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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Ideologies in Play: Schemes of Order, Family and
Young Love in Three Adaptations and Two Derivations
of Romeo and. Juliet (1961-1996)

 

presented by

Kirk L. Hendershott—Kraetzer

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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IDEOLOGIES IN PLAY: SCHEMES OF ORDER, FAMILY AND YOUNG
LOVE IN THREE ADAPTATIONS AND TWO DERIVATIONS OF
ROMEO AND JULIET (1961- 1996)

By
Kirk L. Hendershott-Kraetzer

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English

1999

ABSTRACT
IDEOLOGIES IN PLAY: SCHEMES OF ORDER, FAMILY AND YOUNG
LOVE IN THREE ADAPTATIONS AND TWO DERIVATIONS OF
ROMEO AND JULIET (1961-1996)
By
Kirk L. Hendershott-Kraetzer

This dissertation looks at the complex uses to which a widely available fiction
is put in three adaptations and two derivations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet: Romeo and Juliet (1968, dir. Franco Zeffirelli), Romeo and Juliet (1978,
dir. Alvin Rakoff) and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996, dir. Baz
Luhrmann); West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins) and
China Girl (1987, dir. Abel Ferrara). Informed by performance theory, the
concept of textual renewal and current theories of ideology, “Ideologies in Play/’
concentrates, through close study of specific scenes and sequences, on how the
productions flame and contextualize a set of concerns about the free-floating
constructs of schemes of order, the family and young love, and what values,
beliefs and assumptions an individual production reveals. By examining in
detail differing expressions of these constructs, the dissertation traces how
Performances create meaning, both individually and in the aggregate, and how
those meanings might affect perceptions of the playtext.

In the opening sequence of each production, the use of Choric figures,
locations, shots, editing, sound and on—screen text works to establish a milieu,
ideas about the families, and figures and objects of order While suppressing the
love story. Subsequent investigation discloses that surface challenges to

schemes of order overlay deeper commitments to some of the same schemes

 

f———____’

the productions superficially denigrate. The treatment of “family” in such
episodes as Capulet’s “old accustomed feast” and his 3.5 confrontation with
Juliet presents that institution as stressed by divisions between young and old.
In China Girl, and less directly in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, the
“family” is a source of criminal activity. In some cases, it is characterized by
incestuous pressures. In every production, the presentation of the lovers as
spiritualized and distant from the Violent worlds they inhabit positions young
love as an idyllic alternative. However, this too is conditionalized: in their
closing moments, the productions variously contest the suitability of young

love as a newly dominant ideology, thus disclosing how the hegemonic process

is ongoing and only tenuously resolved.

 

 

 

 

In memoriam: Wanda Ruth and Henry Charles Kraetzer

 

iv

 

 

 

 

 

will
by

 

K

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is difficult to truly account for all of the ways in which so many people have
helped in preparing this dissertation. Pride of place goes to my wife, Lisa,
whose support has been stern, loving and absolute. Without her, this would not
have been possible. I would also like to thank my dissertation director,
Professor Philip C. McGuire. He has been tolerant beyond all account, a more
than able teacher of Shakespeare and scholarship, and a fine writing teacher
as well. I can pay him no higher compliment than that.

For their encouragement and support, my gratitude goes to Peter
Holland, Peter Donaldson and Ken Rothwell. Thanks again to Pete Donaldson,
as well as to Barbara Hodgdon for sharing unpublished studies of William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet with me. Their willingness to let me read and
quote from their helpful work was a pleasant surprise, and I am indebted to
them. Laurie Osborne was kind enough to offer me useful criticism of an essay
on dancing in the adaptations and derivations of Romeo and Juliet, which I
have used in revising parts of this dissertation’s second chapter. Patricia
Solomon first suggested that I consider West Side Story alongside China Girl in

1994, and sent me both the film and the stage musical’s script. I have tried to

 

use her as an example in sharing material I have with others who may find it of
use. Thanks also to Jim Lake, Kathy Howlett and Sam Crowl: their friendship
and encouragement has been most welcome, and I hope that I have, and can
continue, to reciprocate.

I owe a particular debt of gratitude to two people at Jackson

Community College, where I taught for seven years while working on my

 

 

 

 

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degree. Ann Green and Maria Sayers took a very junior part-time faculty
member on as a teaching partner. They rearranged their own teaching
schedules to allow me to take classes and to attend a semester-long Folger
seminar, tolerated me through comprehensive exams, and supported my
decision to leave teaching with them so that I might finish the degree. They
taught me more about teaching and about culture than I could have imagined
possible, and much of the impetus of this dissertation’s exploration of how
Romeo and Juliet works in culture derives from my time working with them.
For their patience, intelligence and support, there are not thanks enough. Also
of Jackson Community College, for their help with my myriad technological
problems and needs, my thanks to Aurelie Seward, Patrick “Alex” Bymhold,
Chris Olds, Michael Young, Randy Bentley and the staff of student tutors
whom Aurelie so ably trains. In J CC’s Department of Theatre, Gary Righettini
offered me work as a director; then Sandy DiCesare and he taught me how to
do it. Working in performance, rather than just looking at it, has added a small
but, I think, crucial dimension to this dissertation.

At Michigan State University, the Department of English, The College
of Arts and Letters and the Graduate School have often been generous with
financial support, both for travel to conferences and seminars, and for
research. The Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library also
provided financial assistance to help me to attend their first-ever Shakespeare
on Film seminar. To all, my thanks.

There are, obviously, many more people I could thank, and still others
Whom I have forgotten. Limited space and a weak memory prevent my listing

them. For this, my apologies, and to those whom Ihave omitted, thank you.

 

CH
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Beginnings

CHAPTER 2 “By example of those thynges”:
Constructing Order

CHAPTER 3 Alike in Dignity?
Houses, Households, Families and Feuds

CHAPTER 4 Pure Love

CHAPTER 5 So Orderly All Things

GLOSSARY

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A Romeo and Juliet (1978): Opening Scene
APPENDIX B Romeo and Juliet (1968): Opening Sequence

APPENDIX C William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996):

Opening Sequence
APPENDIX D West Side Story (1961): Opening Sequence
APPENDIX E China Girl (1987): Opening Scene
APPENDIX F China Girl (1987): Closing Scene
APPENDIX G West Side Story (1961): Closing Sequence
APPENDIX H Romeo and Juliet (1968): Closing Scene
APPENDIX I Romeo and Juliet (197 8): Closing Sequence

APPENDIX J William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996):

Closing Sequence
ENDNOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

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269
271
273
276
278
281

284
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INTRODUCTION

I came across a section which induced a kind of vertigo, I don’t,
fortunately, remember all the actual titles, but a quick scan
showed me Shakespeare as royalist, democrat, catholic, puritan,
feudalist, progressive, humanist, racist, Englishman, homosexual,
Marlowe, Bacon, and so on round the bay. I flicked the pages of
some of the more improbable ascriptions. The compounded smell
of disuse and of evidence rose to my nostrils. I got out and went
for a walk.

Raymond Williams,
Afterword 281

This is a dissertation about the ways in which film, television and Video

manage Romeo and Juliet. More particularly, it is about how a set of
productions in these media work to construct ideas of Romeo and Juliet.
Through close study of three adaptations and two derivations of Romeo and
Juliet -- respectively, Romeo and Juliet (1968, dir. Franco Zeffirelli), Romeo and
Juliet (1978, dir. Alvin Rakoff) and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet

( 1996, dir. Baz Luhrmann); and West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise and

Jerome Robbins) and China Girl (1987 , dir. Abel Ferrara)1 -- this dissertation

examines five productions generation and expression of ideas, assumptions and
commitments, and the implications of those expressions for understandings of
Romeo and Juliet. It will study some of the work to which the playtext is put.
The dissertation concentrates on these three adaptations and two
derivations of Romeo and Juliet for several reasons. They all belong to the
latter part of the twentieth century, spanning a relatively brief 35 years from
the first in 1961 to the last in 1996. This allOws consideration of some of the

ways in which one of our culture’s enduring fictions is constructed and

 

 

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understood in a limited period of time. All share a concern with youth,
frequently constructed in the productions as being equivalent to freedom and
innocence, and as frequently threatened by or in tension with hierarchically-
encoded and/or feuding worlds. All derive at least some energy from this
construction of youthfulness, so that, unlike Renato Castellani’s 1954 Romeo
and Juliet, which comes close to the above-noted time period and makes use of
the youthfulness of its two leads, they are more than beautiful pictures with a
Shakespearean story attached. The productions are interconnected, variously

informing and informed by the playtext and/or each other. Most are
reasonably well known; moreover, most are accessible.2 There are also

several reasons for investigating productions which share a connection with
Romeo and Juliet. Beyond such accidents as its being the first Shakespearean
playtext I ever read, one I have taught and which has been the subject of much
useful scholarly criticism over time, its treatment on film, tv and video has
never received an extended study all its own. Also, its story is familiar. This
last is important in that non-Shakespeareans are apt to have an idea of what
the play is about -- probably at a minimum two people in love -- and one of the
primary goals of this work is to see how the productions may effect an
understanding of what Romeo and Juliet is “about.” Pe0ple recognize the title
Romeo and Juliet and even those who do not know the playtext, know
something about the story. All five productions studied here trade on this
currency: as I hope to show, they begin with a familiar story and then use it to
construct meaning that can then be carried back and applied to the playtext.
West Side Story, an updating of the Shakespearean playtext to early
1960s New York (for the stage musical, late 19505), addresses Romeo and

 

 

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Juliet through a look at urban gang (so-called “juvenile delinquent”) conflict, as
second-generation, Americanized white teens clash with immigrant, first-
generation Puerto Rican youths. In this version of the story, the tragic action
is triggered by the love between its protagonists, Tony and Maria. Roughly
contemporary to Zeflirelli’s 1961 London staging of the play and predating his
film effort by some seven years, the film of West Side Story limits the adults’
role in its narrative action, stressing their impotence or implicating them in
biases which fuel the feud governing the narrative. West Side Story appears to
have had some influence on Zeffirelli’s 1968 revisitation of the playtext; for, like
the Wise/Robbins film, Zeffirelli’s movie is characterized by several high energy
sequences, along with youths at once disconnected from yet influenced by the
adult world of Verona. However, unlike the earlier musical, Zeffirelli’s film
places a premium on the love story it locates at its center: his Romeo and
Juliet emphasizes youthfulness, exemplified by the principals’ love, in conflict
with adulthood, exemplified by the feud, rather than treating love as a
complicating factor in a foregrounded conflict.

Also dependent upon West Side Story is China Girl, which further
updates Arthur Laurents’ story to late 1980s New York City, specifically Little
Italy and Chinatown. Like West Side Story, China Girl is the story of a feud
complicated by competing pressures. In addition to West Side Story’s citizen-
immigrant conflict, China Girl borrows the earlier film’s study of racism
(constructed there in primarily sexual terms) and compounds it with paranoia
about miscegenation: its ethnic gangs resisting the “dilution” threatened when
younger members of the “races” become more a part of their adopted society,

interacting with supposedly alien others. To this, the film adds the gangs’ fear

 

 

 

 

 

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of economic and territorial loss, then constructs the film’s adults as criminals,
bosses of Triad and Mafia organizations ostensibly regulating the gangs. These
bosses are interested in order not as an altruistic civic good but to further their
own illegal ends. The film’s adults are cast as distant not only in their power to
dictate to the gangs, enforcing those dictates violently if need be, but also in
their vast economic advantage over the impoverished gangs. The youths see
the adults’ desired end -- making money -- as at least partly antithetical to
their own powerfully understood, violently maintained ethnic and territorial
purity. The love story introduces an exacerbating element into this already
complex set of tensions, and remains a secondary element in a fiction more
concerned with issues of sociological identity.

In contrast, the BBC Romeo and Juliet concentrates on a single family,
the Capulets, exploring how its youngest member’s love for her purported foe
affects bonds within that family and the society of which it is a correspondent
part. The lowest-energy production of the five studied here, it is also the most
intimate. Its attempt to present a close-to-full-text production of the play
rewards audiences with nuances that Zeffirelli and Luhrmann omit in the face
of other priorities at the same time that it is complicated by pressures on the
series to be a worthy representative of the BBC’s institutional and
Shakespearean history, and a perhaps misguided attempt to avoid alienating
“average” viewers with overly stylized productions. Resulting in a purportedly
“traditional” approach to the playtext, these pressures generate the most
theatricalized Romeo and Juliet of the three adaptations, a production which,
though broadcast on television and marketed as a televisual artifact, claims

authority through stagy artifice. Operating in tension with the naturalizing

 

 

 

 

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pressures of the medium of which it is part, this theatrical artifice is also in
tension with the other four productions, all powerfully filmic in their appeals.
While the BBC Romeo often is pedestrian in its execution, the manner of its
execution reveals a way of thinking about staging Shakespearean stories far
different from that advocated by its filmic counterparts.

The approach perhaps most antithetical to that exemplified by Rakofi’s
production is Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. More showily
aware of its artifice than Rakofi’s effort, the film is a catalogue of the technical
virtuosities filmmakers can perform in their medium. For all of that, it is, like
Zeffirelli’s film almost thirty years before, centered on its protagonists’
relationship. Updated beyond Ferrara’s New York City to a fictionalized late
19905 metropolis Verona Beach, the world of Luhrmann’s Romeo is the most
ostentatious and apocalyptic of the five productions. In Ferrara’s film the
graphic bloodletting is restricted to two more-or-less insular groups, and after
its opening, anarchic brawl Zeffirelli’s feud likewise concentrates on members

i of the two houses. Luhrmann’s Verona Beach, however, is a city under siege,
its gang-banging youths roving the city in chopped-down low riders while the
adults -- distant, sometimes abusive, stoned or drunk -- cruise the blasted
streets in sleek black limos or cavort in mansions guarded not simply by high
walls, but also by metal detectors and heavily armed, latter day sturmtruppen.
It is a world more beholden to ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore than to Romeo, one so
debauched that Romeo and J uliet’s love is the only thing that stands any
chance of redeeming a very fallen society. William Shakespeare’s Romeo +
Juliet focuses on the one good thing in a world gone very, very wrong.

Romeo and J uliet’s story of a doomed relationship surpasses mere

 

 

 

 

 

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familiarity. It has ascended to the level of fundamental cultural myth, so that
any romantic relationship between individuals of different backgrounds which

is in some way opposed or threatened can be regarded as a Romeo and Juliet
(or Romeo and J uliet-type) story.3 It is a story of far-ranging cultural

currency, useful in understanding or defining a variety of individuals or
situations: any lovesick youth runs the risk of being termed a Romeo,
particularly if that youth is of a sensitive or poetical bent (as intimated by
Luhrmann’s charming gesture of having Romeo write his oxymoronic
complaints about love as verse in a journal, a cigarette dangling fi'om the
corner of his mouth); slapping the label “Romeo” on an individual brings to mind
visions of pitiful yearnings after unattainable femmes (an explicit reference
made by Mercury in China Girl). It is almost a cultural joke. Yet at the same
time, Romeo and Juliet can evoke notions of deep, abiding, even perfect love,
love so strong that individuals feeling it are willing to brave death to preserve it.
An individual can appropriate ideas of -- not from, a very different matter --
Romeo and Juliet to establish an immediate set of meanings about his or her
point or project. The story is one of great fascination to culture, and film and tv
makers can use this fascination to prompt quick understandings about their
projects.4 Whatever personal, social or economic value artists may find in
working with ideas generated in, by or through the playtext, they also find

value in the meanings and associations borne by its name which may or may
not have anything to do with the playtext itself. At its core, that is what this
dissertation will examine: how do five productions variously influenced by

Romeo and Juliet display their understanding of that dramatic fiction, and how

are those understandings encoded?

 

 

 

 

 

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I begin with the opening moments of each production. Although varying
in length, style, tone and emphasis, all five productions initiate their
examinations of schemes of order, family and young love by largely ignoring the
last of these, constructing their fictional worlds as places dominated by
rivalries which threaten order. I demonstrate this by a close examination of
the ways in which the productions deploy personnel (both actors and
characters), visuals, sound, editing, on-screen text and the playtext itself in
their presentation of Chorus, authority figures, citizenry and physical locations
and objects. Out of this evolve the following three chapters, which
demonstrate that each production foregrounds challenges to order, the family --
a complicated term I address in greater detail in chapter 3 -- and young love.
They do this both through depicting threats external to the ideological
constructions and by exposing their internal contradictions (for example, in
West Side Story, civic order is threatened from without by the J et—Shark feud
at the same time it is weakened from within by the bigotry of that film’s chief
representative of law and order, Lieutenant Schrank). Young love is advanced
as an alternative to purportedly repressive or weakened ordering schemes and
dysfunctional families, although it too is revealed to suffer from internal
contradiction and complication. While the productions may at times elide or
suppress these weaknesses, they can and, at times, do foreground them, albeit
sometimes in ways more subtle than those used to expose weaknesses in the
ordering schemes and families. Young love is not challenged in the same way
that the other ideologies are, but its situation as a dominant, even preferred
ideology is left in question.

This idea carries into chapter 5, which examines the closing moments of

 

 

 

 

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each production to see how they frame and reframe the ideological
relationships revealed in chapters 1 through 4. Following a methodology
similar to that employed in the first chapter, the fifth demonstrates that the
productions’ struggle between these three ideologies for dominance is at best
uneasily resolved. Young love may appear to dominate; however, that
dominance is far from total. It is not presented without contestation. Indeed,
the productions reveal considerable slippage in the affirmations and challenges
they mount, suggesting that none of the ideological positions they stake out are
quite so stable as the productions themselves might otherwise imply.

In his pioneering Shakespeare on Film, Jack J. J orgens attempts to
draw schema by which readers and subsequent critics can identify and

understand different types of Shakespearean film (7 -15), which were in time
developed by Peter Holland (“Two-dimensional” 51-57).5 In general, J orgens

does not treat the playtext as something to be protected, defended against
marauding creative types intent on defacing a masterpiece. This is the way I
tend to approach these five productions. Cuts, alterations, updatings and
transpositions are just that: cuts, alterations, updatings and transpositions,
revealing, perhaps, attitudes toward the playtext, and evidence of differing
intelligences interacting with it. The result of whatever changes writers or
directors may make to a playtext is of more interest -- and I think, more
important -- than spending time investigating whether any such changes were
hurtful to a playtext in need of protecting.

This latter type of criticism is defined by Susan Willis as “one that

terminates” discussion (BBC 55).6 I prefer criticism that “initiates” it (55).7

Examples of this type of writing can be found in the work of Willis herself, along

 

 

 

 

 

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with Laurie E. Osborne and Barbara Hodgdon, who compare playtexts with
performances or “performance texts,” and/or situate performances in the
historically specific conditions of their production and/or reception. They look
at what performances and their receptions say about attitudes to and
understandings of Shakespeare and whatever playtexts and productions are

germane to their discussions, rather than hunting for how “well-behaved” a
particular production is.8 Such performance criticism, which seeks to

understand the interrelated functionings of a group of performances, both
derives from and supports the belief that “productions of Shakespeare’s plays
reveal the flaw in imagining a fixed and immutable canon of his work, since
every presentation, whether in text or in performance, represents a version of
the play, not the play itself” (Osborne 170). That is, any two productions of
Romeo and Juliet, let alone any two staged performances, demonstrate that
what the play “means” is contingent upon any number of factors impinging
upon the production and performance. Particular to this project, the
“performance on film, which is obviously not identical to the text, belies this
claim of a unitary spirit of the play. The very doubleness of these
reproductions refutes the singularity assumed by ‘the spirit of the play itself”
(Osborne 183). I wish to understand, at least in part, the relationship between
these three adaptations and two derivations of Romeo and Juliet, and their
“interweaving of variable elements, [which] reflects a post-modern desire to
replace the logocentric idea of theatre with one in which performance becomes
the site of cultural and aesthetic contestation” (Bulman, “Introduction” 2).
This idea evolves out of post-modem performance theory, which has

challenged traditional assumptions about textual authority and the
production of meaning. It has interrogated the nature of the evidence we

 

 

 

 

 

use to reconstruct performances and to assess audience response. It
has raised questions about representation, made problematic the status
of the actor’s body, and alerted us to new ways in which performances of
Shakespeare may reproduce established aesthetic and political
formations or serve as sites of cultural contestation. It has even forced
to us to come to terms with a “Shakespeare” who can exist without his
language. (8-9)

At its most useful, even “as criticism undertakes to deconstruct ideology and
discover marginal voices and perspectives . . . performance criticism directs
our attention to silences and subtexts” (Crowl 12). This allows critics to
explore productions as “divergent” as Kumonosu-Jo (aka. Throne of Blood,
1957, dir. Akira Kurosawa), Ran (1985, dir. Akira Kurosawa), and other non-
Anglo-American products such as Kozintsev’s Shakespeare films, along with
films like West Side Story and China Girl, as legitimate sources of information
on and about Shakespeare and Shakespearean playtexts.

An equally important impulse in contemporary performance criticism is
the desire to avoid the kind of criticism that W. B. Worthen argues “tends to
regard the theatre as a transparent vehicle for the Author’s intention”
(“Staging’ 16). According to Worthen, there are grave risks in asserting
authorial intention, as well as in overly personalized “interpretations” of a
given performance (or, by extension, playtext):

By mapping the Author into the design of performance, performance
criticism hesitates to move in a direction charted by Roland Barthes
some time ago, “from work to text.” This is a surprising lapse, for
although Barthes’s notion of the Text [sic] refuses “to assign a ‘secret’,
an ultimate meaning, to the text . . .” . . . it enables us to consider the
text in terms that conform (or should conform) more closely to the
working of the script in the theatre: “as play, activity, production,
practice” . . . . this sense of the text seems imperative for a truly
performance-centered criticism . . .

This interpretive sense of performance legitimates “readings”
which mask the historical, social, and institutional particularity of the
theatre at any given time, in order to privilege the “essential” operations
of the stage, and so an “essential” vision of Shakespeare. This attitude
enables us to locate “meaning” in the ineffable practices of

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(“Shakespeare’s”) drama, rather than seeing it as the consequence of
the stage’s place in contemporary culture, and of our own ways of acting

in, and thinking about, theatre. (17-18)
Although I agree with the position that there is no “essential” meaning in a
Shakespearean playtext, unlike Worthen, who seeks to move away from
criticism which asserts or implies de facto Authorial meanings in a
performance or playtext, I argue that the five productions “attempt” to fix
meaning. Although their clear variety of presentation in a (relatively) short
time span would seem to contest a purported fixity, I find that the productions
generate what are at times very similar meanings (for instance, a clear
pattern of questioning the Prince or Prince analogues among the five
productions could be taken by an individual to indicate that Romeo and Juliet
regards such representatives of order with, at best, suspicion). Because of that
similarity over time, a similarity generated by different productions made by

different people in different places for different reasons, immanent, essential
meaning can be presumed.9 I would not agree with such a presumption,

although I can see how it could be formed. My goal, in part, is to unpack the
codings that could help in the formation of just this kind of presumption.

When V. F. Perkins writes that a critic “cannot require a movie to fit his
definitions. . . . The most he can ‘demand’ from a film is coherence: a structure
which points consistently towards the performance of comprehensible
functions” (45), he provides a useful template for some areas of performance
criticism. First among his “requirements” for critics is that they address films
(and, by my extension, television and video) on their own terms, rather than
according to a set of preconceived standards. (By his own token, Perkins’

“demand” for coherence can -- and should -- be questioned.) Perkins asserts

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that critics need to attend to specific works, rather than film or television as a
whole.10 This position forms the basis for a response to biases which can

delimit . . . [a critic’s] perceptions, direct his explorations, and dictate his
conclusions. This is especially true for film in its various forms, since
both message and medium may be misinterpreted as the result of long-
held but seldom-examined notions. Such notions may have been
originally naive and therefore invalid or may have been rendered
obsolete by technological change. In either case, critical judgements fail.
(Pilkington, Screening 158)

Put in other words, “There are radical differences between television and

theatre, but they are not necessarily disadvantages unless one’s thinking is

dominated by theatrical precedents” (Charney 291) -- my only modification of

this sentiment being that theatrical precedents might not be the only way in

which thinking can be biased.11

Related to this is the fear of film and television as somehow threatening
the purity of a theatrical original:

the tape may become the play, as fixed as any Hollywood production,

not merely an interpretation of the play. Worse, the lazy student may

allow viewing the tape to serve as a substitute for reading the text, and

be never the wiser. Furthermore, if the production is only mediocre . . .

students may never wish to encounter the play again. (Bulman, “BBC”
571)12

How a tape -- Bulman is referring to the videotapes of the tv broadcasts of The
Shakespeare Plays -- differs in this regard from a film or even a heavily cut or
radically imagined stage production is unclear, since they too have the power to
“become the play” as well as to be mediocre. Bulman argues that “It is crucial
. . . that students continue to be taught to read . . . responsibly, even to imagine
a ‘performance’ as they read, before they are asked to see a tape and respond
to it critically” (571), and while I am not about to argue that students ought

ot to read Shakespeare -- I am not so sure about “responsibly” -- I do not

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think that reading a playtext before seeing a performance is necessarily
“crucial.”13 This sort of criticism regards Shakespeare paternally: he needs

protecting, here from television but by extension from any sort of activity
which might threaten an individual’s conception of who Shakespeare or what a
Shakespearean play ought to be. Such attitudes are insulting to the subject
they would protect and to those who run the so-called risk of being exposed to
“bastardized” productions in “truncated” and “insufficient” media, individuals
who presumably cannot see or understand the differences between playtext,
play, film or television, and who need guides to “right” ways of seeing, thinking
about and understanding Shakespeare.
John Collick objects to artificially constructed, “unresolved
competitions” between literature, theatre and film, which posit
an idealised hierarchy of works from the filmic down to the non-filmic.
This scale of values effectively suppresses any connection cinema may
have had with other areas of cultural practice. . . . Susan Sontag, André
Bazin and Hugo Munsterberg [and Charles Monaco] have all sought to
formulate a theoretical distinction between theatre and film. . . . This
approach [especially of criticizing films for “theatricality”] dehistoricizes
the relationship between film and other are as of cultural production. (7)
Collick also challenges arguments that mystify “the real relationships between
cinema and other art forms,” and allow critics to regard films of stage plays as

“partly . . . ‘translation[s]’ from the stage to the screen” (7), and so falsely
continue “the belief that theatre and cinema are, by their very nature,
fundamentally distinct genres” (8).14 This argument is important, I think, not
least because it speaks directly to one of the main ways that performance
criticism addresses Shakespearean film, television and video. Although he does
not offer any useful substitute for the terms “translation” and “adaptation,”

Collick does suggest that their use results from ahistorical, universalizing

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thinking. He asks that critics interrogate distinction they draw between film,
television and theatre, which might end some of the artificially maintained

dichotomies between performance forms which support hierarchies of
faithfulness to the theatrical nature of the Shakespearean original.15

This raises the issue of how one can refer to the five productions under
consideration here, and more broadly to any Shakespeare-related production
on film, tv or video. The use of the term “production” foregrounds the different
kinds of work involved in making a film or preparing a television broadcast or a
videotape, beyond that suggested by “translation,” which privileges language
over other semiotic codes in film, television, video or, for that matter, theatrical
performance. “Performance” is itself a useful term, indicating that a playtext
has been enacted (and so again highlighting work), although the issue becomes
complicated when considering a production such as West Side Story or China
Girl: although the films are performances, they are not necessarily
performances of Romeo and Juliet. Referring to such productions as West Side
Story and China Girl as “derivations” is helpful in that the term indicates the
antecedent playtext which in some ways governs the productions. For
example, both of those films trade on the playtext’s feud in their portrayal of
ethnic rivalries, China Girl plays on Mercutio’s misogyny through the film
character Mercury’s racism, and West Side Story rings changes on the
playtext’s Nurse via Maria’s sexually aware older confidante, Anita. The feud,
Mercutio and the Nurse are clearly evoked in the films, which repurpose these
textual elements to create meanings specific to the films, meanings which can
also reflect back to inform how one understands the playtext. A weakness of

he term is that, like “translation,” “derivation” can imply subservience to the

14

 

 

playtext, and be taken to grant it priority, if only tangentially. In this sense,
treating China Girl as a derivation of Romeo and Juliet can result in searches -
- whether fruitless or fruitful -- for correspondences with the playtext: who is
the Friar figure? where is the quarrel between Capulet and Juliet? Such
correspondences may exist, but this sort of inquiry can rapidly turn into a
snipe hunt, resulting in such potential silliness as questions asking how many
correspondences it takes for a production to be considered a derivation of
Romeo and Juliet, when a derivation becomes an adaptation, or an adaptation
a performance? Such inquiry may be entertaining, even invigorating, but I am
very unsure of its utility in revealing how the productions work to circulate
understandings of Romeo and Juliet. All too easily this sort of debate can
become bogged down in tiresome debates of “Is it Shakespeare?” or, worse,

“Where’s the Shakespeare?” I use “derivation” in a limited, descriptive sense,

based on its connotation of moving away from an origin or source.16 This

  
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
  

preserves, I hOpe, a sense of connection, without an overemphasis on a
production like China Girl’s subservience to the Romeo and Juliet playtext.
Similarly, my use of “adaptation” to refer to the films by Zeffirelli, Rakoff and
Luhrm%n should be understood as limited. The term indicates the movement
of the Romeo and Juliet fiction from one medium into another. As with
derivation, it evokes the playtext, but should not be taken as prioritizing it.
Collick’s concern with the way in which the term can support, if not promote
“unresolved competitions” between theatre and film is a valid one; and I am
aware of such constructed competitions. However, his implication that a term
like adaptation is complicit in the construction of those competitions is

verstated. It can be, but I hope that my narrow use of the term, like that of

15

 

 

 

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derivation, contests that assumption. In short, it is my hope that the use of
these terms offers a means for considering performances such as West Side
Story and China Girl (as well as Zeffirelli’s or Rakoff’s Romeo and Juliet, or
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet) which does not place them in the
position of having to live up to the playtext. Whether adaptations or
derivations, these productions can represent Romeo and Juliet, as well as ideas
from and about it, without having to be it or be faithful to it.

In this dissertation I hope to avoid concerns with “artistic responsibility”
(Manvell 3) and fears about what the presentation of Shakespearean
performance on film and television will do to the playtexts and to Shakespeare.
For critics concerned with this issue,

the perceived threats of contemporary performances represent the

reappropriation of textual elements; the potential enslavement of text

by spectacle; the disappearance, destruction (as opposed to
deconstruction) and ultimate consumption of the text. (Hodgdon,

“Absent” 354).

Considering film, tv and video texts as adaptations and derivations may not
eliminate such concerns as Hodgdon enumerates, but it can help to allay them

if it is understood that any of the five productions is “‘a site of passage . . . in
which instabilities are both made and made manifest’” (Worthen, “Drama”
1101).17 Hodgdon suggests that adverse reactions to such instabilities are the
result of a critical blindness: the “critic or reader [does not] deal with the whole
play; rather, he or she ignores -- and sometimes effectively erases -- large
sections of text. This is not called cutting, however; it is called making an
argument” (“Parallel” 58). This blindness leads to the construction of a
“‘necessary’ difference [that] comes about largely because, whereas the critical

reading seeks to stabilize the text, the performance acknowledges, in its every

16

 

 

 

 

 

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aspect, its ephemeral nature” (65). In other words, critics, reacting to the
“disturbance” (65) of the stable, readerly text, may challenge the validity of an
adaptation or derivation “by suggesting or implying that . . . it isn’t the ‘real’
Hamlet or King Lear -- that is, such [performed] versions do not faithfully
construct the text of readerly desire or dream” (58).

Regularly one of the most incisive performance critics working today,
Hodgdon posits an elegant reason for much of the resistance to Shakespeare
on film and television when she writes about the “expectational text” which
“contains . . . private notions about the play and about performed

Shakespeare,” notions that one may not even recognize until finding them
denied (“’I‘wo” 143).18 Hodgdon does not take issue with well-read or well-

informed audiences. Instead, she questions audience members who develop
doctrinaire positions of what the playtexts are about, and where and how they
ought to be performed and presented. Such positions, in Hodgdon’s words,
express themselves as a “peculiarly obsessive brand of Shakespearean quality
control,” measuring “the extent to which the performance successfully (or
unsuccessfully) competes with the printed text, or, more significantly, with
each reader’s private, ideal construction of the text, for authority” (“Absent”
355). These positions can contaminate an individual’s response, “delimit his
perceptions, direct his explorations, and dictate his conclusions” (Pilkington,
Screening 158) when the individual is unaware of or does not examine those
preconceptions. In Peter Brook’s estimation, they also have a farther-ranging
effect, damaging the willingness of performers and performance groups to
experiment with the plays, to play with them, and in so doing perhaps breeding

even more audience members expecting correctness rather than challenge

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(251).

Hodgdon attempts to construct ways to avoid falling prey to the
expectational text by advising that

we need to commit ourselves to studying those texts . . . on their own

terms. This means working, not with a single authoritative text and its

signed and unsigned derivatives but with a multiplicity of texts -- a

playscript, a theatrical performance, a filmtext -- and finding more

precise modes of description and analysis for the ways they engage us.

(“Two” 150)19
This engagement with different performances and texts encourages the
assumption that the Shakespearean playtexts themselves are plurally
understood (and not simply plural), which in turn makes possible a wider range
of understanding, from “all readings are readings from specific positions, and . . .
all readings have implications beyond our individual understanding of a
particular play” (Belsey, “Shakespeare” 152) to a careful and intelligent
analysis of “the exigencies that influence modern productions” so that we
might find “important clues to the underlying interpretation -- or adaptation --
that governs the production” (Halio, “Finding” 669, 663). Considering the
interaction of playtext with performance/s and other texts puts critics “in a
position to construct a more substantial defense” or analysis of a particular
performance (Gilman 294—95). It may be the only way to do a performance
“justice in evaluation” (296).

Holderness suggests that engaging with performances on their own
terms will not only require critics to treat them “fairly,” but will open critics to
methodologies beyond those of their own specialized fields, perhaps enriching
their approaches to both the performance and their more familiar critical and

heoretical modes (Shakespeare in Performance: “The Taming of the Shrew”

1). Similarly, it will prevent the hypocritical condemnation of directors such

18

 

 

 

 

 

 

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as Zeffirelli for utilizing techniques like “Extensive cutting of the text, the
dramatisation of reported scenes . . . [and] the substitution of visual images for
verbal effects” (66), techniques identical to those employed by such “approved”
directors as Olivier and Kurosawa, because treating performances in their own
right prevents the establishment of a pantheon of approved, perhaps
approvable, artists.

It is far more productive, if that premise be accepted, to compare a film

of a Shakespeare play with other film versions of Shakespeare, with

other films from the repertory of the same auteur, with films from a

comparable genre. (66)

When Holderness argues that “To evaluate a film version against a conception
of its ‘original’ is, since Shakespeare did not make films, a meaningless
procedure” (6667), he is not suggesting that critics not look at the playtext.
Rather, he argues that critics not treat the playtext as a standard to be met
(51-52). It is one of a body of interacting texts. Examining it as such, but not
privileging it will allow for a greater understanding of how the playtext is
understood.

While this admits a degree of personal response to an analysis, it is not
the sort that so troubles Collick. Rather than supposing that “the correct
response to a play will allow the sensitive individual to understand the
experiences and truths communicated by the writer,” transcending “historical
and cultural difference” (Collick 6), personal response is foregrounded as such,
presented as one possible response among many to a performance WhiCh,
likewise, is one of a range of possible responses. There is no essential meaning;
rather, interacting meanings can offer a fuller, richly ambiguous look at the

playtext and its functioning. This kind of personal reaction admits it is active,

0t passive, and so resists the impulse to regard playtexts as transcendent,

19

 

 

 

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ahistorical entities communicating truth to tabula rasa readers.20

Finally, foregrounded, self-aware engagement with a variety of texts
moves beyond questions of accepting “film as a legitimate medium for
interpreting Shakespeare, or predict[ing] why it shouldn’t or won’t be accepted”
(Ferrara 168). Shakespeare is on film, on television, on video; arguing about
whether this should or should not be accepted is to hide one’s head in the sand.
One might as well argue whether a muggy day ought to be accepted: no matter
what the answer, the day is still muggy. A more productive approach might be
to examine the implications of reactions to that day. Informed by the work of
Hodgdon and others, I wish to address the implications of three adaptations
and two derivations of Romeo produced over three and a half decades, in order
to reveal something of the understanding of that playtext, not just what and
how it means but how it is used.

,,.

At this Introduction’s outset I noted that this dissertation would
examine the values, ideas, assumptions and commitments that the different
productions reveal, what ideologies they promote, challenge or subvert, and
how they do it. To accomplish this, it is useful to establish a grounding in
ideological theory, drawn here from texts specifically concerned with ideology,
as well as literary, film and television analyses employing ideological theory in
their critiques of other texts, such as might be found in a study of the
construction of ad hoc families in one-hour tv dramas. To that end I will turn to

ow ideology is defined and understood by various critics, then to some
hallenges of contemporary ideological theory, and, as a means of

ontextualizing my own approach to the productions in question, close with an

20

 

 

 

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examination of some of the ways ideological theory is being put to use in
studies of film, television, and literature.

In popular understanding, ideology is “illusion, false consciousness,
unreality, upside—down reality” Williams, Keywords 128) or “some kind of
especially coherent and rigidly held system of political ideas” (Kavanagh,
“Ideology” 306). Classical Marxist theory, on the other hand, understands
ideology as “the set of ideas which arise from a given set of material interests”

such as “the conditions and changes of condition in economic production”
(Williams, Keywords 129).:21 More recently the influence of Louis Althusser has

led to ideology being understood to appear “as a ‘given’, a sense of the ‘natural’

and the ‘real’ which we inherit, willy-nilly, and without which it is impossible to
conceive the world we inhabit” (Hawkes 298).22 Althusserian theorists and

critics regard everyone as being “in” an ideology -- or more accurately, “in”

ideologies. Further, for Althusserians, an ideology is by definition invisible to

  
   
  
  
  
   
  
  

the social subject who is “in” it: one can only see ideologies with which one does
not agree or to which one is not subject. Since “the primary point of ideology,
that which defines its social function, is not to ‘give knowledge’ or make an
accurate ‘copy’ of something, but to constitute, adjust, and/or transform social
subjects” (Kavanagh, “Ideology” 314), the social subject who has been

constituted, adjusted and/or transformed cannot accurately perceive that

 

which has done so to him or her. The subject may recognize other ideologies,
and may even note and resist certain expressions of an ideology, but may not

recognize or question the more fundamental ideological structure close to the
ne.23 For example (as I shall discuss in chapter 2), in West Side Story Riff

d the Jets resist the attempts of Schrank, Doc and Glad Hand to regulate,

21

 

 

 

characterizing these attempts as authoritarian and repressive, but when on
their own, and even in the act of resisting those authority figures, the youths
willingly participate in the hierarchical structures and control mechanisms of
their gang.

