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Genghis Galahad's avatar

Calling R&J a cliche is like calling pizza 🍕 a cliche. It's a classic. I don't think one encounters the famous play in high school and not be swept into all of its highs and lows and its inevitability of fates intertwined tragically. It's hardly a love story and the friar was absolutely correct as to its violence or violations of societal norms and prohibitions imposed by enmity! I think high school students can absolutely dive into the complexities especially at ages of nearing adulthood but having little power of various social trajectories and less berth for fuller self expression or some kinda emancipation or independence of sorts. It's kinda the right time AND if you perform 🎭 the play full text, it's a journey, alongside the Zifferelli production! Romeo must not live! Now "hollywoodizing" it as otherwise supremely talented Baz Luhrman does, somewhat loses or downshifts the pathos in the tragedies inherent. The call for justice or vengeance on Romeo is what further shifts the tragedy beyond the seeming wistfulness of young love to forbidden dangerous territory into dire consequences and immediate loss. Dammit, though, if they only had pagers!

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