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After watching the 1938 movie adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's 1913 Pygmalion directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, I was struck by how similar this movie was to a 1999 movie directed by Robert Iscove called She's All That. The basic plot structures are very similar, but each movie presents a different twist on essentially the same story.

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An irresistible cast of Hollywood's young faces star in this fun, sexy comedy hit about the power of attraction and the pressures of popularity!

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"I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly." - Emma

When Emma Woodhouse, the spritely 21-year-old protagonist of Jane Austen's 1816 classic novel Emma, delivers the above judgment, she's deciding to tolerate a friend who's just traveled 16 miles to London to get a haircut. Such a long trip for so little payoff seems like foppishness and vanity to Emma, who is shocked when the friend, Frank Churchill, returns "without seeming really at all ashamed of what he had done... quite as undaunted and lively as ever." But after pondering his self-indulgence, she decides she can excuse it because Frank is otherwise a relatively grounded gentleman, and because at least he isn't bragging or awkward about such a massive offense to propriety.

There's a lot of comedy packed into this little moment-in Emma taking such a proprietary, offended interest in Frank's haircut; in her believing she needs to find reasons to pardon him; in the fairly ridiculous mental workaround she uses to decide she can accept his trip; and in her getting huffy over him going to London in the first place. (There's even an extra layer of irony in that all her fuss is misguided; he's actually on another errand she doesn't know about, and the haircut is just a cover story.) As the only remaining resident daughter of a prominent land-owner in a country village, Emma is one of the most socially important aristocrats in her little community, and she lets it go to her head, deciding she's far more mature and responsible-and far less naïve and arrogant-than she actually is. But while she would never acknowledge it, her philosophical treatise on Frank's behavior could be applied to her as well: There's plenty of folly in her attempts to play matchmaker in her community, but her actions never seem silly, because she goes about them with such good will, and so playfully. Emma is a comic novel, but the humor isn't at Emma's expense.

The same quote also explains a lot about Clueless, which loosely transplants and translates Emma's basic characters and action to the 1990s. As Genevieve Koski explained in her Tuesday Keynote, Amy Heckerling's version of Emma Woodhouse-ultra-rich California teenager Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone)-is similarly entitled, privileged, ignorant, and arrogant. And yet as Emma would put it, she's a sensible person making silly choices in such an impudent way that she comes across as charming. By the end of the film, Cher is shaken at realizing she's been the clueless one all along, but she's irrepressible enough to bounce back quickly, smart-mouth the audience in voiceover narration, and go on "quite as undaunted and lively as ever."

The funny thing about reading Austen's Emma shortly after revisiting Clueless in seeing how profoundly similar they are. The plot beats are roughly the same, albeit with significant alterations to account for their eras-in one of the broadest interpretations, a sheltered young woman terrified into incoherence by a band of importunate, begging "gipsies" becomes a character who earns brief popularity after a couple of horseplaying teen boys briefly dangle her over the second-story railing at a mall. But more significantly, both stories are about the same kind of people, in the same kind of environments, approached with the same sort of satirical winking.

The country village of Austen's novel is small enough to only house a handful of prominent land-owning families who consider themselves close enough on the social scale to make associations proper and viable. They form an insular little circle, spending all their time visiting each other, writing letters back and forth, planning group amusements, and gossiping about each other. While a handful of them have traveled further afield-to London for visits, or to Bath for their health-they're all inextricably caught up in and defined by their immediate community. (Again, this story takes place in an environment where Emma thinks it's impossibly self-indulgent to travel 16 miles without significant cause.) When Emma loses her former nursemaid and current companion to marriage, they stay best friends, their homes are only a short carriage ride apart, and they see each other daily, but Emma still mourns the loss of a live-in friend on her estate as if the newly minted Mrs. Weston had died, rather than moved up the road. When Emma befriends beautiful but penniless outsider Harriet Smith and decides to find her a higher-class husband, she can't look outside her own limited social set, so she settles on an inappropriate match with the handsome, proud vicar Mr. Elton. When Mr. Elton spurns Harriet, leaves town, and comes back engaged to a boorish outsider, all the characters heave an inward sigh, knowing there's no escaping constant contact with the new arrival. Conversely, the arrival of Frank Churchill-another outsider, but a dashing, entertaining one with local family ties-energizes the entire community. And when Emma falls in love herself, naturally it's with her family's oldest, closest friend and nearby neighbor, Mr. Knightley.