The varying definitions of ideology lead to questions of how ideology and
its effects can be evaluated. Kellner offers a useful, basic methodology when
he suggests that “we View ideology as a synthesis of concepts, images,
theories, stories, and myths that can take rational systematic form . . . or
imagistic, symbolic, and mythical form” (472). Understanding that “The
combination of rational theory with images and slogans makes ideology
compelling and powerful” and that “ideologies have both ‘rational’ and
‘irrational’ appeal, as they combine rhetoric and logic, concepts and symbols,
clear argumentation and manipulation” (472) provides what amounts to a list

of broad areas which might be investigated: concepts, images -- including those

  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  

of “country and race, class and clan, virginity and chastity, salvation and
redemption, individuality and solidarity” (472), or my own subjects of schemes
of order, family and young love -- along with stories and myths such as those
represented via the fiction Romeo and Juliet. This sort of analysis regards
ideology in a neutral way, seeking to understand how it functions, not whether
ideology in general, or an ideology in particular, is good 01’ bad per se (although
that can be an ancillary component of this sort of analysis). It seeks to
derstand the ways in which a subject interacts with an ideology, and the
lippages in the expressions of an ideology, the places where within a challenge
0 the ideology, deeper assumptions and commitments which support the

deology remain unchallenged, intact. My analysis understands ideology to

22

 

 

 

 

 

refer

write

 

 

refer to free—floating constructs of which individuals (such as, in this case,
writers, directors, critics) can be aware, and about which they can express
conflicting attitudes. Thus, I will look at a select few of the major ideological
constructs and ideas represented in, reacted to and enacted by the productions:
order, in particular the various schemes by which an idea of what order is
and/or means is embodied or conveyed, frequently as a means of controlling,
curtailing or punishing the behaviors of certain individuals or groups; the family
(and its analogues), an institution at times deeply, and sometimes uneasily,
involved with notions of order, as well as one through which individuals can gain
and maintain a sense of place, belonging and identity; and young love, an
emotional state which can be taken to be more pure or exalted, more innocent,
than its adult incarnations. Each of these constructs carries a complex set of
assumptions with it, both social and individual. (For instance, my own
ideological baggage inclines me to look with suspicion on schemes of order, the
family and young love, despite my own imbrication in all three in my personal
and professional lives.) I will look at how these ideological constructs and the
attitudes about them are displayed via verbal figures and visual images (both
individually, in sequence and in aggregate out-of-sequence groups), as well as at
the fictional narrative itself. Particularly, since “Most theories of ideology have
failed to analyze properly the apparatus that produces and transmits ideology”
(Kellner 472), a goal of this study is to examine filmic and televisual
apparatuses and the ideological work they do, how they participate in and with
the above ideological constructs.

Two crucial realizations of post-Althusserian ideological criticism are

that no one ideology should be assumed to be dominant, and that no ideological

23

 

 

 

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dominance is total. Such assumptions “spring from a nondialectical notion of

ideology. Dominant ideology is . . . subject to the stresses and contradictions” of

the field of which it is part (Spellerberg 7 70).24 In other words, “The cultural

hegemony system . . . is not a closed system. It leaks” (Gitlin 531).“5 For

example, though a critic may challenge television for its commercialism, s/he
may fail to address commercial film on the same terms. However, the fact
that a dominant ideology may “leak” does not mean that it is not dominant:
even if “in the historically specific form of popular culture produced by the
culture industries controlled by corporate capital, popular culture has tended to
produce hegemonic ideology,” that hegemonic ideology is not total. It may not
be aggressively or successfiilly challenged, but it will be challenged (Kellner
484).26 However, at the same time that assumptions of dominant or total
ideology must be questioned, “in criticizing the notion of dominant ideology as
monolithic, an unfortunate reluctance to see any ideology as dominant has
occurred” (Mayne 125). An example of this could be found in Romeo and
Juliet’s suicides: their deaths can be taken as questioning patriarchy -- an
ideological system that it could be argued supports and even encourages the
feud which, in part, leads to the children’s deaths -- but not subverting it: the
patriarchal system of Verona remains in place, perhaps even is
strengthened.27

For my purposes, criticism proceeding from the belief that “it is in the
aggregate of apparently insignificant codings that ideology works most
effectively” (Fiske, Television 11) is most useful: this sort of inquiry analyzes

not one way in which an ideology is promoted or challenged, but many; not a

24

 

 

 

 

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particular ideological construct, but several; and those several within not just
one, but within a collection of productions. I intend to examine at least some of
the ideological work that these five productions engage in, particularly how the
ideological positions they express and reveal are encoded via the techniques of
the media. While engendering a greater understanding of how these
productions work, I hope to retain a sense of the play of ideology, as the

productions traverse a spectrum between active questioning and passive
acceptance of the ideologies present in each.28 For instance, in West Side Story,

the gangs chafe under the restraints that Lieutenant Schrank attempts to
impose on them, yet at the same time accept restraints imposed by the gang
leaders; those leaders apparently see no contradiction in their willingness to
exert their authority over the behavior of the gangs even as they scoff at the
claims to authority Schrank makes. Similarly, Luhrmann’s film mounts
serious challenges to the institution of marriage through its depictions of the
disaffected, unaffectionate marriages of Capulet and his wife, and Montague
and his, yet endorses the marriage of Romeo and Juliet. Using examples such
as these, the dissertation will attempt to show that the functioning of ideology
is never simple. Ideally, this will result in the heightened pleasure that comes
with knowing better how a production works as well as an increased
understanding of the work the Shakespearean playtext can be put to.
When Curtis Breight writes that “Shakespeare is being used as both a
eans of global communication and a touchstone for struggle within
umultuous societies such as the USA” (297), he begins to address what
trikes me as the most important ideological point that could be made about

hakespeare (or whomever “Shakespeare” is supposed to be) and what he is

25

 

 

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supposed to have written. It is not a matter of arguing that Shakespeare was
subject to Elizabethan, Jacobean, early modern or Renaissance ideologies; nor
is it that Shakespeare overtly or covertly, knowingly or passively, argued for or
against ideologies; more, it is how a Shakespearean playtext is used to argue
ideologies, how (modifying Kavanagh) a given adaptation or derivation

interacts with Romeo and Juliet for its own ends (“Shakespeare” 147). When
Terry Eagleton asserts in Criticism and Ideology that “The text . . . is a certain
production of ideology” (64), he provides what strikes me as a very useful half
of the equation, the other half being that the text exists not only as a

production of ideology, but helps to reconstitute ideology for a new audience.29 I

wish to explore what Stephen Greenblatt called the “‘life’ that literary works
seem to possess long after both the death of the author and the death of the
culture for which the author wrote” (Shakespearean 6) by examining the
“multiple exchanges” of ideologies generated within and among the adaptations
and derivations of Romeo and Juliet, the “supplementary transactions through
which the work renews its power in changed circumstances” (20).
In introducing part two of Political Shakespeare’s second edition, Alan
Sinfield writes that, because “Shakespeare’s plays constitute an influential
edium through which certain ways of thinking about the world may be
romoted and others impeded, they are a site of cultural struggle and change”
155). He is correct. The difficult pleasure of this dissertation is examining
hat “certain ways of thinking about the world” are “promoted and . . .
peded,” and how promotion and impediment is effected through the means
vailable to the artists involved in the five productions under consideration.

infield worries that

26

 

 

 

 

It may be that we must see the continuous centring of Shakespeare as
the cultural token which must be appropriated as itself tending to
reproduce the existing order: that however the plays are presented, they
will exercise a relatively conservative drage [sic], that any radical
influence can hardly extend beyond the educated middle class, that in
practice conservative institutions are bound to dominate the production
of such a national symbol, and that for one cultural phenomenon to have
so much authority must be a hindrance to radical innovation. (157)
Although his use of such determinate words and phrases as “will,” “are bound
to” and “must be” seems doctrinaire, Sinfield casts his worry in an oddly
conditional sense: “It may be that we must see the continuous centring of
Shakespeare . . . as itself tending to reproduce the existing order.” He does not
know if a presentation of the playtext will “reproduce the existing order,”
though he suspects it might tend to (157). This dissertation confirms his
suspicion: the adaptations and derivations of Romeo and Juliet studied here
mount challenges to constructs of order and family, but they also at points
reveal commitments to them. Similarly, the productions tend to affirm ~-
though not without complication -- the value of young love. My approach,
appreciative at its core -- the productions are useful, even valuable artifacts --
is also part of the post-modern challenge of authority that studies of different,
even divergent productions can help to provide, though I will question whether
performance theory’ s challenge of authorial intentionality and transcendent
meaning adequately considers the cumulative effect that a series of
productions, spanning 35 years and sharing similar reactions to certain points
in the playtext, can have on an individual’s understanding of what a playtext
can, may, or ought to mean. If these productions evoke or promote what some
would deem to be reactionary ideological stances, fine; if they advocate what
others would deem to be progressive ideologies, fine. The point is not to

challenge their politics, but to examine them for what positions they take and

27

 

 

 

how they take them. Understanding these things will aid in understanding

more about some of the ways in which Romeo and Juliet works.

 

28

 

 

CHAPTER 1

Beginnings

The next time you go to a movie, find out how long it takes you to
make a decision about whether you like the film or not. It takes
about ten minutes. That’s ten pages of your screenplay. . . . You
have approximately ten pages to let the reader know WHO your
MAIN CHARACTER is, WHAT the premise of the story is, and
WHAT the situation is.

Syd Field,
Screenplay 8-9

The adaptations and derivations of Romeo and Juliet are already participants
in various ideologies before audiences ever see them, through their involvement
with major, minor or independent producers and studios, through their budgets
or methods of production, or through corporate and commercial sponsorships,

network involvement or targeted demographics. Months before the public first

  
  
  
  
   
 
  
  

sees it, a production is characterized by the ideologies involved in, conditioning
and expressed through its creation.1 These never disappear, although they are
complicated when the commitments and investments of a particular
production begin to be expressed. This chapter is concerned with what

appens during the opening moments of the five productions. It will proceed by
onsidering how the meanings suggested in each relates to those in the others,
well as to possibilities extant in the playtext’s Prologue.2 By examining how
ach production’s relationships with schemes of order, the family and young
ove begin to develop, I will illustrate not just the interplay of those constructs,
ut their interdependence, and demonstrate the different approaches the

daptations and derivations take to the playtext. Most striking, however, is

29

 

 

 

 

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fifd

av:

 

the similarity this analysis reveals: only one of the five surrogations begins by
stressing the love relationship, while all five work to establish milieux in which

that love will play out.

Prologue to this tragedy
Paralleling the structure of the Q1 and Q2 versions of the playtext,3 all

five productions begin with a Prologue, four more or less immediately and the
fifth, the BBC Romeo, after a brief title sequence for The Shakespeare Plays as
a whole. With this structural device, each production begins to display some
of its ideological make-up, most immediately through whether Chorus or a
Chorus figure is presented, through how the character is conceived, through
what the character says and how he or she says it, and through whether the
character is part of the dramatic context or stands apart from it. Comparison

of how the five productions deal with Chorus reveals most obviously that the

  
   
   
  
   
  
 
  

figure is open to a wide range of presentation; more telling is how much Chorus’
first few moments can reveal of how a production will proceed.

In Rakoffs Romeo and Juliet, the first installment of the BBC’s The
hakespeare Plays (Willis, BBC 319-20), a crossfade from shot 1 to shot 2
eveals Chorus, in long shot, standing in what looks to be a small city square, a
ew people and merchant stalls around him, wearing a long robe and cap of
amasked cloth (see Appendix A). That he appears in the same space
abited by characters presumably involved to some degree in the drama’s
ction marks this character as potentially having part in the action as well.
is period costume emphasizes this possibility: not only is he present with

ther characters, he is dressed like them. Yet, Chorus is aware of the camera.

30

 

 

 

 

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He not only speaks to it in direct address in shot 2, a typical device of
television’s characteristic appeal to intimacy, but approaches the camera and
tracks it with his eyes when it booms away from him at the end of the shot.
None of the other characters “notice” the recording device. By his costume and
physical positioning he is a part of the fiction, but his actions distinguish him
from it, grant him an awareness of the device used in recording the fiction that
the other characters do not display. Calling attention to the camera helps to
generate an awareness of the fiction’s artifice.

In contrast to this is Zeffirelli’s off-screen Chorus. Over the film’s
Opening two shots, characterized by slow movements by the camera as well as
within the frame, by long, wide shots, faded colors and drifting mist, the
audience only hears Chorus (see Appendix B). This has a documentary effect:
a quiet, modulated voice provides context for a set of visuals. In combination
with his invisibility, this provides the character a degree of omniscience as he
reveals what will happen. Because this moderate, unseen Chorus does not call
attention to the means of production -- this is supported by the excisions of the
final six lines of the Q2 Prologue text, as discussed below -- there is less chance
of consciously noticing the production’s artifice. The scene seems natural,
immediate, unpremeditated, all qualities characteristic of Zeffirelli’s film,

hereas Rakoff’s reflexive gesture foregrounds some of the means of
roduction, thereby challenging notions of immediacy or naturalness.

Luhrmann’s Romeo begins with a Prologue cloaked in a post-modern

'sion of who, and what, Chorus might be (see Appendix C). The film’s first
hot is of an old tv set superimposed on a black field, its initial on—screen static

eplaced in sequence by three insets: “20th Century Fox presents” and “A

31

 

 

 

 

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Bazmark Production,” then a black female television anchor. During a slow
zoom effect on the tv, she speaks the first 12 lines of the Prologue as if they
were the lead for a news story; then, as she says “is now the two hours traffic
of our stage,” a slam zoom hurtles toward and apparently into the inset image
itself. This construction of Chorus as a tv news anchor combines the effects
the Zeffirelli and Rakoff constructions of the character: her direct address
continues to foreground the artifice which the tv set, dissociated from all
context, has already made apparent, while her positioning as a news anchor

generates a documentary effect -- she will be reporting on what happened to
Romeo and J uliet.4 Her identity makes her relationship to others in the story,

and the source of her knowledge, apparent: because she is a news anchor, she
knows about these events. Moreover, her identity makes her motivations

clear. She tells what happened because it happened; telling what happened is

her job.5 In contrast to this, Zeffirelli’s Chorus is anonymous and amorphous;

  
  
   
 
  
  
  
   
 
  

Rakoff’s, though physically present and aware of his surroundings, is no less
anonymous, even mysterious: who is he? how does he know these things?
why is he telling this story? are questions that could be asked of him.
Complicating this presentation is that Luhrmann serves up a second
Chorus. The film’s first shot is the first part of a two-part opening sequence,
and provides a (sort of) traditional Prologue. The 98-shot second part of that
sequence, with its aggressive camera movement and shot selection,
pectacular editing (98 bits of film in a sequence one minute twenty five
econds long) and complex soundtrack, provides an untraditional second
ologue. This second Prologue contains a second Chorus, similar in style to

effirelli’s: beautifully articulated baritone consonants and vowels roll off an

32

 

 

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invisible speaker’s tongue. Like Zeffirelli’s, Luhrmann’s invisible second Chorus
acquires an air of anonymity and omniscience. However, because this
character speaks in the context of what is constructed as a news report, over
close ups of newspaper and magazine headlines and grainy, sometimes blurred
handheld shots reminiscent of those taken by combat cameramen, the
speaker could be construed as a professional reporter; as vocal talent, hired for
his orotund gravitas; or as an individual involved or concerned with the events
being reported —- a politician, a social worker, a suicide counselor -- whose
comments have been added to the visuals for effect. All of the possibilities help
to explain the character’s knowledge.

Second Chorus also could be more than a tangentially involved,
unnamed individual. He could be another character in the film: Pete

Postlethwaite, the actor who says second Chorus’ lines, also plays Father

Laurence.6 This introduces a series of complications: if audience members

recognize Postlethwaite’s voice;7 if they are aware he is playing Father

Laurence (who has not yet appeared on-screen, so that, with no title credits for
the actor or his character before his voice comes over the speakers, such an
awareness requires prior information, from perhaps reports on the film and/or
previous viewings); and if audience members connect the disembodied voice
with Father Laurence when he first appears some minutes later, then they
may begin to consider whether one of the characters to whom the action is
familiar is speaking in the role of second Chorus, along with what the
implications of that possibility might be. This second speaker could be a news
eporter, or an omniscient narrator like Zeffirelli’s Chorus. What this unseen

peaker says may represent his own understanding of events in which he was

33

 

 

 

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involved. This possible construction of Father Laurence as second Chorus
reverses a formulation made by Joan Ozark Holmer, that the Friar is choric
but not a Chorus, integrated within the play unlike the figure who stands
partially within and partially without the drama (“N o” 166). In Lurhmann,
Chorus may be brought more fully into the fiction via Laurence. As a result,
an external, removed recitation of events not only becomes more credible but
may also revise the news anchor’s version of events to omit the reconciliation -
- which, in the end, the film never shows. Luhrmann’s presentation(s) of
Chorus challenges the sanctity of the Shakespearean playtext by repeating
one of its structural elements, and further establishes the reflexive course the
film will continue to explore.

In West Side Story and China Girl the complicating factor is Chorus’
absence, which raises some important questions for understanding how Romeo

and Juliet works: when do these films first begin to reveal themselves as

  
  
  
  
   
  
   
 
  

derivations of the playtext? can their Openings rightly be called Prologues?

and, what are the implications of an absent Chorus? I would like to defer
answering the first question for a moment, and address instead the second and
third. Romeo’s Prologue is distinct and, in the playtext, easily discerned.
Sometimes. Q2’s Prologue is 14 lines long. Q1’s is 12. Q3 and Q4 follow Q2
(Gibbons 81). F1 has no Prologue at all. So, should one require it, there is
textual support for omitting this portion of the playtext in performance.
owever, West Side Story and China Girl do have Prologues. The abstract

' ustration of lower Manhattan that begins West Side Story and the music
hich accompanies it, according to that music’s denomination in the

oundtrack, comprise that film’s Overture (West Side Story: The Original

34

 

 

 

 

 

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Sound Track Recording).8 At shot 4, music from what the soundtrack denotes
as the Prologue begins, continuing through shot 109 and ending some ten

minutes later (see Appendix D).9 Strictly speaking the film’s Prologue more

resembles Romeo 1.1.1-76,10 ending when Schrank and Krupke enter to stop

the brawl (Schrank’s “How many times have I told you punks to cut this stuff
out?” is an earthy analogue to the Prince’s “Will they not hear?”), although it
could be argued that the abstract design and the initial visuals of the city
(shots 1-22) show a version of “In fair Verona” (Prologue 2). In similar fashion,
China Girl’s 25-shot opening scene of a Little Italy neighborhood forms that
film’s Prologue, separated fiom the first dance club scene and the chase and
brawl sequences by a fade to black and brief silence (see Appendix E).
Although its action is less elaborately developed than in West Side Story, and
many of its playtextual equivalents shifted to later points in the film, China
Girl’s Prologue establishes the Italians’ resentment of the encroaching
Chinese, and so might be said to represent the Shakespearean
Two households, both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, . . . (Prologue 1-3)
Since both films contain Prologues, their structures could be said to parallel
those of the Romeo Quartos.
The absence of a Chorus increases these films’ distance from the
playtext as well as their immediacy. Since neither film has an intervening
figure to provide even the little background Chorus does offer, or to introduce

the story about to happen, events seem to happen at the moment of their

ppearance on screen, recorded as if by accident rather than being controlled,

35

 

 

 

 

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or known, by some outside intelligence.11 West Side Story’s audience members

have to determine the history of the gangs’ rivalry for themselves -- as opposed
to being told, with Chorus’ admirable lack of clarity, that the “grudge” is an
“ancient” one -- as well as understand Tony and Maria’s roles in exacerbating
and perhaps ending the rivalry, as the plot develops. Similarly, China Girl’s
audience has to identify the situation and conflicts for itself. This task perhaps
is complicated by China Girl’s less explicit identification with the Romeo
fiction. Links with West Side Story are present, but nebulous: that China Girl
has a Prologue sequence (with markedly different content than the earlier film)
is no help in forming connections to West Side Story, much less to Romeo and
Juliet. This speaks to the point raised above, about when the films announce
themselves as derivations of the playtext. The question is not easily answered.
For those aware of the production’s history, “The genesis of West Side Story
dates back to 1949 when Broadway director Jerome Robbins approached
Leonard Bernstein . . . with the idea for a modern musical version of Romeo and
Juliet set in the New York slums” (Hemming 7). From this point of view, West
Side Story was a derivation of Romeo and Juliet fi'om its beginning, although
Hapgood notes that Robbins
was inclined to play down the connection with Shakespeare, to whom no
official credits were given. As he told an interviewer when the musical
was in rehearsal, “Romeo and Juliet is merely a spring-board . . .
gzsiczally, this is to be a tough contemporary story and a jazz piece.”
Contemporary reports on and reviews of the stage musical regularly asserted

West Side Story’s ties to Romeo and J uliet,13 as did articles about the film.14 A

ore difficult case than West Side Story is China Girl, for which there is less

ocumentary evidence. In a published interview, Ferrara mentions neither

36

 

 

 

 

 

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Shakespeare or the musical, although the interviewer does (Smith, “Moon” 41).
A few links to West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet come through reviews.15

However, individuals ignorant Of the productions’ origins or the secondary

material still have to make sense of the films, and the issue of where, when,
and how they “become” Romeo can be thorny.16 It depends, partly, on how one

understands the playtext. If Romeo and Juliet is a fiction about the
restoration of order to a troubled civic entity, then West Side Story and China
Girl may form connections to the playtext quickly, with their recourse to New
York City. If about a feud, then the links may take longer, coming as the Jets
travel the West Side (from shot 27) or during their first encounter with
Bernardo (from shot 35), during the minor scufiles between Jets and Sharks
(from shot 44), at the start of the stylized brawl (shot 68) . . . at any point,
really, in the entire Prologue. SO, too, with China Girl: the film’s 25-shot

Opening sequence immediately begins to establish ethnic and economic

  
  
  
  
  
   
 
 
  

tensions between the Italians and Chinese, although whether this would be
understood as an “ancient grudge” or incipient “new mutiny” is at best an Open
question. There is no love lost between the two groups, but that is not enough
to provide any surety that this would be regarded as a Romeo-style feud. If
Romeo and Juliet is a love story, the fihns’ Prologues are no help -- the
connection is deferred, in West Side Story perhaps to Tony’s dreaming of

something better outside Doc’s shop, or more likely tO his first encounter with

 

aria at the dance, and in China Girl more certainly to Tony and Tye’s initial
ance-club idyll. If Romeo and Juliet is an amalgam of these, and other,
lements, the link between the playtext and films could come anywhere, at

hatever time the audience member has gathered enough information to make

37

 

 

 

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the ideational leap from present to precedent text.17

In addition to whether Chorus is presented, and if so how the figure is
constructed, there is the issue Of what Chorus says. In the playtext, the
character privileges the idea of the patriarchal house:

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. (Prologue 1-4)

Similar in importance is Verona, the civic entity the households inhabit.
Chorus does not identify the feud as a threat to either household: it is “In fair
Verona” that this “ancient grudge” through “civil blood makes civil hands

”

unclean. The blood and hands Of the city as a whole are Chorus’ concern,
although the Capulet and Montague households, as part Of the civic entity, are
implicit in the reference. Chorus accords both households equal respect. They
are “alike in dignity.” The grudge, so important to the houses themselves,
concerns Chorus only insofar as the “strife” and “rage” (ll. 8, 10) threaten the
orderly life Of the community.

As constructed by Chorus, the tension between the need for order and
the primacy that the Capulet and Montague houses hold in their masters’ and
members’ minds exists in tension with love, which the character establishes as
inextricable from the houses and order:

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. (ll. 5-8)
ithout love, the strife between the houses will not end; yet because of that

trife the lovers will die. Chorus then expands on the importance of Romeo and

uliet’s love beyond the fact of its existence:

38

 

 

 

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bein

but

 

 

The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage --

Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove --. . . (ll. 9-11)
If Romeo and Juliet, Offspring Of the heads Of the respective houses, do not fall
in love, the feud will continue; order in Verona will continue to suffer. That rage
being removed, the feud between the houses will end and order will be restored,
but only through love’s agency.

Chorus’ last words complicate this presentation:

The fearful passage Of their death-marked love . . .

Is now the two-hours’ traffic of our stage;

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. (Prologue 9, 12-14)
The character calls attention to the fact that what is yet to come will be
enacted, an artifice designed for some purpose which Chorus does not reveal:
whatever lesson is to be learned from this fiction -- if any is intended -- is a
mystery. This reflexivity not only informs subsequent action, but forces a

reevaluation Of the preceding moments in the Prologue. Chorus’ initial
utterances, which can be taken as hurried or impromptu, are revealed to be
anything but: they are designed, rehearsed, foregrounded works of artifice.18
All in all, the Prologue is a nifty bit of shorthand: in 14 lines the playwright sets
up three ideological elements, establishes them in relationship to each other --
households are important, order necessary, and love essential for the
preservation of both -- and enforces knowledge of the creation of a dramatic
fiction.

Rakoff’s Romeo retains the full 14-line Q1 Prologue, its last lines’
movement between present, past and future complemented by Chorus’

ambiguous placement within and without the drama. John Gielgud’s

39

 

 

 

 

 

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performance as Chorus complements the obviously artificial, almost theatrical
set. His delivery is performative, almost stately: I find it difficult to watch this
Chorus and not see Gielgud, or marvel at his elocution. Although pleasing to
listen to him speak, it is, oddly, a greater pleasure to watch him say his lines.
The words are almost limpid, tactile, when in this actor’s control, and I am
never unaware that he is playing a role. Unlike Gielgud’s performance, in
Zeffirelli’s film Laurence Olivier’ s portrayal of Chorus is not foregrounded. Not
only is his body hidden, but his voice seems to hide as well. The actor’s soft
tenor, a model of refined elocution, supports the visuals’ restrained tone and
their emphasis on order with their quiet scenes and slow movements. He

speaks about the feud and love, but does not stress those ideas, and this
matches the hint at them with the brief zoom on the sun at the end of shot 1.19

Chorus’ vocal rhythms and pacing matching those of the editing, as well as of
the two shots’ visual content. Like Gielgud’s, this quiet, restrained Chorus
helps to emphasize the idea of a “fair Verona.”

Rakofl’s Prologue retains the playtext’s language. Zeffirelli’s modernizes
“Doth” (l. 8) to “Do,” perhaps because of an assumption that audiences would
not understand the older verb form; more likely it was because the archaic
form is disruptive, requiring a moment more than “do” for an audience to

process, which would interfere with the immediacy that the opening
attempts.20 More significant than this is the excision of 11. 9- 14, so that

Zeflirelli’s Chorus says only:

Two households, both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

40

 

 

 

 

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A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.21
Cutting the last six lines omits the reemphasis of the necessity of the children’s
love for ending the feud and restoring order; more importantly, it eliminates the
suggestion that this production is created for an audience. Combined with
Chorus’ invisibility, the sequence’s unobtrusive camera work, its classical,
Hollywood-style editing and apparent location shooting -- all of which place a
premium on the realism of the production -- this cut limits the film’s reflexive
action and enhances its sense of immediacy. This is in contrast to the reflexive
energy of Rakoff’s production, in which what Chorus does and says draws
attention to that Romeo’s artifice, and in which the man playing Chorus draws
attention to the production’s artifice through his performative delivery and the
simple fact Of the presence of one of the most famous Shakespearean actors Of
this century.
Luhrmann’s first Chorus, the anchorwoman, reports that,
Two households, both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage --
Which but their children’s end, naught could remove --
Is now the two-hours’ traffic Of our stage.
esented as the lead to a news report, the lines retain the playtext’s interplay

f past, present and future despite the loss of 11. 13- 14. This is due to a

ommon rhetorical pose of tv newsspeak, the framing of historical events in

he present tense.22 The elimination of the last two lines’ appeal for tolerance

41

 

 

 

 

 

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repo

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it

Fh

 

 

also constitutes a statement that there will be nothing wrong with the

“stage [d]” report that will follow, and so there is no need to apologize for the
truth it presents about Romeo and J uliet.23 One Of the qualities of the voiced-

Over second Chorus is identical to that of the first: encompassed by the news
report’s flame, second Chorus refers to things which have already happened as

though they are occurring in the here-and-now:

Two households, both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.
Attentive audience members should be familiar with the lines at this point,
having heard them less than a minute and a half before. Why repeat them?
First Chorus establishes that there are feuding houses, that civic order is being
disrupted by that feud, and that a pair of lovers born of those houses is living
under the ominous dictates of Fate. Second Chorus eliminates the suggestion
that the lovers’ fate will reconcile the houses, and in so doing tightens the
action. Rather than two lovers doomed to end the feud, the audience is
presented with two lovers doomed by the feud. Additionally, as it is presented
in voice over, the phrase “take their life,” though meaning were born, acquires a
suicidal overtone amplified by the on—screen text of “TAKE THEIR LIFE” in
shots 50 and 71. This reiterated yet slightly disjunct presentation suggests
that Romeo and Juliet will “take their [own] life.” In tension with the
presentation by first Chorus, this is both recollective and reductive. Yes, other

elements Of society and family still exist, but they are subordinated to the

lovers’ plight: now the feud comes home to two helpless members of that

42

 

 

 

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fi‘actured society. Alongside this reference to Romeo and J uliet’s sad end is the
suggestion that second Chorus may be Father Laurence, which raises the
possibility that the film is told from his point of view. If so, and since it is the
Father’s well-intentioned efforts that go awry, the passage indicates not just a
tragedy of personal scale, but one of personal failure set in the context of, and
in fact caused by events of larger social moment. This is also a reason for
omitting the reflexive lines: for someone involved in the tragedy, the events
were not constructed. They happened. What happened may comment on the
social upheaval, but it is first and foremost the sad story of these two lovers

with which the audience ought to concern itself.

In fair Verona
Without recourse to the playtext’s language, West Side Story and China

Girl are thrown back on their visual resources to begin establishing their

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  

positions on schemes of order, the family and young love. West Side Story does
this immediately. Before its panoramic first shot of fair New York, the film
presents a four minute, 32 second View Of an abstract figure on a background

of shifting color, decipherable as lower Manhattan given lmowledge of the cityts

 

topography, which crossfades into an aerial shot of the island itself while the
score plays on the soundtrack. This and the subsequent travelling shots over
the city provide the film with a wealth of establishing shots: in addition to the
Opening figure and the first aerial, shots 4-21 (all aerials as well) present a
bridge, a highway interchange, docks, a park and a series of 13 cityscapes
efore shot 22 narrows to the West Side schoolyard where much Of the film’s

ction takes place, more than six minutes after the film’s first visuals appear

43

 

 

 

 

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on screen. With this, West Side Story establishes itself in a specific place, not
simply the West Side, but in that schoolyard, a large, bounded area that
anticipates the square in Zeffirelli’s Prologue as well as that in Rakofl”s. The
film’s very title emphasizes that it is about a place -- it is not Tony and Maria -
- which has the effect of broadening its concerns beyond the two lovers’
problems. In its opening moments, the film stresses that the lovers are less
important than what happens in and to the place where they live.

That place is one offences and walls, of barriers. The film first shows
the Jets flom an extremely high angle in an extreme long shot, isolated in a
corner Of chain-link fencing; in shots 28 and 69, the Jets are photographed
through the fence, a routine way of depicting prisoners. During the first half of
the Opening brawl, the combatants are often photographed running past,
flamed by or hemmed in by fences. This is most striking in shot 74, as the
Jets leap away from the camera in pursuit Of some Sharks while more gang
members race back and forth in the deep background. Surrounding the
dancers are what seem like miles of tall fencing. This angle, with its tiny people
enclosed by these barriers, makes the schoolyard look more like a high-security
prison; it also evokes the double fences that ringed German concentration
camps. In fact, the bird’s eye views of the schoolyard (shots 22, 23, 96, 98 and
100) reveal that the fences forms huge boxes in which the West Side’s youth
play and fight and die. And, where there aren’t fences, there are walls, most
strikingly in Baby John’s encounter with some Sharks in shots 88-94. At first
unrecognizable in an extreme long shot but revealed through jump cuts to a
long and then a medium shot, Baby John stands against a high brick wall,

editing a painted “Sharks” with a grafi‘ito of his own, “stink.” He notices

44

 

 

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Bernardo crouched on tOp of the wall, spins away, sees another Shark on the
wall, starts to run in a different direction, only to find still more Sharks. He is
literally cornered, trapped between the Sharks and a hard place. When he does
run, his Options are limited by another wall, itself decorated with a huge

cartoon shark. He flees, of all places, to the schoolyard, where almost
inevitably he is again cornered against one Of those fences before being brought
to ground by his pursuers. These and other barriers are a visual comment on
the prospects of the Jets and Sharks?" Constantly in the presence of some
limiting object, they are trapped. Baby John is cornered, twice, and physically
injured as a result; in time, Bernardo, Riff and Tony will be killed surrounded by
fences. Through its visuals, the film establishes its “fair Verona” as limiting,

even claustrophobic -— one of many challenges the production will mount
against schemes of order.25 China Girl’s Prologue slyly recalls these fences

and walls, and their attendant meanings, in its sixth shot: initially of a fire
escape, it then tilts down, pans left and dollies in on a pizzeria window where
Alby Monty sits, staring outside. This shot functions on several levels: the
literal, in which the fire escape helps establish the urban setting; the symbolic,
in which the bars of the fire—escape suggest a cage or a trap, and in the
movement to Alby, which suggests his need for an escape flom the (as yet
undeveloped) conflicting loyalties which entrap and will ultimately kill him; and
the reflexive, in which the shot recalls the earlier film.

The “break to . . . mutiny” of the playtext is most Obvious in the evolving
brawl of West Side Story’s Prologue, but it is also expressed in the presentation
of the forces Of order that are supposed to protect the city. Although one might

expect that the force (and forces) of the law would have a positive role in

45

 

 

 

 

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controlling the feud and separating its participants flom the “civil hands” of

New York’s citizenry, the film’s Prologue indicates otherwise. There are in fact
few citizens to protect,26 and the authority and even awe that could be

attached to a figure such as Escalus is lent neither to Officer Krupke nor
Lieutenant Schrank. They tend to be filmed head-on, at eye level: the camera
does not invest them with any authority beyond that lent by their clothing (a
suit for Schrank, a uniform for Krupke) and their titles. They get involved in
the brawl themselves, becoming, for a moment, part of it rather than
remaining aloof, only gradually making a space for themselves between the
two gangs. Finally, there is their language, as informal as the Jets’ and
Sharks’. Both use colloquial constructions and slang -- “I thought I told you
punks to cut this stuff out” yells Schrank, who also employs a surprising
obscenity, calling the brawlers “cocksuckers” as he wades into the melee.
These factors establish a running theme in the film, that the law is less a
source of authority than a font Of violence and bigotry doing little to help defuse
the feud, and much to inflame it. The brief vision of foul-mouthed, workaday
law at the end of the Prologue is a glimpse at what will become an even more

disturbing presence: however bad the gang rivalry is, the institutionalized

bigotry represented by Schrank is worse.27

To at least as great a degree as West Side Story, with its opening survey
of New York City’s early 1960s’ topography, China Girl grounds itselfin a
specific, physical location, late 1990s New York City. Ferrara’s Prologue
begins with a shot of a porcelain Buddha surrounded by flowers and American
flags, a shrine summarizing the tension between ethnic and naturalized

identities that several of the film’s Chinese character are exposed to. It then

46

 

 

 

 

 

cuts to a 24-shot street scene. Though set in an Italian neighborhood -— along
with signs for Luna Restaurant and Ferrara Pastry (shot 3), other Italian
names appear in shots 4 and 7 -- it becomes clear that a small group of
Chinese are setting up a restaurant, Canton Garden, in what used to be
D’Onofiio Bakers. Locals look on as the delighted Chinese watch the sign for
their new restaurant being raised into position. Filmed on location, the
sequence is powerfully placed. It has Ferrara’s self-described “documentary”
(Smith, “Gambler” 21) feel. To a greater extent than West Side Story’s bravura
Opening, this film effaces its technique.28 There are no flashy cuts or wipes;
with two exceptions, no camera movements draw attention to themselves, and
one of those, shot 4, which begins as a shot of the sky then pans to reveal a
frieze with “Anna Esposito 1926” carved in it, works as a shot establishing the
neighborhood’s ethnic history. The understated camera work, naturalistic
lighting and mix Of literal and nonliteral sound (children playing -- a sonic nod to
West Side Story’s schoolyard? -- and the rustic, Italianate score) combine with
the methodical busyness of the Chinese and the almost motionless Italians to
generate a strong sense of orderliness for this community. There is no mutiny
at present, but it is threatened in the unwelcoming looks on the faces of the
Italian onlookers. The neighborhood’s ethnic homogenization, an ordering
scheme that helps to preserve civil communal relations, is being disrupted by
the presence of the Chinese, and the locals do not like it.

Zeffirelli too begins with a View of a city, then continues with a second,
wide shot of a huge piazza, grounding the film in a specific place, purportedly

Verona.29 The gesture is parallel to the Openings in Wise and Robbins, and

Ferrara. The two shots comprising this Prologue are lengthy, 41 and 27

47

 

 

 

 

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seconds, reSpectively, and the camera movements languid. Movement within
the flame is slow as well: the city seems to slumber. Men and horses move
slowly in the deep background (an impression enhanced by their distance flom
the camera -- the apparent speed of an Object lessens the farther it is flom the
viewer). Mist drifts. Colors are muted and seem to blur, recalling a faded sepia
wash. At this point, the whole film appears a grave beseeming ornament.
There are virtually no suggestions that there is anything wrong with this
Verona, no new mutiny . . . beyond, perhaps, the zoom on the sun in the first
shot, through which Zeffirelli suggests the literal heat that will follow -- “The
day is hot,” Benvolio warns (3.1.2) -- as well as the figurative, feudal heat that

will permeate the city. Despite this, the overwhelming idea that the first
minute and a quarter of film generates is one of tranquility.30 In this Prologue,

the neo—realist-influenced Zeflirelli combines calm scenes, unobtrusive camera
work, classical Hollywood-style editing (intended to be unnoticed by viewers)

and location shooting, all of which place a premium on the production’s sense of

naturalness, of things happening exactly as they appear on screen.31

As in Zeffirelli, the square in Rakoff’s Prologue contains a market, and
also like the earlier film it is quiet as people go about their orderly business.
The visuals indicate that this Verona is clean, airy, its people well-scrubbed
and industrious -— it is a fair Verona indeed. However, this is more than simply
a small public square. It also fronts on Capulet’s home: one of the flights of
steps leads to his flont door. Although this is not revealed until Capulet’s 1.1
appearance, when it is revealed, the realization that this visit to this Verona

egan in what is effectively Capulet’s flont yard acts as what Wolfgang Iser

alls a “negation,” forcing a re-evaluation of the previous understanding of the

48

 

 

 

square. In spite of the connotations of the term, negations do not obviate

previous understandings and replace them with new ones, but position both Old
and new understandings in tension, and thus stimulate ideational activity.32 In

this case, when the square is revealed to abut Capulet’s home, audience
members can (not must) realize that the public square also has a private
aspect to it. What happens in the city square also happens in Capulet
“territory” -- the Opening, public brawl could be seen as one in which the
Capulets are defending their home turf. Additionally, any disturbances in the
square might reflect on the Capulets; in this sense the brawl certainly
anticipates and symbolically parallels the familial disruptions of Romeo 3.5.
Finally, echoing the playtext’s emphasis on this household (Benvolio spends 55
lines with Montague and his wife in 1.1, as Opposed to scenes showing Capulet
household doings in 1.2—1.4, 2.5, 3.2, 3.4, 3.5, and 4.2-4.5), the production
locates itself near their home, placing audience members in a position flom
which they can identify or sympathize with the Capulets, and setting the
foundation for what will be this performance’s generally sympathetic, nuanced
look at the Capulet household.

Luhrmann’s Prologue does not privilege any one house in this way. His
stress, particularly in the second half of the Prologue, is “fair Verona”: the first
Chorus says it, as does the second, and the words appear on screen as text in
shots 4, 6, 8, 29 and 62. Clearly this idea is important to the film, although its
understanding of the phrase is markedly different from those in Zeflirelli and

akoff, or Ferrara and Wise and Robbins. Instead of using a synechdocical
ublic square for the entire city or concentrating on a neighborhood, Luhrmann

rovides an array of dizzying aerial shots of a vast, dun metropolis.

49

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Recollecting West Side Story’s opening device, these visuals help to establish
the film in a specific place, the actual location, the megalithic sprawl of Mexico
City, standing in for the fictional Verona Beach, and show that the film will
survey the whole city, not just selected parts of it.

