about, to whom?
no subject
Date: 2013-09-08 12:54 am (UTC)"My brother hath a daughter,
Almost the copy of my child that’s dead,"
He doesn't specify which brother, but I don't think anyone in the play--least of call Claudio--would buy Beatrice as "almost a copy" of Hero. I don't think there is another cousin who's actually heir to both estates.
But yeah, the interchangeable women thing always bugged me, and Claudio is an ass. One of my issues with the Whedon movie was the places where the values clashed with the setting, in a way that messes with my suspension of disbelief on film (it probably wouldn't on-stage).
And beats the hell out of me how it could be adapted without gutting, although I'm pro-Hero saying 'thanks but no thanks.'
no subject
Date: 2013-09-08 09:37 pm (UTC)Be yet my nephew: my brother hath a daughter,
Almost the copy of my child that's dead,
And she alone is heir to both of us
Beatrice is not similar to Hero in temperament, but in the Whedon version, at least, they do look quite similar. And it explains why, in Whedon's version, Claudio is quietly gagging as he agrees: he knows Beatrice and has already commented that he would never want to marry.
Someone could probably write a hilarious send-up of Much Ado about Nothing, but a straight-up adaptation to the modern US...it requires more mental agility than I can muster, at least.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-08 11:43 pm (UTC)IDK, I have trouble with that reading. I'm sure it's been analyzed to death somewhere...
no subject
Date: 2013-09-10 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-10 11:41 pm (UTC)