Clueless ' brilliance as an adaptation comes from the way Heckerling saw how precisely Austen's country village parallels a modern-day high school, another environment where a small group of people are tied together by circumstance in a social setting where class and personality creates artificial rifts, nearly impenetrable except when the participants see some benefit in penetrating them. Without making a show of it, Heckerling is awfully clever about finding specific situational equivalencies, like the way Emma deigns to attend a party thrown by her social inferiors because all her intimates will be there and she doesn't want to be left out, while Cher reluctantly agrees to venture outside safe, posh Beverly Hills because "the whole crew is going to this party in the Valley." Or the way Cher's bestie Dionne (Stacey Dash), like Emma's Mrs. Weston, is still constantly available to Cher, but seems just a little less devoted and simpatico once she loses her virginity. Or the way Frank is flirtatious but coy with Emma because he's covering up his secret engagement, while new-to-town pretty-boy Christian Stovitz (Justin Walker) is flirtatious but coy with Cher because he's covering up the fact that he's gay.

But while Clueless follows Emma on a point-for-point basis, its biggest similarities are still environmental, in the way the insular aristocrats of a small, wealthy village mirror the spoiled, perky kids of a Beverly Hills high school. Both groups are so locked into their socially hermetic whirl that the arrival of a new face is cause for huge excitement and endless entertainment. Both groups are obsessed with gossip, hungry for novelty, and deeply focused on the rare formal dance that makes the same old faces and relationships feel fresh again. And both groups take their hookups and split-ups extremely seriously, never realizing that their authors are openly making fun of them.

There's no malice in the satire of Emma or Clueless; both stories are affectionate about the social circles they travel, but they're also both aware of those circles' flaws. Austen gets her version of snark in through endless scenes where tiresome characters-Emma's stick-in-the-mud father; trivial yet talkative spinster Miss Bates; Mr. Elton's puffed-up new wife-drone on at great length without communicating anything worthwhile. Even the most dynamic characters engage in long, empty, fencing conversations about nothing. Austen occasionally directly says that all the polite, banal upper-crust English chatter is tiresome, but more often, she puts it on the page at length, to amuse her exasperated readers. Clueless directs its snark more at Cher, who's so sheltered and inexperienced that a brief, accidental moment of driving on the big, scary freeway counts as, like, a major life trauma. ("Boy," she thinks afterward, "getting off the freeway makes you realize how important love is.") This is a girl who, chastised about not contributing enough to society, proudly proclaims "As soon as I get my license, I fully intend to brake for animals!" Asked about significant happenings in school on a given day, she muses, "Well... I broke in my purple clogs." Where Austen satirizes the stiff and meaningless forms of her society, Heckerling snickers at teenagers' self-absorption, self-righteousness, and cluelessness. But both creators are still kind to their creations: Their trials are small, their comeuppances are minor, and they both end in happy places. They're foolish, but they aren't wicked-they're just doing silly things in impudent ways.

As Heckerling was making Clueless, another writer-director was working on his own Emma adaptation. Douglas McGrath's Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma Woodhouse, came out a year after Clueless, and reclaimed the story for the 19th century. It follows the literal details of Austen's book, using her dialogue, character names, and story specifics, and paying a great deal of attention to the scenery, accoutrements, and clothing of Austen's era. But strangely, it feels like a less-faithful adaptation, because it's so artificial and mannered, and because it's off-base in so many tiny details. Austen's book is about a sweet, self-possessed young woman whose vanity leads her to interfere in other people's lives, but whose innocence leaves her relatively blameless, especially when everything works out well in the end. Heckerling follows suit. But in Paltrow's hands, Emma doesn't seem young or innocent, so much as contemptuous and superior. When she dismisses a well-written offer for Harriet's hand in marriage ("It is a good letter. One of his sisters must have helped him."), she sounds as snide and resentful as Austen's sort-of-villain Mrs. Elton. Mock-praising Mr. Knightley for arranging a ride for Jane Fairfax, who plays the pianoforte better than Emma, Emma sounds downright bitchy. ("How sweet to have lent your carriage to her, so that her fingers would be warm enough for the performance.") She doesn't come across as naïve so much as catty, petty, and jealous. When she assumes Frank Churchill is in love with her, she adds smug and insufferable to the mix; when she alternates grousing to Harriet about Mrs. Elton with bright greetings for other people around her, she seems two-faced as well. Austen's Emma has some growing up to do, but Paltrow's needs a full personality transplant.