As is the case with location settings in West Side Story and China Girl,
and in fact in Zeffirelli’s and Rakofi’s productions, Luhrmann’s Verona Beach is
a

“constructed” world, one that is different enough flom a “real” one to

allow for different ways of being and knowing, but with enough

similarities to permit understanding . . . built bit by bit out of previous,
inherited modes of telling, showing and understanding. These operate
allegorically, and involve the viewer in sophisticated strategies of
interpretation. So we are required to decipher what this constructed

world stands for and how it comments on our own. (Arroyo 6-8)

Of the other four productions, Rakoff’s is the most Obviously constructed, with
its stagy sets and Chorus’ direct address to the camera,33 but Zeflirelli’s,

Ferrara’s and Wise and Robbins’ films are as well, although they conceal or

  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
  

complicate this to varying degrees.34 In William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet,

the disjunction between actual location and fictional setting allows for the
emphasis of ideas from the playtext that ordinarily might not have resonance
in “our” society; yet the similarity between the two allows for the application of
those ideas to the “real” world. With this constructed world, Luhrmann’s film

 

adaptation “appropriate[s] Shakespeare’s playtext in order to address
ontemporary cultural circumstances” (Hodgdon, “Absent” 343), possibly in a
eaningful way.

One of those circumstances which Luhrmann uses his constructed world
0 address is urban violence and disorder, which pervade the second part of his

ologue. Despite being presented in the body of the film as a fact of life of

50

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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which everyone is aware and that almost everyone takes for granted, and
although it threatens the feuding Capulets and Montagues most often and
most directly, Luhrmann’s Prologue shows that the feud’s effects extend far
beyond the two families. It explodes the playtext’s claim of “new mutiny”:
Verona Beach is a war zone. Blurry, handheld camera work, as though
photographers are filming arrests and unchecked rioters running through
ruined city streets through broken windows or helicopters (shots 12, 13, 34, 35,
37, and especially 22, 41—43, and 45), and textual fragments presented as
newspaper or magazine headlines (“ancient grudge” in shot 33, “new mutiny” in
shot 36 and “civil blood makes civil hands unclean” in shot 38, along with “Riot
and Dishonor,” “Venom’d Vengeance,” and “Shoot Forth Thunder” in shot 44) or
as intertitles (“From ancient grudge,” “break to new mutiny,” “Where civil
blood,” “makes civil hands unclean” and “From forth the fatal loins” in shots
64-68 respectively) support this construction Of a violent world. This could be
Beirut, Sarajevo, Hué; photographers seem to have to rush to get their
pictures before some gunman takes a bead on them. It is no accident that
several establishing shots of the city early in the Prologue’s second half are
Ollowed by images of cops and rioters tearing the place apart. Even the law is
potentially lethal presence -- these cops are heavily armed -- though not an
ffective one. Riot goes on all around while the police fly their little helicopters
bout the sky, and any control can only be gained through what the film
epicts as a significant concentration Of men and firepower. Audiences see a
usty megalopolis from above, then get a good close look at what street-level

e is like. Fair Verona indeed.

51

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Alike in dignity
Despite the pride of place Chorus gives the two households, they receive

far less attention than order in Zeflirelli. While Chorus speaks of them, neither
of Zeffirelli’s opening two shots relates to the Capulet or Montague houses,
unless the restrained tone Of his Prologue can be understood as an elliptical
reference to the dignity of the houses, and this is an admitted stretch. Rakoff,
too, deals only glancingly with the houses, or at least appears to. If one
accepts the argument about the identification Of the square in Rakoff’s Romeo
and Juliet as being both public civic and private Capulet space, then that
production sets itself up as an investigation of the Capulets from its second
shot. More clear in its implications, though, than this elliptical possibility is the
first shot of the Prologue, which is neither Of Chorus nor of the square, but of
the Montague and Capulet family crests, superimposed on each other and
surrounded by a black masked iris. The crests, whose designs mirror each

‘ other, imply the “dignity” of the houses —- Capulet and Montague are either Of
high enough rank or have enough wealth or influence to possess a coat of arms.
Their similarity subtly interrogates the reason(s) for the “ancient grudge,”
which the adaptation, following the playtext, never makes clear: if the two are
so alike, why are they at odds? That similarity also implies reasons for the
feud: the houses are too alike. The crests’ overlapping edges suggest still more
reasons for the feud: the interests -— economic, perhaps, or political —- of one

collide with the other’s. They may even suggest the Capulets’ and Montagues’
eventual merging.35 Neither this production nor Zeffirelli’s devotes much direct

attention to the families in their beginnings, their attentions being focused

elsewhere, mainly on depicting the calm the feud will in time disrupt.

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Similarly, West Side Story does not devote much time to developing ideas
of houses or explaining reasons for the feud. While the film provides ample
illustration Of its take on schemes order in its Prologue, that same sequence
fixes the film as a story of gang rivalry. It contains no mention of
Shakespearean houses or households, of course, and the links between that
early modern entity and the twentieth-century youth gang is at this point in
the film only inferential and elliptical,36 but the Prologue parallels the playtext
in associating civil disorder with these two groups. At that, it takes over eight
minutes for the film to reveal that there is any conflict at all between them,
when the Jets first encounter Bernardo, and even then any reason for the

confrontation beyond ethnic antagonism is unclear. The conflict just is -- as

 

such, it could be taken as “ancient,” as well as natural or inevitable, all
possibilities representing ways in which ideology can efface the origins of an
artificial conflict -- and the film spends the lion’s share of its Prologue on that
conflict’s escalating degrees, from its early, almost silent encounters to its
chaotic end when the law (such as it is) arrives on the scene. Any links to the
idea of houses or households are external to the film, prompted by its
connections to Romeo and Juliet and the gang conflict’s similarity to the
similarly unexplained feud between the playtext’s rival houses. As in the
playtext, the reason for the conflict is beside the point, although it will become
an issue later in the film.

Luhrmann devotes more time than Rakoff, Zeffirelli or West Side Story
to the two sides in the feud, although their treatment in his Prologue does not
accurately indicate the rough handling that families Will come in for later in the

1m. The bulk of the adaptation’s early work takes place during the second half

53

 

 

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of the Prologue, when he presents two dramatis personae segments, one in
shots 25 and 27, the other in shots 50-57. The first is presented as shots of a
newspaper, The Verona Beach Herald, whose banner headline is “Montague vs
Capulet.” Accompanying the story is a photo spread depicting “THE
MONTAGUES” (“Caroline Montague,” “Ted Montague” and a young “Romeo
Montague”) on one side of the page, and “THE CAPULETS” (“Fulgensio
Capulet,” “Gloria Capulet” and a young “Juliet Capulet”) on the other. The
second presents a series of shots of most of the fiction’s main characters
flozen in still-frame while on-screen captions provide their names and
relationships (omitted are Tybalt, whose fleeze-flame and caption appear

upon his 1.1 entrance, Father Laurence, who is never so introduced, and
Romeo and Juliet themselves).37 The obvious function of the first dramatis

personae segment is to introduce some of the major characters in their family

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

groups, so audiences have a better chance of knowing who is related to whom.
While the function of the second would seem to be similar, it also seems
redundant, until two factors are taken into account. One is identified by
Donaldson: “the opening credits were added in part to identify Juliet’s mother

so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a man when she enters in underwear and
shower cap” (“‘In Fair Verona’”). The audience either needed this assistance, or

was believed to need it, and rather than having a lone, out-Of-place freeze-

 

flamed credit, the filmmakers appear to have added a series.38 The other

factor is the film’s ostentatious display of artifice: the freeze-flames are
another attention-grabbing technique, and the repeated identifying of

characters is of a part with the second Prologue’s obsessive repetition of

'suals, dialogue, and on—screen text.39

54

 

 

 

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This establishes the houses as one more component to be processed in
the media spectacle which Luhrmann both employs and critiques.“ They are

entitled to neither more nor less respect than are the flagmented and
rearranged Shakespearean text and ideas about how a Prologue ought to be
performed. At the same time, Luhrmann does evoke the obsession with
naming that characterizes the playtext by the repeated iteration Of “Capulet”
and “Montague,” as well as the opposition of the families by his newspaper
headline (and the positioning of the pictures on Opposite sides of the flont page),
and may even hint at an economic reason for their “ancient grudge” by showing
side by side office towers (crowned with huge “CAPULET” and “MONTAGUE”
signs) in shots 11 and 18. Overall, though, while his presentation indicates

that he will devote some attention to the idea of the family, it does not
accurately reflect the extent of the challenge he will mount against it.

As suggested in its Prologue, China Girl reveals its concern with family

 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
  

and the extended, metaphoric ethnic “families” flom which individual members
derive a sense of identity, place and belonging. The neighborhood is full of what
look like family businesses, and the Off-screen noises Of children at play further
the implication that this neighborhood is a place of families. These people live
in a neighborhood coded as Italian, which suggests the larger, metaphoric
“family” mentioned above. And although it never addresses it as such, flom its
Opening moments the film works to establish the importance of this “family” to
'ts characters, through such devices as the unwelcoming stares the locals

'rect at the Chinese in shots 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 22 and 25. To an even
eater degree than the Italians, that small group of Chinese is encoded as a

am] y. Although the film never defines the relationship, the combination of

55

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Older man, older woman and young girl, whose affection is made evident when
the man hugs the two women at the end of the Prologue, strongly suggests that
they are related. That this family-like group is working together to establish
the new business (shots 17, 21 and 24) helps further presumptions about the
nature of the Italian businesses as well -- this is a neighborhood of small,
family-run restaurants and shops. It is in this relationship between family,
community and business that China Girl provides a reason for its conflict, and
this distinguishes it flom its counterparts. Of the other four productions, only
Luhrmann’s gives any hint at this stage as to the reason for the conflict
through its side by side Office towers. The other productions establish that
there is tension, but provide no demonstrable reasons for it. (West Side Story
will eventually establish offer economic reasons similar to China Girl’s for its

conflict, although taking longer to do so, and those reasons will not be stressed
to the extent that those in Ferrara’s film are“) Linking the order of the

neighborhood streets with family, ethnicity and economic prosperity is one of
China Girl’s strengths, although its Prologue does not reveal what will become
the challenge to the ideology of the family that will arise out the those concerns

so closely imbricated with it.

Lovers take their life

Curiously for adaptations and derivations of a playtext most commonly
regarded as a love story, these five productions Spend comparatively little
energy on that ideology in their Prologues. Zeffirelli, for instance, retains the
Choric mention of the two lovers and their eventual fate, and his dawning sun

erves as metaphor for the protagonists’ love -- “It is the east, and Juliet is the

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sun” (2.1.45) -- and Rakoff may imply it in his opening shot’s merged family
crests, if one regards love as a merging, though that first shot is so ambiguous
that it could be made to mean just about anything. Rakoff and Zeffirelli both
employ a score with their Prologues, and both use music which will be revealed
as the love theme for each production. When first heard, however, there is no
way an audience could know this. When the Prologues are screening, there are
very few indications of the young love that will become central to both
performances.

Of the three visuals which correspond to love in Luhrmann, the firework
explosions (shots 72 and 91) and the floating mask (shot 94), none is
particularly comprehensible where it is placed, in the middle of a dense
montage of shots culled flom the body of the film. The fireworks, which happen
outside Capulet’s masked ball before the lovers first meet, appear in the
Prologue to be Visual exclamation points, a self-referential, ironic comment by
Luhrmann on his own stylistic exuberance. The mask, abandoned by Romeo
just before he first sees Juliet through the fish tank, is in particular an
ambiguous visual at this point in the film. An Obvious symbol Of concealment,
there is nothing in the context of the Prologue to connect it with Romeo, and,
appearing on-screen for less than a second, seems unlikely to be recalled when
the scene of which it is properly a part occurs. More, it looks to be sinking. In
this it anticipates the motif of love as submergence or drowning which the film
will develop in time. At the point Of the mask’s first appearance, however, the
Prologue does nothing to connect ideas of concealment, drowning and
abandonment to young love in Romeo and Juliet, although the movie will

develop each of these ideas. Juliet hides her relationship with Romeo flom her

57

 

 

 

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family, and Romeo conceals his marriage flom his fiiends. Romeo abandons
his friends to meet Juliet at her home, both abandon their families, and Juliet is
abandoned by hers; Romeo has to abandon Juliet and the city when he flees, he
thinks she has abandoned him by committing suicide, and she sees him as
abandoning her in the same way. And they are, in a manner Of speaking,
drowned by the feud, which, to their minds, leaves them no way out except
death. Even with such an understanding Of the playtext in place before the
Prologue begins, the mask is on screen for so little time (three film flames, or
one eighth of a second) that it is difficult to say whether a connection between
the visual and these ideas is possible.

A more ominous note about Romeo and J uliet’s love is struck by the

 

context in which second Chorus says, “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their
life.” As noted above, the omission of “Whose misadventured piteous
overthrows / Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife” along with the
presentation of the on—screen text “take their life” in shots 50 and 7 1 combine
to generate the impression of “death—marked love,” rather than the contextual
meaning of “were born.” This repurposing of the line situates the lovers as
doomed, their love as coming to no good end, and shifts the emphasis flom the
cessation of hostilities and the restoration of civic order to the lovers’
unfortunate end. This forewarning of their doom is certainly clear in the
playtext, but the privileging of the lovers is not. Here, the film accurately
suggests that the lovers’ story will take precedence. However, the Prologue’s
overall stress on city and feud works in conflict with this point. The imagery of
Luhrmann’s Prologue concentrates on urban violence while its on-screen

textual and spoken dialogue elements stress the lovers.

58

 

 

 

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The concentration on urban disorder is even greater in the West Side
Story Prologue, where love is a notable absence. While the playtext takes
pains to establish that love is necessary for reconciliation to take place, West
Side Story does not. The film shows neither of its lovers until well after the
fight. Only then is Tony mentioned, and then his name is invoked as a physical
recourse to the threat posed by the Sharks’ encroachment on Jet territory, a
specific contrast to the playtext, where Romeo is mentioned in the context Of
maternal concern (1.1.116-17) and a courtly lover’s dotage (11. 118-40). Maria
appears even later. As with Rakoff and Zeffirelli, the score, specifically the
Overture, does suggest the principals’ love through its incorporation of themes
flom the songs “Maria,” “Tonight,” and “Somewhere,” all of which deal with
Tony and Maria’s relationship. However, as with the music in Zeffirelli and
Rakoff, the inclusion of these themes has an effect only if people recognize the
songs, and know what they are about, or reflect back to them when they occur
in the course of the film’s narrative. As in the two other films, this musical
foreshadowing is elliptical at best. One clear result of this lack of reference to
the lovers, their relationship or that relationship’s end is an increased sense of
immediacy, and a related increase in emotional tension -- the effective opposite
of the reiteration in Luhrmann’s film that the lovers will die. Uncertainty
about whether Tony and Maria will live happily ever after (though audience
members may suspect not), or if their unhappy end will be the same as that in
the playtext, is amplified by the cryptic foreshadowing. The playtext is
specific: nothing but the children’s deaths will end the strife, and that death is
foretold. They will die. The feud will end. But, because West Side Story’s

audience members do not know if Tony and Maria’s hearts will go on and on,

59

 

 

 

they do not know what will happen to the strife depicted in the film’s Prologue.
Will it go on (and on)? Reconciliation is in doubt.

China Girl’s references to the love story are equally vague. The shot of
the fire escape recollects West Side Story’s “balcony scene,” and so can also
function predictively, foreshadowing Tony and Tye’s equivalent moment on the
fire escape outside her bedroom window, if audience members are even aware
of the scene in the earlier film. Like all allusions, this one depends on extant
and accessible knowledge to work. Audience members must be aware of West

Side Story, and be able to access and apply that information in order for it to be
successful.42 Apart flom its allusive activity, the Prologue does not report that

its china girl will fall in love with an ethnic Other, does not even indicate to
whom the title refers. In fact, neither Of the film’s lovers is mentioned or shown
at all. It is notable, however, that Tye, the eponymous china girl, is privileged
by the title. Even as the film stresses its upcoming examination of the
relationship between ethnic relationships, family, neighborhood and economic

enterprise, its title sets these elements in conflict with the individual, much as

Romeo and Juliet are set in conflict with their society’s imperatives.43

Our stage

It may be that, because Romeo and Juliet is a play most famous for
being about two lovers, the need to show love as one of the productions’
primary components was seen to have been less than pressing -- it could be
taken to be understood. One result of not stressing love visually is that it
allows the productions to establish the milieux in which their action occurs:

violent, disordered worlds of ethnic territoriality in West Side Story and China

60

 

 

 

 

Girl, or peaceful scenes against which later disruptions can be judged, as
seems to be the case in Zeffirelli and Rakoff. Not stressing love also allows the
productions to begin to suggest the challenges they will mount against certain
of the ideologies, as with what will be the attacks on schemes Of order and the
family in West Side Story, China Girl and William Shakespeare’s Romeo +
Juliet. Not stressing love also helps to disguise it. One of the implications Of
Zeffirelli’s near-total lack of reference to love in his Prologue is that there is no
need to investigate it. Luhrmann’s reiterated repurposing of “take their life”
suggests the inevitability of the lovers’ suicide. If the suicides are inevitable,
there is little point in questioning why they happened or whether their having
happened is a good thing, although the film will, by its end, offer a complicated
answer to the latter. In similar vein, Rakoff’s production emphasizes its milieu
visually, although it may suggest love in the Opening superimposition.
Apparently, the audience can be relied upon to fill in information about the
lovers, with some verbal prodding by Chorus. This (perhaps overly) subtle
approach masks what will end in being a cautious, even cautionary look at the
lovers’ commitment to each other. Similarly, although neither China Girl nor
West Side Story addresses love directly in their respective Prologues, both
eventually Offer some interrogation Of the ideology, despite both having bigger
ideological fish to fry.

In this, the production’s Prologues reflect the playtext’s, which Offers a
glib elision of the love story in its assertion of Fatedness. Romeo and Juliet are
destined to fall in love, and their love is destined to set things aright in Verona.
Both are inevitable. That glibness, particularly as regards their deaths, is

belied by the bulk of the playtext, which, as Douglas L. Peterson asserts,

61

 

 

 

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makes it “impossible . . . to maintain the romantic view of Romeo’s suicide, and
of Juliet’s” (317). It will not be impossible in the productions, although the
ways in which each presents the deaths will not be so determinate as
Peterson’s claim suggests they could be. All five will come to offer romanticized
versions of the suicides, but these will be shot through with complication and
qualification. By directing attention away flom a sustained questioning Of
young love and toward the other two dominant ideologies, which they will

shortly continue to question the five Prologues do not prepare for this. It is this
idea of questioning that I would like to carry into the following chapters, to

show the ways in which the productions deal with schemes of order, the family
and young love after the preparatory action of their Prologues has been

completed.

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CHAPTER 2

“By example Of those thynges”: Constructing Order

Almightie God hath created and appointed all thinges in heaven,
yearth and waters in a moste excellent and perfect ordre.

An Exhortacion concernyng Good

Ordre and Obedience to Rulers and
Magistrates 161

As suggested in the first chapter, although the Montagues and Capulets might
find that the feud threatens their respective houses most, Chorus sees that
the disorder bred Of their conflict threatens Verona as a whole. Prince Escalus
would probably agree with such an assessment: he describes the brawlers in
the playtext’s first scene as “Rebellious . . . enemies to peace” (1.1.74). They

threaten social order. The way in which these five productions construct their
representatives and representations of order is the focus of this chapter.1 For

this reason, I will not be addressing disorder, although I will refer to specific
instances Of disruption while making other points. Nor will I spend much time
on marriage. These may seem odd omissions: how one can discuss order
without considering its violation, or without examining one of its primary
expressions is a legitimate question. However, since this chapter’s concern is
with how schemes of order are expressed, and since in these productions the
families, as well as affective and ethnic relationships, are means for expressing
disorder, I think it more useful to concentrate on disorder in the following
chapter, on the family. Similarly, I look at marriage in the context of the ways

in which the productions deal with families and young love, so while I will look

63

 

 

late:

not
the

ord

 

 

 

at marriage in passing in this chapter, it will come in for more extensive review
later in the dissertation.

In particular, this chapter demonstrates how schemes Of order are
expressed and interrogated in the five productions, “by example of those
thynges that be within the compasse of mannes knowlege, Of what estimation
ordre is” (Elyot 1: 4). Such an examination will show that while the
productions do leave certain expressions Of order unexamined and in place, the
foregrounding, questioning and occasional subversion Of still other expressions
opens spaces in which contestatory ideologies can move toward dominance. At
the same time, this analysis will reveal some gaps in contemporary
performance theory/s assertion that there is no immanent meaning in the
Shakespearean playtext. It will do this by demonstrating that these three
adaptations and two derivations of Romeo and Juliet all propose similar ideas
about particular concepts -- for instance, that the state’s authority is to be
treated with suspicion, scepticism or outright cynicism -- which, because of the
fact of their repetition in different expressions of the same fiction, can come to
be regarded as de facto meanings of the playtext itself.

NO ideology is expressed as a monolith; rather, it is composed of “bits
and flagments” of information which “become ideological currency in social
exchange” (Lull 9). Given this, it should not be expected that the productions
will reveal their relationships with the schemes of order all at once, in a unified,
coherent fashion. For this reason, I will consider a range of representatives
and representations from each of the five productions: primary agents Of
control; authority figures additional to those primary representatives;

locations and physical Objects; and events in which the characters participate.

64

 

 

 

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?»—

Any of these elements taken on its own might suggest how a given production
understands schemes of order. Taken in sum, they reveal much more of the
texture of that same understanding. As indicated in the introduction,
contemporary ideology theory argues that no one ideology is total. It may be
dominant, but that dominance is not absolute. It is constantly tested,
challenged, affirmed. Close examination Of the ways in which schemes of order
are expressed in these five productions will reveal not just the means of that
expression, but the ways in which and the degree to which those schemes are
pressured or reaffirmed, and the result of that process on an understanding of

Romeo and Juliet.

 

Primary agents of order
In Romeo and Juliet, order is most obviously represented by Escalus,

the ranking member of the playtext’s Veronese society, whom G. K. Hunter

  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  

claims “remains throughout the action an objective and unsubverted
guarantor of order” (4). Perhaps. This is an assertion which the five

productions question. Taken together, their attitude toward the Prince or his

 

analogues would read, Escalus is not an objective and unsubverted guarantor of
order. To explain this revision I would like to look first at the textual entity,
then turn to how Escalus and his analogues are presented in performance.

The Prince appears at the beginning, middle and end of the playtext (1. 1,
3.1 and 5.3 respectively), each time after some signal disorder: the first brawl,
the slayings of Mercutio and Tybalt, and the deaths of Paris, Romeo and Juliet.
One of his main functions is to reassert order. In this, he is ineffective. His

threats of punishment and injunctions against subsequent disruptions are

65

 

 

 

ignored, his banishment Of Romeo flouted. Jill L. Levenson goes so far as to
describe him as characterized by “temporizing and procrastination” (“‘Alla
stoccado’” 86); he is unable to control the members of his society, unable to
enforce his edicts, and functions mainly to clean up messes he should have
prevented in the first place.

This textual entity is at odds with the individual presented in Zeffirelli’s

film. Photographed flom low angles, the character seems to loom over the
viewer and those around him.2 Intercut with these angles are high angle point

Of view shots, so that Escalus seems to be looking down on those he
commands. Neither type of shot is necessary for the depiction Of the
character. Even in his 1.1 appearance, although Escalus is on horseback,
Zeffirelli does not need to show the Prince as others see him or as he sees
others. He could be photographed at his own eye level, a common enough
tactic with characters on horseback. SO, too, with the assembly on the ground:
they do not need to be photographed flom above, just because Escalus is
looking down at them. So long as the 180-degree rule is not violated and the
editor and continuity people maintain eyeline matches, photographing the
characters at or near eye level would make visual sense, as is the case with
Rakofl’s presentation of the first scene, discussed below. Zeflirelli also uses a
hand-held camera when shooting the Prince. The constant, unsteady
movement imparted by this method of photography suggests spectators
unable to look at their ruler for very long, or, when combined with Escalus’
point of View shots, his anger. The Prince’s power is also shown through
proxemics: neither Capulets nor Montagues nor other citizens approach him.

He is surrounded by space.

66

 

 

 

 

too
she

pot
SCt

n

 

In the first scene of Rakofl’s adaptation (which seems informed by
Zeffirelli’s), views Of the character cut between a slightly low medium shot and
a low long shot. There are no high angles on the Montagues or Capulets that
appropriate the Prince’s point of View. Both medium and long shots move, but
this seems less a hand-held effect than the photographer’s adjustments to
keep the subject in flame as the horse he is riding moves to and flo. The long
shot is akin to what might be seen by a bystander, and in fact other
characters do move between the lens and its object at moments, heightening
the suggestion that audience members are appropriating an on-site witness’
point of view. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this Prince’s first
scene is his entrance on horseback (itself a clear recollection of Zeffirelli).
Visually, the character is almost lost in the crowded flame; along with this, his
first words are inaudible in the noise of the brawl. While in keeping with the
BBC’s tradition Of perspective sound, in which sound sources farther from the

camera are harder to hear than those closer to it,3 this technical-aesthetic

component also affects how Escalus is perceived. At first buried at the back of
the screen in a welter of index, graphic and motion vectors, he only becomes
clearly visible when his men at arms clear a space around him. It is not a

large space. His first words are smothered under the rest Of the sound field; it
is only when the crowd quiets that he becomes clearly audible (at “Will they
not hear?”). Rather than Zeffirelli’s object of respect and even fear, Rakofl’s
Prince seems to have to struggle to assert his authority.

When Luhrmann’s Captain Prince appears in 1.1, he is riding in a police
helicopter.“ In an extremely low angle medium shot, he shouts into a

loudspeaker microphone, ordering Benvolio and Tybalt to drop their weapons.

67

 

 

 

 

After a quick cut to Benvolio looking up, there is an extreme low angle close up
of a police sniper in the Open door to another helic0pter, aiming his rifle down at
the ground. Tybalt looks up; Benvolio aims his gun away flom Tybalt, Tybalt
aims away flom Benvolio, and in long shot both raise their hands. There is a
low close up of the Prince, still shouting into his microphone, and a tighter long
shot Of Benvolio and Tybalt finally dropping their guns. These visuals

establish that Luhrmann’s Prince has a considerable arsenal at his command
(a squadron of helicopters, all armed with snipers), and that he is not only
willing to use it, but has to use it in order to regain control of the city. His
threat, “On pain of torture, flom those bloody hands / Throw your mistempered
weapons to the ground” (1.1.7 9-80), seems serious in this film. In addition to
the display Of hardware, he is visually dominant. While there is good reason for
the camera to be aimed up at him -- he is in the air, after all -- as with Escalus
on horseback there is no reason that it has to be. Even more revealing is the
scene after Benvolio and Tybalt drop their weapons, when Luhrmann cuts to
Prince’s Office. The shift indoors gives the scene with Capulet and Montague
the air of a dressing-down. It is unclear why the patriarchs are there, though
the implication is that they have been summoned. Both seem unrepentant.
For his part, Captain Prince is on a more equal footing with the others.
Although more dominant in his shots than they are in theirs -- he is
Photographed in tighter angles, and is more centered in the flame than they --
he is seen at the same flat angle they are, and the fixed camera makes the
positions of all concerned seem less flexible, more entrenched. He speaks
forcefully, but he does not have the same force as do Zefiirelli’s and Rakoff’s

Princes, because the visuals do not empower him.

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Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet continues its visual presentation of the
Prince in his 3.1 appearance. Rather than having Escalus enter to the
aftermath of the brawl, though, the film cuts to a new scene as the Montagues
and Capulets bring their dead before their leader. With this reversal, the film
again indicates Escalus’ authority: the Montagues and Capulets are
supplicants. In particular, the cut to a very high, wide shot of the crowd (far
too high to be a point Of View shot) at Escalus’ “exile him hence” (3.1.181)
suggests the Prince’s power, the crowd’s insignificance, and the gravity of the
sentence laid on Romeo. The second appearance of Rakofl’s Prince again
recollects Zeffirelli’s. After the Citizen of the Watch charges Benvolio to “Obey”
and accompany him (3.1.135), the onlookers begin to disperse and Tybalt’s
body is covered. Following a fade to black is a fade-in on a high establishing
shot Of an audience chamber, the Montagues and Capulets already assembled,
Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s bodies laid out on litters. Escalus, along with some
other men, enters, takes his seat and begins his inquiry. This suggests (as
does Luhrmann’s Act 1 presentation) that the families have been brought
before their Prince, rather than spontaneously bringing their pleas to him.
After his entrance and before his departure, both of which are photographed
flom the same high angle, all views of Rakofl’s Prince are in medium shot or
close up; there are no point of view shots, nor are there any high or low angles.
The first and last shots have a similar effect to Escalus’ initial appearance in
1.1: he is almost lost in the busyness of the crowded flame until he sits, when
he is distinguished flom the others by the Open space around him and the index
and graphic vectors directed at him. He only gradually becomes the focus of

attention.

69

 

 

 

 

 

you

She

61m

 

 

 

The closest shot of Rakoffs Prince comes when he says, “But I’ll amerce

you with so strong a fine / That you shall all repent the loss Of mine” (ll. 184—

86). This moment of visual intensity accompanies what is at its core a private
emotion: the angered Escalus intends to punish the two families for the
murder of his kinsman. In contrast, the most intense moment in Zeflirelli’s
film is a medium one-shot Of the Prince, whirling to shout that for Romeo’s
murder of Tybalt, “Immediately we do exile him hence” (l. 181). This stresses
Romeo’s violation of civil peace. The blocking and shot selection in Rakoff
again suggest that while this Prince is a man to be respected, he is not a man
to be feared, and his assertion of authority over others comes, twice, after
moments of visual confusion.

In the main, the appearance of Luhrmann’s Prince after Romeo has
killed Tybalt presents him as an officer Of the law trying to figure out what has
happened. His exchanges with Benvolio are conducted in low tones, and his
body language in reaction to the accusations of Capulet’s wife are those of a
man trying to discern the truth flom the different accounts he is hearing. The
notable visuals in this scene depict him as caught between Benvolio and Lady
Capulet: he has to turn flom one to the other, and in one shot, blocked in
depth, the camera’s foreshortening effect makes him seem crammed between
the two people. At one point, Captain Prince is at physical risk when Capulet’s

wife as much as assaults him while trying to get at Benvolio, and he has to

 

shove her away. His emotional arc proceeds flom quiet interrogation through
sternness (at “Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio. /Who now the price of his
dear blood doth owe?” [11. 175-77]) to anger:

I will be deaf to pleading and excuses.
Nor tears nor prayers will purchase out abuses.

70

 

 

 

 

 

Mo

pos

the

 

 

 

Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,

Else, when he is found, that hour is his last.

[Romeo is banished] (11. 186-89)5
These reactions accompany the continuing verbal battles of the Capulets and
Montagues, their repeated attempts to push him toward a particular political
position. The more they challenge him, the angrier he becomes.

As the productions move flom Zeffirelli through Rakoff to Luhrmann,
the Prince undergoes a clear lessening Of authority. Zeflirelli’s, the most
imperious and visually powerful Of the three figures, exists to mete out
judgements. His superiority is clearly visualized in the shot selection, and the
physical relationship between the Prince and his subjects -- they are at a
distance, and literally below him -- stresses his authority, as does their coming
to him for redress. Behavior in his presence is deferential, even fearful, but
while not challenged in any direct verbal or physical way, he is not obeyed.
While visually powerful, his authority is subverted by the actions of his
subjects. Rakoffs Prince, presented with greater visual moderation, appears
correspondingly less powerful. More important than camera position and shot
selection in this production is his physical relationship to his subjects, through
whom he must struggle before achieving visual prominence. His authority is
suggested in that he can have members of the combatting families brought
before him, but stressing of his personal reaction to the death of his kinsman
Mercutio lessens his emotional distance flom the feuding houses. Luhrmann’s
film presents a law-enforcement inflastructure able to deal with turmoil only
by massive accumulations of man- and firepower. Captain Prince, Often set as
visually equivalent to and once as trapped between the people he is trying to

regulate, is on the verge of losing control. Zeffirelli’s supplicants and Rakofl’s

71

 

 

 

 

 

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defendants have become opponents in Luhrmann, their responses to the agent
of state control either stony unresponsiveness or sometimes violent badgering.
The weakness Of Luhrmann’s Prince echoes that of the agents Of the

state in West Side Story and China Girl. The simpler case of the two is China
Girl. During the first brawl, sirens sound in the distance. When police cars pull
up in the background, fighters scatter to the left and right as uniformed Officers
pass through a gate in the fence. A few cops follow the fighters off left and
right, while another in the deep background pans his car’s searchlight back and
forth across the wet bricks of the street. This, the first appearance of the

police in the film, does not augur well. Arriving after the damage has been

 

done, Ferrara’s cops are far less effective than any of the Princes. They stop

 

the brawl, but not through direct involvement. The gangs get away, and suffer

no punishment nor threat of punishment.6 The police do not pursue them with

   
  
   
   
  

much energy —- it is as though they know they aren’t going to accomplish
anything -- and the one lone cop playing his light across the empty street is
particularly flaccid: he illuminates empty space. The police also appear later
in the film, when two mounted patrolmen approach Tony and Tye, who are

being menaced by Tye’s brother, Yung, and his cousin, Shin.7 The police

prevent Tony flom getting knifed more by accident than by design: already

 

headed into the alley where the scene takes place, they blunder without
noticing it into stopping a murder, a fact they do not even appear to realize.
When they send Tony on his way, they prevent Yung and Shin flom following
him, offering the helpful suggestion that Chinatown is in the opposite direction.
Again they prevent a crime flom happening (this time more deliberately); they

preserve order. But they do this by asserting an artificial racial order, and by

 

72

 

 

 

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assuming that the Chinese were up to no good. They weren’t, but the police do
not know that: Yung and Shin have done nothing wrong, beyond going in a
direction the cops don’t think they should. The imposition of order, although
happy for Tony, is arbitrary and accidental. The order provided by the police in
China Girl is order in negative: they don’t reestablish control, they run the
disorder off to another place, prevent it momentarily and by accident, or assert
it through assumptions and implicit racism.

In this, Ferrara’s police recall those in West Side Story. Chapter 1
introduced Officer Krupke and Lieutenant Schrank as virtual equivalents to
the Jets and Sharks: filmed flom similar angles and at similar focal lengths,
the two policemen speak like the disorderly gang kids and become physically
embroiled in their battles, needing to use bodily force to part the combatants.
Despite the authority that attaches to them because Of their jobs, Krupke and
* Schrank are not that different, at the moment Of their involvement in the fight,
flom the fighters themselves. At other points in West Side Story, Krupke and
Schrank resort to silent, implicit physical threat: whenever they approach a
given group of Jets and/or Sharks, the youths begin to behave. The behavior is
restless and borders on the resentful but they do subject themselves, briefly, to
the agents of the state while they are on the scene. Beyond this, Schrank uses
threatening language to try to impose order. For example, after the first brawl
Schrank Offers this advice to the Jets after the Sharks have departed,:

N ow look, fellas. Fellas! Look, let’s be reasonable, huh? Ifl don’t get a

little law and order around here, I get busted down to traffic corner, and

your friend don’t like traflic corners. So that means, you’re gonna start
makin’ nice with the P.R.s flom now on. I said nice, get it? ‘Cause if you

don’t, and I catch any of you doin’ any more brawlin’ in my territory, I’m

gonna personally beat the livin’ crud out of each and every one of you
and see that you go to the can and rot there.

73

 

 

 

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This is a (very) rough version of Escalus’

Will they not hear? . . .

If ever you disturb our streets again

Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. (1.1.7 6-90)
The similarity of Schrank’s language to the Jets’ lessens his distance flom
those he seeks to subject; its low rhetorical style also distances him flom the
authority derived flom the Shakespearean Prince’s highly formalized rhetoric.
Of greater interest than this, however, are five points arising out of what
Schrank says. The first (I think central) one is the change flom Escalus’ use
of the first person plural “our” to Schrank’s use of the singular “1.” “Our”
suggests not only the royal plural -- Escalus as personified representation of

Verona -- but also Escalus as a member of the community: “our” includes

 

Escalus with the rest of the Veronese. With “I” Schrank reveals that, while he
may be interested in maintaining “a little law and order,” his interest is as
much personal as it is civic. If he cannot maintain law and order, he will be
punished. Schrank’s personalization of the issue contrasts to the Rakoff
Prince’s personal involvement in the feud, for in the latter case the individual
had already suffered some personal loss. Schrank is not reacting to the loss of
a relative. He is engaged in careerism.

This relates to the second aspect, which concerns attitudes toward the
body politic. Escalus suggests that his involvement is civic in the three
adaptations. He is upset because

Three civil brawls . . .

Have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets

And made Verona’s ancient citizens

Cast by their grave-beseeming ornaments

To wield Old partisans in hands as Old,
Cankered with peace, to part your cankered hate. (11. 82—87)

He reacts to the damage to the common weale that the brawls have done.8

74

 

 

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With Schrank, this is hardly the case: he thinks the neighborhood he is
charged with protecting is “crummy.” Surrounded by what he regards as
urban decay (although it is pictured as a very tidy slum), Schrank is less
angered by any damage done to the neighborhood than by the possible damage
being done to his professional reputation.

A third point concerns how Schrank and the various Princes deal with
the issue of cooperation. None of the three Princes pleads for cooperation, as
Schrank does. They demand compliance, the behavior of subjects. They may
have difficulty asserting themselves before making the demand, different
manners of expressing the demand, and the demand may meet with differing
degrees of success, but the imperious expectation remains. None appears to
doubt that compliance ought to be immediate. Schrank does not expect this.
Not only does he have less authority, but he realizes this. He attempts an
artificial, assumed bonhomie to do his job, rather than relying on respect.
When that doesn’t work, he resorts to threat. The Princes in the textual and
performed Romeos issue threats flom a neutral position, with and through the
authority of the state, with the intent Of restoring order. Schrank’s threat,
that he’ll “personally beat the livin’ crud out of each and every livin’” one Of the
Jets, is issued from a position of state-invested authority for reasons of
personal retribution. Coming after the allusion to loss of rank, this further
distances the self-centered Schrank flom the civic-centered Princes. The
lessening of authority noticed over time in the Romeos is present to a much
greater degree in a film which anticipates all three of them: there has been a
devolution flom Prince -— an individual in control -— to Lieutenant —- an

individual controlled by others. Rather than imposing an edict as a matter of

75

 

 

 

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law and having it carried out by the engines of state-regulated retribution,
Schrank has to impose his own sentence and enforce it outside the bounds of
law. This is more than a threatened violation of civil rights; it suggests that
the state no longer has the ability to effectively impose order or to carry out

punishments, has become an entity where law and order are matters of
personal, rather than official, agency.9 Ironically, his threats are no more

successful than are those of the Romeo Princes. If anything, they are less so,
as demonstrated when he interrupts the rumble negotiation in Doc’s Candy
Store: he attempts to assert order, is rebuffed, issues more threats and
leaves, after which Bernardo and Riff return to their conference. While much
of the violence in Romeo and Juliet can be staged as resulting flom accident or
hot tempers some time after the Prince’s edict, and then over the protests of
bystanders, the Jets and the Sharks, warned not to fight, turn around and
keep planning to do exactly that. The very refashioning of the role from Prince
to cop has a diminishing effect on the character. Rather than a Prince, a
hereditary guarantor and representative of divine order, William Shakespeare’s
Romeo + Juliet, China Girl and West Side Story configure their state agents of

order as civic employees rather than as civic leaders, which is the case in
Zeffirelli’s and Rakoff’s adaptations.10 They are private individuals, like those

whose behavior they are supposed to govern, and attending this diminishment
Of rank and degree of social separation is their increased difficulty in
maintaining, or even asserting, order.

