2 ms·
You can take the story for whatever genre you see it as, but being satire doesn't excuse it from being shallow. Romeo and Juliet fall in love for some very gro
by striking 3y ago
You can take the story for whatever genre you see it as, but being satire doesn't excuse it from being shallow.
Romeo and Juliet fall in love for some very grounded, realistic reasons. They are adolescents, which are known to be particularly susceptible to falling in love, and also doing it with someone your parents don't like is extra hot, and so on.
And the way the story plays out requires some suspension of disbelief (wait, how did they get married if the royals would forbid it?) but it is always explained in a way that at least feels like it logically follows (oh, the Friar believes secretly marrying the two might bring peace; funnily ironic that they then should die instead).
Shakespeare did not have to experience these situations in order to portray them. When they start to get over the top and imaginative we at least feel like we started from some sort of grounded position, so it isn't so hard to suspend our disbelief. The entire play is building up to this ultimate tragedy and it earns it.
This contrasts with the other work, which does not set up anything before attempting to claim a payoff. The characters just are the way they are, things just happen. They don't have to be explained or have reasons that follow, because it's just satire.
I am not blaming the author for taking creative license in the way that Shakespeare did in describing the suicide of a pair of romantically involved individuals. Nor am I blaming the author for being a man. I am blaming the author for producing a work that is just shallow in a gendered feeling way. Were the author a woman, they might have realized that women don't just do things randomly but instead, drawing on her past experience being a woman, that they usually have a backstory where these things originate from.
If you like stories like this, don't let me yuck your yum. But also it is good to take the time to more deeply think about a work and what it means, why the characters act the way they do, why the author produced it in the first place.
- stavros 3y agoI see what you mean, thanks, that's insightful. I don't know how I'd feel if it were two men, with nothing else being different, but I suspect I'd think the same. Basically, I can see why you find the writing bad, I'm just not sure I agree on whether it would be better if the characters were men.