And while each of the three versions have their own version of artificiality, Clueless and its source material seem more aware and deliberate about the satirical value in conscious fakery. Emma the novel gins up romantic misunderstandings and hollow, bantery conversations; Clueless is presented in wall-to-wall Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air-era eye-searing fashions and fake slang. Both creators are poking fun at their eras' art: Austen at stuffy contemporaneous novels, Heckerling at 1990s fashion and style. But the 1996 Emma seems to take itself dreadfully seriously, even as the actors are giving broad, emphatic performances underlined with bombastic music cues and a lunging camera. (Ewan McGregor says his clumsy performance as Frank Churchill is a career-worst, and it's hard to argue, while Toni Collette's clumsy dopiness as Harriet robs her of every sympathetic aspect Austen described.) McGrath is so determined to wedge in as much of the book as possible that he slices out all the nuance, so characters who discreetly withhold every thought and emotion in the book core-dump them on each other in the movie, in a flood of rushed exposition. Meanwhile, he creates gags by cutting rapidly between scenes to create jokey, ironic juxtapositions. He presents Austen's book with such leaden literalness that it feels less faithful than the version set in a time and place Austen never could have imagined.

None of the three versions are actually about how real people lived in their era. Austen invents an aristocratic life of leisure where tedium, repetition, and snobbery are funny rather than stultifying, and everything works out in the end. Heckerling invents a tempting fantasy version of California where everyone's rich and even the mean girls are largely defanged and benevolent. McGrath invents a falsely mannered version of history where everyone was genteel and bloodless, speaking in bon mots delivered with heightened, decorous precision. All three creators are inventing aspirational fantasies, romanticizing their worlds to make them fresher, funnier, and more alluring than their real-life equivalents. But from the perspective of nearly 200 years after Austen wrote Emma, it's remarkable how many people have tried to adapt her work without understanding it as well as Heckerling does, or finding its core as adeptly as she did. The most loyal adaptation isn't necessarily the best, if it doesn't get the intent right, or embrace the kind of creative spark that the original work found. As Emma herself realized, a certain amount of playfulness goes a long, long way.

Our Movie Of The Week discussion of Clueless ends here. Don't miss Tuesday's on the "way normal" life of Cher Horowitz, and Wednesday's staff forum on the movie's all-star cast, endlessly quotable script, and time-capsule specificity. And don't miss next week's discussion of Mary Harron's shrewd adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.

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Clueless understands Jane Austen better than 1996's more literal Emma

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"I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly."

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10 Things I Hate About You

Many of the plays written by English playwright William Shakespeare have been adapted to films with much success. The comedy "The Taming of the Shrew" is a good example of this. This play has been adapted to movies in several occasions, the first one being a short film directed in 1908 by D. W. Griffith. Over the years, other film adaptations had the participation of renowned personalities from the cinema industry, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Maureen O'Hara, and John Wayne.

The release of the teen movie "10 Things I Hate about You", back in 1999, served to highlight the fact that William Shakespeare's writings are timeless and universal. In this article we take a look at this modern adaptation of Shakespeare's famous comedy and examine the keys to its success among the public.

The Taming of the Shrew: an introduction to the original play

In order to understand better the success of the movie "10 Things I Hate about You", it is useful to have a general idea about the original play as written by Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew was written towards the end of the 16th century (probably between 1590 and 1592). The comedy is set in Padua, Italy, where noble lady Katerina Minola is known for her difficult character and brazen personality. As a result of her harshness, everyone believes that Katerina will never get married.