The scepticism with which West Side Story regards agents of order is
magnified to cynicism in China Girl, whose Officers of the law are at best

marginal presences. That film’s real primary figures of authority are Gung Tu,

76

 

 

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the Triad “uncle,” and Enrico Perito, the Mafia boss. Rather than the police,
or any other agent of the state, these two criminals control Chinatown and
Little Italy. Ironically, however, Gung Tu sees that his role is to look out for his
community as well as the criminals who serve him. He tells his protegee,
Yung, that
must learn what it means to be a real sunxu, a gentleman of the people.
Our relationship with the Italians is of mutual benefit to everyone. It is
good for the neighborhood and a real sunxu does only what is good for his
people. Peace is good for his peOple. Obedience is good for his people.
Bloodshed is bad for his people. It’s simple.
The speech is almost Escaline in its assertion of authority, but here that

authority is expressed and maintained not by law-makers, but by law-
breakers.11 Gung Tu’s Triad controls criminal enterprise in Chinatown, which
nominally includes the teenage gangs who roam the streets, preying on shop
owners. When Shin’s faction of Yung’s gang violates Gung Tu’s edict and
continues to demand protection money flom the Canton Garden, the
restaurant depicted in the film’s opening sequence, this lack of proper
subjection to Triad authority generates a swift, deadly response: the “uncles”
have one faction member hung and another stabbed to death.12

Perhaps the deepest cynicism of the film is that two criminal
organizations, Triad and Mafia, which are both dedicated to operating outside
the law, direct their efforts to ending the disorder caused by the disobedient
Shin’s continued forays into Little Italy, so that they can get on with business.
A mid-film sequence critical to understanding this cynicism begins when Shin’s
faction firebombs Canton Garden after having been warned away flom it by

Yung.13 The results of this act occur in three stages. First, the Italian gang,

which was coming unravelled as its members fought about whether to obey

77

 

 

 

 

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Perito and leave the Chinese alone, bands together to attack the Chinese. At
the same time, the bombing leads to an intragang fight among the Chinese, as
Yung attempts to rein in the others, whom he regards (along with Gung Tu) as
out Of control. Second, when the reunified Italians, led by Alby, attack the
flatricidal Chinese gang, the two Chinese factions begin fighting together
against the Italians. This turns into a running battle around Chinatown that
ends with one of the Italians, Mercury, spraying indiscriminate automatic
weapon fire around the neighborhood. The third stage happens after this
melee. When Alby returns to his family’ s pizzeria, he finds Perito waiting for
him in the company Of other Italian and Chinese gangsters. Perito beats Alby
for disobeying his order to stop fighting with the Chinese. After Alby has left,
while still in the pizzeria, Gung Tu muses to Perito that their mutual problem
is “reckless children [who] cannot live within the tradition of our society. Our
responsibility is to control our children,” which he and his fellows then do:
Perito’s lieutenant COOperates with Gung Tu’s in stabbing to death a member
of Shin’s faction, after which yet another faction member is shown hanging
flom a lamppost. In these stages, disorder leads to increased organization,
which in turn generates greater disorder, with the ultimate result being that
the criminal organizations running Chinatown and Little Italy become more
unified in their disorderly, anti-social intentions and actions as they violently
discipline their errant “subjects.”

That threats of violence are used to maintain order should not be a new
idea at this point. Nor, given the example of West Side Story, is the notion that
such violence might be extra-legal. However, the amount and extremity of

violence required to maintain order in China Girl is of a different order than in

78

 

 

 

 

 

 

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the other productions. People are slapped, punched, kicked, slashed, hung, shot
and run through in the name of reestablishing order and enforcing respect for
one’s superiors. That this is in the name of preserving the peace is unsettling
enough, but Gung Tu’s and Perito’s concern with the peace relates directly to
the effective, uninterrupted operation of their criminal enterprises. In this,
they resemble Schrank, whose concern with order is informed by his own
personal interests. The criminals are disturbed by the “civil brawls” which
have “disturbed the quiet” of their streets but only insofar as they disrupt
business. As Gung Tu tells Perito,

We must never allow ourselves to be divided by war, or to be interfered

with by police investigations all because a few reckless children cannot

live within the traditions of our society. Our responsibility is to control
our children.
However, Schrank’s efforts, like the violence he proposes (but never enacts)
are qualitatively (and in fact quantitatively) different flom those of the
gangsters, whose self-interested attempts tO establish order in Little Italy and
Chinatown can, by their very nature, only hurt the communities they purport
to be helping.

Earlier in this chapter I proposed that Hunter’s assertion about the
Prince is effectively reformulated by the productions so that it would read that
the Prince and his analogues are not Objective and unsubverted guarantors of
order. All of these figures are compromised to one degree or another. In the
Romeos, the Princes are pressed to varying degrees, their authority shown to
be diminished by the visual structures Of which they are part, and/or the
behavior Of those around them. As the performances move further into the

century, the challenges increase in severity. This process is amplified in the

derivations (and even anticipated in West Side Story), which treat the primary

79

 

 

 

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agents of authority first with scepticism, then cynicism, as attempts to
reassert order become increasingly violent, far beyond those in shown in the

Romeo adaptations.

Additional figures of order

An ideology is communicated in part through layers Of images. In a film,
although a particular type Of visual image -- depictions Of the Prince’s
proximity to his subjects, for example -- may introduce or highlight an aspect
of how an ideology is understood, it is as likely that it does not represent that
film’s entire relationship with that ideology. These five productions all have
additional image clusters (groups of visuals with a specific person, type of
person, Obj ect, et cetera in common) and scenes that reveal fuller, more
complex involvements with the schemes of order than depictions of primary
agents of authority reveal on their own. These additional elements are, in
general terms: figures of authority other than the principal agents Of order;
locations and physical Objects; and events in which characters take part. I
would like to turn now to authority figures other than the primary ones
discussed above.

After the Prince, Friar Laurence is the most Obvious ordering agent in
Romeo and Juliet. His desire to turn the “households’ rancour to pure love”
(2.2.92) is an expression of his fundamental belief in order, best expressed in
his understanding of nature, where there is

naught so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use,

Revolts flom true birth, stumbling on abuse. (ll. 17-20)14

Everything has its own function, its Own use; and things ill can be turned to

80

 

 

 

 

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good, and vice versa, if pushed too far.15 Fittingly, both the Zeffirelli and Rakoff
adaptations first reveal their Friars in nature, Zeflirelli in the fields outside
Verona’s walls, Rakoff in the garden outside his cell.16 (Zeffirelli’s Friar, in fact,

is at first buried in nature: all that is visible of him is a bunch of rustling
wildflowers and grasses, out of which he pops.) In Luhrmann, the associations
of order are considerably lessened, as Zeffirelli’s peaceful fields and Rakoffs
tidy cloister garden (nature’s order underscored by the symmetrical
Renaissance architecture) are replaced by a rooftop greenhouse with a few

potted plants.17 More to the point though is the way in which the productions

deal with Laurence’s plan to unite the houses through marriage. That plan

 

itself rests on two apparent presuppositions, that Christianity equals order,
and that marriage leads to order. Rakoff examines neither of these, and ends
by leaving both assumptions in place -- his production shares the Friar’s
commitments. In Luhrmann and Zeffirelli, however, the plan’s presuppositions
are called more to account.

Zeffirelli shows the moment the Friar conceives Of his scheme. He and
Romeo are entering the church after meeting in the fields. The Friar sets his
basket of flowers on a low wall, looks up Off left, then down the steps he has
just ascended, then again Off up left. A point Of view shot shows a crucifix
hanging in the center of the church. Zeffirelli then cuts to the Friar, his
attention up off left; he thinks, then gestures down left for Romeo, who mopes
in, pauses, then rushes to kiss the Friar’s hand. Before noticing the crucifix,
the Friar is castigating Romeo for his infatuation with Rosaline; after seeing it,
and following his thoughtful silence, he announces his plan. Through editing, an

eyeline match and the Friar’s index vector, Zefl‘irelli’s film provides an explicit

81

 

 

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den
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context of the Friar’s scheme in Christianity.

Although in a more intricate manner, Luhrmann’s film does the same
thing: it begins with Romeo helping the Friar with his robes, then cuts to a
point of view shot of a boy’s choir in the balcony, rehearsing. Following this is a
dense series of crossfades and superimpositions, comprised of these visuals:
flames, recognizable from the burning gas station at the start of film; a
newspaper headline, “Ancient grudge”; a close up of the Friar, a statue of the
Virgin Mary over his right shoulder; the flames; The Verona Beach Herald, its
headline “Montague & Capulet . . .” with a black and white picture of Montague

and Capulet shaking hands; the flames; a black and white newspaper photo of

 

Romeo and Juliet kissing; a dove; a drawing of a heart wreathed in roses,
flames at top, radiating beams of light; a second dove; a firework burst; a
young black choir boy; two doves; a second firework burst. After this, the
Father reveals his plan, then Luhrmann cuts to a brief scene showing him in
the act of consecrating the wine and host for communion.

When this series of visuals begins, it is clear that the sight of the choir
rehearsing has started Laurence thinking about the feud. When in extreme
close up the Father says “For this alliance may so happy prove / To turn your
households’ rancour to pure love,” the words are out of textual sequence and in
voiceover. The combination of crossfades, superimpositions and voiceover --
devices often used in film, tv and video to suggest subjective interiority -- is a

clear cue that he is thinking the words as a means of peaceful reconciliation.

 

The imagery of the dove and the heart, representing the holy spirit and the
heart of Christ, anchors the plan as being developed in the context of Christian

belief. Further, the Father’s vision is an explicit repudiation of disorder.

82

 

 

Beginning with fire (from the gas station brawl) and the headline “Ancient

grudge” (first seen in the second part of the film’s Prologue), the vision

continues with newspaper headlines heralding peace between the houses, with

pictures of Montague and Capulet shaking hands and of Romeo and Juliet
kissing. Laurence’s vision replaces the flames of the burning gas station with
the dove of peace, the burning heart of love, and the firework burst shown
outside the Capulet ball when Romeo and Juliet first met. When the Father
comes out of his reverie, he tells Romeo he will assist him, then speaks aloud
his plan to reconcile the houses. The return to the choir, now singing for the
service, and depiction of Laurence celebrating mass makes it seem as though
the plan does not just originate in Christian belief, but is blessed.

In specifying the plan as Christian in origin, the two films establish a
vision of order independent from that of the state. Laurence’s plan is
representative of reconciliation and union, while the Princes’ way of ordering,
through threat, fine and violence, is of a kind with the mindset that produces
the feud in the first place. This is in contrast to Rakofl’s Friar, whose plan is
developed neither in a church nor in reference to specifically Christian
iconography, but in a garden that at no point in the production is explicitly
connected to a church or a monastery. Rakofi’s Friar conceives his scheme in
the context of nature and orderly Renaissance architecture, and while both of
those do have connections to Christian notions of order, the linkage is not
specifically made, nor even, I think, made clear. The plan is Christian because
a Friar had it, and because it includes a Christian marriage, but that is as far
as the Rakoff Romeo goes. Because of this, it seems more of a kind with the

efforts of the Prince to bring order to society.

83

 

 

 

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On the surface these schemes of order appear quite positive. The plan
might not work out well, but that does not make it a bad plan. However:
complications arise when it is regarded in the context of other moments from
the productions. The Zeffirelli and Luhrmann productions question marriage
as an expression of and means to order through their presentations of the
Capulet’s relationship: in Zeffirelli, Capulet’s wife is hostile toward her
husband and may be engaged in an incestuous liaison with Tybalt; in
LMann, that same incestuous relationship is much more obviously drawn.
In Zeffirelli the very cowardly Friar, last seen as he runs shrieking from the
Capulet tomb, causes one to wonder how strong the man’s faith is.
Luhrmann’s film indirectly questions the validity of Christianity, mainly
through the presentation of the Christian iconography that pervades the film
as essentially decorative, through the blurring of the cross with the crosshajrs
of Tybalt’s telescopic gun sight (Donaldson, “‘In Fair Verona’”) and through the
scene in which Tybalt dies at the feet of the giant Christ statue. In Verona
Beach, religion has become pro forma, decorative rather than a matter of
conviction and faith: Romeo forgets to cross himself before the Virgin at one
point, and when he remembers, it is timed as a comic moment rather than as a
comment on his disregard -- or disrespect -- for Catholic ritual. Whatever
productive role Christianity may have had in Luhrmann’s Verona is all but
extinct, and the film casts considerable doubt on the validity of the religion as
an ordering principle.

Zeffirelli’s and Luhrmann’s films reveal their scepticism of the Friar as
agent of order by challenging the component elements of his plan. If marriage

leads to disorder, then how will Romeo and J uliet’s marriage help Verona? If

84

 

 

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Christianity has become decorative, if its most potent symbol can be elided
with one of violence and aggression, how can a Christian plan to reorder society
be valid? The challenges of Rakofl’s film parallel those of the playtext -- a plan
Christian in quality that goes awry, and a Friar who abandons Juliet when she
arguably needs him most -- but the production explains them away by
presenting them as, respectively, bad luck and a man who has tried his best

but is badly shaken by how badly things have turned out. The adaptation does
not question the Friar’s vision of order.18

In China Girl there is no Friar, nor any Friar analogues. Nor is there a
Friar in West Side Story, although there are figures who resemble that
character in superficial ways. However, rather than cataloguing the ways in
which a particular character -- Glad Hand, say -- substitutes incompletely for
the character of Friar Laurence, it is more useful in the present context to
investigate how characters in the surrogation act in the Friar’s function as
orderer. Both Glad Hand and Doc are ineffectual in this respect. They want to
set situations aright, but are unable to do so. Glad Hand (referred to in the
stage musical’s script, from the point of view of the teens, as a “‘square’”
[Laurents et. al. 153]) asserts that his “get-together dance,” is to help the
teens make new friends, an obfuscation of his actual intent to break down the
barriers between the two gangs, which the teens see right through. The very
picture of an inept high school guidance counselor desperate to connect with
his charges, Glad Hand braves his way through the teens’ abuse, unable to
accomplish anything unless Riff and Bernardo instruct the others to
cooperate, unable to impose order without Krupke to back him up. (By

contrast, the Zeffirelli and Rakoff Friars and Luhrmann’s Father are able to

85

 

 

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regulate Romeo and Juliet, even in their most extreme moments, albeit with
some effort.) Glad Hand’s intentions may be good, but he reflects the film’s

attitude, which it expresses without question throughout, of the general

uselessness of adults and their schemes for reforming gang kids.19 Doc is

successful in his effort to reform Tony,20 but his attempts to impose a curfew

on the Jets when they meet in his store for their war council or to get them to
play basketball rather than fight meet with disdain, as does his mockery of the
rituals of the gang (“War councils,” he kvetches. “Rumbles.”), as well as his
attempts to build personal connections (“Why, when I was your age . . .”) or to
influence the kids through practicality (“What are you gonna be when you grow
up?”). None of these approaches works, and his efforts end in bitterness (“I’ll

dig your early graves, that’s what I’ll dig”), sarcasm (“I have no mind. I am

 

the village idiot”) and despair (“You kids make this world lousy”).

This lack of success extends the film’s sceptical presentation of
schemes of order: the police, with all of the authority of the state behind them,
are ineffective, as are the peace makers, mocked not only by the youths they
attempt to regulate, but by the film itself. Glad Hand is a caricature of an out-
of-touch social worker. Doc is a stereotypical Jewish senex. In constructing
these individuals as failed, even ridiculous mediators, the film marginalizes
them and their ideas. Mocking them correspondingly mocks their beliefs in
harmony, order, play and good fellowship. (A similar effect happens when
Luhrmann’s Romeo forgets to cross himself: making the moment a comic one
undercuts the faith that drives the Father’s plan, as well as the mass that
appears to bless it.) By holding Doc and Glad Hand’s commitments up to

ridicule, the film reveals its own assumption that their ideas are facile, corny or

86

 

 

simplistic, express
This does It
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simplistic, expressed via the pose of the hip, urban mocker.

This does not mean there are no effective ordering agents in the film.
Bernardo and Riff control the gangs. In being the first to join in Glad Hand’s
get-together dance they allow it to proceed; they conduct negotiations over how
the rumble will be conducted and decide whether and where those negotiations
will take place. The teens who defy and mock adult agents of order are
themselves fairly well organized: both gangs, but in particular the Jets, have
clear hierarchies of command.21 Riff is more concerned with some aspects of
order than Bernardo, who “understand[s] the rules” but mocks his
counterpart’s concern with proper ritual: “More gracious living? Look, I don’t
go for that pretend crap you all go for in this country.” For Bernardo, rules are

a ridiculous daintiness when used to disguise the gangs’ animus, but he is

 

happy to impose rules of his own when it suits his purposes, for instance telling
Maria whom she can date and when she has to go to bed.

Analogous to Riff and Bernardo are China Girl’s Alby and Yung,
although their involvement with order is much more complicated. Both try to
regulate the behaviors of their associates and their siblings even as they
attempt to negotiate the demands placed on them by their elders. Yung,
ordered to “control your friends,” tries to keep his sister in line as well: “Can’t
stay in Chinatown, you stay home,” he tells her. Like Bernardo, he’ll “decide
what’s right and wrong for her.” Alby, Tony’s older brother, is similar to both
Yung and Bernardo: while chafing under Perito’s edicts, he tries to control his
kid brother, whom he commands to “Do what I tell you.” Much as Bernardo is
unable to control his sister, Alby and Yung are unable to check their siblings,

though it is not for lack of trying. However, Alby and Yung have a much

87

 

 

harder time than '
Yong in Pamwl’”
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obey orders.

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harder time than their West Side Story counterparts at controlling their gangs.
Yung in particular has to deal with internecine rebellion throughout the film,
and both characters are chastised by their criminal superiors for failing to
obey orders.

Each of these four characters, who as a gang member lives according to
an assumption that the ordering principles 0 “straight” society are invalid if
not ridiculous, also displays commitments to the schemes of order by
commanding others, a clear example of the way in which an ideology “leaks.”
Riff and Bernardo resist the adult imposition of order but never realize their
deeper commitment to it, expressed via formulations which give them
authority over their gangs, or for Bernardo over his sister. Yung, Alby,
Mercury and Shin, deSpite their sharp awareness of the constraints and duties
placed on them from above, do not hesitate to impose controls on others when
they see fit. They are committed to schemes similar to those for which they
express resentment. From the standpoint of principal agents of authority and
Friar analogues, order in West Side Story and China Girl is regarded in an
almost entirely negative way. However, when agents of authority beyond
those figures are taken into account, the attitude toward ordering constructs
becomes less clear even as the functioning of ideology is more clearly revealed.
What distinguishes the two films is that China Girl seems aware of Alby and
Yung’s blindness to their ideological commitments, while West Side Story does
not. That film draws attention to that blindness through Anita’s mockery of
Bernardo’s absolutist positions, but these moments are contained by the
characterization of her complaints as comic, instances of the Chiquita running

her mouth, as well as of Anita herself as a little too sexually liberated for

88

 

 

 

comfort -- she ooul
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comfort -- she could do with some more order, the film implies. Ferrara’s film
uses Tony and Tye as well as Tye’s friends to confront the gang leaders’
unconscious participation in the ideology -— a proposition which, of course, they
reject out of hand. However, the helpless disgust with which the youths’
challenges are presented, and the confusion and defensiveness which
characterize the responses, help to instantiate the challenges, rather than
deflect and contain them. Both films seem very aware of the damage that
rigidly held or oppressively maintained schemes of order can cause, but China

Girl truly demonstrates how pervasive those schemes can be.

Orderly places
There are any number of places that the productions could use to

represent ideas about order. It could be suggested in buildings -- both what

goes on in them or through their architecture22 -- neighborhoods,23 or even

through streets.24 Certainly what goes on in the streets can represent

schemes of order. A particularly revealing example begins to present itselfin
the markets with which Zeffirelli and Rakoff begin their Romeos. Although the
Q1, Q2 and F1 versions of Romeo and Juliet do not offer any suggestion in the
form of stage directions about where 1.1 might be set, Greenblatt locates the
scene in “A street or public place in Verona” (1. 1n), but offers nothing more
Specific than that. Zeffirelli and Rakoff place the scene with more specificity in
a market set up in a public square. Zefiirelli’s is by far the larger of the two; his
is also busier and noisier. Rakofi’s market seems more orderly; at least, it is
quieter. Surrounded by Renaissance arcades, as well as several perspectival,

receding series of Renaissance arches, the square’s architectural detail adds to

89

 

 

 

 

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the impression of order. Rakoff’s low-key market more clearly shows “the
quiet of our streets,” although the idea can be taken as metaphorical in
Zefirelli: the market is efficiently doing what markets do until disrupted by the
brawlers. Luhrmann’s film does not have a market per se, although the staging
of the 1.1 brawl begins at a gas station convenience mart before expanding
into the rest of the city.25

Michael Pursell, addressing the use of “incidental detail” in Zeffirelli,
comments that “The perfection of the market place becomes, without our
really having to think it, a symbol of that order, domesticity and community
that the feud constantly threatens” (“Artifice” 173). His point that viewers
are not really aware of the ways in which order is being expressed is an
accurate one, I think. Much of the detail in Zeflirelli’s market, as well as that
in Rakoffs and Luhrmann’s (and in other places), is incidental. The markets
are settings, and unless attention is called to them through shot selection,
editing, lighting, or index, graphic or motion vectors (such as in Luhrmann’s
presentation of the church setting at the end of his film), they exist as
atmospheric detail, adding visual and aural texture to a given scene. This is
what gives them symbolic power. They are constant, understated
representations of order.

In the Zeffirelli, Rakoff and Luhrmann adaptations, the settings for the

1.1. brawl are not just places of visual and/or aural order, but places of
commerce.26 This indicates a profoundly ideological commitment on the part

of the directors, that order and business are in some way connected. That
none of the three performances makes an explicit link between the Prince’s

anger about the disruption of order and the disruption of financial activity does

90

 

 

 

 

not mean the 11111
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not mean the link is not there. However, that none of the performances
comments upon the link may indicate a presumption that the disruption of
financial efficiency represents a serious threat to social order. This connection
between order and commerce appears in China Girl and West Side Story as
well, although Ferrara’s film foregrounds the connection to a greater extent
than do the other four productions. In West Side Story, Doc’s Candy Store
(changed from the stage musical’s drug store, its new, ironic references to
childhood and innocence paralleling those borne by the schoolyard) indicates
that film’s equation of business and order. Doc himself represents order, and

his employment of Tony leads the youth away from the gang life: gainful work
is cast as a means to curtail social disorder.27 When the Chinese open their

new restaurant in the storefront where D’Onofrio Bakers used to be, part of

the antagonism China Girl’s Italian locals feel toward the Chinese is ethnic in
nature, resentment against the foreigners.28 However, Mercury reveals

another aspect to the unfriendly reaction by repeatedly expressing a link
between local business and neighborhood identity, as in this speech:
They can’t even leave the Virgin Mary alone, Alby. Look at this, they’re
selling Buddhas at a Catholic feast. Mama-san, Papa-san, you got any
fish head soup over there? Get your Buddhas. Hey, Buddhas. What do
you got, got any egg rolls over there? Huh? They’re gonna do good
business.
His argument, that Perito “don’t give a shit for the bloc ” and is “up in Staten
Island waitin’ for the next payoff” is spot-on: as Perito himself tells Alby, “The
Chinese have paid plenty for what they got. Don’t confuse the issue. Just
walk away.” For Perito, whatever disorder his economic arrangements with

the Triad bring to the neighborhood is irrelevant, so long as the arrangements

themselves are not threatened. For Mercury, threats to local businesses are

91

 

 

 

equivalent to “h“
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equivalent to threats to social order.

The film does not regard the issue so simply as does this character,
however. It suggests that business is synonymous with order via the
restaurant Canton Garden. However, other restaurants —- other businesses --
are established as places where people more often than not try to impose
order. Gung Tu’s lieutenant charges Yung with controlling Shin’s rebellious
faction, by any means necessary, in a restaurant. Perito beats Alby for
disobedience in a restaurant. Both of these incidents either contain or
encourage further disorder. For the criminal bosses, Mercury’s attachment to
local business interferes with the orderliness of their business; for Mercury, the
bosses’ attachment to their business of making money however possible
threatens local business, and so his orderly neighborhood. Yet a further
complication is introduced by Shin, whose protection rackets are threatened,
by the Triad uncles, who feel his preying on Canton Garden’s owners threatens
to disrupt their business with the Italians. As complex as this set of conflicting
yet interrelated imperatives is, the idea that ties them together is the
assumption on the part of all the above parties that the efficient function of
economic enterprise as they define it is both a signifier and guarantor of order.
By exposing these contradictions, the film shows the potential weakness of the
ideological construct; yet, since none of its characters seem aware of the
contradictions, let alone the underlying ideological assumption, the film again
reveals the pervasiveness of the ideology. In this, China Girl demonstrates a
much more sophisticated awareness of this particular aspect of ideology than
do the productions of Zeflirelli, Rakoff, Luhrmann, and Wise and Robbins,

whose equations of efficient economic activity with order go unexamined. By

92

 

 

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exposing the faultlines in the ideology, Ferrara’s film is distanced from it.

At the same time that the productions participate in this aspect of the
ideology, they can be active in exposing and questioning others. Such is the
case with the way in which they address a specific sort of physical structure.
In several instances the Romeo playtext refers to walls or barriers, physical
objects preventing ingress or egress: the Capulet orchard walls “are high and
hard to clim ” (2.1.105); Romeo, banished, exclaims that “There is no world
without Verona walls” (3.3.17); Friar John is prevented from delivering Friar
Laurence’s message to Romeo when the health officers “Sealed up the doors,
and would not let” him go (5.2.11) for fear of plague; the tomb which Romeo
opens is also a barrier, preventing his (and Paris’) access to Juliet. Despite
this concern with devices of separation, the three Romeos make little of the
possibilities the playtext offers. None of the orchard wall gives any of the
Romeos pause. Only Zeffirelli, filming on location in and around walled cities,
shows city walls, and he only uses them to make an allusion to divisiveness
and intransigence at the end of his very last shot. Rakoff alone keeps the
reference to Friar John being locked in. Luhrmann’s tomb becomes the
church, the doors to which are open; RakofI’s tomb does need to be pried open,
but the action is filmed at a distance, in low light, with Romeo’s back to the
camera and his body obstructing the view, with the effect that what could be
displayed as an act of desecration is instead a matter of ill-defined physical
labor; Romeo easily breaks open the door to Zeffirelli’s tomb. In short, physical
barriers are of little concern in the performances of Romeo and Juliet.

This is quite the opposite in the two derivations, both of which go to

considerable pains to depict walls, fences, bars and other sorts of barriers. As

93

 

 

 

 

described in chat
difierent fences 2
structures whicl
entrapment. Es
an intervening s
impossible to se
that they varior
sing of love but
where the ruml
impossible to gt
shots composit
with a massive
he usual quote
Witcularly dr
Shots which cc
EHluarter -. sh
not include sh
Visuals draw 2
through a ten
nothing but a
and barTiers .
endanger. Ft
Child) “Br 01.
minted \‘t‘her

John. he is u

 

 

described in chapter 1, West Side Story sets this up through repeated shots of
different fences and walls, and by depicting them not just as barriers,
structures which inhibit movement, but as devices of containment, even
entrapment. Especially germane is the motif of photographing people through
an intervening screen. During the fire escape scene, for example, it is almost
impossible to see Tony or Maria without seeing them in context of bars, bars

that they variously clutch, climb around, lean over and peer through. The two

 

sing of love but look as though they are in jail. The area under the highway
where the rumble takes place is first shown through a fence, and seems to be
impossible to get to without climbing over or crawling through something. The

shot’s composition, using a low, wide angle, makes the area seem a giant box

 

with a massive concrete lid. It could be a coffin. China Girl, in what appear to

 

be visual quotations from West Side Story, lards on the barriers fast and thick,
particularly during the chase and fight scenes early in the film. Of the 152

shots which constitute the alley, first dance club, chase and fight scenes, 38 --

a quarter -- show or feature prominently fences or walls. (This percentage does
not include shots which simply include walls as part of the setting.) The

visuals draw attention to the barriers, often with lighting but also by shooting
through a fence, by having one prove integral to the action, or by showing
nothing but a fence (usually its shadow on bricks). Ferrara’s film treats fences
and barriers as did West Side Story: at best, they constrain; at worst, they
endanger. For example, as Tony flees from Shin and his faction, he has to
climb over or pass through fences three times. While climbing one, he is
injured when the Chinese shatter a bottle against the chain links. Like Baby

John, he is trapped when he crashes into a chained and locked gate; his

94

 

rescuers have to t
can present its b.
enclosing Maria .
Girl’s photograp]
as outright shad
sometimes only

emphasizes the

SEuthols of order

0rdfiring ever
While Ca
through such 9:
Romeo’s Preser
refilSes to man
feast” (1.2.18t‘
foregoing an al}
’0 Comm his n
mOmEnts do n
lepregsi‘. e er}:
moments are .
end mp help ‘
The p12
dance, Mr th
the dancing u
that this, the

 

 

rescuers have to break it open in order to reach him. While West Side Story
can present its barriers as transparent or even beautiful -— the fire escapes
enclosing Maria and Tony have an abstract, Braque-like elegance -- China
Girl’s photographer Bojan Bazelli depicts fences and walls as shadowy (if not
as outright shadows), almost menacing from the start. While West Side Story
sometimes only alludes to bars, cages, imprisonment, China Girl often
emphasizes the point. These two films’ most visible and visual physical

symbols of order are also their most negative.

Ordering events
While Capulet’s home is also a place in which order can be expressed,
through such episodes as Capulet’s attempt to control Tybalt’s rage over

Romeo’s presence at the feast, and his attempt to control Juliet when she
refuses to marry Paris,29 more notable is the dancing at the “old accustomed

feast” (1.2.18), which reveals a set of further commitments which the
foregoing analysis has not revealed. I will defer considering Capulet’s attempts
to control his nephew and his daughter until chapter 3, for although these
moments do represent attempts to assert order, they are of a piece with the
repressive expressions noted above which demand certain behaviors; these
moments are also expressive of the tensions cast as threatening the family,
and will help to reveal the exchanges that ideological construct participates in.

The playtext specifies neither particular dances, nor the number of
dances nor the duration of the dancing. Neither does it specify the manner of
the dancing (energetic, sedate, raucous, quiet, and so on). But it seems to me

that this, the manner of the dancing, is important to understanding how order

95

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

is conceived in th
dancing during A
audiences” the “2
society as well as
and maturity.” 1
function to defm
to the city and f:
film, tv and wide
much the same
for order. (For t
Capulet feast ir
internal weakn
vision to disord
ln Zeffir.
Both are eaten
three minutes
atldience mem
Shets of the dr
emtillasizes in
forTllations an
dancing, tithe
War to the
dam“ For
Jilliet‘s dance

from anthng 1

 

 

is conceived in these performances. Philip C. McGuire contends that “the
dancing during Act 1, scene v, might very well have signified to Renaissance
audiences” the “absence -- in the civic and family structures of Veronese
society as well as in particular characters -- of virtues, particularly prudence
and maturity.” Further, “the measures through which the dancers move can
function to define a norm of prudence and maturity applying to individuals and
to the city and families of which they are members” (216-17). The dancing in
film, tv and video adaptations and derivations of Romeo and Juliet can signify
much the same thing to contemporary audiences, a expression of the potential
for order. (For this reason, I will not consider Luhrmann’s presentation of the

Capulet feast in detail at this point. That scene functions more to reveal the

 

internal weaknesses of the Capulet family than to offer a positive counter-
vision to disorder in Verona Beach.)

In Zeffirelli, there are two primary dance segments in his staging of 1.5.
Both are extended, the first slightly more and the second slightly less than
three minutes long. Each is characterized by long-duration shots that allow
audience members to take in the action of the dancers, intercut with briefer
shots of the drama’s principals. The photography in both segments
emphasizes intricate, symmetrically balanced patterns in the dancers’
formations and movements; the composition of the shots depicting the
dancing, typically for this film, is elegant.30 The presentation in Rakoff is
similar to that in Zeffirelli, allowing viewers time to consider the dances and the
dancers. For example, opportunity for extended contemplation comes during
J uliet’s dance with Paris. Photographed from the side of the set as though

from among the crowd, Juliet and her suitor are on diSplay in the center of the

96

 

 

 

screen. Their slo
dance.

West Side
analogue to the (
musical number.
of “Blues, Prome
Story: The Origr
accompanied by
to a high wide sl
acut to a low or.
wide shots of th

couples, are con
these shots an i
clear. During“
Action tells her
dance out of po
gestures, his It
begins With “8
ClTCles, Which I
Patterned me
intercuts W, de
couple tthe ha
Jet” then She
The de deux“

 

 

screen. Their slow movements emphasize the symmetrical patterns of their
dance.

West Side Story contains an array of dance sequences, both in the
analogue to the Capulet feast, set in the converted gym, and in its other
musical numbers. “The Dance at the Gym” (Laurents et. al. 135) is comprised
of “Blues, Promenade, Mambo, Pas de deux, [and] Jump” segments (West Side
Story: The Original Sound Track Recording 2). It begins with a crossfade,
accompanied by an orchestral segue, from the dress shop where Maria works
to a high wide shot of the gym, where the dance is already underway. Following
a cut to a low wide shot of the dancers, subsequent angles alternate between

wide shots of the whole dance floor, and shots that, although privileging certain
couples, are composed show them in the context of other dancers.31 Through

these shots an idea not just of orderliness, but also of conformity, becomes
clear. During “Blues,” when Anybodys walks through without a partner,
Action tells her to “get outta here.” Similarly, when Baby John and his partner
dance out of position and out of pattern, Riff smacks him on the butt and
gestures, his message clearly that the young Jet is out of line. “Promenade”
begins with “Boys on the outside, girls on the inside” of a pair of concentric
circles, which rotate in opposite directions. High and wide angles display its
patterned formality. “Mambo,” like “Blues,” begins with a low wide shot and
intercuts Wide shots of the entire gym with shots privileging one or another

couple (the basic pattern is one of parallelism and contrast: the film shows
Jets, then Sharks; Bernardo and Anita, then Riff and Graziella; and so on).32

“Pas de deux” (the tune “Maria” configured as “a delicate cha-cha” [Laurents et.

al. 154]) features Tony and Maria at center screen, with three other couples in

97

 

 

 

 

the shadowed bac
“Jump,” the last :
almost identical 1
By the chc
Chino Girl is far
he, were the disr
tthere are two: t
distinction from
of time glow erin
playtext, where
immediately pr
club, and proxir
China Girls fir
(landfill in tire,
other momenta
that the 9mm,
bEtm'ers exist 1
this, it. like th
intelligible pa
Which is Show
“during the q
as“,
older to their
something w
M“ is, the t

 

 

the shadowed background; the movements of all eight dancers are identical.
“Jump,” the last number in the scene, continues to present dance patterns
almost identical from couple to couple.

By the choreographic standards West Side Story sets, the dancing in

China Girl is far less complex, although it too offers indications of what could

 

be, were the disruptions of the feud eliminated. The first dance club scene

(there are two) takes place in an environment initially free from tension, a

 

distinction from West Side Story, where the Jets and Sharks spend a good deal
of time glowering and profiling at each other, as well as the Shakespearean

playtext, where the Montague boys move around inside their rivals’ household.

 

Immediately preceded by a scene showing a fist fight in an alley outside the
club, and proximate to the ethnic tensions proposed in the film’s Prologue,
China Girl’s first club scene reveals a jumble of ethnicities and genders
dancing in irregularly shifting groups: sometimes the dancers are alone, at
other moments in pairs, trios or even larger groups. The editing establishes

that the ethnic resentments of the Prologue are not universal. Whatever
barriers exist to mixing in the outside world, they do not obtain in the club.33 In

this, it, like the other dance scenes, functions “most deeply as a non—verbal but
intelligible paradigm of that principle -- the ‘tempr’ring’ of ‘extremities’ . . . --
which is shown breaking down in individuals, in families, and in” the city itself
“during the course of the” film (McGuire 225).

Through the expression of this paradigm, these four productions also
offer to their audiences “image [s] of ‘something better’ to escape into, or
something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives don’t provide” (Dyer 222).

That is, the dancing in these four productions proposes “Alternatives, hopes,

98

 

 

wishes. . . the st
something other
Richard Dyer sei
entertainment; 1
while entertainl
created by societ
constitutes the l
orienting itself 1
and inadequacii
(228).34
By oonst
pervasive, the :
audiences can l
alternatives to
Patterned dam
Peaceful inter]
Place Shorfly f
in these four l
Performances
eStabllshes w
Others are not
the feud is M
Shem“. .. it (l
and Plierto-F

negative Wax

 

 

wishes . . . the stuff of utopia, the sense that things could be better, that
something other than what is can be imagined and maybe realised” (222).
Richard Dyer sees this proposition of alternatives as a basic function of
entertainment; however, he complicates this description by asserting that
while entertainment “responds to needs that are real,” those “needs [are]
created by society.” Further, entertainment “also defin[es] and delimit[s] what
constitutes the legitimate needs of people in this society . . .[and], by so
orienting itself to them [needs], effectively denies the legitimacy of other needs

and inadequacies, and especially of class, patriarchal and sexual struggles”
(228134

By constructing fictional worlds in which disorder is not only present but
pervasive, the four productions immediately at hand create spaces in which
audiences can begin to feel a need for representations of order, then offer
alternatives to the problems they have constructed in the highly regulated,
patterned dancing of West Side Story, the Zeflirelli and RakoffRomeos, or in the
peaceful intermixing of Ferrara’s dance club. (Notably, these scenes all take
place shortly following depictions of intense disorder.) In these terms, dancing
in these four productions is established as distinct from the violent feuds of the
performances. Characteristic of ideology, this process of distinction

establishes two or more possibilities in opposition to each other: one is good,
others are not.35 In all four productions, dancing, representing order, is good;

the feud is bad. (Ironically, the feud is also an alternative way of ordering
society -— it differentiates between houses in the Romeos, between “American”
and Puerto-Rican in West Side Story, and ethnicities in China Girl -- albeit in a

negative way. It is a dystopian gratification of the same need for security,

99

 

 

 

expressed as ordf
The dance
and discomiOrts”
Story, Zeifirelli e
uncomplicated.
China Girl, Shir
tries to kill Ton}
through a dance
competition ove
out-dance the 0
beginning to th
Maria’s dance.
onyhalt as Re
uncle over Ron
emphasis on fi
the feud, rathr
the backgrom
feud‘s discomj

W Home of th

 

 

expressed as order, that the dancing gratifies.)

The dance scenes in Ferrara designed as “escapes from the problems,
and discomforts” (Dyer 230) of that film’s feud. So is the dancing in West Side
Story, Zeffirelli and Rakoff. However, none of those escapes is total, or
uncomplicated. Disorder continues to exist and struggles to assert itself. In
China Girl, Shin, along with his faction, interrupts the dance, assaults Tye and
tries to kill Tony. In West Side Story, “Mambo” offers an escape from the feud
through a dance in which the Jets and Sharks transfer their violent
competition over territory into non-violent competition over which gang can
out-dance the other, the very choreography of the dance reflecting the stylized
beginning to the Prologue’s brawl. Bernardo violently interrupts Tony and
Maria’s dance. In both Zeffirelli and Rakoff, the productions cut away to shots
of Tybalt as Romeo and Juliet speak, and both retain Tybalt’s dust-up with his
uncle over Romeo’s presence at the feast, an interruption lent greater
emphasis on film, tv and video because the productions cut to this eruption of
the feud, rather than showing it while Romeo and Juliet continue to interact in
the background of the frame. The dancing may represent an escape from the
feud’s discomforts, and suggest possible, harmonious alternatives to disorder,
but none of the four productions allows these moments to go unchallenged.
(Luhrmann’s film is an extreme extension of this point. His hallucinogenic
feast scene is more debauch than dance, and Romeo literally has to go soak his

head to clear it of the revel’s disorderly influence, a step the film suggests is
necessary before he can meet J uliet.36) Despite this, none of these challenges

seriously questions the validity of the idea that dancing offers an escape from

the feud —- the expression of order through dance is left largely intact.

