The original Macbeth is in no danger of being lost and there have been many retellings in English culture, why not a new retelling from a different viewpoint?
And right there I think might be the problem. (See also my last reply, above your comment.) Macbeth, like Romeo & Juliet (and even like Robin Hood and King Arthur) is pretty freaking ubiquitous. It's nearly impossible to reach high-school graduation in nearly any country in the US, Canada, or the EU (not sure about South America, but I'd be willing to bet it's the same) without running into some instance of Shakespeare. Or at least knowing the basics, seeing how some of the general outlines are part of our Western cultural groundings.
That means that it's not just possible to do wacky adaptations, it's almost required. How many times can we watch Juliet at her balcony before we start rolling our eyes? So someone updates it, where the guns have names and the families are gangsters. Or transposes Macbeth to WWI, or sets Taming of the Shrew in high school. Or does a complete turn-around a la Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Those, though, require that we know the original, so we can see how the remake is messing with things, where stuff's been changed/altered, or where a different POV (like RaGaD) renders a scene completely different.
But if you don't know the original story at all, then something like RaGaD would probably leave you utterly baffled. You'd certainly miss a lot of the jokes and in-story references, at least. Or the different take someone mentioned in another comment, of the Robin Hood remake that was supposed to (well, until the director & lead actor totally screwed it all up) present Prince John as a good guy, tracking a wily criminal named Hood. That kind of thing only works if we know the original really, really well, to get the reverse version.
That kind of example doesn't work in this instance, and it's why I dismiss such suggestions as being analogous to what Gaiman's suggesting (or as a refutation of my original analogy about Robin Hood) -- because the majority of Westerners do not know Monkey. Hell, the majority of them barely register what Buddhism is about, and they'd probably stare blankly if you said "sutra" to them. (If they didn't immediately think of hospitals.) Doing a non-faithful remake would be a complete waste, IMO, because the audience has no grounding to understand why or how things were changed -- so we end up with monkey-sized dreamcatchers and no comprehension of the original meaning/intent.
For a really awesome and bizarre and totally off-the-wall adaptation, try "Sukiyaki Western Django" which retells "Fistful of Dollars" which in itself was a retelling of "Yojimbo" which was in turn an adaptation of some noir pulp fiction. It's like a freaking ping-pong ball of influences, and SWD totally mixes up the Japanese samurai (a la Yojimbo) elements with the Wild West and/or spaghetti Western elements. And when I say "mixes up," I mean "throws in a blender along side crazy visual jokes and some wacky Shakespearean references". A total hoot. Also, entirely in English... with a cast that's nearly entirely NOT fluent in English. Good times, good times!
...but maybe not if you haven't seen The Man With No Name series or never watched Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Hunh. Okay. So like I was saying...
no subject
Date: 21 Mar 2011 05:23 am (UTC)And right there I think might be the problem. (See also my last reply, above your comment.) Macbeth, like Romeo & Juliet (and even like Robin Hood and King Arthur) is pretty freaking ubiquitous. It's nearly impossible to reach high-school graduation in nearly any country in the US, Canada, or the EU (not sure about South America, but I'd be willing to bet it's the same) without running into some instance of Shakespeare. Or at least knowing the basics, seeing how some of the general outlines are part of our Western cultural groundings.
That means that it's not just possible to do wacky adaptations, it's almost required. How many times can we watch Juliet at her balcony before we start rolling our eyes? So someone updates it, where the guns have names and the families are gangsters. Or transposes Macbeth to WWI, or sets Taming of the Shrew in high school. Or does a complete turn-around a la Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Those, though, require that we know the original, so we can see how the remake is messing with things, where stuff's been changed/altered, or where a different POV (like RaGaD) renders a scene completely different.
But if you don't know the original story at all, then something like RaGaD would probably leave you utterly baffled. You'd certainly miss a lot of the jokes and in-story references, at least. Or the different take someone mentioned in another comment, of the Robin Hood remake that was supposed to (well, until the director & lead actor totally screwed it all up) present Prince John as a good guy, tracking a wily criminal named Hood. That kind of thing only works if we know the original really, really well, to get the reverse version.
That kind of example doesn't work in this instance, and it's why I dismiss such suggestions as being analogous to what Gaiman's suggesting (or as a refutation of my original analogy about Robin Hood) -- because the majority of Westerners do not know Monkey. Hell, the majority of them barely register what Buddhism is about, and they'd probably stare blankly if you said "sutra" to them. (If they didn't immediately think of hospitals.) Doing a non-faithful remake would be a complete waste, IMO, because the audience has no grounding to understand why or how things were changed -- so we end up with monkey-sized dreamcatchers and no comprehension of the original meaning/intent.
For a really awesome and bizarre and totally off-the-wall adaptation, try "Sukiyaki Western Django" which retells "Fistful of Dollars" which in itself was a retelling of "Yojimbo" which was in turn an adaptation of some noir pulp fiction. It's like a freaking ping-pong ball of influences, and SWD totally mixes up the Japanese samurai (a la Yojimbo) elements with the Wild West and/or spaghetti Western elements. And when I say "mixes up," I mean "throws in a blender along side crazy visual jokes and some wacky Shakespearean references". A total hoot. Also, entirely in English... with a cast that's nearly entirely NOT fluent in English. Good times, good times!
...but maybe not if you haven't seen The Man With No Name series or never watched Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Hunh. Okay. So like I was saying...