Katerina has a younger sister, Bianca, who is nothing like her sister and has two serious suitors, Gremio and Hortensio. Seeing the situation, Katerina and Bianca's father decides that he will not allow Bianca to get married unless Katerina does the same first. This decision prompts Gremio and Hortensio to devise a plan to marry Katerina off to somebody else, so that they can compete for Bianca's affection. Gremio and Hortensio see the perfect candidate in Petruchio, who arrives in Padua with the intention of getting married. Petruchio is not taken aback by Katerina's character, and soon they get married.

In the meantime, Gremio and Hortensio continue their game of deception and pretense in order to marry Bianca, who by that time is in love with Lucentio. Bianca and Lucentio get married in secret, and later return to Padua after much confusion about Lucentio's identity (mostly caused by Gremio and Hortensio's plot). While this happens, Katerina's personality begins to change as a result of her husband's efforts to "tame" her, to the point that she is considered the most obedient wife among their acquaintances.

Ten Things I Hate about You

As it would be expected from a typical teen movie, "10 Things I Hate about You" deals with issues like unreciprocated love and confusion. The movie was released in 1999 as a romantic comedy and as a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's famous play. The film's main characters are Kat and Bianca Stratford (played by Julia Stiles and Larisa Oleynik), Patrick Verona (played by Heath Ledger and based on the character of Petruchio), Cameron James (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and inspired on Lucentio), and Joey Donner (who is played by Andrew Keegan and whose personality combines many elements of the original characters of Gremio and Hortensio).

In the movie, Cameron James becomes infatuated with Bianca, but since her father will not allow her to date anyone until her older sister Kat does the same, he conceives a plan that involves Patrick Verona (a rebel by nature) courting Kat. Patrick goes along and accepts money to go ahead with the plan, but he ends up falling for Kat, whose difficult character seems to mirror his own.

At first, Bianca is not attracted to Cameron, and instead shows interest in Joey, although she is unaware that he has made a bet that he can get involved with her. In the end, and after Joey's plot is discovered, Kat and Bianca end up dating Patrick and Cameron.

The film's success was undeniable, and during its opening weekend it made more than $8 million. To understand how well received the movie was, we need to remember that "10 Things I Hate about You" was in movie theatres at the same time as "The Matrix", and the Shakespeare-inspired film ranked second after the classic sci-fi movie. In total, the film made over $53 million. The movie and its cast received several awards, including Best Musical Performance, Young Star Awards, Most Promising Actress, and Best Casting for Comedy Film.

This movie was also well received by the critics, who in their majority believed that the film went beyond the stereotypical high school movie. Many critics also praised the character played by Julia Stiles, who was so clearly different from mainstream female Hollywood characters. Once again, this demonstrates that Shakespeare's timeless vision of human nature is accurate in our days too.

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10 Things I Hate About You from ShakespeareMag.com

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Many of the plays written by English playwright William Shakespeare have been adapted to films with much success. The comedy "The Taming of the Shrew" is a good example of this. This play has been adapted to movies in several occasions, the first one being a short film directed in 1908 by D.

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Another "10 things I hate about you" trailer, whit Heath Ledger!

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Bridget Jones' Diary (1997), by Helen Fielding, also a succesful film, offers a strange and parodic comment on Pride and Prejudice. Its action roughly echoes the plot - but in the midst of a quite different moral world.

Bridget Jones's Diary is a highly imaginative interpretation of the novel Pride and Prejudice, so different to be hardly recognizable.

Directed by Sharon Maguire in 2001, one hundred and eighty-eight years after Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, with that, Bridget Jones's Diary would seem be quite diverse to Pride and Prejudice. But it is actually a highly imaginative interpretation of the novel. This modern interpretation is seen through the plot, characters, context, values, language and film techniques.

Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones's Diary can be quite deceivable to the extent in which they are similar. To begin with, the first line from Pride and Prejudice states "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." This line has been modified in Bridget Jones's Diary as a voice over and it states, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that the moment one area of your life goes okay,the other falls spectacularly to pieces." This direct appropriation reveals the similarities between the texts and allows reproduction of Pride and Prejudice through Bridget Jones's Diary to be noticeable.

Bridget Jones's Diary and Pride and Prejudice do endure a similar plot. The protagonist is female; she is looking for love and is under pressure to find love particularly by her mother. The protagonist meets a man but his pride and her prejudice keeps them apart. She has been led to believe that the man is dishonest and had been involved in some inexcusable past behavior. Yet he learns to love her "just the way she is" and she learns the truth about her past behavior and he lets go of his "pride" and she lets go of his "prejudice" and they ironically fall in love. In analyses of the plot outline we see the texts do resemble each other and Bridget Jones's Diary is a highly imaginative interpretation of Pride and Prejudice.

Bridget Jones is left with a mother who is crass and difficult and always difficult and never complimentary other daughter. She is completely self-absorbed, much the way Elizabeth Bennett's mother has not a good thing to really say abut her daughters, her single daughters, and wishes to marry them off, just as Mrs. Bennett does, to the richest bidder there is: so it is that Jane and Elizabeth up for the offerings so to speak; Bridget to Mr. Darcy (Mark Darcy, Colin Firth, with whom the mother is always trying to pair Bridget) and Mrs. Bennett who likewise is always trying to pair Elizabeth with Mr. Darcy, also played by Colin Firth. More, Bridget must choose between some other and Mr. Darcy ~ Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy. As for Mr. Wickham, the Cleaver equal I believe, he has made his intentions clear to one of Elizabeth's sisters who is now "lost for ever" and "our whole family must partake of her ruin and disgrace."

Moreover, in both films, our Colin Firth plays the same role, even in name (Mr. Darcy), and we have our Daniel Clever stand in, not to mention a clever repetition of scene and script that mimic the original. Except here, in Pride & Prejudice it is not the blonde who is favored, but the beautiful brunette, Elizabeth Bennett, who is lovely and certainly a woman worth fighting over. Though she may be of a 'lower social standing' like Firth, when Mr. Darcy sees her he wants her nonetheless and makes no secret of it. Or at the end he doesn't, and while his initial resistance is there, it was too in Bridget Jones, our "everywoman" so to speak, or every single woman, and in some ways the directors really did capture what it means to be in your thirties, working, urban and single. The lifestyle seems accurate. The friends, the apartment, the job - all of it is so believable.

Some interesting aspects are:

Source Bridgetandpride and blogcritics

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Bridget Jones' Diary compared to Pride and Prejudice

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Bridget Jones' Diary (1997), by Helen Fielding, also a succesful film, offers a strange and parodic comment on Pride and Prejudice. Its action roughly echoes the plot - but in the midst of a quite different moral world. Bridget Jones's Diary is a highly imaginative interpretation of the novel Pride and Prejudice, so different to be hardly recognizable.

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Bridget Jones Diary - Official Trailer (HD) Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant

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Get one month's free trial at http://www.pictureboxfilms.com now. Watch now, and check out exclusive bonus content! http://bit.ly/PBBridgetJones Or join in the conversation on Facebook @PictureBox and Twitter @PictureBoxFilms An average British woman attempts to turn her life around against personal setbacks and her imperfections. She decides to keep a diary, telling only the complete truth.

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Mrs. Rohlfs
British Literature
17 April 1998

Hamlet and The Lion King: Shakespearean Influences on Modern Entertainment

There is no doubt that today's entertainment has lost most of its touch with the more classical influences of its predecessors. However, in mid-1994, Walt Disney Pictures released what could arguably be the best animated feature of all time in The Lion King. With a moral base unlike most of the movies released at the time, TLK placed a children's facade on a very serious story of responsibility and revenge. However, this theme is one of the oldest in history, and it is not the least apparent in one of the oldest works of literature by The Bard himself, William Shakespeare. The work that Disney's TLK parallels is none other than Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, and the film shadows this work so closely, that parallels between the main characters themselves are wildly apparent. This very close comparison has led critics "to compare the movie to Hamlet in the importance of its themes" (Schwalm 1). But with a closer inspection of the characters themselves do we see just how apparent these similarities are.