100

 

 

 

 

 

Assuming order
It would be
present order itse
seem at a first, f2
order: Gung Tu,
principal that Es
Veronese Prince
shown to act for
extent of person
does threaten “1
95h These indi-
Presentation 0
unable to enSu
are likewise ur
Charges. This
Playtext‘s late
into Suspicion
Yet deg
0f Order. the).
WES into n}
deSpite the C
Drodum 0113
‘hmueh dam

altemathe r

 

Assuming order

It would be a gross oversimplification to say that these surrogations
present order itself as repressive or damaging, although that is how it might
seem at a first, fast glance. To be sure, they do reveal negative expressions of
order: Gung Tu, Perito and Schrank are inverse, extreme examples of a
principal that Escalus represents, that of order through force. Whereas the
Veronese Prince acts for the good of the city, the criminals and the cop are
shown to act for their own gain. Their methods differ from his in degree and
extent of personal involvement, but it should be borne in mind that the Prince
does threaten “pain of torture” and “of death” to those who disobey him (1.1.79,
96). These individuals act to preserve order. The tension possible in the
presentation of Escalus -- the representative and ensurer of Verona’s order,
unable to ensure it -- carries over to the derivations, whose authority figures
are likewise unable to control those subject to them, or to protect their
charges. This doubt, this anxiety, appears to have carried over into the
playtext’s later-twentieth-century surrogations, even to have been extended
into suspicion and cynicism.

Yet despite the fretfulness with which the productions consider schemes
of order, they also work to reafirm its agency, its validity. The further one
moves into the performances, the more one sees the texture of the ideology:
despite the cautionary presentation of primary agents of authority, four of the
productions embrace (though not whole-heartedly) the expression of order
through dance. (As I will show in chapter 3, Luhrmann’s film demonstrates an

alternative vision of the dance as disorderly, an example to be avoided.) Order

101

 

 

itself may not be t
are. All of the pro
ideologies are not
which are shown
similarity of som
Princes. Krupke .
expression of 0rd
questioning of in
three Romeo am
Proposes the p05
SlIDilarities, ring
so that. the me
authenty figure
released over 3
Productions th,
“hallenges out
Peacemakers 2
the Supposing
worse, danger
DEYfOImanCe ,
”marines i]
need to add“
may not he 3
seem that SC

If ider

 

 

 

itself may not be bad, the productions suggest, but many of its expressions
are. All of the productions sustain ideological theory’s supposition that
ideologies are not monolithic by presenting challenges to schemes of order,
which are shown to be riven with contradiction. At the same time, the
similarity of some aspects of their presentation of order -- the treatment of the
Princes, Krupke and Schrank, Gung Tu and Perito; the belief in dance as an
expression of order —- begins to reveal a gap in performance theory’ s
questioning of immanent meaning. The very resemblance of these aspects in
three Romeo and Juliet adaptations and in two of the playtext’s derivations
proposes the possibility that audiences, exposed to these reiterated
similarities, might take them to indicate immanent meanings. This is not to
say that the meanings are. However, the developing scepticism regarding
authority figures in the three adaptations and two derivations of the playtext
released over a period of 35 years may suggest to those watching the
productions that Romeo and Juliet itself necessarily questions, if not
challenges outright, authority figures; the repeated presentation of the
peacemakers and their beliefs as weak, weakened or silly may help to confirm
the supposition that Friar Laurence is an inept plotter, his ideas kooky or,
worse, dangerous. The surface dissimilarity of the productions supports
performance theory’s denial of immanent meaning, but these deeper
similarities indicate an aspect of accounting for meaning that the theory may
need to address: certain meanings may not inhere in a playtext, and meanings
may not be ahistorical or transcultural, but these productions can make it
seem that some are.

If ideology “creates meaning by differentiating” (Snyder, “Ideology” 90),

102

 

 

 

 

then the schemes
because the prodi
italy, dance v. hr;
The list could go
productions offer
However, no one
it is pressed, our
the large scale c
depiction of bar.
the productions
lhope Ihave sl
00mment to
expression, tbi
cOIIStruct: it d
reality that. is“
comma] anr
Provides a Spa

dominance.

 

 

 

then the schemes of order in these productions are ideologically successful,
because the productions are filled with differentiation: Chinatown v. Little
Italy, dance v. brawling, American v. Puerto Rican, obedience v. disobedience.
The list could go on and on. The “synthesis of concepts, [and] images” that the
productions offer make the ideology “compelling and powerful” (Kellner 472).
However, no one position goes unchallenged; even as one scheme is supported,
it is pressed, questioned, tested from another quarter. The aggregate effect of
the large scale challenges, especially to authority figures and through the
depiction of barriers, particularly since many of them occur so prominently in

the productions, is to assert order’s susceptibility and weakness, despite what

 

I hope I have shown are the productions’ (in many ways fundamental)
commitment to schemes of order. An expression of ideology’ s multiplicity of
expression, this also has the effect of opening a hole in the facade of the
construct: it does not seem possible that the ordering schemes are “the only
reality that is” (Snyder, “Ideology” 93). The presentation of “certain
communal and individual weaknesses” (Berry 144-45) in the productions

provides a space in which other ideological constructions can struggle for

dominance.

 

 

103

 

 

AlikeinD

Although it is ch
preceding chapi
of supporting 03
what commitm
schemes theme
stresses that o
and Juliet 1 3:
issues arising
internal contr
representativ
schemes of or
the feud. whir
this. 1 will lor
then turn to
family Whirl
“sentient-cg
anali‘sis of t
“mull \Vhir

aresult oft

 

 

CHAPTER 3
Alike in Dignity? Houses, Households, Families and Feuds

There’s no such thing as just a family.

Lisa S. Starks,
Public comment

Although it is difficult to consider the family apart from schemes of order, the
preceding chapter endeavored to address the latter more or less independently
of supporting or conflicting ideological constructs such as the family, to see
what commitments and challenges the productions revealed to the ordering
schemes themselves. Building on that approach, this chapter will address the
stresses that order is subjected to in the adaptations and derivations of Romeo
and Juliet I am considering, in particular from expressions of the family and
issues arising from them. Already challenged through the revelation of its own
internal contradictions, along with ineffectual, self-serving or criminal
representatives, and crumbling or repressive physical infrastructures,
schemes of order are further threatened by the institution of the family, and by
the feud, which depends on the family’s ideological privileging. To demonstrate
this, I will look first at how the feud develops from a distorted ordering scheme,
then turn to a demonstration of the ways in which early modern conceptions of
family which inform the Romeo playtext become metaphorical in its later
twentieth-century surrogations. Following that, I will engage in a close
analysis of the different ways the productions demonstrate weaknesses in the
family, which in turn lead to further, serious challenges to schemes of order. As

a result of the similar treatments family receives in the productions, gaps in

104

 

 

 

pedomanoe the
the end, 1 POP“ 1
of the family, w
conflict, a confli

construct, your

pamjly, feud
There is
Montague feur
recent years h
noted that the
“had been to r
Tragedy” 52')
playtext, desr
dead letter. f
societal valur
manhood (“C
and opposed
expression c
socialized ir
mudificatior
masculimq

as smiling
P9P m1 l

through \i

 

 

 

performance theory’ s questioning of immanent meaning is again appear. In
the end, I hope to show that the ideological constructs of schemes of order and
of the family, which ought to support each other, more often than not exist in
conflict, a conflict which will continue to Open a space in which a third

construct, young love, can move toward dominance.

Family, feud

There is no shortage of intelligent, detailed examinations of the Capulet-
Montague feud, its origins and its implications. The most incisive of these in
recent years have been feminist. Before those contributions, H. B. Charlton
noted that the “general trend” in the evolution of the Romeo and Juliet story
“had been to magnify the virulence of the feud” (“Shakespeare’s Experimental
Tragedy” 52) to the point of its being “ungovernable” in the Shakespearean
playtext, despite having run its course (Annual 35).1 Rather than Charlton’s
dead letter, feminist critics find the feud to be a dynamic expression of basic
societal values. Coppélia Kahn argues that the feud is not just the definition of
manhood (“Coming” 342), but a way in which men are linked to their fathers
and opposed to women, love and sex (Man’s 83); it is not just an “extreme”
expression of patriarchy, but the way in which the citizens of Verona are
socialized into the patriarchal system (84, 86). Marianne Novy, in a
modification of Kahn’s thesis, argues that the feud “calls on men to define their
masculinity by violence” (359-60); Francois Laroque sees language in the play
as striking “the keynote . . . of aggressive virility and unabashed phallicism”

(19).2 Jill L. Levenson argues that the narrative is “driven by social disorder

through violence” (“‘Alla stoccado’” 83). Her position that Verona is

105

 

 

 

characterized bi
who sees the fer
levenson comp.
duels and fighti
Halio identifies
playtext, which
and even myth
sources, argue:
involved (“Idec
1.89). Verona i.
ideology which
about the trag
seen to have i'

of the feud, ar
self assertion

if endl.

so is tl

right. t.

an alt
Practi

1“ this ounce
of maSC-ul‘mj-
”though his
”he implicit
N0)“, Lev

easfly SEpaI

rum

 

 

characterized by attitudes of competition and advancement (94) echoes Kahn,
who sees the feud as the normal social pursuit in Verona (Man’s 90), although
Levenson complicates the investigation by arguing that the playtext questions
duels and fighting through its fight scenes (“‘Alla stoccado’” 93-94). Jay L.
Halio identifies the feud as emblematic of a larger array of violence in the
playtext, which “is not only physical . . . it is sexual, psychological, generational,
and even mythic” (Introduction 11). Susan Snyder, pulling from many of these
sources, argues that while the feud is not always taken seriously by those
involved (“Ideology” 88), it is necessary for the families to define themselves
(89). Verona is permeated by ideology constituted by the feud (93); it is
ideology which, based on its normal action of separation and division, brings
about the tragedy (95). Robert Applebaum, in an essay which again can be
seen to have its origins in Kahn’s work, and which reacts to feminist analyses
of the feud, argues that, while the feud parallels pressures toward masculine
self assertion (252),
if endless cycles of violence are expressions of the regime of masculinity,
so is the promulgation of the law, a law of peace, which itself has the
right to resort to violence. . . . So, too, is the promulgation of the idea of
an alternative, the idea of standing apart from the masculinist regime in
practices of heterosexual love. (255)
In this conception, ideologies of order, family and love come out of the ideology
of masculinity. Applebaum does not apologize for masculinist violence,
although his argument is an apology in the older sense of defence: reacting to
the implicit condemnation of masculinity he finds in accounts like Kahn’s,
Novy’s, Levenson’s and Snyder’s, he seeks to explain how violence cannot be so

easily separated from such ideologies as law and love.

While understanding Applebaum’s point -- it is well made and

106

 

 

 

provocative -- l i
origin of the ten
As Snyder 31” gui
into predetermi
l‘ldeology’ 90 t
is through the t
through which

— for instance.

Verona is orde'
Capulet” t. 1.1.(

lend: a diliere
understandin;
different. but .
individual to i
becoming a fe
assumed ordt
distinct from
then that. ur
the Pilrelv lo
disfinct grog

Praductinns‘

 

 

provocative -- I also disagree with it. He reverses what I see as the source and
origin of the tensions in the play, which is the distortion of the need for order.
As Snyder argues, ideology works through “identifying, hailing or interpellating
into predetermined subject-positions . . . it creates meaning by differentiating”
(“Ideology’ 90). In other words, one of the primary ways a society orders itself
is through the division of individuals in that society into distinct groups,
through which individuals in those groups gain an understanding of themselves
-- for instance, in Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Gregory’s understanding of

Verona is ordered through their understanding of themselves as “of the house of
Capulet” (1.1.0sd).3 This ordering principle, taken to an extreme, becomes the

feud: a different house (and those individuals whose world is ordered by their
understanding of themselves as, say, “of the Montagues” [1.1.28sd]) is not just
different, but an enemy. The handing down of this ordering principle from
individual to individual, from generation to generation, leads to the principle’s
becoming a feud, an unexamined and permanent expression of an artificial,
assumed order. That two groups of people would understand themselves as
distinct from each other is not in and of itself a problem. The problem arises
when that understanding becomes violent, and violently expressed. Aside from
the purely local threat to order that a violent quarrel between two (artificially)
distinct groups poses to the civic unit (shown more than adequately in all five
productions, though perhaps less well in West Side Story, where the gangs
mainly threaten each other), this extreme understanding of the family as
ordering principle can lead to fundamental disruptions of the state, of which the
family is often considered a foundational structure. As Susan Dwyer Amussen

points out, in early modern England “the village was the natural outgrowth of

107

 

 

 

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the family: grown children began separate households, building first a street,

then a village, a city, a b‘oroug ” (50).4 The net effect of this construction of

the family not simply as related to but as the root of social order is to invest
the family (and by extension the household and the house) with considerable
ideological significance. The family isn’t “just” a family: upon it all social order
depends. On the face of it, the relationship seems clear, even simple. However,
Amussen points out a potentially fatal conflict that inheres in this conception:
although “The message of household manuals on the surface supported public

order,”

In practice it was not so simple. When the household is a godly
commonwealth, then relations between households become the
equivalent of foreign relations. The godly household could (and did)
separate itself from other households to maintain its purity. Clever and
Dod [in A Godly Forme of Household Government: for the ordering of
private families, according to the direction of God’s Word (1612)] insisted
that “the husband without any exception, is master over all the house,
and hath more to do in his house with his own domestical affairs, than

the magistrate.” (47)

The tensions this could create in local governance would be extreme. The
family may have been “the main guarantee of . . . public order” (Stone, Crisis
591), but if two families who were taught to see each other as dangerous rivals,
themselves as equivalent to the state and their heads as analogous to princes,
entered into conflict, then the threat to social order could be severe. Order, in
theory supported by the family, is threatened when the family, begins to
assume an ideological weight of its own, a weight ironically provided by that
very ideological construct which it comes to threaten.

The danger represented by the Capulet-Montague imbroglio exists in
what even a street-level squabble could metastasize into. Sir Francis Bacon,

in “Of Seditions and Troubles,” maintained that “when discords and quarrels

108

 

 

and factions 3
government i5
104). No
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and factions are carried openly and audaciously, it is a sign the reverence of
government is lost,” and that “factions grown desperate” lead to seditious (102,

104). N o

prince or state [should] be secure concerning discontentments, because
they have been often, or have been long, and yet no peril hath ensued.
For as it is true that every vapour or fume doth not turn into a storm, so
it is nevertheless true that storms, though they may blow over divers
times, yet may fall at the last: and, as the Spanish proverb noteth well,
The cord breaketh at the last by the weakest pull. (104)
As Buchanan Sharp notes in his study of riots and uprisings in England, even
“drunken outpourings received most serious attention from the government,
who regarded them as a possible first step toward insurrection that gave point
to the Crown’s insistence on suppression of superfluous alehouses in times of
scarcity” (42). The “government took seriously all seditious words which might
be the first step toward social turmoil” (46). A seditious opinion, spoken aloud;
a challenge to a fight; an unlawful assembly; an assault; a rout; a riot; a feud:
any, and all, could conceivably be construed as threats to the state.5 If a local

feud were to involve families with sufficient resources of men and materiel, the

government’s uneasiness might well increase.6

In this context, Escalus’ inability to curtail the Capulet-Montague
fighting can be seen as particularly alarming: the weakness, vulnerability,
corruption, even ineptitude that the state figures of authority display in
Zeflirelli, Rakoff, Luhrmann and Wise/Robbins, or the criminal ruthlessness
shown by Gung Tu and Enrico Perito in Ferrara, has already called into
question how much order there is in these productions’ societies. And now the
societies themselves are threatened by groups that ought to represent their

stable basis. Lawrence Stone comments that Elizabeth I, in dealing with a

109

 

 

dispute betwee:
procrastinate. l
explosion” lfCrt
other state aut
dangerous gror
Prince has to r
to explaining 1
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dispute between the Earl of Sussex and Lord North “could only temporize and
procrastinate, keeping the balance of force sufficiently even to prevent a major
explosion” (Crisis 233), and this may offer some clarification: Escalus and the
other state authority figures may not have the power to rein in two bellicose,
dangerous groups. Confronted with rivals whom he cannot overmaster, the
Prince has to negotiate, threaten, charm. Such a construction goes a long way
to explaining Luhrmann’s Captain Prince, at one point literally trapped
between Capulet’s wife and Benvolio, able to assert control only through
massive accumulations of weaponry and men; it also helps explain Rakoff’s
Escalus and his struggles to assert himself amid thickets of Montagues and
Capulets. Even Zeffirelli’s Escalus, imperious as he is, is unable to stop the
fighting. While there is an argument to be made that the feud has become a
way of life, an enculturated activity that one cannot just end,7 there is also an
argument that individuals like Tybalt have no real fear of the Prince’s
authority. It may be possible that Tybalt believes the Capulets strong enough

to protect him from whatever punishment the Prince might try to mete out.

Performing families

Although lengthy, the preceding background is useful in understanding
some of the presentations of families and the feud that the productions tender.
As the above reference to Zeffirelli, Rakoff and Luhrmann suggests, the
relationship between the Capulets, Montagues and the Prince can be
explained, even if only in part, in relation to the well-armed houses and violent
conflicts of early modern England. I would like now to turn to a more detailed

examination of the families and their conflicts as presented in the five

110

 

 

productiODS, to
schemes of 0rd:
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productions, a'
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productions, to see if the relationships established above -— that distorted
schemes of order lead to disorder, and that a disordered family not only
represents a threat to, but itself threatens, social stability -- continue to prove
useful.

There are any number of ways one can look at the families in these
productions, and this presents an immediate question about how to deal with
West Side Story and China Girl, in which there are no houses in the sense that
a character such as Tybalt or Benvolio would understand them, as an
aggregation of nuclear family, servants and related kin which perhaps included
the kin’s family and servants as well. In early modern England a house was
defined not just by its nuclear core, but by its affiliated kin and its non-kin
resident servants, so that individuals who had no affinal ties to the core family
considered themselves part of a larger, coherent group. I am by no means
certain how well such an understanding pertains even in Zeffirelli’s and Rakofl’s
period pieces: although uttered, the concepts of “house” and “household” are
never actually explained, and instead are displayed primarily through the use
of costumes. Members of a particular house dress alike, and seem to live under
the same roof. It seems likely that many viewers would take “house” as
metaphoric for “family.” Such a metaphor is extended in Luhrmann, and to an
even greater extent in West Side Story and China Girl, where “family” becomes
a metaphorical reference: certainly there are nuclear families in all three of
these productions, but the understanding of family can be seen to extend
beyond blood relation. Ethnicity in the two derivations of Romeo and Juliet
(and in Luhrmann’s film, a point I elaborate on below) can be considered a

family of sorts. At the center of three of the four “families” in the two films is a

111

 

 

 

fragment of a r
Tony. In West
lived under the
cores are attac
and the other
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ethnic groups
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fragment of a nuclear core: Bernardo and Maria, Yung and Tye, and Alby and
Tony. In West Side Story, Tony and Riff are not nuclear, although they have
lived under the same roof as quasi-siblings for four years. To these respective
cores are attached affiliated others: Chino, Pepe, Indio, Anita and so on; Shin
and the other gang members; Mercury and the other Italians; Action, Ice,
Baby John, Graziella and the rest of the Jets’ circle. Like many families, these
ethnic groups work toward a common goal, although not without dissension.
The analogue is not 1:1, but it is suggestive. Ethnic tensions act as surrogates
for the tension that pits Tybalt’s desire to confront Romeo against Capulet’s
desire to preserve hospitality in his home (as well as his own authoritarian
rule), or for the tension that pits the Capulet and Montague toughs in
opposition to Escalus’ attempts to exert control over them. How are these
examples different, really, from Shin’s and Mercury/s refusal to cooperate with
the gangster bosses? The bonds felt by the gang members toward each other
and toward their gang (and, in some cases, their neighborhood) are those of
pleasure or affection, and obligation, the first two of Ralph A. Houlbrooke’s
three “pillars” of effective relations among kin (English Family Life 221).8
Similarly, the criminal groups in China Girl and West Side Story (as well
as those hinted at in Luhrmann’s film) can be seen as metaphoric families. In
fact, the relationship between gangs and families is not a new one. A range of
studies throughout this century have documented that gangs tend to be formed.
from youths coming from weak family structures.9 Others propose that gangs
take the place of weak or absent families, functioning as family “surrogate [s] ”

(C. Taylor 104:).10 The argument that “To the outside world they may appear

to be gangs or crews, but to the participants, this is their family, their school,

112

 

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their church” (95) is germane: with few or no apparent kin-based relationships,
the youths of West Side Story, China Girl and William Shakespeare’s Romeo +
Juliet have formed structures analogous to families, in which (especially in
Ferrara and Wise/Robbins) older, more experienced members are shown
looking out for younger ones. Riff, Action and the others teach Baby John how
to gang. Bernardo acts as an older brother to Chino. Yung is told that his
cousin Shin is his “responsibility,” and Shin complains that “I expected my
cousin to fight by my side. I expected you to help me.” The members of the
gangs do display some affection for each other; being members of gangs also
obligates them to behave in certain ways; additionally, the Chinese street gang
and adult criminals of Ferrara’s film, in looking to receive economic enrichment
as reward for their criminal activity, can be seen to demonstrate Houlbrooke’s
third pillar of effective kin relations, that of expected advantage (English
Family Life 221). As with ethnicity, this is not to suggest that the criminal
groups of the two derivations can be directly equated with Renaissance
families. However, it does seem clear that the relationships and concerns
revealed by these criminal groups are analogous to those characteristic of
families like the Capulets and Montagues.

Given these metaphorical ways in which family can be understood in the
derivations, it would make sense to explore how families are presented in
“traditional” and “nontraditional” manners. Of those two, “untraditional” is
more provocative, as it indicates more of the ways which family can mean in
the latter part of the twentieth century. However, this conception is also
rather too binary for my liking, too either/or, suggesting an absolute

categorization that the films defy. A more useful approach is to look at a range

113

 

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of the ways the groups of people in the five productions can be categorized,
noting similarities and differences. Four major categories that the productions
themselves suggest are violent, affectionate, ethnic, and criminal. (I would note
that these categories are not exclusive: affection and violence may be
expressed in a single family, and these may also have roles in an ethnic,
criminal, or ethnic-criminal “family,” either independently or in tandem.)

In Shakespearean Films/ Shakespearean Directors, Peter S. Donaldson
presents an articulate examination of violence in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.
As he conceives it, “Zeffirelli is acutely sensitive to ways in which gender
ideology shapes the play, and his visual design extends Shakespeare’s critique”
of patriarchal rule, which is

sustained by an ideology requiring young men to assert their masculinity

by violence, devalue women, and defensively distance themselves from

them. These texts of patriarchal ideology are not merely ground rules or

taken-for-granted assumptions in the play: we see them transmitted,
taught, imposed, and resisted. (153)11

For Donaldson the “roots” of the “feud are connected to a family dynamic in
which the struggle for dominance among the males . . . involves conflict for or
over women” (163). The basis of Zeffirelli’s patriarchal families is expressed
through competition and, eventually, violence, which evolves from “the
redirection of the threat of incest outside the primary family” (161).
Patriarchal society, prompting an “obsessive concern or anxiety about who is
part of one’s family and who is not” (161), contributes to the feud by requiring
the males of one family to forcefully assert their distinction from males of

another. For Donaldson’s psychoanalytic argument, the violence of the feud

has its origins in “the boundaries required for the resolution of Oedipal tension”

(161).12

114

 

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My interest here is not with Donaldson’s argument, but with whether his
ideas of the source of Romeo’s violence are applicable in any way to the other
four productions. Clearly they are in West Side Story and China Girl, and to a
lesser degree in Rakofi’s and Luhrmann’s films. In fact, of the five productions,
the incestuous tensions that Donaldson ascribes to Romeo and Juliet, and to
Zefiirelli’s film in particular, are also on display in West Side Story, China Girl
and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and to a considerably lesser degree
in Rakoff’s Romeo as well. In Romeo incestuous rivalry is expressed at a slant
through violence; in the two derivations gangs invoke violence to keep the
young women safe from rival, ethnic Others. Bernardo in particular expresses
fear of what he sees as Americans’, and particularly Tony’s, predatory
sexuality: “There’s only one thing they want from a Puerto Rican girl.” His
hatred for and desire to fight Tony one-on-one is fuelled as much by this as by
his animus toward America, Americans or the Jets. (The irony that his
attraction to Anita is apparently based in large part on this same sexuality
goes unnoticed.) The dancing throughout the film, described variously as
“reckless, joyless and sinister” (Atkinson, “‘West’”) or as characterized by
“sweep and vitality . . . wild emotion . . . muscle and rhyt ” (Crowther), is, I
think, both: several of the dances are shot through with sexuality at the same
time that they are about, depict, or resemble depictions of violence.13 This is
made explicit in the “Tonight” quintet, as Tony and Maria, Anita, and the Jets
and Sharks sing respectively of love, sex, and fighting in a complex,

polyrhythmic mix.14 The film exposes the same link between sex and

aggression that feminist critics address; however, like Donaldson, it locates

that link in relation to the family. Bernardo is unwilling to find in his little sister

115

 

 

 

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Plat-"€11tit bein

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the sexuahty that he sees in Anita, and is willing to fight and perhaps die to
prevent it being revealed or played upon.

In China Girl, Yung’s concerns are similar to Bernardo’s. He fears his
younger sister’s involvement with an ethnic Other, but his admonitions are less
obsessed with Tye’s sexual vulnerability:

YUNG
You’re my sister and I love you, but you’re my responsibility and you
have to do what you’re told.
TYE
Ijust want to go out and be like everybody else.
But you’re not. You’re Chinese.
TYE
I know that. It doesn’t make me any different.
YUNG
Tye, you got yellow skin and almond eyes. You’re nothing but a Chink to
them. That’s why we live in Chinatown.
His delivery of the lines, along with his body language and the direction of his
gaze, does not indicate that his construction of Tye as “nothing but a Chink to
them” includes an understanding of her being more sexually vulnerable
because of her ethnicity, although that possibility inheres in the dehumanizing
assertion. Later, when he hits her after catching her with Tony in the alley, he
says it is because she does not listen to his warnings. The attack (in response

to seeing her with Tony) is presented as punishment for defying him; however,
because her pairing with Tony is at the same time defiance of her brother’s
edict, the sexual tension again asserts itself.15 Although Yung does not pursue
Tony with anything like the vigor that Bernardo does West Side Story’s Tony,
Yung’s attitude toward his sister is much more doctrinaire, and certainly more
violent, than Bernardo’s is toward Maria. The aggression Yung normally

directs outward, away from the family source of sexual tension, is directed

116

 

 

inward, toward
presence. In 51
Zefiirelli’S Rom
may exist in C}

In Willie
defiance of his ‘
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inward, toward his sister when his patriarchal command is challenged in his
presence. In sum, the Oedipal violence Donaldson finds in the playtext and in
Zeffirelli’s Romeo is expressed as incestuous tension in West Side Story, and it
may exist in China Girl as well.

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Capulet’s reaction to J uliet’s
defiance of his authority is far more severe than Yung’ s: the man is out of
control. At “Thank me no thankings” (3.5.152), Capulet grabs Juliet by the
upper arms; pushed by the handheld camera, he throws his screaming
daughter onto her bed, where her white robe flies open, revealing her legs, bare
to the hip. After Juliet hurries to cover herself, Capulet grabs her again; the
camera pushes him as he bulls Juliet out of her bedroom while his wife and the

 

Nurse try to pull him off his daughter. The next shots, handheld close ups,
alternately favor Juliet (a slight high angle over her father’s shoulder, his head,
left shoulder and upper arm a dark, out of focus mass obscuring the right third
and lower quarter of the screen) and Capulet (slightly low, over Juliet, three
quarters of her head an out of focus brown mass obscuring the lower left corner
of the screen). Capulet becomes incoherent at one point; he slaps his wife

away from him at her “are you mad?” (1. 157), throws the Nurse to the floor at

 

“Peace, you mumbling fool” (I. 173) then shoves Juliet to the floor as well at “I’ll
not be forsworn” (l. 195). In this scene, Juliet is dressed in a white robe, and
her bed linens are white, suggesting her innocence. When Capulet throws her
onto the bed where she has recently been making love with her husband, her
sprawling body is a bleak recollection of the playful tumbling she engaged in
With Romeo not long before, as well as the naked Romeo’s pratfall off the bed

when the Nurse entered to warn the lovers of the approach of J uliet’s mother.

117

 

 

 

The ludic quali'
Capulet in ever
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The ludic quality of these two moments sets the ugliness of the scene with
Capulet in even greater relief.16 Capulet’s body -- easily twice the size of his
slight daughter’s -- overwhelms Juliet’ s when they are in the hallway; the shots
are composed so that he dominates her in the frame. These elements, along
with the screaming delivery of the lines -- Capulet’s are howled more than
spoken -- contrive to make the scene more like a rape than an argument
between father and daughter.

In comparison, Rakoff’s Capulet never touches Juliet. He thinks about
it, raising his hand as if to hit her, then, as if mastering himself, strikes his own
palm at “My fingers itch” (l. 164). His movements are constricted, comprised
of aborted blows and restless pacing along a short arc of floor. Much of the
symbolism is similar to Luhrmann’s: the scene takes place in J uliet’s bed
chamber, she is dressed in white, and the linens are white as well, but the
violence and volume are toned down. Zeffirelli’s presentation of this scene falls
in between the Luhrmann-Rakoff extremes. Lady Capulet tells her husband of
Juliet’s reaction on the stairs, so he does not even reach his daughter’s room
until “Hang the young baggage.”17 When he gets there, he breaks the door
down. Juliet, again clad in a white nightgown, is, as in Rakofi", on her white-
sheeted bed, which Capulet gets to by pawing through the white bed curtains.
Juliet, her outstretched hands clasped, pleads with him; he grabs her hands
and throws her against the wall. When the Nurse protects Juliet, he tries to
move the woman but cannot, and struggles briefly with his wife as well. The
first of the two crucial shots in this segment is a high wide shot of Capulet, the
Nurse and Juliet: Capulet occupies the right half of the screen; the Nurse

stands alongside a long wooden cabinet in the left third of the screen; Juliet, on

118

 

 

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between the da
is her face and
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the floor, peeks from behind the Nurse’s skirts. All that is visible of the girl
between the dark cloth of the Nurse’s clothing and the dark wood of the cabinet
is her face and a bit of white nightgown. (All three Romeos employ a similar
shot looking down on Juliet in depicting this moment; Zeffirelli’s is the most
extreme, cramming her into the smallest space and revealing the smallest
proportion of her body.) The second crucial shot appropriates J uliet’s point of
view. It is a low, wide angle of Capulet pere and mere. Capulet’s wife stands,
partially obscured by the cabinet, at screen right; Capulet stands just left of
screen center, dominating the frame as he delivers his edicts to his daughter.
The angle, and the emotional content, are strongly reminiscent of the visuals of
Escalus in 1.1 and 3.1: Capulet is as terrifying a presence to Juliet as the
Prince is to his subjects.18

Capulet’s assault in Zeflirelli is less overtly sexualized than in
Luhrmann, although all three Romeos have similar incestuous overtones.
That the scene is set in J uliet’s bed chamber -- as opposed to merely “aloft”
(3.5.1sd)19 -- imbues all three presentations with implications far in excess of
those already carried by Capulet’s “having now provided / A gentleman of noble
parentage” (ll. 17 8-7 9), whom he also calls “my friend” (I. 191), for his daughter
to marry. Capulet’s reaction, in two performances violent, in one nearly so, is
fuelled most directly by J uliet’s refusal, but it may also stem from the
incestuous tension which Juliet has, through her refusal, brought closer to the
surface.20 J uliet’s refusal to comply short-circuits Capulet’s attempt to
redirect incestuous pressure toward Paris, to whom he “give [8] ” (l. 191) Juliet;
as her husband, Paris will replace Capulet, but, because of his close

relationship with his wife’s father, he will also function as surrogate lover for

119

 

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examDies

 

Capulet. This would rechannel the incestuous pressures in a socially
acceptable manner. Having this (unconscious) plan thwarted exposes Capulet
to the risk of having the incestuous impulse revealed (to himself as well as to
others), and so provides an additional explanation for his extreme reaction.
Clearly this has moved from Donaldson’s Oedipal conflicts to an examination of
father-daughter incest. Despite this difference, the results of the conflict
remain similar. J uliet’s refusal to comply prompts the redirection inward of the
violence normally directed outward against a purported foe. The outwardly
violent family becomes internally violent.

This process happens to an extent in China Girl as well, although less
obviously so, and is clearly present in West Side Story, in Bernardo’s obsessive

worry over whom Maria can and cannot date or marry. Although like Capulet

 

in this respect, Bernardo is not a Capulet figure: Maria does have a father,
albeit an absent one.21 However, Papa’s role of looking out for Maria’s

prospects has been usurped by Bernardo, who contends that their father
“do[es] not know this country any better than she does.” His displacement of
their father complicates the film’s incestuous tension, particularly as he
chooses as groom for his sister the bland, agreeable Chino, a boy apprehensive
about walking into the dress shop where Maria works because “this is a place
for ladies.” Bernardo selects a safe choice for his sister, one who will not
debauch her, and in so doing eliminates the competition. (A similar action
seems to be occurring in Luhrmann, in which Dave Paris is played as a

pleasant nonentity by the conventionally good-looking Paul Rudd, and in
Rakoff, where the approved suitor is a tall, Milquetoast sort”) In these

examples, with the exception of West Side Story, in which Maria is never

120

 

attacked, the i
turning inw art
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aggTaVatk

 

 

attacked, the incestuous tension which gives rise to the feud can also be seen

turning inward when the young women risk exposing it, however accidentally.23

For all of the problems that the foregoing analysis would suggest that
these families have, they are presented, although less emphatically, as
affectionate groups. Maria’s father refers to her by the fond diminutive
“Maruca.” Bernardo and Yung would both argue that they are looking out for
their sisters’ best interests, and both do have some tender moments with the
young women. Bernardo in particular can exert control with no small amount
of charm, although the reactions of Maria and Anita make clear that they
know he is being controlling. Yung has a touching, quiet moment with his sister
when he comes into Tye’s room while she is sleeping. After he tucks her in, he
wanders around the room: following his gaze, the camera reveals a McDonald’s
box atop Teen and Seventeen magazines, themselves partially covering a
Chinese magazine; alongside these is a collection of the cosmetics so necessary
to teenage dance-club life, mixed in with some old family photographs. This
moment, more than any other, demonstrates to him that the life he had hoped
for her, as a Chinese in the United States, is impossible, and soon afterward he
decides they will return home to Hong Kong.

The families in Zeffirelli and Luhrmann are less affectionate than those

in the two derivations, in Luhrmann considerably so.24 In all three, the

strongest bond Juliet has is with her Nurse (who, in both, proves an
aggravation to the girl’s mother, another expression of household tension).

J uliet’s relations with her mother range from deferential in Rakoff to formal in
Zeffirelli to strained in Luhrmann.25 “Remote” is probably the best way to

describe the relationship between most of Zeflirelli’s Capulets. J uliet’s first,

121

 

exuberant 313E
contrasts star
windows J ulié
on the score.
has been rega
shuts his owr
Luhrmann. l
Capulets wit
Tybalt at the
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exuberant appearance, romping around the second floor of the Capulet home,
contrasts starkly with the appearance of Capulet’s wife (in the same rank of
windows Juliet appeared in moments before), accompanied by a violin discord
on the score. Her expression stern, she shuts the window on her husband, who
has been regarding her fiom across the courtyard. Shuddering, her husband
shuts his own window. (There are no comparable segments in Rakoff or
Luhrmann.) Later, the film may hint at an incestuous liaison between
Capulet’s wife and Tybalt during the confrontation between Capulet and
Tybalt at the masked ball. As Capulet scolds Tybalt, she comes into the

alcove where they are arguing and approaches her nephew, and her entire body

 

language alters. She smiles and purses her lips, and her rigid posture loosens.
“You are a princox. . . / Be quiet, or --” (1583-84) is reassigned fiom Capulet,
and is delivered thus: “You are a . . . [smiles] princox. Be quiet, or . . . [smiles to
others] mm.” The moment is ambiguous: her reaction could be that of a
woman very concerned with social propriety, and who is using two different
modes of address to quiet two different men; at the same time, I find that her
attitude toward Tybalt is more than simply flirtatious in tone. Her “Be quiet,
or . . .” is stuffed with suggestion. She isn’t saying what she will do, but what
she might not. In contrast, when she says “I’ll make you quiet” (I. 85) to her
husband (this also reassigned from him to her), her posture is again stiff, her
expression angry; her body is turned away from the camera, her face in right

profile, whereas with Tybalt her body and face were more open. Luhrmann’s

 

film exaggerates incestuous possibility to a lurid degree: during the masked
ball, Capulet’s wife kisses Tybalt open mouthed, in slow motion. She later flirts,

moaning and vamping, with Paris and another woman, suggesting that as

 

122

 

 

 

 

much as Capt
unacknowledg
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In Zeff
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much as Capulet might want to marry Juliet to Paris for his own

unacknowledged (and unacknowledgeable) reasons, his wife may have motives

of her own for wanting young Paris in the house.26
In Zeffirelli, Capulet’s wife does not demonstrate anything like her
affection for Tybalt to her daughter. The happy Juliet sobers when told her
mother is calling for her; she actually looks worried when her mother dismisses
the Nurse before their 1.3 conference, then brightens when the Nurse is called
back. Throughout the scene, her mother’s body language is remote: when she
touches her daughter, it is with her fingertips, while the Nurse envelops Juliet
with hugs. A demonstrative instance is a three-shot, with Juliet between the
older women. The Nurse holds Juliet and touches her repeatedly, while her
mother stands slightly apart. In Luhrmann’s presentation of 1.3, the woman
takes one look at her waiting daughter and yells for the Nurse to come back. A
cut to Juliet shows her wearing a very teenagerish “This again” expression.
Her mother downs some pills with whiskey before starting to talk to her
daughter -- getting a dose of Dutch courage, perhaps. For a few moments,
Juliet is in frame between her mother and the Nurse, then her mother moves
away leaving the other two women seated together on a settle. Throughout the
scene, the woman’s manner is erratic, at moments overly ingratiating, at
others dismissive (she pushes Juliet’s face away) or intemperate (as she

leaves, she stops, whirls to her daughter, shouts “Juliet!” as she throws her

hands in the air, then rushes out, slamming the door behind her).27
In the presentation of 3.5, both directors show these family relations,

already tenuous, breaking down entirely. When in Zeflirelli J uliet’s mother

reveals her father’s plan, it is impossible to see the older woman’s reaction to

123

 

 

 

 

 

J uliet’s mm
to concentrate
Capulet on th
the refusal, b-
When Capule
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J uliet’s response, as her back is to the camera before Zeffirelli zooms past her
to concentrate on Juliet. That she is upset is made clear by her demeanor with
Capulet on the stairs -- she is in tears -- but it is unclear why: is it because of
the refusal, because Juliet is upset, because she knows trouble is brewing?
When Capulet rails at his daughter, the Nurse defends the girl; her mother is
half offscreen, her back to the camera. Dressed in black like Capulet’s wife,
the Nurse has clearly displaced her mistress’ mother. In Luhrmann, J uliet’s
mother says “Here comes your father” (3.5.124) in a fearful sotto voce: she is
scared of her husband’s reaction. After Capulet storms off, Luhrmann shows
his wife in profile against the family crest, engraved on the gold elevator doors.
She turns fully to the camera, saying “Do as thou wilt” (l. 203) in low, flat

tones, then walks away: the last visual of her in the scene is along shot of her

walking away from the camera.28

Taken together, these moments indicate a general tendency among the
productions to explain familial tensions as deriving from contention between
mothers and their teenaged daughters, or incestuous pressures between
fathers and daughters (or brothers and their sisters), or, in some instances,
both. (The mother-daughter tension may even arise from a suspicion,
awareness or knowledge of incestuous feeling, although none of the productions
goes so far as to make this connection explicit.) The striking, reiterated setting
of 3.5 in J uliet’s bedroom, especially when such a location is not specified in the
Q1, Q2 or F1 versions of the playtext, offers what seems to be a clear glimpse
of ideology at work. It is as if the tensions in the family must be explained in
terms of the daughter’s sexual maturation. Her developing independence from

her family is certainly an issue, but this is -- as if by necessity -- linked to her

124

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Story and Chi
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sexuality in Zeffirelli, Rakoff and Luhrmann, and to a lesser degree in West Side
Story and China Girl, which also regularly return to Maria’s and Tye’s
bedrooms. This may even reflect a broader cultural predisposition to explain
pressures on families in terms of sexuality and sexual development.

In these productions, the Capulet nuclear families are at best remote;
Luhrmann’s seems actively dysfunctional. In both, the Nurse, a member of
the house, is more mother than Capulet’s wife, physically open with the girl
and affectionate. What affinity there is seems to run from Capulet to his
daughter, though this is much more clearly demonstrated in Zeffirelli. In
contrast to both of these is Rakoff’s production, which contains by far the most
affectionate family. Not only is it less internally violent, but mother and
daughter are closer than in the two films. For example, although it is an
ambiguous moment when Capulet’s wife calls the Nurse back -- does she do so
because she wants the woman there, needs her there, or regrets hurting the
Nurse’s feelings? the delivery of her lines is rushed, so does not provide enough
time for the actor to communicate a clear reason for the change of mind -- her
relationship with her daughter is established as reasonably close. She stands
in physical proximity with Juliet while the Nurse tells her story. Both are
smiling; she brushes her daughter’s hair, they laugh (in contrast to the two
other mothers, who are at best unamused by the Nurse’s bawdy), and touch
their foreheads together. Although Juliet does stand with the Nurse while her
mother delivers news of the proposed wedding, this is not presented as a
repudiation of the plan, and her answer is not resistant in tone -- indeed, the
hug Juliet shares with the Nurse afterward is a happy one: she is going to be

married! All this is an effective set-up for her mother’s anger at J uliet’s refusal

125

 

 

 

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to marry in 3.5. It is an unexpected reversal. Notably, when Juliet returns
from Friar Laurence’s cell and begs forgiveness fiom her father, Rakofi’s
production returns to the blocking in depth used in earlier family scenes but
which was not during 3.5. This shows a fiagmented family: instead of Capulet,
his wife, Juliet and sometimes the Nurse being arranged in a single fiame, the
production cuts between individual shots of Capulet, Capulet and his wife,
Capulet’s wife, Capulet, Juliet, the Nurse, Juliet and the Nurse, and Capulet,
Juliet and the Nurse. In Zefi’irelli’s presentation of this “reconciliation,” the
camera zooms on Juliet as she is being hugged by her father. This functions to
underscore the distance between them: her face is turned away fiom her
father, and her expression severe. (In Luhrmann, the scene is cut altogether --
there is not even the pretense of reconciliation in this Capulet household.)
Perhaps most revealing of how the Rakoff production depicts the Capulet
family is that the notorious lamentations in 4.4 are played straight. They are
cut outright in Luhrmann-- her family’ s reaction to J uliet’s death is an occasion
for brief official business, a plot point -- and in Zeffirelli they are limited to a few
quick lines and a point of View zoom on Juliet, slumped half out of her bed, with
her father’s “O lamentable day. Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon
the sweetest flower of all the field” (a conflation of 4.4.57 and 55-56) in voice

over. But Rakofl’s cast, by underplaying the emotion, sells the segment as
sincere, heartfelt grief over the death of a beloved daughter.29 This is in

keeping with a production displaying the least violent reaction to J uliet’s

refusal to marry Paris, and in which the incestuous tensions between Capulet
and his daughter, are the least pronounced.30

In addition to characterizing the families in terms of violence and

126

 

 

 

 

 

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In transporting th
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affection, three of the productions classify the families according to ethnicity.31

In transporting the locale from Verona to the ambiguously—placed Verona
Beach, Luhrmann’s film liberates the families from their Italian heritage: the
Montagues are generically Anglo, the Capulets nebulously Hispanic. Of the
two families, the Capulets, again because of the greater proportion of time
they are on screen, bear closer scrutiny. The familys ethnicity is, in point of
fact, very nebulous, as the core of Capulet, his wife and their daughter are not
in any clear way identified as Hispanic: understanding them as such comes by
inference, based on the Hispanic actors playing Tybalt (John Leguizamo) and
the gangbangers he runs with. J osé Arroyo argues that “This device attaches
to Shakespeare’s characters certain modern stereotypes,” such as Tybalt’s
“pride, temper and the importance he attaches to family honour” which are
“far more understandable to present-day viewers as Hispanic . . . than as
values of a Renaissance nobleman” (8). However, the coding of the Capulets
as Hispanic is also marked by contradiction arising out of the actors playing
the Capulets themselves. Arroyo argues that “while Paul Sorvino can
personify ethnicity as Capulet, Claire Danes as Juliet doesn’t even use the
accent. Her ethnicity is a kind of drag impersonation imposed on her character
by genealogy” (8—9). “Drag” is the operative word here, although not in the
sense that Arroyo intends it: Sorvino’s strong identification with Italian
ethnicity, from such movies as GoodFellas (1990, dir. Martin Scorcese), in
which he plays a Mafia boss, and the TV drama Law and Order, in which he
played an Italian New York police department detective-sergeant, imposes a
degree of drag on his characterization of Capulet as an Hispanic don -- it

makes it harder to believe. Combined with Danes’ lack of an accent, and Diane

127

 

 

 

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Venora’s inexplicable now-you-hear-it—now—you-don’t Southern drawl, the
conception of the family as a Whole comes off a muddle: Italian gangster with
cholo nephew seeks Southern belle to sire white-bread daughter in Mexican
mansion. Must be fit for debauchery and excess. In addition, the Capulets have
attracted Hispanic toughs to their name (for some unexplained reason). The
end result is that the definition of the Capulets as Hispanic is at best
uncomfortable and uncertain. Because of the lack of development of this
ethnic characterization, its effect on the film is negligible: as Arroyo notes, it
may help to render comprehensible certain behaviors among the characters,
such as Tybalt’s macho pride or even Capulet’s rage at being defied, but it does
not do much to explain the feud beyond suggesting it originated in ethnic rivalry
of some sort.

Aside from making Tybalt and Capulet more easily understood, or even
explaining a possible root of the feud, the Luhrmann film’s conception of the
Capulets as ethnic recalls West Side Story, in which (Natalie Wood excepted),
the Sharks are clearly conceived as Puerto Rican, and the Jets as a

conglomeration of second-generation European immigrants considered
“American.”32 One of the immediate effects of this decision is to endow the

story with “extra social repercussions” (Arroyo 9), among them “a certain
erotic frisson to the relationship” (9) between Tony and Maria, and the failure
of the American melting pot to function as advertised.33 Of the two meanings,
the latter seems much more clearly intended: Robert Hapgood reports
additional significations o “‘caste lines of either race or social class’” were
intended for the story from early on -- “the pattern of divided groups trying to

come together was basic and longstanding” (106-07).34

128

 

The extende
intension. Maria
wants to be “plain
Carmen Margarit
Bernardo, whom .
Rico and the Unit

BEE
Ah. It's so
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The extended ethnic “family” that the Puerto Ricans share is itself one
in tension. Maria is determined to be “a young lady of America,” and Anita
wants to be “plain Anita now” instead of “Anita Josefina Teresita Beatriz del
Carmen Margarita, etcetera, etcetera.” This sets them in opposition to
Bernardo, whom Anita engages in a debate about the shortcomings of Puerto

Rico and the United States:

BERNARDO
Ah. It’s so good here?
ANITA
It’s so good there? We had nothing.
BERNARDO
Ah, we still have nothing, only more expensive.
ANITA
Once an immigrant, always an immigrant.
BERNARDO
Hey, look, instead of a shampoo she’s been brainwashed.
ANITA
Stop it.
BERNARDO
She’s given up Puerto Rico and now she’s queer for Uncle Sam.

The debate is capped off by the song and dance number “America,” in which
the women argue in favor of the United States, the men against:

ANITA
Puerto Rico . . .
My heart’s devotion . . .
Let it slip back in the ocean.
Always the hurricanes blowing,
Always the population growing . . .
And the money owing,
And the sunlight streaming,
And the natives steaming.
I like the island Manhattan —-
Smoke on your pipe and put that in!
WOMEN
I like to be in America!
OK by me in America!
Everything free in America --
BERNARDO
For a small fee in America.
ANITA
Buying on credit is so nice --

129

 

BER:

One look at
WOh

I have my 0
BER
What will 3’
AN 1'
Skyscraper
WOl
Have a vac
WOl
Industry b<
MEI
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The melting pot i.
integrated into tl
disenfranchised.
inwhich it conta:
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to which the eth
fear 0f Maria’s Sr
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BERNARDO

One look at us and they charge twice.
WOMAN 1

I have my own washing machine --

BERNARDO

What will you have though to keep clean?
ANITA

Skyscrapers bloom in America,
WOMAN 2

Have a vacuum [‘2] in America,
WOMAN 3

Industry boom in America --
MEN
Twelve in a room in America.
The melting pot is pulling the Puerto Ricans apart: the women are becoming
integrated into the culture of the United States, the men increasingly

disenfranchised. The number is lightly ironic in tone, which is one of the ways
in which it contains the challenge it poses to conditions facing immigrants.35

But that should not mask a realization of the way in which it reveals tensions
to which the ethnic “family” is subject. These tensions exacerbate Bernardo’s
fear of Maria’s sexuality: not only does he not want to admit that she is sexual,
and sexually attractive, but her attractiveness and attraction to Tony, a
“Polack,” doubles the threat to Bernardo’s image of, and plans for, his baby
sister as a virtuous Puerto Rican homemaker. The burgeoning relationship is a
triple threat: to his idealization of Maria to his idealization of Puerto Rico and
to his condemnation of the United States.

These issues are raised as well in China Girl, and compounded by the
identification of the Monty family as Italian. Instead of two Veronese families
or Puerto Ricans and Americans in conflict, Ferrara’s film has Chinese and
Italians. His is the most polarized of the five productions, both because of the

specificity of the division, and the rigidity with which the Chinese and Italian

130

 

 

gangs cling to the ’
attachment to the
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telljng her. The in
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gangs cling to the idea of pure, ethnic identity. This is expressed through the
attachment to the neighborhood, and, for Yung in particular, the constant
reiteration of his and his sister’s ethnic identity: “You’re Chinese,” he keeps
telling her. The impression resulting fiom this is of a man with his finger in the
dike. (Shin’s assertion to the Canton Garden’s owner that “Chinese do
business with Chinese” is a variant of this.) His final repudiation of his sister,
“You’re no longer Chinese, anyway,” may seem petulant, but for someone like
Yung, attached as he is to his ethnicity, it is little less than a damnation. It is,

in effect, a banishment: as he says it, he is preparing to return to Hong Kong,

leaving Tye to America’s tender mercies.36

In this film the pressures on ethnic identity are similar to those in West

Side Story, which, as the number “America” reveals, tend to be economic as

 

much as romantic. Yung's Triad elders are no more interested in preserving
Chinese ethnic purity than are Alby/s mafia bosses in preserving Little Italy.
As Perito says to Alby, “The Chinese have paid plenty for what they got. Don’t
confuse the issue. Just walk away.” As presented in Ferrara’s film, capitalism
trumps all other ideologies. Those individuals tugged least between the
demands of ethnicity and commerce, Shin and Mercury, are those who can

afford to be most doctrinaire about manning the barricades against foreign
encroachment.37 Their complaints about the gangsters’ inattention to matters

ethnic point out the two characters’ parallels:

SHIN
You gotta take care of us. . . .To hell with the old man. I eat rice while

he’s dining on fucking duck? He ain’t the problem, you’re the problem.
We went to war for you. The uncles wouldn’t have done shit.

131

 

 

 

MER
Fuck this SC
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MERCURY
Fuck this son of a bitch, Alby. I don’t even know what he’s talkin’ about.
. . . I shit on his business, how ‘bout that? You know, Alby, we are gonna
be selling shrimp toast here instead of calzones if they get away with
this. Huh, he don’t give a shit about us. He don’t give a shit about the
block. He is up in Staten Island waitin’ for the next payoff, that’s all.

There is only limited resistance to the positions these two espouse. While Yung
and Alby struggle between ethnic and economic imperatives, Tye’s friends
maintain that she should “Tell your brother, ‘Go to hell’,” and argue with Yung
that “This ain’t China you know.” Tony tells Mercury that “They ain’t Chinks,
they’re people, man,” to which Mercury responds, “Why don’t you take a look
at what those people did to your family store, how ‘bout that?” When Tony
asks, in reference to the beating Alby took from Perito, “And what people did
this to my brother, huh?” Mercury is unable to formulate an effective rebuttal

)

but neither does it alter his position: if anything, Alby’s bruises are further

 

evidence of how far Perito has fallen fiom the true faith. In fact, after Tony
argues with Mercury, Alby takes Mercury’s side, telling his kid brother, “You
were born in this neighborhood. Don’t forget that.” Whereas the ethnic
paranoia in West Side Story is expressed through economic and sexual terms,
the fears being loss of territory and of miscegenation, the fears in China Girl
are more difiuse, centering around the anxiety over losing a way of life, in fact,
of difiusion. Yung’s fears about Tye’s consorting with lo fann, barbarians, are
part of a more comprehensive matrix centering on the loss of identity. What
Yung and Shin, and Alby and Mercury see uniting themselves, and
distinguishing them from their purported opposites, is ethnicity.
Complicating the obligation of ethnicity is the fact that the gangs in
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, China Girl and West Side Story are

criminal. The most immediate question this raises is whether the Capulets

132

 

 

 

and Montagues. in
derivations can be
Montagues violate
from organs of the

would have found

would have been c
about crime and l
criminal court rec
often cryptic and
Bearing this in In
modern, but of ar
here is that “bets
between weakne
were Simply err;
dtStinction betw
“‘SOClal CI'IIllESl‘”
authOIities [but
legal grounds. b
behaviors incluc
“land 123», 5
reDresen
SOClal an
cdnflicti]
Sistem,
Protest

social a1

0fthea

 

 

and Montagues, in the early modern playtext and two twentieth century
derivations can be considered criminal as well. Certainly the Capulets and
Montagues violate any number of period calls for order, whether stemming

from organs of the state or fiom individuals publishing material that the state
would have found congenial.38 However, this does not necessarily mean they

would have been considered criminal. On a basic level, it is difficult to know
about crime and law enforcement in the sixteenth century, since “a majority of
criminal court records have been lost or destroyed; and the few that remain are
often cryptic and open to various interpretations” (Cockburn, “Nature” 50).

Bearing this in mind, it is still useful to understand crime (not just of the early
modern, but of any period) in the terms of its own time.39 A crucial distinction

here is that “between offenders and criminals [which] was the difference

between weakness and evil. Most lawbreakers were not . . . criminals; they
were simply errant brethren” (Herrup 110).40 One way of concretizing this

distinction between offenders and criminals is to look at what J. A. Sharpe calls
“‘social crimes’,” that is, “types of behaviour regarded as illegal by the
authorities [but that] were thought of as legal, or at least justifiable on quasi-
legal grounds, by certain sections of the ruled” (Crime 12). Examples of these
behaviors include poaching, gleaning, wrecking, coining, rioting and smuggling
(12 and 123). Social crime
represents “a conscious, almost a political, challenge to the prevailing
social and political order and its values”. It occurs when there exist
conflicting sets of official and unofficial interpretations of the legal
system, when acts of law-breaking contain clear elements of social
protest, or when such acts are firmly connected to the development of

social and political unrest. (122)41

Of the above behaviors, rioting is the most obviously germane to a

133

 

 

 

discussiOD of Rom
riot is when
“the men an
customs; a!
of the com
legitimate
the lawma
This might sugge
crime, with the v
However, the flu
brawlers are not
opening brawl, it
outside the law r
bear” his biting l
offensive even, i
over the line. T]
gesture as a cle:
0IIIIlibus name 1
their neighbors
“encourageISI n
Oppose EOOd orr
on his Side if he
genera] Puhlic

0mission of the

 

 

discussion of Romeo and Juliet. Sharpe notes that a legitimizing notion for a
riot is when
“the men and women in the crowd were defending traditional rights and
customs; and, in general . . . they were supported by the wider consensus
of the community.” . . . certain actions, although against the law, are
legitimate when placed in the context of a set of values different from
the lawmakers. (133)42
This might suggest that the 1.1 Romeo brawl could be characterized as social
crime, with the values of the houses in conflict with the values of Escalus.
However, the three Romeo performances make clear that the values of the
brawlers are not those of the community of which they are part. In the
Opening brawl, its instigators reveal their knowledge that they are operating
outside the law when Samson states it is a disgrace to the Montagues “if they
bear” his biting his thumb at them. He knows the gesture is insulting,
offensive even, but not illegal, whereas the Montagues in response might step
over the line. The Zeffirelli, Rakoff and Luhrmann adaptations all present the
gesture as a clearly intended provocation, an example of barratry, “a sort of
omnibus name for the various nuisances which men and women inflicted upon

their neighbors” (Emmison 139). In biting his thumb in the first place Samson

“encourage [s] many others through his misdemeanors and evil example to
oppose good order” (141).43 His subsequent question, about whether the law is

on his side if he admits he bit his thumb at the M ontagues (as opposed to
general public thumb—biting), is but a further example of barratry. The
omission of the question “Is the law on our side ifI say ‘Ay’?” (1.1.43)
eliminates the subsequent profiling between the Capulets and Montagues --
another instance of two groups skirting the edge 0f illegality, neither willing to

step over the line -— and allows the film to show just how little provocation the

134

 

 

houses need to stz
Chino. Girl or Wes
side is enough to :
aimed loogie fina
confrontations. l
Before Zef
gather, gesturing
textual, disguste
trouble.) The cit
capable of, and 5
tmdeiately Spi
cages knocked 0
are drawn into t
everydlle, not ju
tower (in celebr
their windows, :
eye new, of the
of the marketpl
not wearing C a
terrified ”Omar
halliam The
like the brawn:
bro contemi0E
Rahofl‘s

”"01"“ just (

 

 

houses need to start fighting. (Questions of legality and peace do not enter into
China Girl or West Side Story. In the former, the mere sight of the opposing
side is enough to spark conflict, while in the latter, a kick in the butt and a well-
aimed loogie finally set the brawl off after the steady escalation of non-violent
confrontations.)

Before Zeffirelli’s first brawl even begins, the citizens of Verona start to
gather, gesturing in disgust at the young men. (The film includes an extra-
textual, disgusted “Look at this” as three men move toward the nascent
trouble.) The citizens know full well what the Capulets and Montagues are
capable of, and seem in no mood to tolerate ructions. Once the fight starts, it
immediately spills over into the marketplace: stalls are disrupted, baskets and
cages knocked over, some merchants and townspeople try to hide, and others
are drawn into the fight. The film is at pains to demonstrate that it involves
everyone, not just the Capulets and Montagues. A man rings a bell in a high
tower (in celebration? an alarm? a call to arms?). People throw garbage from
their windows, pelting the Montagues as they rush through an archway. Bird’s
eye views of the plaza show brawlers rushing in from all sides, and wide angles
of the marketplace show it being torn apart. A medium shot shows two peOple
not wearing Capulet or Montague colors throwing vegetables at each other. A
terrified woman with a child runs through the flame; another cowers behind a
haywain. The different shots show that while some of the townspeople do not
like the brawling, others are drawn into it -- the disorder concerns more than
two contentious families. It is tearing the town apart.

Rakofi’s first brawl is slower to develop. The first part of the fight

involves just Capulets and Montagues, and never completely stops even after

135

 

 

 

Benvolio’s int/ewe}
and Tybalt debate
merchant’s bask e'
disregard for thos
watch, doing notl
Rakoff s productii
endanger an infa
yells “Down with

moments here. a
other is when th
these may suggi
houses’ quarrel,
turn on them; t
“fling to tolera
inconvenience 1
Either Way, thi
and Montague
their houses th
Wait for their 1
LUhrmz

Before the figl
and trouble“ l.
M“ his right
Piece of flesh‘

tar SteI‘EO‘ A

 

 

Benvolio’s intervention: people keep hip-checking each other while Benvolio
and Tybalt debate. Tybalt tries to provoke Benvolio by knocking over a
merchant’s basket which Benvolio has been trying to set aright (also showing
disregard for those not of his house). When the fighting restarts, the citizens
watch, doing nothing, until a Capulet accidentally slashes a baby (in this,
Rakoff’s production ups the ante on Zeffirelli’s, in which the brawlers only

endanger an infant). After a silence, a citizen (not a member of the watch)
yells “Down with the Capulets!” (1.1.67) and the townspeople wade in.44 Two

moments here are crucial: one is Tybalt’s upsetting of the basket, and the
other is when the townspeOple finally enter into the fray. Taken together,
these may suggest that the citizens of Verona are afraid to get involved in the
houses’ quarrel, because they know the Capulets and Montagues can -- will --
turn on them; these moments may also suggest that the townspeople are
willing to tolerate a certain level of personal inconvenience, but when
inconvenience turns to physical risk, they take matters into their own hands.
Either way, this presentation of the 1.1 brawl demonstrates that the Capulets
and Montagues are more contemptuous (or at least careless) of others not of
their houses than are Zeffirelli’s, and that the Veronese people are unwilling to
wait for their leader or his official agents to try to set things aright.
Luhrmann’s first brawl begins at a gas station-convenience mart.
Before the fight actually begins, however, Abra45 chants “Double, double, toil
and trouble” (Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1.10fi), and Sampson [sic] pinches and
licks his right nipple at a clutch of Catholic schoolgirls while “I am a pretty
piece of flesh” (Romeo 1.1.26), set as a grunge-rock song, blares on Benvolio’s

car stereo. As Benvolio and Tybalt square off, Sampson, crouching by an

136

 

Argosy Cars cab,
woman, whom be
off times into VlOl
These moments I
threaten the citiz
them to the exteI
really appear to <
insurrection, but
feud may be spe
city, and gun-tot
eye long shots ~-
bystanders, citi:
Daliicipate in tl
violent. Only G
the fighting is 6
thact on the 1:
As Shari
attIibutes: an
hiVergent defir
those Dilrticipg
GiVen this, the
Protest, Th“
“Capulet, in z,
to hlall‘ie for tl

 

 

Argosy Cars cab, gets repeatedly smacked on the head by a screaming
woman, whom he has to threaten with his gun before she stops. As the stand
off flares into violence, Tybalt menaces a young boy in a suit with his gun.
These moments reveal that these feuding houses are apt to outrage or
threaten the citizens of their city, but these brawlers don’t seem to endanger
them to the extent that Rakofi’s do. Tybalt is terrorizing the kid; he doesn’t
really appear to consider shooting him. Sampson is quelling his own little
insurrection, but his attention and fears are clearly elsewhere. Luhrmann’s
feud may be spectacula —- the gas station is immolated, smoke blankets the
city, and gun-toting youths and terrified citizens run this way and that in bird’s
eye long shots -- but deSpite the physical chaos, the film never shows

bystanders, citizens, being hurt by the feud. Nor does the citizenry seem to
participate in the fighting.46 Of the five opening brawls, this is the least

violent. Only Gregory is shown getting shot, and that in long shot. The scope of
the fighting is expansive, and its deleterious effects clear, but its chaotic
impact on the life of the city is limited to just that, chaos.

As Sharpe defines it, social crime possesses “a number of distinctive
attributes: an element of social protest; strong communal support; and
divergent definitions between the interpretations placed on an activity by
those participating in it and that of the law and its enforcers” (Crime 140).
Given this, the brawls in the three Romeo performances do not qualify as social
protest. They are criminal; those involved may defend them as legitimate
(Capulet, in Zeffirelli’s film, demurs at Escalus’ suggestion that he was partly
to blame for the opening riot, either ducking blame or suggesting that there is

no need for blame in the first place) or display no signs of remorse (as in

137

 

Luhrmnn), but ‘
The Princt
violators of socia
view.”7 So, too, \
Zefiirelli and Lid
Verona is almos
while the residei
weather than th
although occurr.
Rakofl‘s fight is
encourage the f
tum-theother-t
would have leaJ
ll.) This sugg«
get involved th
the feud’s conti
ambiguously S,
and one would
that the Citizer
Schrank andF
time, although.
fruit Vendor a]
at thther poi;

drah‘lng The
Oh Anita in ii)

 

 

Luhrmann), but that does not change the fact that they violate social norms.
The Prince, clearly, regards Capulets and Montagues as criminal

violators of social standards, even if his subjects do not always share this
view/247 So, too, with Romeo’s killing of Tybalt, and Tybalt’s of Mercutio. In

Zeffirelli and Luhrmann that incident is cast as essentially private. Zeffirelli’s
Verona is almost deserted, and the combatants are left to their own devices,
while the residents of Luhrmann’s Verona Beach are more concerned with the
weather than the fight. Even the car chase and Romeo’s execution of Tybalt,
although occurring in public, occur in isolation: the combatants are alone.
Rakofi’s fight is more public, in fact oddly so. In this sequence the citizens
encourage the fighters, of whom Tybalt is the more reluctant after Romeo’s
turn-the-other-cheek response to his challenge. (One would think the Veronese
would have learned not to stand too close to a sword fight after the disaster of
1.1.) This suggests that, unlike Luhrmann’s citizens, or Zeffirelli’s, who quickly
get involved themselves, Rakoff’s citizens bear at least some responsibility for
the feud’s continuation, as they egg it on. The social standards are
ambiguously set in Rakoff’s Romeo and Juliet: Escalus does not like the feud,
and one would think the citizens would not, either, but 1.1 and 3.1 make clear
that the citizens’ dislike begins when the violence spills out to include them.
Schrank and Krupke see the Jets and Sharks as violating standards of their
time, although the gangs rarely harm civilians. Two Jets steal an apple from a
fruit vendor and Action threatens a man who calls them “good-for—nothins,” but
at another point the Jets deliberately detour around a little girl and her chalk
drawing. The only danger to someone not in the gang comes with the assault

on Anita in the candy store. China Girl’s Perito and Gung Tu take a dim View

138

 

 

of the youths’ refi
faction bombs th'
block with gunfiI
adrenaline rush *
Particular
in Zetfirelli, Raki
ethnic and crimi
varying concepti
ideology of order
money from Car
gang’s criminal .
to his ethnic, at
obligations to tl
obligations to Sl-
affection for his
with his Sister i
Thhyh unasi-fr.
hhhgation to an
obligatjcms Ofb
as a Caplilet 01
to respect an d
thfeateus the ;
0E3“ by her n
hrhhhctions

pr
render Chorus

 

 

of the youths’ refusal to comply with their edicts, particularly after Shin’s
faction bombs the Canton Garden and Mercury sprays a Chinese apartment
block with gunfire (a surprisingly callous act that is played more for its
adrenaline rush than as an indication of the character’s instability).
Particularly in Ferrara, but also in Wise/Robbins and to a degree as well
in Zeffirelli, Rakoff and Luhrmann, the interconnection of violent, affectionate,
ethnic and criminal houses leads to considerable tension, not just between the
varying conceptions of family but also within those conceptions and with the
ideology of order. For example, Shin’s desire to keep collecting protection
money from Canton Garden, to preserve the pillar of economic advantage his
gangs criminal activity provides, puts him at violent odds with his obligations
to his ethnic, at times affectionate, gang superior (and cousin) Yung. Yung’s
obligations to the Triad are tested by his ethnic, affectionate and criminal
obligations to Shin; the obligations of his ethnic family try his obligations to and
affection for his sister. In West Side Story, Bernardo’s affectionate relationship
with his sister is compromised by his ethnic and criminal obligations; Riff and
Toan quasi-fraternal affection is subjected to stress by Riffs continuing
obligation to and affection for his criminal family. In the Romeos, the
obligations of being a Capulet are set at odds with affection: Tybalt, behaving
as a Capulet ought in preparing to confront Romeo, runs afoul of his obligation
to respect and obey his house’s patriarch; his obligation to the Capulets
threatens the affection Juliet has for him. Capulet’s affection for Juliet is
offset by her rejection of the obligations she has as daughter. As these
productions present it, the family is shot through with contradictions which

render Chorus’ assertion of “Two houses, both alike in dignity” questionable.

139

 

 

 

Yet, despite this,
commitments to
families or familj
greatest irony, tl
Througho
challenged by th
families, and obl
which inhabit. th
there are destro;
dead and her on
widowed mothei
evolved from th.
the imperatives
“uncle’s” family
Chinese kids” v
faced by both R
hi Order to pres
and father-figu
hhhgation, let 2
abandon his ol
the gang “fami
hfipection. In so
hhghborho 0 d.
t3hiht‘ the dis]

Siluilar

 

 

Yet, despite this, the adaptations and derivations demonstrate deep
commitments to the family: characters continually strive to form or preserve
families or family-like groups through which they can identify themselves. The
greatest irony, though, exists in China Girl.

Throughout that film, affectionate ethnic and nuclear families are
challenged by the tension between obligation to the advantage-seeking criminal
families, and obligation toward the various families and family-like groups
which inhabit the Chinese and Italian communities. What nuclear families
there are destroyed by the film’s end: brothers Alby and Tony are dead, Tye is

dead and her cousin Shin has been shot; they leave behind, respectively, a
widowed mother and a possibly-orphaned brother.48 This resolution has

evolved from the impossible dilemma in which Yung is placed. Caught between
the imperatives of his blood relations, his kin, his ethnic family, his criminal
“uncle’s” family and the gang family represented by Shin and other “poor
Chinese kids” whom “Nobody gonna help,” Yung faces a choice similar to that
faced by both Romeo and Juliet: he has to deny one unit of social identification
in order to preserve another. He cannot be a dutiful brother, cousin, “nephew”
and father-figure all at once -- he cannot satisfy the pillars of affection and
obligation, let alone those two and economic advantage -- and so he opts to
abandon his obligation to and affection for his “uncle” and his sister in favor of
the gang “family” for which he’s responsible, and for which he also feels
affection. In so doing he also violates the role of the sunxu by abandoning his
neighborhood, even while he provides an advantage to that neighborhood by
taking the disruptive gang back to Hong Kong with him.

Similarly, Alby has to watch out for his brother and his gang family,

140

 

 

 

which both depth"-
by his padriIiOI
AL]
You takin.
make me 1
PE
Don’t 00m
Alb§ts response,
rune he has ”C
neighborhood, I)
brother from th‘
disruption, and
welfare. His cor
mindedness, an
contradictions.
problems: the (
violence, above
criminal famili
unification, Sh(
ironically leads
of the families ‘
the basis of co:
in this.
the film denim
Community. 31
restoration of

Montague she

 

which both depend on him. These imperatives do not jibe with those imposed
by his padrino:

ALBY
You taking care of the situation doesn’t take care of me. How does that

make me look?
PERITO

Don’t confuse the issue. Just walk away.

 

Alby’s response, that “Maybe I got no choice,” is the opposite of the truth: like
Yung, he has too many choices. Feeling obligated to preserve order in his
neighborhood, protecting it from encroachment, he has also to protect his kid
brother from the Chinese, protect his padrino’s criminal interests from

disruption, and protect his gang from Perito’s anger, as well as provide for their

 

welfare. His commitments deny him the luxury of Mercury’s single-

mindedness, and prevent him from successfully negotiating their

 

contradictions. Gung Tu and Perito, like Shin and Mercury, have no such
problems: the older criminals privilege economic advantage, gained through
violence, above affectionate or ethnic obligations, and so they, and their
criminal families, survive. In fact, they thrive. The gangsters’ criminal
unification, shown as they teach each other toasts in their native tongues,
ironically leads to the restoration of order in the community, albeit at the cost
of the families which earlier ages, including early modern England, considered
the basis of community.

In this, China Girl’s concerns are not unlike those in Romeo and Juliet:
the film demonstrates how commitment to family can strengthen a
community, albeit in tragic, unintended ways. Romeo and Juliet can end with a
restoration of order -- in Luhrmann, Father Laurence’s vision of Capulet and

Montague shaking hands is a possible outcome -- but that restoration comes

141

 

at the cost of the
order, the timed:
p mticulaf mstan
asideological 0017
when EXPreSSiOI’
come into conflic
obligation and 3‘
Because OfitS in
severe, this W83]
instead of leadin
ironically, this I
performance the
could be seen to
playtext that qr
representative I
challenge will u
weaknesses cre

dominant. ideol<

 

 

at the cost of the extermination of the community’s youth. The demand for
order, the expectation that order is necessary, is made tangible in this
particular instance through the institution of the family. However, the family
as ideological construct is also vulnerable to contradiction. This is made clear
when expressions of the family as violent, affectionate, ethnic and criminal
come into conflict, as social subjects try to negotiate the demands of affection,
obligation and advantage which those four expressions have set at odds.
Because of its internal contradictions, the family is weakened; at its most
severe, this weakness turns into intra—familial violence. The disordered family,
instead of leading to greater social stability, increases social disorder.
Ironically, this reiteration of the failing family again serves to complicate
performance theory’ s challenge to immanent meaning: the five productions
could be seen to assert through their very similarity that Romeo and Juliet is a
playtext that questions the validity of the family, let alone the family as
representative unit of social order. It remains to be seen whether this implicit
challenge will continue. How young love moves into the opening which these
weaknesses create, and whether (and if so, how) it will replace them as a

dominant ideology are the matters I will turn to next.

142

 

 

 

 

a I t ‘

for
“l
“I
“l
“I

The nominal 5111
treated perhaps
period, or in sub
Juliet. Properly
alone its treatm
dissertation. Hi
ideological expre
Romeo and J all
the first place.
Though 2
understanding (
Juliet.2 it is not
draw on this m;

horcanbe defi

beyond attemp

 

 

 

CHAPTER 4

Pure Love

“It would be worth your while to think about whether you love me
for my sake or yours.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I said.

“Why not.”

“Everybody needs one pipe dream,” I said.

“Love?”

“Romantic love,” I said. “I won’t give it up.”

Robert B. Parker,
The Widening Gyre

The nominal subject of this chapter, love, has in its various formulations been

 

treated perhaps more extensively than any other during the early modern

period, or in subsequent writing about it; so, too, as regards love in Romeo and

 

Juliet. Pr0perly speaking, love is a subject for dissertations on the playtext, let
alone its treatment on film, tv and video, rather than one chapter in a
dissertation. However, not to address love in a study of some of the primary
ideological expressions in film, tv and video adaptations and derivations of
Romeo and Juliet would be, perhaps, even more foolish than attempting it in
the first place.

Though aware of studies which attempt to provide contexts for the

understanding of love in the early modern period,1 as well as in Romeo and

J uliet,2 it is not my intent to replicate that work here, although I will certainly

draw on this material as necessary. Likewise, although questions of how love
is or can be defined are intriguing and fruitful, I will not be engaging in them

beyond attempting to show some of the ways the productions themselves work

143

 

 

to categorize love
are depicted in th
look at the ways ‘
relationship in s;
constructions he:
of argument wbi
moments of the j
that, despite the
the PTOductions
relationship, H,
marriage. diSpl;
Physical deSiror
rhpTesentathn '
hhmeo and J ulj
other marriage
Romeo and Jul
allows 370mg l(
and house/S. tor
ProductiOnS I‘ej

hhlll‘Oblematj

Assume Lc
in addl
means as may

 

to categorize love. My interests here are with how certain love relationships
are depicted in the five productions. In particular, this chapter will begin to
look at the ways in which the productions tend to construct Romeo and J uliet’s
relationship in spiritual and/or sacramental terms, and explain how such
constructions help to mystify that relationship as a transcendent ideal, a line
of argument which will continue into the chapter 5 investigation of the closing
moments of the five productions. The present chapter will also demonstrate
that, despite their primary construction of Romeo and J uliet’s love as spiritual,
the productions also reveal a physically desirous, erotic aspect to the
relationship. However, all of the productions work to contain this aspect within
marriage, displace it onto other characters, or conflate Romeo and J uliet’s
physical desirousness with spiritualizing imagery, and so render that desire’s
representation less of a threat to the conception of youthful, idealized lovers.
Romeo and J uliet’s love will be shown to be further exalted through reference to
other marriages in the productions, routinely constructed as less loving than
Romeo and J uliet’s relationship. The idealizing work the productions engage in
allows young love to move into the space created by the challenging of order
and houses, toward a position of ideological dominance. However, although the
productions reify an idealized love-match they will not leave that ideology

“unproblematically in place” (Belsey, “Name” 98).

Assuming Love
In addition to such struggles over what and how Romeo and Juliet
means as may be inferred from the preceding discussion of schemes of order

and the family, there are (of course) other issues of contention regarding the

144

 

 

 

plaleXh: such as
Some critics do n
assertions as, Re
which looks forw
308) on the Way
sometimes entirn
problem of defin
most common dc
ways, this is n01
Shakespeare Plr
conjunction wit
claim that. “Ror
that it is not on
language” but ‘
Writing
eighteenth cen
Romeo and J u
”Changing" 15
W makers are
and those com-
ond Juliet me
centhll' audie
Fear period a]

 

 

playtext, such as whether the play is a tragedy,3 or what kind of tragedy it is.“
Some critics do not deign to address these issues, proceeding instead from such
assertions as, Romeo has a “tragic conception that is fully worked out and
which looks forward to the mature tragedies, to Hamlet, especially” (Peterson
308) on the way to making other arguments.5 Still other critics (at times and
sometimes entirely) ignore the issue of tragedy, yet still circle around the
problem of defining what kind of play Romeo and Juliet is.6 For all of this, the

most common definition of Romeo and Juliet is that it is a love story. In some
ways, this is not just what the play is about, but what the play is: The
Shakespeare Plays: A Viewer’s Guide to The Shakespeare Plays, released in
conjunction with the BBC series by WNET/THIRTEEN, offers (along with the
claim that “Romeo and Juliet has been a hit for almost 400 years”) assurances
that it is not only “the most beautiful portrayal of young love in the English
language” but “One of the great love stories of all time” (15).7

Writing about the Garrick—Cushman Romeo performances of the
eighteenth century, Levenson proposes that “early audiences found images of
Romeo and Juliet that satisfied not only their tastes, but also their fantasies”
(“Changing” 156). This seems similar to what is happening here. The film and
tv makers are participating, through the fictional constructs Romeo and Juliet
and those constructs’ fictionalized relationship, in an expression of what Romeo
and Juliet means that is evidently acceptable enough to later twentieth-
century audiences that the expression has remained fairly consistent over a 35

year period and a variety of production styles.8 This is not to say that the

productions are monovalent in their presentations. In addition to those

145

 

 

 

aspects of love or
represented by 5
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aspects of love which Romeo and Juliet represent, there are the aspects
represented by Samson and Gregory, by Mercutio, by the Nurse, Juliet’s
parents, Romeo’s parents, the Friar . . . to borrow a term from Deborah
Shuger, the productions reveal different “discourses of desire” (Stanwood et. al.
270 and 273), which themselves reveal acts of contestation over how love in
the playtext can be defined, understood, and thereby controlled. The individual
productions not only contain discourses, but are themselves discourses which
contend with other productions over how the playtext can be, is or should be
understood. However, despite the varieties of love each production presents,
and the variety of the productions themselves, the discourses represented by
these productions eventually limit an understanding of Romeo and Juliet to a
particular formulation within What Shuger calls “the totality of available
discourses” (Stanwood et. al. 273), not just of desire, but of all ideologies. These
attempts to define Romeo and Juliet’s love confirm Romeo and Juliet as being
a play about love. In a broad sense, what kind of love does not finally matter.
Individual definitions may seem accurate, insightful, naive, entrenched, limited
or limiting, but the multiplicity of those articulations reveals not just the
superfluity of the playtext, but also the ability of those who come into contact
with it to find in it meanings congenial to their own assumptions about the
playtext. The action of these five particular productions has the effect in this
instance of defining Romeo and J uliet’s love as ideal.