In The Lion King, the role of the young prince whose father is murdered is played by a cub named Simba, whose naivete procures him more than his fair share of hardships and troubles. By the acts in the story alone, one can see that Simba is a direct representation of Shakespeare's Hamlet Jr., but not only that, each of them shares similar actions in the play. Interpretations if Simba's actions are as profound as Hamlet's, particularly of why Hamlet delayed in exacting vengeance for his father's death (Harrison 236). Both Simba and Hamlet Jr. "delay" their action of retribution for their respective father's deaths. The loss of their paternal companion leaves Hamlet incredibly melancholy, and Simba without a royal teacher and father during his tender years. Each of them runs from their responsibility, although inside themselves they know what must be done: Hamlet attempts to validate his suspicions while Simba hides from his past. However, some have attempted to theorize that Hamlet's delay is due to his mental instability, his madness over the death of his father. Eliot refutes this, calling the characterization "a simple ruse, and to the end, we may assume, understood as a ruse to the audience" (62). Simba exhibits this same behavior, venting his feelings in mournful retaliation against responsibility, most notably when his childhood friend Nala attempts to persuade his to return to the Pride Lands. This delay between our characters adds a more haunting effect between the two works. It's surprising that today's audiences can be so moved by themes that were first implemented in literature almost four hundred years before.

Similarly, the characters of Hamlet Sr. and Mufasa bear a striking resemblance to one another, not only in their actions, but their meanings as well. Hamlet Sr., the once king of Denmark, ruled his kingdom in peace and prosperity, evident in the conversations in Act I, Scene I between Marcellus and Horatio about the creations of implements of war in Denmark under the new king, Claudius. Mufasa, too, ruled peacefully over the Pride Lands, only worrying about his son and his responsibilities. But, after their deaths, they each become more than the kings they once were. They become the heralds for thir sons, compelling them to avenge their deaths and take responsibility for what their uncles have done. Each deceased king approaches his son in the same way: via an apparition that gives a direct, if not opaque, monologue driving their princes to action, and each ghost leaves the interpretation of their messages open to their sons. Neither Hamlet Sr. or Mufasa tell their respective sons directly to destroy their murderers, although Hamlet Sr. does name the perpetrator directly, it is Hamlet that decides that action must be taken. It is this direct allusion of one major character with an integral part in advancing the work to another that helps solidify Shakespeare's influence as a writer of great literature.

But it isn't just the protagonists that allude to one another; the villians in both The Lion King and Hamlet can be directly and similarly compared to one another. Both Scar, from TLK and Claudius, from Hamlet, are brothers of the king, murder their sibling to ursurp the throne, and take their brother's wife as their queen (There is no direct proof of this conjecture for Scar, but since Scar calls upon Sarabi, the former mate of King Mufasa, in The Lion King to report on the status of the Pride Lands, it stands to reason that she is Queen of Pride Rock.). It is not so much the characterizations of the characters in this instance than the actions that provide proof of how Shakespearean literature invokes writers today. Claudius, at first, appears satisfied by his deeds, enjoying the life of a king, parading around to view his belongings, wedding his own brother's wife, and holding banquets in his own honor, all the while preparing for war with a neighboring Scandinavian country. Scar revels in his ill-gotten spoils as well, allowing his hyannic henchmen to hunt the Pride Lands to practical defoliation while he reclines in the pride's cave, tormenting his majordomo Zazu and eating more than his fair share of the kills. Scar, like Claudius, grossly exploits his new-found power and drives his kingdom into war. But here is were the similarity begins to diverge. In Hamlet, we see Claudius repenting for his sins against his brother, repealing the fact that he comitted that heinous deed and begging forgiveness from his Lord. Scar, on the other hand, never once doubts his actions, and goes with them to their final conclusion. Scar even goes as far as to taunt the prince, Simba, has he hangs of the precipice of Pride Rock: "And now here's my little secret. I killed Mufasa!" One could argue that the act of confessing to the crimes is an additional parallel between the characters, but their motives for doing so are not alike. Claudius is making an attempt to repent for the sin cast upon his soul, while Scar is bawdily declaring his cleverness over his kind-hearted yet naieve brother.