The productions begin to accomplish this by ascribing sacramental
and/or spiritual qualities to their love.9 However, the adaptations and

derivations also reveal elements of physical or erotic desire to the relationship.

In this ascription of lust to Romeo and J uliet’s relationship is what Belsey calls

146

 

a “counterknowle
countercurrent tr
desire for each or
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Goldberg, who a
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a “counterknowledge” (“Name” 80n); lust is constructed as running
countercurrent to spirituality, existing in tension with it. Romeo and J uliet’s
desire for each other indicates that there are yet other ways of understanding
their relationship, an indication borne out by the criticism of Jonathan

3“

Goldberg, who addresses the lovers transgressively (un)productive desires” in
his important essay, “Romeo and J uliet’s Open Rs” (94). Lust is not only

counter to the conception of Romeo and J uliet’s love as spiritual, but dangerous
to it.10 That assumption of danger results, I think, from a presumption that

lust is disorganized, threatening, that it is a threat which may have no ending,
or at least no “good” one, whereas sacramental love, for instance, orders and
organizes desire, containing it within marriage, which supports order in society.
Because of the threat physical desire poses, it needs to be delegitimated or
contained, which the productions all work to do. Similarly, the idealim'ng
impulse implicit in asserting the primacy of the sacramental and the spiritual
in Romeo and J uliet’s relationship means that their love needs to be better
than other kinds of love, or love relationships, such as that between Mercutio
and Romeo, Romeo and Rosaline, Juliet and the Nurse, Romeo and his parents,
Juliet and hers, or their respective parents for each other.

What does this mean for the subsequent examination of the five
productions? I intend obviously to identify representations of spiritual,
sacramental and sexually desirous love, demonstrating how the productions
privilege one over another. I will also reveal the ways in which those privileged
constructions which do exist are conditionalized, problematized, or disturbed by
counterknowledges; and I will show how Romeo and J uliet’s love relationship is

idealized beyond what other loves the productions may present. This analysis

147

 

 

 

 

 

will demonstrate
productions corn
love, but that it i
final look at the
affirm or deny tl

Sacred, Sexua
Luhrmar

old accustomed
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will demonstrate that in the action corresponding to 1.1-3.5 in the playtext, the

productions combine to assert not just that Romeo and Juliet is a play about

 

love, but that it is about youthful, ideal love. This will prepare the way for a
final look at the productions’ closing moments, to see the ways in which they

affirm or deny the ideological commitments they have established.

Sacred, Sexual, Spiritual, Ideal

Luhrmann’s lovers first meet in the debauched atmosphere of Capulet’s
old accustomed feast. Pearce and Luhrmann (implying in the screenplay that
the hallucinatory imagery is Ecstasy-driven [44], although the visuals also
recollect an acid trip) describe the Busby Berkeley-esque dance sequence on

the great staircase, elements of which Luhrmann borrowed from the Sydney
Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras,11 as, partly, “close up inside Mercutio’s dream,”
and as a “depraved musical routine” (44); it is a scene in which “The grotesque
images of avaricious decadence bufld to a nightmarish peak” (45) and the
music “contorts to a horrifying, nightmarish cacophony” (46).12 During the
sequence, Luhrmann’s characteristic signifiers of excess depict what is as
much Romeo’s hallucination as Mercutio’s: slam zooms, whip pans, dutch

angles, distorted close ups, and hammering, distorted sound; colors (their neon

 

intensity diminished on video) seem to bleed off the screen into the air of the
theatre. Following a cut to a shocked, disoriented Romeo, the film jump-cuts to
an underwater shot (which the screenplay describes as “Silent” [46], but which
is not -- there are sounds of splashing and bubbles) of a wide-eyed Romeo,
staring down at the camera through the water.

Structurally, this sequence of hyperactivity and dissonance followed by

148

 

 

 

a shock cut to aI
first appearance
caterwauling ca
submerged and
Juliet as individ
household. Car
allows audience
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to the feast.13
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bildU’lgSrom

 

 

 

a shock cut to an almost-silent, submerged and staring face mirrors J uliet’s
first appearance, in a jump-cut from her mother’s and the Nurse’s
caterwauling career through the mansion to an almost-silent shot of J uliet’s
submerged and staring, dreamily placid face. This works to link Romeo and
Juliet as individuals trying to escape the goings-on inside the Capulet
household. Carrying baptismal symbolism, these parallel submergings also
allows audience members to connect Romeo and Juliet sacramentally before
the two even meet. The sea-shell basin that Romeo dunks his face in
resembles a holy water font, heightening the religious symbolism of the scene,
which in turn reflects back to J uliet’s earlier dousing. The sea-shell also
connotes Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, and so the engendering of something new,
an alternative to the revels in the other room.

When Romeo straightens from his dunking, he is suddenly, miraculously
straight, his perceptions now unclouded by the drugs he took before travelling
to the feast.13 This moment can be taken as sloppiness, an instance of Romeo
miraculously “getting clean” because he has to be for his meeting with Juliet.
However, it is also possible to understand this moment as miraculous: the
cleansing, in combination with the birthing/re-birthing symbolism of the water
and sea-shell basin, shows that Romeo, having resisted the temptations of the
feast, has been purified, rendered fit, rendered worthy for what is to come, his
meeting with the angelic J uliet.14 It is no accident, surely, but neither is it
simplistic romanticism that Romeo is costumed as a knight in shining armor.
Taken together, the Dantesque feast, the symbolic baptism and Romeo’s

costume recall not just medieval romances of popular imagination, but also the

bildungsroman component of an epic such as Homer’s Odyssey, complete with

149

 

the young man’s
in Spenser’s T he
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the young man’s travels over water on his way to maturity, and such episodes
in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene as Guyon’s temptations in the Bower of Blisse
(II.xii), or Red Crosse Knight’s various trials (II.xii and I, passim). Romeo does
not see Juliet and follow her out of the feast; he leaves under his own volition,
discovering her after having overcome temptation and having been purified.
The cleansed Romeo sees Juliet as a vision -- he can’t seem to believe his eyes -

- while she is in her angel costume, through a tank containing angel fish, which,
as Donaldson notes, share the coloration of the celebrants at the feast,15 colors

which now represent the sacred as well as the profane. Here, the film’s

Christian iconography characterizes Juliet with the angelic functions of
blessing, celebration and protection.16 Juliet celebrates Romeo’s purgation,

blessing him with a love at once earthly and quasi-divine; her love protects him
not only from the feast, but fiom Mercutio’s carnal conjuration afterwards as
well. Even though they reenter the great hall, which is still replete with threat
(Tybalt as devil) and temptation (Capulet’s wife, beckoning, beckoning;
Mercutio and the Montague boys), the love Romeo has found, personified in his

angelic guide -- he does follow her through the celebrants -- protects him from

these dangers.17

Further complicating this construction of the love-match as spiritual is
the water imagery which in part sustains the Christian symbology. Despite
the beauty of Donald McAlpine’s photography -- including one of the most
striking and probably best-remembered visuals in the film, that of Romeo and
Juliet gazing at each other through a screen of gemlike salt-water tropicals ~-

the water images are harnessed not just to the idea of baptism but of

drowning.18 For a moment, when Juliet is face down in her tub, she seems

150

 

 

 

barely to be brea
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barely to be breathing; Romeo, face down in the font, seems shocked as
bubbles burst out of his mouth; and these are but two of a series of visuals
containing or highlighting drowning imagery.19 This motif, an effective
visualization of the verbal love-death pattern that runs throughout the
playtext, also comments on the dangerous quality of their love: they literally
submerge themselves in it, and the danger of so overwhelming a passion is
made clear.

Neither of the other Romeo adaptations -- Rakofi’s or Zeffirelli’s -— goes
to such lengths to ascribe a spiritual quality to the relationship. All three, as
noted previously, take care to drape Juliet and her bedchamber in virginal
white for her 3.5 blow-up with her parents. All three have her in White for the
balcony scene as well (Luhrmann’s Juliet wears white all of the time).
Zeffirelli’s painterly compositions in the balcony scene recollect da Vinci’s
Virgin of the Rocks to an extent: the pale, bare skin of J uliet’s face, neck, arms
and upper chest, and her white bodice, make her seem to glow, set as they are
against her dark hair, next to the dark stone and in the same frame with
Romeo’s deep green clothing. As in other instances, in this scene Rakoff seems
to borrow much of his staging, and certainly some of his camera angles and
movements, from Zeffirelli, but despite using a similar color scheme, his
adaptation is missing the film’s rich, saturated palette and sfumato lighting
effects. And, as discussed previously, the Luhrmann and Zeffirelli films place
the Friar’s plan to use the marriage to unite the houses in a specifically
Christian context.

This latter point indicates the movement of the relationship into the

realm of the sacramental, an idea demonstrated clearly elsewhere in the

151

 

 

 

productions. ln
set in church. (as
directions to Jul
sacramental in
These vir
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productions. In Zeffirelli and Luhrmann, both preludes to the 2.5 marriage are
set in church (as opposed to Laurence’s cell, where the Nurse’s 2.4.67
directions to Juliet suggest it could be staged), and include moments clearly
sacramental in nature. In Luhrmann, Laurence’s

These violent delights have violent ends,

And in their triumph die like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore love moderately. (2 5.9- 14)
is presented as a wedding homily for the couple rather than as sententiae to
Romeo alone: the bride and groom stand before the altar while a choir sings in
the loft. Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet kneel before the altar after the Friar
promises that “Holy Church [will] incorporate two in one” (I. 37). By contrast,
Rakofi’s trio exits the Friar’s cell, presumably to perform the ceremony, which
takes place 01f screen; however, it does (if the reports of Romeo, Juliet, the
Nurse and the Friar are to be believed) take place, again sacramentalizing the
relationship.

However, the lack of overtly spiritualizing imagery in the Zeffirelli and
Rakoff productions suggests that a germane question might be what it means
to employ descriptions based on the word “spiritual.” Certainly the usage
relates to the conjunction of Spirits, or souls, an ephemerality difficult to
display in the visually specific media of film, tv and video, although I have
deliberately extended the term to refer to spiritual guardians and guides --
angels -- based on Luhrmann’s film. Certainly the use of “spiritual” also
depends on an understanding of love that expresses faith in the formless spirit,

or soul, more than an understanding of love as a complex compendium of needs

and desires. Certainly part of this understanding is based on the idea of one

152

 

 

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spirit uniting with another, as a result of which the spirit is completed,

becomes whole. The implication is that one needs a soul- (or spiritual) mate,
an individual ideally suited to oneself, to become whole.20 This sense of

idealization is crucial to understanding how young love seems to be expressed
in the adaptations and derivations: the couple are not just lovers, but lovers
representing a perfect match of persons, personalities, souls. There is a strong
degree of Hodgdon’s expectational text in such an understanding -- this is not
just what the lovers can be, or ought to be, but are. This sense of definitiveness
can extend to considerations of love in general: rather than a state
encompassing an array of experiences, love is reduced to a set of preferred,
privileged constructions. That this occurs reflects critics, who, in

demonstrating different kinds of love, tend to identify them as distinct, rather
than as permutations on a scale.21 This tendency stands in contrast to critics
who challenge the impulse to dichotomize love, and so resist the ideological
impulse to separate and prioritize.22 While many of these critics rightly and

helpfully identify different ways of conceiving of love, they do not interrogate
those conceptual differences, and this helps to preserve ideological distinctions
between the types. Deborah Shuger provides a helpful insight when she says

that

In any culture where erotic longing provides the central metaphor for
spirituality, desire cannot be equivalent to sexuality. Even when writing
about romantic love (which, of course, does have a sexual component),
Renaissance authors tend to assume a distinction between erotic and
sexual response -- which is not the same as a distinction between
spiritual and physical love. Erotic desire is physical, but it primarily
aflects the upper body; it is engendered in the eyes and dwells in the
heart. (Stanwood et. al. 272)

If early modern thought did perceive a difference between the erotic and the

153

 

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physical, or the spiritual and the physical, subsequent thinking need not
assume that same privileging construction. However, this seems to be the
case. Because the spiritual originates in the upper body, rather than in the
lower, it is seen to be not only different from, but better than, the physical.
This enables the idealizing impulse.

Like the soul, idealization is diflicult to show on film, video or television,
although there are certain cultural constructions that artists can resort to. As
the discussion above suggests, the color white -— imputing innocence, purity,
virginity, and so on -- is one. Angels, currently pOpular albeit in less terrifying
or incomprehensible forms than they sometimes take in Biblical literature, for
instance, are another. Subtlety and understatement seem to be
characteristics of ideals: the ideal is quiet, and need not attract attention to
itself; nor is the ideal “coarsened” by base, or baser, impulses, needs, motives
or functions: ideal lovers do not suffer fiom halitosis, are not self-centered or
troubled by hormonal imbalances or urges, do not try to cop feels or (heaven
forbid) become priapic. The ideal, particularly as regards love, can be shown by
bursts of spontaneous play, mutual laughter, giddiness, even goofiness (in
small amounts, but never at inopportune times). Physical desire is not
unwelcome, but is tempered, decorous, even timely.

This list is limited, in this case by what I have found in the Romeos
which could be applied as examples of idealization, which attends upon the
construction of Romeo and J uliet’s love as spiritual. The reason for this link
between the ideal and the spiritual can be found in what Snyder identifies as
the extraordinariness “not so much” of “the youthful lovers as” of “the love

itself” (Comic 68). This extraordinariness allows love to be seen “as an entity

154

 

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independent of the characters who represent it” (M. Hall 89). Iflove, seen as
extraordinary, ideal, exists apart from the subjects experiencing it, it becomes
easier to describe the emotional state as a spiritual one because of that
separation. Love, already an abstraction, becomes further abstracted by its
removal from the subject in whom it originated, and from the object at whom it
was directed. It seems likely that this removal feeds into notions of spirituality
since the idea of the spirit is akin to this conception of love: formless,
abstracted, rarified. Love removed from the complicated and complicating
subject becomes simpler, less subject to contradiction, and so easier to idealize
as characteristic of the perfect union between two similarly disembodied,
ethereal spirits. The difficulty of this conception for film, tv and video is the
problem of representing abstractions such as these, whence the standardized
cues like those enumerated above, which can help to identify rarified, innocent,
“spiritual” individuals and thus their emotional states.

All three Romeos display examples of the above qualities. Zeffirelli’s
lovers are profoundly active sighers, great ones for breathless, whispered
declarations of love. (The film is quite attentive to how Romeo and Juliet
breathe, as listening to their reactions when their hands first touch at the feast
demonstrates: the sound is miked, and mixed, so their little gasps have sonic
prominence.) Love for Zeffirelli’s youths is sudden, surprising. It literally takes
their breaths away. The lovers are also exultant. Olivia Hussey sells J uliet’s

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep. The more I give to thee

The more I have, for both are infinite. (2.1.175-7 7 )

for all it is worth as she takes her Romeo in an ecstatic hug. Romeo himself is

so carried away with joy that he swings from a tree growing beside J uliet’s

155

 

 

balcony as he 52
O blessec
Being in
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In contr
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balcony as he says, with similar delight,

O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard,

Being in night, all this is but a dream,

Too flattering-sweet to be substantial. (ll. 181-83)
After parting, he gambols through the garden while sprightly music plays on
the soundtrack. Everyone should feel such sweet sorrow. The qualities
suggested in these two moments, of suddenness and of plenitude, the capacity
to contain and express an infinite degree of emotion, are characteristic of one
way in which an idealized, spiritual love can be conceived.

In contrast, Rakoff’s lovers are models of propriety, even restraint.
They rarely exult, nor do they gambol. Before their marriage their kisses are
chaste at best, a couple quick pecks on the lips. They only touch once during
the balcony scene, and then they only touch each others’ fingertips. Their love
is so rarified that almost all physicality is stripped from the relationship: the
ideal as Apollonian. Only when they have been (safely) wed -- the very Friary

Friar won’t allow them a kiss before they marry -- do they become more
physically demonstrative.23 This is another way of presenting Romeo and

J uliet’s love as spiritualized, ideal: it is so perfect that they have little need of
outward, physical expression. This construction proposes that it is language,
not acts, that feeds assumptions of spirituality. This may seem banal, a
truism, given that this is a Shakespearean playtext under discussion.
However, that it is only partially true; more particularly, it is a discussion of
the playtext’s adaptations and derivations, and a side effect of film, tv and
video texts is that attention can be deflected away from the playtext. In these
media, love rendered primarily in speech -- as opposed to the other, multiple

languages of film, tv and video -- is ripe for the construction of Spirituality.

156

 

 

 

Rakoffs Romeo
of physicality, ti
West S id

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Rakoff’s Romeo and Juliet can be seen as spiritual lovers because of their lack
of physicality, their stress on “spiritual” language rather than bodily deeds.

West Side Story and China Girl employ some of the same devices as the
three Romeos, to what are at times similar ends. Laurents et. al. make an
obvious attempt at signification in West Side Story by renaming Juliet Maria.
Pauline Kael notes one possible understanding of this renaming: Maria “is no
mere girl like Juliet -— she has the wisdom of all women, she is the mother of us
all” (34). Luhrmann’s Juliet is an earth-bound (and ersatz) angel, blessing and
guiding her Romeo through the Capulet feast, but West Side Story’s Maria
becomes a full-fledged intercessor, urging Tony to stop the rumble and save the
sinners, then grieving for Fallen humankind at the film’s end as she laments
not only Tony’s death, but her own descent into hate. Tony’s wailed “Maria!”
after he has killed Bernardo is as much an invocation of the Virgin as a cry to
and for his girlfriend.24

This recasting of Juliet as a metaphorical Mother of Christ, in
combination with the film’s visual effects, does have a rarifying effect on her
relationship with Tony. They sing at, to, with and about each other and the
perfection of their love; they dance together as “sugary old stars hover in the
sky” (Kael 34) behind them;25 before that, they are isolated from others around
them, first by an iris, then by lighting. The “gauzy and dreamy” (34) visuals
make clear that “it’s true love -- unmistakably signalled as the first, the last,
the only” (30). As noted before, the balcony scene is lit so that the bars and
rails of the fire escape glow, and when Tony sings his anthem, “Maria,” the
bricks of the city, elsewhere presented as hard, flat, and unyielding, are

rendered via lighting as objects of almost transparent beauty -- love has the

157

 

 

power to make
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power to make even the West Side beautiful.

West Side Story takes a step away from the sacramental aspect of the
relationship in the Shakespearean playtext. Tony and Maria are never
married. However, they do participate in their own private, imaginary wedding,
arranging clothes for their never-revealed parents, dressing themselves in a
tuxedo coat and bridal veil. They kneel, and even have vows. (In this, their
wedding is more fully realized than that in any of the Romeo adaptations,
despite not being an actual wedding.) Although the scene is ceremonial, there
has been no sacrament, despite its sacramental tone and the added spiritual
imagery of a golden light shining down on the lovers at the end of the scene. To
engage in a debate about whether Tony and Maria’s relationship is truly
sacramental would be beside the point. The film encodes it as such, and, to
ensure that the love match is approved, seals the ceremony with a beam of
light from an unseen source, recognizable from centuries of Christian
iconography as the light of God (or the Holy Spirit, or divine love, or what have
you, anything but an overwrought lighting effect). The blessed lovers are
married, in metaphor if not in fact.

China Girl makes no effort at all to sacramentalize Tony and Tye’s
relationship. There is no wedding, no talk of nor playing at a wedding. While
overall their relationship might seem the least likely to contain spiritual
aspects, this impression may be fed by the film’s gritty look and urban milieu,
against which the lovers are set in contrast. Again, both are often dressed in
white (Tye in all but two of her appearances). Rosetta -- the neighborhood girl
with whom Tony has or has had some sort of unexplained relationship -- gives

Tony a white flower, and Tony presents Tye with three white

158

 

 

 

c rsanthemur
color, though, it
only do they no
the film, who 5]
ready for (or re
generally short
sentences and
volubility. In 2
love are derive
retrofitted love
Ferrara’s film
to speak, and
cannot be exp
covering up t]
it also seems -
neither expljc
Miraculous 21
Such a
away Rome 0‘
Rhsaline, alr
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Chrysanthemums. More interesting than Ferrara’s use of that overworked
color, though, is that the lovers hardly ever speak when thefre together. Not
only do they not fight, and so stand in relief to many of the other characters in
the film, who spend the majority of their time fighting, squabbling, or getting
ready for (or recovering from) some battle, but their conversations, which are
generally short, their individual contributions often half-expressed semi-
sentences and borderline non-sequiturs, stand out because of their lack of
volubility. In a derivation of a playtext from which presumptions of spiritual
love are derived not least from what the lovers say to each other, the
retrofitted lovers gain spiritual significance through their inarticulateness.
Ferrara’s film seems to pursue the double idea that Tony and Tye do not need
to Speak, and that when they do speak to each other, their love is so profound it
cannot be expressed adequately. (Such a conception has the added benefit of
covering up the actors’ deficiencies.) While this might seem a novel approach,
it also seems that inexplicability is another quality of idealized love: it requires
neither explication for nor conversation between those experiencing it.
Miraculous and instantaneous, it just is.

Such a construction of idealized love has the happy benefit of explaining
away Romeo’s shifting of affection fiom Rosaline to Juliet. Romeo’s love for
Rosaline, already structurally weakened by the Shakespearean satire of the
Sighing, wretched Petrarchan lover, is further invalidated by Romeo’s discovery
of his true -- i.e., right, correct -- love. What such a construction elides is that
Romeo’s sudden love is founded on the Petrarchan trope of looking, which
Romeo does not seem to realize was part of the problem vis a vis Rosaline.

Even more to the point, the construction disguises Romeo’s love for Juliet as

159

 

discovery, rathE
attraction to J1
and to its natu‘
them above the
of their friends
41) or as “tran
at first sight” (
passionate lov
necessary (De:
replacement 0

uniqueness ar

Zeffirel
so, I guess, trz
film shows a 3
conventional]
Screen to the
less confiden‘

Segue into th

rich, saturat
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hersem the.

 

 

discovery, rather than exchange. Describing Romeo’s sudden and unexplained
attraction to Juliet as “Virginal passion [that] sweeps them aloft and away,
and to its natural goal” (Granville-Barker 78) or as “naked passion, [that] lifts
them above the world and out of life by the mere force of it . . . beyond the ken
of their friends,” belonging “to a world which is not their world” (Charlton, 40-
41) or as “transcendent” (Levenson, “Changing 152) mutual (Levin 93), “love
at first sight” (Peterson 306), a “fundamental experience of deep and
passionate love . . . at the very base of the whole drama” (Clemen 69) or
necessary (Denson) covers up what Goldberg describes thus: “Juliet as
replacement object is inserted into a seriality rather than as the locus of
uniqueness and singularity” (85).26
Zeffirelli’s production participates in this idea of love as inexplicable -- as
so, I guess, true -- in how it first reveals Juliet to Romeo: during the dance, the
film shows a young woman whom I take to be Rosaline, tall, slender,
conventionally beautiful, prominently in the frame. Then, as she passes off
screen to the right, Juliet appears, dressed in deep red, shorter, less slender,
less confident in her bearing, less conventionally attractive, as the musicians
segue into the film’s love theme. The film’s signals are unmistakable, even to
one who has never seen it before, and perhaps also to one completely
unfamiliar with the story. It’s Juliet. She’s the One. As if these cues -- the
rich, saturated, distinct color, the space around Juliet, the music (all
recollecting West Side Story’s tactics upon Tony and Maria’s first meeting,
though more deftly done) -- were not enough, there is a cuts to a shot of a
stunned Romeo. Even if audience members fail to be overwhelmed by Juliet

herself, the film tells them in no uncertain terms that they should be, that not

160

 

 

 

simply the pars
moment.

There is
the room, movi
appear later in
attentions, onl;
blocking in del
on the dance f
Romeo is watt
the only ones I
who passes in

Peeks behind
facet: the ban
suddenly dire
not Rosaline.
attractive of
he begins to
ling OfSpectz
DTOductiom ;
disfingllishe
OfIOV‘Sr-boy‘
ldefllified b3
disgllise tbi.
Either Tony

hSomething

 

simply the person but what she has instantaneously inspired is of great
moment.

There is a similar strategy in Rakofi’s adaptation. His Romeo peruses
the room, moving fi'om left to right, evidently looking for Rosaline (who may
appear later in the scene, apparently having decided to favor Romeo with her
attentions, only to be pushed aside by the newly re-distracted lover). The
blocking in depth, which emphasizes fore- and backgrounds, establishes Juliet
on the dance floor, partnered by Tybalt; as Tybalt hands her off to Paris,
Romeo is watching her intently -- as is everyone else, since Juliet and Paris are
the only ones dancing. Helping to distinguish Romeo’s attention is Mercutio,
who passes in front of his friend, scanning the room for a likely prospect (he
peeks behind one woman’s visor, then quickly puts it back, a sour look on his
face): the bawdy fellow is lookin’ for the goods while the doting lover has
suddenly directed his attention to a girl whom the audience already knows is
not Rosaline. (As with Zefiirelli, Rakoffs Rosaline is the more conventionally
attractive of the two love-objects.) Romeo’s attention aside, it is notable that
he begins to concentrate on Juliet before she is set apart in the center of the
ring of spectators. The blocking in depth (foregrounds are used quite well in the
production) and reaction shots indicate Romeo’s interest before Juliet is
distinguished for an extended survey. This too disguises the mercurial shifting
of lover-boy’s affections, especially since Rosaline has not been clearly
identified by this point in the production. West Side Story and China Girl
disguise this shifting of affection even more successfully: neither film provides
either Tony with a pre-existing love interest. West Side Story’s is looking for

“something,” not someone, and China Girl’s does not seem to be looking for

161

 

 

anyone in parti
interest natura
without groani
marginally aw:
Kael, f0!
signal true lov
these cues and
example being
abandons Ger.
Victor Herber
not. so much t.
to recognize c
idealizing rep
fault can be 1
effort to expl;
that lack, as
kinds and m«
not explain V
beyond, perk
In gel
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anyone in particular as he roams the dance floor. Removing the prior love
interest naturalizes and mystifies their love: they can’t be in love with love

without groaning out a rill of Petrarchan gobbledegook for persons perhaps only

marginally aware of or concerned with their existence.27

Kael, for one, reacts sharply to many of the devices directors can use to
signal true love, “suggest[ing] that audiences who have come to depend on
these cues and prods are becoming helpless to respond without them” (30), one
example being, “When true love enters . . . [West Side Story], Bernstein

abandons Gershwin and begins to echo Richard Rogers, Rudolf Friml, and
Victor Herbert. There’s even a heavenly choir” (34:).28 My own complaint is

not so much that those attending films or watching tv or videos are conditioned
to recognize certain cues as representing love -- they, we, are -- but that these
idealizing representations mystify love, render it easy. Of course, much of this
fault can be laid at the playtext’s feet: Romeo and Juliet makes no particular
effort to explain or understand love, its admittedly gorgeous verse obscuring
that lack, as does its examination of love via the presentation of its contrasting
kinds and modes. The result is a complex look at the variety of love that does
not explain what draws Romeo and Juliet -- or any other couple -- to each other
beyond, perhaps, sight and a touch of the blarney.

In general, this mystification is not absolute. The productions do not
reductively present their love relationships as only spiritual and sacramental.
While all display at least some spiritual component to the relationship, all five
also reveal an element of carnality, of physical desire in the relationship, even
if it is only indirectly expressed. China Girl’s inarticulate lovers are in some

ways the most physically desirous of the couples. As in the playtext and the

162

 

other productio
whole first excl
goes on in dam
repartee. That
are compatible
closer together
postures, touci
intersecting ir
and udllingne:
Tony and Tye
focused on ear
aware. With
Juliet’s share
apart from tb
infatuation” l
exchange, To
for them to r
and late 19 8-
9M encour;
Tony and T3-
outside ther
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scene as We

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who

 

 

other productions, the initiation of their relationship is based on sight. Their
whole first exchange is a nice display of the non-verbal sexual evaluation that
goes on in dance clubs, the playtext’s verbal wit transformed into physical
repartee. That they dance together suggests nothing more than Tony and Tye
are compatible, a nice-looking couple, but when the music slows and they move
closer together, their body language -- loose shoulders, slightly slouched
postures, touching foreheads (and, off screen, other body parts) -- and
intersecting index vectors demonstrate not just compatibility, but availability
and willingness. When the other dancers, looking off left, clear a space around
Tony and Tye in response to the entry of Shin and his faction, the two remain
focused on each other, oblivious to the threat of which the others are very
aware. With some modification, Diana Henderson’s comment on Romeo and
Juliet’s shared 1.5 sonnet describes this moment quite nicely: they “exist
apart fiom the other [s] . . . in their own [physically] lyrical world of erotic
infatuation” (4). Unlike the “surreptitious” (4) nature of Romeo and J uliet’s
exchange, Tony and Tye’s is highly public. Partly it is so because it is possible
for them to reveal a sexual attraction publicly -- the dance club environment
and late 1980s teenage behavioral codes did not just tolerate, but allowed and
even encouraged the display of erotic attraction -- but it is so also because
Tony and Tye are so involved in their private lyrical world that the world
outside their erotic idyll ceases to matter.

This disengagement with the world is on display in the second dance club
scene as well, when Tony and Tye dance slowly and deep kiss as these lyrics
play on the soundtrack:

. . . I’ll walk in any weather
When we’re together.

163

 

 

 

And l 00

To be 53
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And I could be glad

To be sad

Standing next to you.

And I could be down

In the dumps, baby,

If you were down there, too.

And I could cry

All my eyes

If I could still see you.

And I could be blue . . .

If you you were blue with me.
Not only do Tony and Tye disregard those around them, but the song they
dance to exalts the disengagement they diSplay (in a club itself distanced from
their world of everyday neighborhoods and conflicts): suffering and misery are
negligible when the beloved is present. Their later love-making (China Girl
being the only production of the five to show the act) is likewise non-verbal.
The setting for the encounter, an abandoned tenement, extends their erotic
disengagement beyond that of the second dance club as they retire further
from the world; afterwards, Tye muses that she “wish[es] we never had to go
back.” While “back” refers to their geographic neighborhoods, it also references
the emotional and intellectual aspects of returning to Chinatown and Little
Italy. (The discovery of the characters in bed recalls Rakofi’s aubade, which
recalls Zefiirelli’s, which recalls West Side Story’s; it anticipates Luhrmm’s.
Robert F. Willson notes that by locating its lovers in bed, Zeffirelli’s production
increases the sense of their liberation, as well as their isolation [103]. This is
an idea that applies equally well to the other four productions.) Squalid it may
be, but their erotic hideaway is one in which a new, more amenable ideology
obtains. It is also a place where the spiritual and the erotic converge: at one

point, Tye strokes Tony’s chest with the white Chrysanthemums he gave her,

and the symbol of innocence, purity and fragility becomes also an object

164

 

 

 

representing 31

The com
Tony and Mari
despite being I
and often hug .
with much att

style from the
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representing and enacting sexual desire.

The couple whom Tony and Tye most closely resemble, West Side Story’s
Tony and Maria, are far less physically desirous than their 1987 descendants,
deSpite being more physically expressive: although both literally dance for joy

and often hug one another, they kiss rarely. They express their love in song,
with much attendant celestial imagery;29 when they dance, it is in a different

style from the dances in which the other characters participate. Maria’s solo
dances, such as in “I Feel Pretty” and while waiting for Tony on the roof of her
tenement building, are either light-hearted and playful -- with spiritualized
overtones, in other words —- or recollect her “delicate” pas de deux with Tony at
the dance hall, which is configured in direct contrast to the spectacular

energies of the Jets and the Sharks, and all of the erotic charge that the
“Mambo” and “Blues” dances figure forth.30 It also demonstrates the contrast

between the public feud, played out in the wide-open spaces of the dance floor
and the city streets, and the private love affair, in which the lovers are isolated
by optical effects, by lighting effects, are isolated in the bars of the fire escape,
in the dress shop and in Maria’s room.

Of the five productions, this one maintains the most rigid division
between spiritualization and sexualization: Tony and Maria not only do not
dance the mambo, but, as they are conceived, would not, and maybe could not.
To do so would compromise what they represent. The film comes closest to
such a compromise in the “Tonight” quintet, which juxtaposes Tony and

Maria’s version of the song with Anita’s and the gangs’:

TONY AND MARIA ANITA JETS AND SHARKS
Tonight there will be Anita’s gonna get her We’re gonna rock it
no morning star. kicks tonight,

165

 

 

Tonight,
see In}
When W
Will st
are.
Today ti
seem l
The hon
slowly
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light.
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bright
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endle.
endle:
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Tony and Mar
their Wishes, .
complicates tl
Ironically, the
Bernardo, bu
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(Illintet; All]

 

 

Tonight, tonight, I’ll Tonight. We’re gonna jazz it up
see my love tonight. We’ll have our and have us a ball.
When we kiss, stars private little They’re gonna get it
will stop where they mix tonight;
are. Tonight. The more they turn it
Today the minutes He’ll walk in hot and on, the harder
seem like hours. tired, they’ll fall!
The hours go so Poor dear. Well, they began it --
slowly, Don’t matter if he’s Well, they began it --
And still the sky is tired, And we’re the ones to
light. As long as he’s here, stop ‘em once and
Oh moon, grow Tonight! for all,
bright, Tonight!
And make this
endless day
endless night,
Tonight!

Tony and Maria are still the chastely desirous couple, but the conjunction of
their wishes, Anita’s carnal intentions and the gangs’ violent designs
complicates the spiritualizing tendency: love is not just the moon and stars.
Ironically, the rumble leads not to Anita’s expected sexual interlude with
Bernardo, but to one between Tony and Maria. Violence brings them together
in Maria’s bedroom, and they sink out of sight onto her bed even while they
continue to sing about their idealized, spiritual love. This scene is by far their
most sexual; in general, the physical potential in Romeo and J uliet’s
relationship, displayed at its height in J uliet’s “GallOp apace, you fiery-footed
steeds” (3.2.1-31), is in West Side Story displaced onto other characters. Anita
in particular carries the mantle of desirous womanhood. Whereas Maria would
like the neckline of her dress lowered “one little inch more,” wondering “How
much [it] can . . . do,” Anita has been up to something unmentionable with
Bernardo “in the balcony at the movies” and remembers with pleasure how
“healthy” Bernardo is “After a fight.” Maria wears her white dress during the

quintet; Anita, lit in red, wears a black slip and is making quite a show of sliding

166

 

 

 

her legs into Si
1 have a
as dangerous.
chapter 3 (“Th
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her legs into some sheer black stockings.31

I have already noted that West Side Story tends to construct sexuality
as dangerous. To the construction of sexuality as predatory examined in
chapter 3 (“There’s only one thing they want from a Puerto Rican girl”) is added
the blend of sex and violence in the quintet, along with notions of the risks
incurred by sexuality: Anita tells Maria that “one little inch” can do “Too
muc ”; when Maria protests that her altered dress is “for dancing, no longer for
praying,” Anita responds, “Listen, with those boys, you can start out dancing
and end up praying.”32 These concerns differ qualitatively from Bernardo’s. He
worries about sexual Others. Anita’s concern is generic -- all teen males bear
watching. Sex -— although fun -- can get one into trouble.33 Throughout, Anita’s

perceptions of love are not uncomplicated: an enthusiastic sexual participant,
she is also committed to the spiritual construction of love; at the same time
she embraces her own sexual identity, she works to dissuade Maria from
taking the same course, and in her more suspicious moments dismisses
Maria’s claims to a spiritual union with Tony. Her conclusion, that “Bernardo
was right” about the Jets after they have assaulted her is a reduction of her
rich, contradictory vision of love. It simplifies, divides and excludes --
exemplifying an ideology in action -- and in some ways represents a greater
tragedy than the death of the less complex and less interesting Tony.

The strategy of displacement also is present in Zeffirelli and Luhrmann.
Although the lovers in both those films do display erotic potential, the directors
shunt some of the sexual energy away from their lovers and onto others.
Donaldson makes clear that Zeffirelli situates the film’s spectator as desiring

subject, so that, particularly in the 3.5 aubade, those watching the slim, softly

167

 

 

lit. Romeo see 1
Fit 154 and

bed and deftly
After Romeo t
pants, there is
lover like this
pool scene, thl
intensity. Th]
swims away f
this time witl
to kiss his wa
the drowning
may Bliminat
Ill. 1-19), and
With new clot
means de-erc
L"hmlann’s .
partly Constr
3180 3 mom:
that. of the a,
hers. both a(
moment, as ,
Sinus and th
COmemlllaltir

 

 

lit Romeo see him as Juliet might, as an object of appreciation (Shakespearean
Films 154 and 165-71).34 In a similar scene, Luhrmann’s Romeo arises from

bed and deftly slides into his boxers. Moments later, the Nurse barges in.
After Romeo takes a pratfall off the bed and starts to kick his way into his
pants, there is a cut to a shot of the leering Nurse. Juliet never looks at her
lover like this, but that is not to say she is never desirous. In the balcony-cum-
pool scene, the lovers have four extended kisses, each increasing in fervent
intensity. They break the first off mutually; the second Juliet breaks off and
swims away fi'om Romeo, breathing heavily; Juliet also interrupts the third,
this time with more difficulty -- on her part as well as Romeo’s -- as he begins
to kiss his way down her chest, and drags herself out of the pool; the fourth, in
the drowning image described earlier, takes place in a blur of bubbles. The fihn
may eliminate the most sexually charged part of her “Gallop apace” soliloquy
(11. 1-19), and Claire Danes may perform the remainder more as a girl delighted
with new clothes than as a woman in an erotic swoon, but the film by no
means de-eroticizes Juliet to the extent that Rakoff’s production does.
Luhrmann’s Juliet undresses Romeo, and he, her; and although her action is
partly constructed as one of ministration -- she is examining his hurts -- it is
also a moment of erotic display. She reveals his body to her look (as well as to
that of the audience of desiring DiCaprio fans) and for her exploration, and he,
hers, both acts in which audience members vicariously participate. At this
moment, as with most of Luhrmann’s intimate scenes, the rate of cutting
slows and the camera moves less and less obviously, allowing time for extended
contemplation of their intimacy as well as their bodies. During the aubade,

they are again childlike, romping under the sheets, and though she is nude and

168

 

 

be nearly so, tl
Althoug
distinct from t'
Montague boy
before the gas
benefit of the
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sexuality is or
retention of p
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he nearly so, this is never made a point. Their playfulness is emphasized.
Although the two are both desirous and sexual, these qualities are
distinct from the aggressive or lecherous sexuality of the Nurse or the
Montague boys (whose anthem, “I am a pretty piece of flesh,” first heard
before the gas station shoot—em-up as Samson tongues his own nipple for the
benefit of the Catholic schoolgirls, also plays on a car radio as Romeo runs into
the Capulet garden). As with Maria and Tony, this Romeo and J uliet’s
sexuality is constricted. Displacement is an effective strategy. It allows the
retention of physical desire while preserving the spiritual conception of Juliet or
the Juliet figure. In this, it functions in much the same way that
sacramentalization does, by containing difficult-to—contain desire within an
easily-conceived-of construct -- the lustful sidekick, for example —- or, in the
case of sacrament, a socially-approved-of institution. As an example, West

Side Story shunts J uliet’s desire away from Maria and onto Anita, who is at
least partially constructed as the hot-blooded, slutty Chiquita.35 Just as it is

when constituted within the confines of marriage, erotic desire is put at a
distance, removed, when it is placed on the slut.