With the major characters in both works aside, the similarties between secondary characters in The Lion King and Hamlet are still quite striking. The insight of one work in another is so deep that The Lion King goes as far to allude Hamlet's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with Timon and Pumbaa. A comparison here, if not the greatest comparison, is the fact that both pairs of characters in both works are provided as relief from the main focus of the stories. Timon and Pumbaa provide a welcome resort from his responisbilities and hauntings of his past by introducing him to the carefree life of "Hakuna Matata", while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern allow the audience to know that Prince Hamlet does enjoy a life outside of the royal house, mingling with fellow scholars-to-be and friends. However, Hamlet's friends are charged by his nemesis, Claudius, to bring Hamlet before the King on numerous occasions. There is no direct evidence that Timon and Pumbaa are in the employment of Scar, nevertheless, the sidekick pair in TLK provide a very similar function, whether they realize it or not. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a constant reminder to Hamlet about the revenge that must be exacted upon Claudius by being messengers to the mournful prince whenever Claudius needs them to be. By locating Hamlet and announcing that the king wishes to have court with him, they play an important role in the foreward progress of the play, and the downward spiral of Hamlet's sadness. Timon and Pumbaa, similarly, at one time attempt to procure their leonine friend's past from his memory. Simba falters, at first, his carefree life shattered by the memories of what brought him to the jungle in the first place. But when he finally gives in and tells them when his own father entrusted him too, Timon and Pumbaa laugh uproariously, disbelieving what they hear. But it is this jogging of Simba's memory at the prodding of Timon and Pumbaa that moves the story onward, and brings Simba's melancholy back to him. And when the past finally becomes fully clear to Timon and Pumbaa with the arrival of the lioness Nala, they not only attempt to bring Simba to his senses in their own blunt, of not comical, way, they attempt to confront him and make him face his past. They fail in this, but they still bring to Simba's mind the events in his childhood, and the pain that it brought to him. Although Timon and Pumbaa had no intention of doing so, they performed the same act of reminding the main character of their responsibility to their father, and to their kingdoms that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern did to Hamlet Jr.

Another secondary character to the protagonist and antagonist are the respeactive queens of each work, Sarabi from The Lion King and Gertrude from Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. Each of them are nearly complete mirror images of one another, each having the same place in the social hierarchy, equal amounts of power over their kingdoms, and emotional ties to the main protagonists of the stories. Sarabi is the Queen of Pride Rock, leader of the lionesses since the reign of King Mufasa. Although sheis not the reason Scar usurped the throne from his brother, it is a near certainty that she has stayed on as Queen because she is quite adept at her duties. Gertrude, likewise, is adept at her duties as well, although they take on a quite different task than Sarabi. She is mainly for show, for Claudius to own and adorn with his newly gotten wealth. Both Sarabi and Gertrude are Queens, but both show little or now power over their subjects. Sarabi is nearly killed by Scar when she dares to question one of his decisions, which shows the place of the lionesses in the pride: pawns in Scar's quest for power. Any deviation from being simple huntresses results in pain, and perhaps death at the paws of Scar and his multitude of hyenas. Gertrude, too, never appears to order anyone, although she certainly has the capacity to do so. She, instead plays the weakened queen, doing as her husband bids her and plaintively bending to Claudius's will. But even though these similarities are surprisingly close for non-primary characters, it is their emotional connection to their sons that spurns the stories along. Gertrude's marriage to Claudius enrages Hamlet to no end, driving him more and more out of his delay to act upon his father's death. It is her willing forgetfulness of her former husband that pushes Hamlet to the brink, their emotional bond that pains them both to ends that he must act on, and she tries deeply to hide. Sarabi, too, has such an effect on her son Simba. When Nala finds Simba, and realizes that he is not dead, as Scar had said, she is enthralled and wonders aloud about the feelings of his mother. This has a noticable affect on Simba. He recoils, the responsibility that he believes is his is once again thrust upon him, and the thought of his mother's feelings towards his past deeds sends him further into sadness, furthering the story. And when Simba does return to Pride Rock, he is enraged when he sees how Scar is treating his mother, just as Hamlet is enraged at how Claudius treats his mother as well. In a way, it is the queen in eack work that adds to the deep melancholy of the main characters and drives them to action.

Although much of modern entertainment may look like new entertainment on the surface, if we probe deeply enough, we can find connections to some of the greatest literature of all time. Shakespeare is probably one of the most influential writers of all time, if not all time, and his greatest works, not limited to Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, are the basis of many stories written today. His plays are continuously redone and reperformed, his sonnets quoted in many a song and story, his histories the basis of many school lessons, and his influences are more than profound in many cases, and in the case of The Lion King, those influences are the basis of the story, not only of the main protagonist and antagonist, but of secondary characters as well. Modern entertainment may have lost much of its roots, but comparisons such as these may well prove the old axiom: "There is no new literature being written, only old literature, redone."

Works Cited

Schwalm, Karen. "Patriarchy in the Pride Lands." 26 Apr. 1995. Online posting. Web Site. http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/~schwalm/lionking.html. World Wide Web. 2 Apr. 1998.

Harrison, G. B, ed. "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Major British Writers. Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc.: New York, 1959.

Eliot, T.S. "Hamlet." Elizabethan Essays. Haskell House: New York, 1964.

Brandes, Georg. "The Classic Tendency of the Tragedy." William Shakespeare, A Critical Study. 1898. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co: 1963.

Taymor, Julie. The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway. Hyperion: New York, 1997.

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Hamlet and The Lion King: Shakespearean Influences on Modern Entertainment

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Mrs. Rohlfs British Literature 17 April 1998 Hamlet and The Lion King: Shakespearean Influences on Modern Entertainment There is no doubt that today's entertainment has lost most of its touch with the more classical influences of its predecessors. However, in mid-1994, Walt Disney Pictures released what could arguably be the best animated feature of all time in The Lion King.

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Intertextuality refers to media that is about other media.

Examples include television programmes that review films such as Film 2018 with Claudia Winkleman.

Other examples include shows such as The Simpsons which makes frequent references to other shows or the movie Franchise 'Scary Movie' see example below.

Pair activity.
Choose an example of intertextuality in film from the sources above.

Sources: Watch the trailer and read the text. Summarise the example of intertextuality in your exercise book.

Which of the following statements do you most agree with?

"The new media is reducing the popularity of the traditional media."

The new media makes all types of media more popular."

Explain your decision to the class, giving reasons and evidence from the sources to support your answer.

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Scary Movie 5 Official TRAILER #1 (2013) - Charlie Sheen, Ashley Tisdale Movie

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Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Scary Movie 5 Official TRAILER #1 (2013) - Charlie Sheen, Ashley Tisdale Movie A couple begin to experience some unusual activity after bringing their newborn son home from the hospital. With the help of home-surveillance cameras and a team of experts, they learn they're being stalked by a nefarious demon.

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Interactivity means audience participation in the creation of the mass media.

Traditionally, we looked to media such as the news as the 'authority' on the information it presents to its audience. Today, in the production of the news and many other types of mass media, the audience are playing a greater role in the creation of the mass media itself. Some forms of media are entirely reliant on interactivity.

All students

List three examples that show interactivity in the mass media.

Identify and explain two examples of media that rely on interactivity.

Extension activity A*-B students

Identify and summarise the impact of 'citizen journalism' on how news reporting has changed. Give one specific example of a news event that was reported in this way.

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Citizen Journalism vs Traditional Journalism

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Convergence of the media means 'to come together.' Watch the video clip.

Now make a list of as many examples of convergence of the media as you can.

Identify the types of technology that seem central to convergence of the new media.

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All students

Choose a genre of music and an artist that you like.

Now consider why you like them. Make a list of three reasons.

Now consider the style of the artist. Would you dress like them?

Do you think this artist is a good role model? Give reasons for your answer