Luhrmann’s lovers are similar to Zeflirelli’s, although the heroine’s body
is emphasized to a greater degree in the latter than in the former. This can be
seen in particular in the balcony scene. Juliet wears a white shift with pale
gold trim; its scoop neckline is quite low, something which Juliet herself
realizes, covering her chest with her hand when first surprised by Romeo. As
the scene progresses, however, she becomes less concerned with this even as
the camera angles increasingly emphasize her décolletage: several of the set-

ups are low angles of Juliet leaning far over the stone rail. Décolleté is not

169

 

 

necessarily 561
paired With th
Zeffirelli’s film
physical desir-
bosom and all
complete With
sexualized vei
surprise and l
Juliet’s physi.
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aubade (in W]
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rather than,

 

 

necessarily sexual, but it can be a component of the erotic, particularly when
paired with the desirous abandon with which Juliet embraces Romeo.
Zeffirelli’s film is adept at showing how quickly exuberant joy can shade into
physical desire, so that they become synonymous: Juliet throws herself, her
bosom and all into Romeo’s arms, and their embraces soon slide into kisses,
complete with clear, audible moans, gasps, and heavy breathing -- the
sexualized version of the high-volume breathing in 1.5 that demonstrates
surprise and breathless innocence. What works so well in the scene is that
Juliet’s physical display —- as with Romeo’s later nude scene -- conflates
innocence with sexuality: Juliet is without affect, aware of but unashamed by
her physicality in the presence of her love. Although the entirety of “Gallop
apace” is cut, the presentation of Juliet on the balcony and later during the
aubade (in which she has a brief, again almost heedless, nude shot) carries
some of the character’s desiring energy.

Although the initial and subsequent encounters between Rakofl’s lovers
are chaste, there are some incidental suggestions of desire in the presentation
of 1.5. Oddly, a production stressing its textual fidelity as a selling point ignores
the textual suggestion that Romeo “would not dance” (1.5.129); the line in the
production is “he that just danced,” and the visuals show Romeo not only
maneuvering to meet with Juliet on the dance floor, but cutting in on her
partner, who steps away in confusion. This Romeo does not sneak up on
Juliet, as does Zeffirelli’s, or discover her by accident, as does Luhrm3nn’s. He
sees her and, swept away, makes a public move to meet her. This gives his

pursuit not a little urgency: he wants her enough to venture out into the open,

rather than, as in Luhrmann, remaining on the verge of the celebration.36

170

 

Zeffirelli’s visr
movements of
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Zeffirelli’s visual motif of touching palms appears here, incorporated into the
movements of the dance, which has the effect of deeroticizing the touch, and
emphasizing Romeo’s wit in troping a physical movement into a verbal conceit.
This is an act of displacement, containing the potential erotic content within a
chaste dance and densely packed verbiage. While filled with sensual detail —-
particularly the textured, subtle palette of the costumes and set -- the scene is
not particularly erotic; Juliet is reserved (as one might expect her to be,
confronted with this unknown, bold fellow) and their first two kisses are not
only low in intensity, but something of a mystery. What, exactly, has Romeo
done to move her to allow the kiss? She certainly gives him no encouragement.
Throughout their courtship, they might best be described as decorous. She is

encouraging during the balcony scene, but, as noted, their only touch is a brief,
tenuous one involving fingertips at the end of the encounter.37 Even “Gallop

apace,” here alone kept in its entirety, is delivered in much the same way as
the rest of J uliet’s lines: her wish that “love-performing night” will

Spread thy close curtain . . .

That runaways’ eyes may wink, and Romeo

Leap to these arms untalked of and unseen. . . .
that night will “learn me how to lose a winning match / Played for a pair of
stainless maidenhoods” (325-7, 1213) seems of mild theoretical interest to
her. Juliet as desiring subject is substantially reined in. Only during the
aubade are the conventional physical signals of desire uncorked. After waking,
Romeo gives Juliet another peck, then they kiss more deeply after she asks
“With thou be gone” (3.5.1); she smiles as he nuzzles her neck at “Yon light is
not daylight” (l. 12), he kisses her at “Let me be ta’en” (l. 17), and they kiss and

nuzzle at “I have more care to stay than will to go” (1. 23); they kiss at “More

171

 

 

light and right”
More rer
is not Zeffirelli-
production emj
movement inn
music in two y
at the ends of
and literally,
treatments, a
literal sound.
connected), 0
momentarily
Nonliteral sc
always sour<
The w

music is ofte
an intermis:
an eKample
until the au

it does not]
lender feelj
However‘ c'
rec"lgllizab
aSSociated

the balcon

 

 

light and light” (1. 36), then kiss several times as he takes his leave.

More revealing than this physical display is the scene’s use of sound. It
is not Zeffirelli—style amplified breathing; rather, here -- and only here -- the
production employs nonliteral musical sound for a purpose other than to signal
movement into or out of one of the production’s three parts. That is, it uses

music in two ways: nonliterally, accompanying for instance the fade to black

at the ends of parts one and two, and the fade in after each brief intermission;38

and literally, combining both source-connected and source-disconnected
treatments, as with the instrumentalists performing during the feast. In
literal sound, the music comes from a source seen on screen (source-
connected), or from a source which viewers can infer comes fiom a
momentarily invisible part of the space being depicted (source-disconnected).
Nonliteral sound does not have its source in the space being depicted; it is
always source-disconnected.

The way Rakoff’s production tends to use nonliteral music imitates how
music is often used in stage productions, to signal movements into and out of
an intermission, for example, or to signal the incipient start of a performance,
an example of how the production ties itself to theatrical performance. Up
until the aubade, the production never uses music in any other nonliteral way:
it does not heighten the energy of the 1.1 brawl, for instance, or underscore the
tender feeling of J uliet’s 1.3 encounter with her mother and the Nurse.
However, during the aubade, what has by this point in the production become
recognizable as the love theme plays. Used over the title credits, and so
associated with the production as a whole, it also covers the fade to black after

the balcony scene, and so gathers to it associations of Romeo and Juliet’s love,

172

 

 

 

 

rather than 51111911
layer of significati
which point J ulie‘
by an audience In
love, and so, even
scene than in any
the film has alree
Romeo touching .
stops, in conjunct
harsh discords ar
so as to be less, I
with the idea the
They both exist,
production’s con
Sublect such as -

Center of concer.

Love Beyond 1

None of t
Sacramental an
love, to one deg
by CO“medium
Who are lm‘olv.
examines of PE

lVhom fimC-tior

 

 

rather than simply those of a production of Romeo and Juliet. This additional
layer of signification stops at J uliet’s “Hie hence, be gone away” (3.5.26), at
which point Juliet begins to refuse Romeo’s caresses. The music can be taken
by an audience member to represent the idealization of Romeo and J uliet’s
love, and so, even though the lovers are more physically passionate in this
scene than in any other, that physicality is pulled into the spiritualizing motifs
the film has already established. The film’s most overt physical display, of
Romeo touching J uliet’s (still clothed) body, happens after the love theme
stops, in conjunction with J uliet’s concerns about “division” and “Straining
harsh discords and unpleasing sharps” (ll. 29, 28), and is hidden by a curtain lit
so as to be less, not more, transparent. Rakoff’s Romeo and Juliet aligns itself
with the idea that spiritual and sexual love are more separate than equal.
They both exist, and may even co-exist, but the latter type is displaced by the
production’s combination of music, photography and blocking, not onto another
subject such as the Nurse, Lady Capulet or an audience member, but from the

center of concern. It is made marginal.

Love Beyond the Lovers

None of the productions preserves a clear dichotomy between spiritual,
sacramental and sexually desirous love. All do privilege a particular view of
love, to one degree or another, although none leaves that view uncomplicated
by counterknowledges. However, Romeo and Juliet are not the only characters
who are involved in or speak of love in the playtext. Aside from the obvious
examples of Paris, the Nurse, Mercutio, Samson and Gregory (the latter four of

whom function at least partially as foils to any tender sentiments expressed in

173

 

 

 

 

or about the prim
playtht? the Cat
husband-

With some

Mercutio, the Nu
more carnally 3“

seem to be some
how the adult me
portrayed. 1 (1119‘
Further, it seems
set of production;
consider not just
productions disp‘.
substantively dil
relationships por
just on Romeo ar
in their respecti‘
While the
represent one w
suffers some set
Flemming. for e
not. The Nurse.
instituted by id.
91191113” (1.5.134

best interests I

 

 

or about the primary relationship), there are three other marriages in the
playtext: the Capulets, the Montagues and that of the Nurse to her late
husband.

With some variation of degree, the productions all maintain a sense of

Mercutio, the Nurse and the servants or their analogues as earthier, bawdier,
more carnally aware than Romeo or J uliet.3 9 However, I have noticed what

seem to be some presumptions in the secondary criticism of the playtext about
how the adult married relationships are conceived and, hence, ought to be
portrayed. I question whether the productions share these assumptions.
Further, it seems sensible that if one is to consider how love relationships in a
set of productions participate in those productions’ ideologies, then one should
consider not just the primary, but also the ancillary love relationships the
productions display. Are Romeo and Juliet aberrant? Is their love
substantively different from others’ love? How are the others’ love
relationships portrayed, and what light, if any, may these portrayals cast not
just on Romeo and J uliet’s relationship, but on the ideologies already revealed
in their respective productions?

While there is an argument to be made that the adults in the playtext

represent one way of thinking and the youths another,40 this assessment

suffers some setbacks in the productions at hand. For one, it is binary,
presuming, for examfle, that the elders are only feud-driven, when they are
not. The Nurse, for instance, although having internalized the separations
instituted by ideology -- she conceives of Romeo as “The only son of your great
enemy” (1.5.134) -- often acts more in support of what she thinks are Juliet’s

best interests, rather than those of the house. Both Snyder and Robert W.

174

 

 

Witt point out th:
feud.41 More to t

interested in the
apparently caus<
that because the
outward, those 5
those household
others, it is not.
The most
that between C.
appearance is I
domestic cont/e:
is not required
her daughter [
severe as she]
is accompame
too soon marr
thus placing I
WOfried abou'
bad relations
““1919, are n
Commumcat,
and a bUlly,
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pl Bytext‘ an

 

 

Witt point out that Capulet himself may be looking for ways to dial back the
feud.41 More to the point, the assumption that the elders are primarily

interested in the feud, in maintaining their society’s patriarchal structure,
apparently causes critics to assume that the families are internally conflicted,
that because the households are directing divisive, combative energies
outward, those same energies will be present in the foundational relationship of
those households. And though this is certainly true in some productions, in
others, it is not.

The most openly hostile married relationship in the five productions is
that between Capulet and his wife in Zeffirelli’s film. The woman’s first
appearance is not during the 1.1 brawl; instead, she first appears in the
domestic context of 1.2, in which, if the dialogue is any indication, her presence
is not required. Revealed after several shots of the happy Juliet, framed like
her daughter by an open window, the woman’s expression and bearing are
severe as she looks at her husband before shutting the window on him; the shot
is accompanied by a whining discord in the score. This prompts Capulet’s “And
too soon marred are those so early made” (1.2.13) as he shuts his own window,
thus placing himself at even further remove from his wife. Well he might be
worried about o’erhasty marriages, which the scene implies is a reason for their
bad relations. By contrast, Luhrmann’s Capulets, while hardly the ideal
couple, are not characterized by the same quality of scornfulness
communicated by Capulet’s wife in Zeflirelli. Luhrmann’s Capulet is a drunk
and a bully, his wife a pill-popping lech; neither seems afraid to display these
qualities to the other (or to others). Pearce and Luhrmann’s rearranging of the

playtext, and the staging of the screenplay in Luhrmann’s film, make clear

175

 

that Capulet’s wi
with Tybalt. lns‘

CAPULE'I
That we h
Look you,
And so did
‘Tis very l:
I promise
I would he
PARIS T?

Madam, g
CAPULE'
Tonight s
The screenplay ]

it occurs in the i

GI
She’ll 11

Dave, an

D.
These 1

Capulet

C.
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that Capulet’s wife does not care if her husband knows about her infatuation
with Tybalt. Instead of the playtext’s,

CAPULET Things have fall’n out, sir, and so unluckily
That we have had no time to move our daughter.

Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly,

And so did 1. Well, we were born to die.

‘Tis very late. She’ll not come down tonight.

I promise you, but for your company

I would have been abed an hour ago.

PARIS These times of woe afford no time to woo.
Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.
CAPULET’S WIFE I will, and know her mind early tomorrow.
Tonight she’s mewed up to her heaviness. (3.4.1-11)

The screenplay presents the following, which, with some minor changes, is how
it occurs in the film:

GLORIA
She’ll not come down tonight.

Dave, an understanding smile.

DAVE
These times of woe afford no time to woo.

Capulet guides Dave into the house.

CAPULET
Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly.
GLORIA
Goining)
And so did I.
CAPULET
(a cold glance at Gloria)
Well, we were born to die.

Capulet takes a large slug of whiskey. Gloria leans close to Dave.
GLORIA
I’ll know her mind early tomorrow.
Tonight she’s mewed up to her heaviness. (118)
Aside from her more active participation in the conversation, the key moment,

for the present purpose, is when she says “And so did I” in her husband’s

presence, which might reasonably provoke “a cold glance.” The film itself does

176

 

 

not contain SUCh
born to die.” Whi
participation in t
likely that the in
soon will become
involvement wit:
as an invitation
she may (for wh
response could l
With Tybalt, or 1
relationship. A
not care about 1
so stricken by I
may have welcc
“733’- This is m
Z9ll’ll‘tilli’s Capt
antaEOIlism an
By Way .
decorum C an
(1.1.69), a line
(lithe line is In

denigrafing or
Bloch to demo:

their perform E

Who know eac

 

 

not contain such a glance. Capulet instead sighs before saying, “Well, we were
born to die.” While his scripted ire could be in reaction to his wife’s uninvited
participation in the conversation as well as to what she says, I think it more
likely that the intended response was to reveal to Paris -- who (they believe)
soon will become a member of the family -- her implied more-than—cousinly
involvement with Tybalt. As scripted and as acted, her line could be construed
as an invitation to Paris, a statement of fact, and a cut at her husband, whom
she may (for whatever reason) wish to humiliate. As scripted, Capulet’s
response could be to her interruption, to her suggestion about her relationship
with Tybalt, or even a revelation of his own suspicions about such a
relationship. As acted, Capulet’s response is even more ambiguous: he might
not care about his wife’s dalliance, or may be oblivious to it; he may himself be
so stricken by Tybalt’s death that he doesn’t even notice his wife’s remark. He
may have welcomed was his wife’s involvement with Tybalt welcomed in some
way. This is not openly hostile, as it seems to me that the relations between
Zeffirelli’s Capulets are, but it some ways it is more troubling for its blend of
antagonism and weakness.

By way of contrast, Rakoff’s Capulets are a model of middle-class
decorum. Capulet’s wife keeps “A crutch, a crutch -- why call you for a sword?”
(1.1.69), a line neither the Luhrmann nor Zeffirelli films retain, but her delivery

of the line is not as barbed as it could be. It is more dismissive in tone than
denigrating or sarcastic.“2 These, the first words the character speaks, can do

much to demonstrate what kind of relationship the couple has, and in Rakoff
their performance indicates two people who have been married a long time,

who know each other very well. In its intonation her question inclines more

177

 

 

War d the “Hen
sword, I say- Oh
(ll. 70-71), is tha
there’s Montagu
enchant;e is char
two, he somethil
they touch eaCh
stands alone in i
that She seems
holding his Wife
his wife back, W
more asserti"e ?
and at the edge
the three, whid
this close to bet
meet, fall in lov
This ass:
Montagues. W
nnmammme
wife grabs the .
foot to seek a ll
Presumes. his .
anger, when It!
Capulets wife

DPOduction: tb

 

 

toward the “Here we go again” than the “Old dolt.” Capulet’s response, “My
sword, I say. Old Montague is come, /And flourishes his blade in Spite of me”
(11. 70-71), is that of a man making excuses: “But I have to go fight. See,
there’s Montague.” He knows he’s not going anywhere. The tone of this brief
exchange is characteristic of their relationship. She is the more flinty of the
two, he something of a buffoon. Unlike Zeffirelli’s or Luhrmann’s Capulets,
they touch each other with affection during Escalus’ 1.1 scolding -- Capulet
stands alone in the two films -— as well as during the Prince’s 3.1 beration, so
that she seems to be supporting him. In Rakoff, the latter scene has Capulet
holding his wife to his chest -— he now supports her. Luhrmann’s Capulet holds
his wife back, while in Zeffirelli, Capulet is marginalized as his wife takes the
more assertive role -- she is center screen, he briefly visible in the background
and at the edges of the frame. The Rakoff relationship is the more “normal” of
the three, which is of a part with the rest of the production: this Verona is just
this close to being a safe, well-ordered society where Romeo and Juliet could
meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after.

This assertion is strengthened by how the production presents its
Montagues. When Montague’s wife stops her husband fiom engaging Capulet,
it is in a manner different from that employed by Capulet’s wife. Montague’s
wife grabs the old man and won’t let him go, and shouts “Thou shalt not stir one
foot to seek a foe” (1.1.73) directly in his face -- she’s angry with him, and, one
presumes, his constant willingness to fight. She wants it to stop. Despite this
anger, when Montague is castigated by the Prince, she stands by him, much as
Capulet’s wife does with her husband. This is a recurrent device in the

production: the Montagues comfort each other, as when, worried, they join

178

 

hands at the me:
and during the 3
frequently than
stable as the Ca
Zeifirelli’s film.
discontented, hi
even be what Rt
the line. Zeffire
supportive way:
absent or physi.
concerns about.
those concerns ‘
sut’gests, opera
contrast, Luhn
Either Zeflireflj‘
appearance, th
The Widescree1
" What in a reg
twenty tan efie

Scan VerSiOIls <

 

 

hands at the mention that Romeo “makes himself an artificial night” (1. 133),
and during the 3.1 interview with the Prince. Although appearing far less
frequently than their purported rivals, the Montagues’ marriage appears as
stable as the Capulets’, and more physically affectionate besides. So, too, in
Zeffirelli’s film. Whereas Zeffirelli’s Capulets might charitably be described as
discontented, his Montagues are close, affectionate. Their relationship might
even be what Romeo and J uliet’s would develop into, twenty-some years down
the line. Zeffirelli’s Montagues repeatedly touch each other in comforting or
supportive ways in 1.1 and 3.1, scenes in which Capulet’s wife is, respectively,
absent or physically and emotionally separate from her husband. Their
concerns about Romeo parallel Capulet’s about his daughter, but they voice
those concerns together, as opposed to Capulet, who, the film’s editing
suggests, operates something at odds with his wife when it comes to Juliet. In
contrast, Luhrmann’s Montagues are more distant toward each other than
either Zeflirelli’s or Rakofi’s. When shown in the same frame during their 1.1
appearance, they sit at opposite ends of the seat in the back of their limousine.
The widescreen composition exaggerates the distance between the two of them
-- what in a real limo would be perhaps four feet becomes, in the theatre, a good
twenty (an effect lessened on letterboxed video, and nonexistent on pan-and-
scan versions of the film) -- as does the fact that the two rarely look at each
other. The only time their eyes meet, or when they touch, is when she will not
allow him to pull his rifle -- named “Longsword” -- from its mount, at the
reassigned “Give me my long sword, ho!” (l. 68). When Montague later pleads
for his son (3.1. 178-80), his wife is left in the deep background, revealed only

momentarily as bodies move about -- a contrast, albeit not a positive one, to

179

 

 

Capulet, who doe
from attacking E
None of ti
and his, as havii
Capulet may be
conceive of his w
Nurse’s marriag
husband’s bawd
source of amuse
Juliet’s fall is al
Nurse, whose n
if nothing else.
cannot be said <
of such stories,
marriage quite
Both del
the elders’ love
DocWas ever 11
Maria has pan
“9"” appear c
flEtting about
appears to be .
she “lives in ti
many during

despite having

 

 

Capulet, who does hold his wife, although not to comfort her, but to restrain her
from attacking Benvolio again.

None of the three films represents Capulet and his wife, or Montague
and his, as having any demonstrable erotic desire for each other. (Luhrmann’s
Capulet may be aware of his wife’s sexual grazing, but he does not appear to
conceive of his wife as desirable.) Nor is there any indication of such in the
Nurse’s marriage, beyond what may be inferred from her own report of her
husband’s bawdy. That report, shocking to Capulet’s wife in Zeflirelli, and a
source of amusement to the lady of the house in Rakoff (the story about
J uliet’s fall is absent from Luhrmann), is in both a source of pleasure to the
Nurse, whose remembrance of her husband’s wit is evidently fond. They were,
if nothing else, a couple whose temperaments were well-suited, something that
cannot be said of her master and mistress in either film. Juliet, raised on a diet
of such stories, may well have received from her Nurse an idea of love and
marriage quite different from that offered by her parents’ example.

Both derivations take care to obliterate almost all suggestion of What
the elders’ love relationships are like. In West Side Story, there is no hint that
Doc was ever married; nor is there for Krupke and Schrank (Mrs. Schrank?)
Maria has parents -- she worries about introducing Tony to them -- but they
never appear on screen. The closest either gets is her father’s off-screen
fietting about how late it is during the fire-escape scene. Tony’ s family
appears to be fractured in some way. He mentions that his mother is fat, that
she “lives in the kitchen,” and that he is “afraid to ask” her for permission to
marry during the dress-shop wedding scene, but never speaks of his father,

despite having reason and opportunity to do so in that same scene. Like

180

 

 

Maria’s parents’
be Pm Of the fih
modern . ' - You ‘
and who Wants t
effect is to lesseI
conceive love: r:
the young lovers
idealization, sat
down from What
or combatantsa 1
Hand, Doc, and
country any bet
again) or absent
in which the on]
The only parent
kitchen); Tye a1
not shown, but
that the world <
Story, or even it
restaurant own
and endure hos
and Tye. althoi
Smlgeling asai
None of

Zeffirellj and R

 

 

Maria’s parents, Tony’s mother never appears on screen. All of this seems to
be part of the film’s attempt at what Kael calls being “really important and
modern . . . You get rid of the parents, of course; America is a young country -—
and who wants to be bothered by the squabbles of older people?” (34). Its
effect is to lessen the complexity with which the playtext and the Romeos
conceive love: rather than having the elders’ relationships to set in contrast to
the young lovers’, the film contents itself with the interplay of youthful
idealization, sexuality and Violence. Though in itself a complex mix, it is thinned
down from what exists in its source. Instead of being loving, lovers, helpmeets
or combatants, the adults are now hostile (Krupke, Schrank), clueless (Glad
Hand, Doc, and Maria’s parents, who Bernardo claims “do not know this
country any better than” the innocent Maria), inept (Glad Hand and Doc,
again) or absent ciphers. The situation is even more constricted in China Girl,
in which the only married couple on display are the owners of Canton Garden.
The only parent present is Tony and Alby/s mother (again, always in the
kitchen); Tye and Yung’s parents are completely absent -- not only are they
not shown, but neither are they heard, nor even mentioned. The effect of this is
that the world of the adults is set at an even greater remove than in West Side
Story, or even in the presumptive critical readings of the playtext. The
restaurant owners -- the one happy couple in the entire film -- exist to provoke
and endure hostility; their joy at their new business is disconnected fi‘om Tony
and Tye, although the potential to establish parallels -- in-love individuals
struggling against oppressive ideologies -- is there.

None of these marriages, with the exception perhaps of the Nurse’s in

Zeffirelli and Rakoff, demonstrates anything like the spiritualized or the

181

 

 

eroticized love of
barest of hints at
to disbelieve th
extrapolations b:
The other marriz
familiarities whi
mutually-felt an«
maybe any nun
certainly the prc
audience membe
There are two w
of their analogm
productions; or,

other love relati<
fOTIner is the m(

other marriages

be further exalte

When Love C0

That qua
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eroticized love of Romeo and J uliet’s relationship. The Nurse provides only the
barest of hints about what her marriage was like, and while there is no reason
to disbelieve what she says, any conclusions about the relationship are
extrapolations based on skimpy evidence, Whether textual or performative.
The other marriages tend to display the tensions, encrusted animosities and
familiarities which long-term relationships can develop, but none of the overt,
mutually-felt and -directed attractions which Romeo and Juliet diSplay. There
may be any number of reasons why those attractions are not present;
certainly the productions suggest some. More to the point is what they offer
audience members by way of comparison to Romeo and J uliet’s relationship.
There are two ways of putting the conclusion: Romeo and J uliet’s love, or that
of their analogues, looks better in light of the other marriages in the
productions; or, Romeo and J uliet’s love, or that of their analogues, makes
other love relationships look pallid, distorted, or incomplete. Of the two, the
former is the more accurate formulation of how these productions work: the
other marriages are foils, by comparison to which the principals’ ideal love can

be further exalted.

When Love Comes In

That quality, exaltedness, is crucial to understanding constructions of
Romeo and Juliet’s love. Its lack may be why the Rakoff Romeo, which
contains a number of interesting performative and staging elements, seems
less than its immediate counterparts, Zeffirelli, Luhrmann, and West Side Story.
In Rakoff’s production which stresses at all times moderation, the principal

romance is not substantially different fi'om the Montague or Capulet

182

 

 

marriages. If the
close Verona actt
error: such a cor
expectations of w
in previor
family are challe
productions, sug
could begin to II
question is a dii
challenged by d
let alone as an

In the a'
only bec
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marriages. If that was a deliberate choice on the director’s part, to show how
close Verona actually is to normalcy and civic health, it may have been an
error: such a conception contradicts what appear to be deep, if not pervasive
expectations of what Romeo and J uliet’s love ought to be like.

In previous chapters, I have discussed how schemes of order and the
family are challenged, in some cases fractured, by their presentation in the
productions, suggesting as a result that this opens a space in which young love
could begin to move toward dominance. The question remains: has it? The
question is a difficult one to answer when the cohesion of that construct is
challenged by differing conceptions of how love should be conceived in Romeo,
let alone as an entity unto itself. Kahn, for example, argues that

In the ambiance of the feud, marriage subverts patriarchal loyalty, not

only because Romeo and Juliet are children of enemy houses, but also

because marriage weakens the fathers’ hold over their sons and the ties

between men as comrades in violence. Romeo and Juliet plays out a

conflict between manhood as violence of the fathers and manhood as

separation from the fathers and sexual union with women. (Man’s 83)
This is a conclusion from which Goldberg demurs:

what the ending of the play secures is a homosocial order, and it is that

configuration that continually triangulates the relation of Romeo and

Juliet, adding in every instance a third term that gives the lie to the

shelter of their love. . . . The functioning of the patriarchy. . . as well as

its misfunctioning . . . is tied to the love of Romeo and Juliet. Indeed,
what makes their love so valuable is that it serves as a nexus for the
social and can be mystified as outside the social. The sexual revolution
replaces the civics lesson indeed: with the myth of love as a private

experience the personal is disconnected from the political. (83)

The two arguments, though seeming similar, could not be more different. Kahn
asserts that Romeo and J uliet’s love threatens patriarchy, Goldberg that the
mystification of love props patriarchy up. Laroque’s claim that “In creating a

multiplicity of perspectives, Shakespeare is able to View the central love story

from conflicting and parallel lines and thus to deflate some of its potential

183

 

pathos and sentin
of perspectives, tl
playtext tend to r
enabling idealiza'
The produ
another) ideolog:
“aporia created l
at Romeo and J1
present a mono}
for all the Variai
maybe threateI
Critics such as
playtext resists
commenting th
fact that Juliet
e‘KPBCtatlon” r]
and L9Venson’
fantasies Oper
and Juliet‘ s 10
love; but. Sim
Challenges to
compromised
Juliet and M
rhetoric bu t 1

membEr th

 

pathos and sentimentality” (23) is accurate, but, by limiting that multiplicity
of perspectives, the adaptations and derivations of the Shakespearean
playtext tend to restore some of the “pathos and sentimentality,” thus re-

enabling idealization and mystification. Goldberg’s thesis obtains.

 

The productions do establish young love as an alternate (instead of
another) ideology to the family and schemes of order in what Snyder calls the
“aporia created by [their] . . . contestation” (“Ideology” 93) . . . if one only looks
at Romeo and Juliet or their analogues. Although these characters may not
present a monolithic vision of love as only spiritual or only lustful, their love is,
for all the variance in the individual presentations, constructed as ideal. It
may be threatened, pressured, countered or challenged, but it is not subverted.

Critics such as McGuire, Ronald Knowles and Ralph Berry establish that the

 

playtext resists the idealization of the lovers and their love,43 but Mary Bly, in

commenting that the tradition of cutting J uliet’s “Gallop apace” “points to the
fact that J uliet’s expression of erotic desire represented a breach of cultural
expectation” (105), shows how both Hodgdon’s thesis of the expectational text
and Levenson’s idea that audiences find Romeos to satisfy their tastes and
fantasies operate in this instance. There is the potential to demystify Romeo
and J uliet’s love through internally contestatory discourses about the nature of
love; but since other expressions of the ideology are restricted so that
challenges to it are less forceful, it is less likely that the ideology will be
compromised successfully. For example, in Zeffirelli, Rakoff and Wise/Robbins,
Juliet and Maria are both given ample opportunity to take up not just the
rhetoric but the mindset of the feud when each is told that her lover has killed a

member of her family, and does not; Luhrmann’s film does not even admit the

184

 

 

 

 

possibility that ’0]
further scales ba
Tony kill anyone
without, but onlj
suggests the soli
productions give
The playt
love has led to 3
alternative rela'
depending on hr
the nature of In
it difficult to cor
or having loving
pencipan. Ant
dilierently. Th.
as contrasting,
germine or hea
something in 0
fed by and feec
hon the other
demODStrated
Young lovers a
characters 1110
Ways ‘m Wlli Ch

so, to a

 

possibility that the feud could so contaminate their love;“4 Ferrara’s film

further scales back the internal threat to the love relationship by not having
Tony kill anyone. In all five productions, young love may be buffeted from
without, but only barely from within the relationship, a situation which clearly
suggests the solidity, the rightness, of the relationship to which the individual
productions give particulars.

The playtext’s installation as a cultural marker of the nature of true
love has led to an acceptance of one love relationship among a range of
alternative relationships, which reveal an array of possible conceptions of love,
depending on how one chooses to stage them, as the definitive statement on
the nature of love. The presumed perfection of Romeo and J uliet’s love makes
it difficult to conceive of the other characters in the productions as feeling love
or having loving relationships; they must be different, somehow, from the
principals. And, in general, that is how they are constructed. Others love
differently. They love less well. Their difference seems intended to be perceived
as contrasting, rather than complementary, as something unlike -- less
genuine or heartfully felt than -- Romeo and Juliet’s love, rather than
something in continuum with it. I think it likely that such a conception is both
fed by and feeds the belief that Romeo and Juliet are substantively different
fiom the other characters in the playtext, despite what I hope I have
demonstrated is a range of parallels and points of comparison between the
young lovers and their older counterparts. Ferrara’s Tony and Tye are the
characters most distinct from their fellows, but even there, there are some
ways in which differing versions of love link the characters together.

So, to answer the question whether the productions leave love

185

 

 

 

 

“unproblematicat
always, love is m
to be linked to ot
foregrounded), Vt
protagonists as .
noted that this 6
into the product
together before
which the prodr
tentative end 01
vacancy create.
order and the f
uncomplicated;
Simplified into
still larger que
these producti
How does the '

addfess those

 

“unproblematically in place” (Belsey, “Name” 98). N 0. They do not. Almost
always, love is not simply conceived for Romeo and Juliet, and their love tends
to be linked to other characters’ versions of love (although none of those links is
foregrounded), which complicates any inclination to see the drama’s
protagonists as set apart from the other characters. However, it should be
noted that this examination has only penetrated slightly more than halfway
into the productions, to Romeo and J uliet’s farewell early in 3.5, their last scene
together before the tragic finale. What remain to be seen are the ways in
which the productions’ conclusions continue the major ideas governing the
tentative end of this chapter: that young love does move into the ideological
vacancy created by the internal and external contradictions in the schemes of
order and the families; that the construction of young love is not itself
uncomplicated; and that Romeo and J uliet’s relationship is idealized, but not
simplified into an either/or conception of spiritual and sexual. And further, two
still larger questions remain: What ideological construct, if any, dominates
these productions when the final frame has flickered across the screen? and,
How does the final alignment of ideologies come to pass? My final chapter will

address those questions.

186

 

 

 

 

If:

By the time eac
own, particular
through the sec
chapters. None
conclusion offer
relationships, 1
production can
Previous chapt
production? an
here. In brief,
more complica
project of this
in chapter 1,(
Unpack the w;
developed ear.
DreDare fer ti.
30110115 play (
Dam‘Clpate al

Subsequténtl}

 

 

CHAPTER 5
So Orderly All Things

If you don’t like that one, don’t worry. There’ll be another one.
Peter S. Holland

By the time each production approaches its conclusion, it has established its
own, particular interplay of ideological challenges and commitments, in part
through the sequences, scenes, shots and moments addressed in the preceding
chapters. None simply ends, however, and none ends simply. Any production’s
conclusion offers its makers a final chance to frame or refiame its ideological
relationships, to reaffirm, problematize, subvert or contradict stances that the
production carries into its final moments. The questions with which the
previous chapter ended -- What (if any) ideology dominates in a given
production? and How does its final ideological alignment come to pass? -- obtain
here. In brief, the answer to the first question is, young love, although in a
more complicated way than that one phrase may imply. Explaining why is the
project of this chapter. To do this, I will use a method similar to that employed
in chapter 1, considering a specific set of elements across the productions to
unpack the ways in which they work with the ideological constructions they
developed earlier. To this end, I will begin by considering how the productions
prepare for the narrative’s climax. The place or places in which the final
actions play out, the participants in that action, and the way those characters
participate all bear on the final sorting out of ideological relationships.

Subsequently, I will look in some detail at the deaths themselves. The

187

 

 

 

denouement is al
contribute gr eatl
adaptation or der
in chapters 1 am
the aftermath; ti
reconciliation; a

image before the

Everything in
McGuire
playtext to end
dead as they a]
number of Sha
Moreover, it is
but a place of <
has died can b
Placed at the 5
flowers, letter
Ofn'olence, or
City, cemeter
interment, m
and his Page
Well as Temir
Place minted
C“algal with.

 

 

denouement is also of concern: events subsequent to the deaths can
contribute greatly to the final alignment of ideologies at the end of an
adaptation or derivation of Romeo and Juliet. To this end, I wish to consider, as
in chapters 1 and 2, authority figures, as well as other characters involved in
the aftermath; the interplay of explanation, recrimination, punishment and
reconciliation; and the visual each production concludes with, its last, fleeting

image before the final fade to black.

Everything in its place

McGuire notes that Romeo and Juliet is the only Shakespearean
playtext to end in a graveyard (223). The lovers are not just surrounded by the
dead as they approach death -- a situation common to the protagonists in any
number of Shakespearean tragedies -- but are also in a place of death.
Moreover, it is not only a place of death -- as any such locale could be called --
but a place of death and remembrance. Although any place where a person
has died can become a place of memory, as demonstrated by the small crosses
placed at the sites of car accidents, the impromptu memorials of pictures,
flowers, letters and mementos that survivors and well-wishers mount at sites
of Violence, or even by such formal memorials as that being built in Oklahoma
City, cemeteries are specifically and deliberately designed as places of
interment, memorial and memory. That is what they are for. The place Paris

and his Page enter at the start of 5.3 is freighted with an unavoidable past, as
well as reminders of an inevitable future.1 Moreover, the bulk of 5.3 takes

place immediately outside or within the Capulet family monument, a place

charged with memorializing individuals such as Tybalt, and with maintaining

188

 

 

 

the patriarchal i
Capulet “corpor
“Shakespeare ft
the tragic impo:
setting, the pla
the feud may be
which Kahn p0
the male house
code of his fath
signifies a reve
103). Not only
feud,2 but Ron
dOing marriag:
schemes of orc
The firs
cemetery; the
the earth. Ra
is not set in a
massive, form
of Verona‘s p1
Verona‘ Work
productions I
has entered ,
Alan C. D ess

 

 

the patriarchal house. Hunter, seeing the tomb as the place where the
Capulet “corporate identity is most unequivocally established,” suggests that
“Shakespeare found the tomb property a convenient expression of his sense of
the tragic importance of family and social continuities” (8). Ironically, this
setting, the place of the destructive feud’s ascendancy, is also the place where
the feud may be itself destroyed. The two lovers are joined under one roof,
which Kahn points out reverses “the traditional passage of the female over to
the male house in marriage” as well as Romeo’s “refusal to follow the [feudal]
code of his fathers;” J uliet’s use of Romeo’s “dagger, against herself” also
signifies a reversal of who should use a Montague blade to kill a Capulet (Man’s

103). Not only are there fewer Capulet and Montague kin left to carry on the
feud,2 but Romeo and J uliet’s reversal of the traditional, patriarchal way of

doing marriage and murder in Verona helps to unite the two in questioning the
schemes of order and the family.

The first part of Zeffirelli’s conclusion is located in a large, walled
cemetery; the tomb itself is an extensive structure, its entrance half-buried in
the earth. Rakofi’s conclusion, which shuttles between two different locations,
is not set in a graveyard but in the square outside Capulet’s home and at the
massive, formal Capulet “monument” (5.1.18). These settings, the first a part
of Verona’s public life and the second of an architectural piece with the rest of
Verona, work to integrate the lovers’ deaths with the life of the city. Both

productions make an effort to display corpses, Tybalt’s especially, once Romeo
has entered the tomb itself: the “detestable maw” (5.3.45) is well-crammed.3

Alan C. Dessen points out that there are no indications in the different versions

of the playtext that Tybalt, or any other body beyond J uliet’s, needs to be on

189

 

 

djsplay for this E
then, the misc 2
right -- as well 2
the number of c
lighting and th<
recesses of the
factors, particu
project to ideal
their true love:
not-too-repulsi
In both
which Romeo ‘
Balthasar rid«
the gallop -- B
sending him 2
Eliminating l
intent, Rome:
Challenge, an
depletion of t
alldience’s 33
his beloved f
threatens to
ChuIChyard
tools and at

 

display for this scene (Recovering 190). Aside from the verisimilar impulse,
then, the mise en scéne physicalizes J uliet’s 4.3 fears about the vault -- she was
right -- as well as indicating an extensive Capulet lineage. Perhaps it hints at
the number of deaths the feud has brought about. Zeffirelli’s Rembrandt
lighting and the gauzy drapes covering the corpses, along with the shadowy
recesses of the tomb, provide the scene with a degree of the gothic. Such
factors, particularly so in the case of Zeffirelli’s film, seem to be part of the
project to idealize Romeo and J uliet’s love. The grieving Romeos come to join
their true loves in carefully-photographed, artistically-designed, even elegant,
not-too-repulsive or -frightening places of death.

In both productions, this romanticization begins with the manner in
which Romeo first approaches, then enters the tomb. In Zeffirelli, Romeo and
Balthasar ride into the graveyard on horseback, moving toward the camera at
the gallop -- Romeo as heroic man of action. After thanking Balthasar and
sending him away, Romeo breaks the metal doors open with a handy rock.
Eliminating Romeo’s threats to Balthasar, Balthasar’s doubts about Romeo’s
intent, Romeo’s setting to the door with a mattock and wrenching iron, Paris’
challenge, and Romeo’s fight with and murder of Paris saves time. It also the
depiction of the sensitive lover as “savage-wild” (5.3.37), and so risking an
audience’s sympathetic engagement with a young husband desperate to reach
his beloved for one last kiss before he takes his own life. A Romeo who
threatens to “tear” his own man “joint by joint, / And strew this hungry
churchyard with thy limbs” (ll. 35-36), who lays into a crypt door with steel
tools and attacks and kills an understandably upset Paris (perhaps with those

same implements) might be more difficult to excuse than the Romeo who

190

 

 

 

 

 

 

pursued and fbl
friend), and wh
which Romeo w
thing up, and v
scene in a men
wrenching iror
monotone, dee:
photographed
door open, but
urgency, and t
violence of the
mild, even me
death seem a:
murder of Tyl
accidental. 11
almost out of
certainly tha
The tr

those in Zeffi
film seems t4
l153-5, 36l: 1
Verona Beac
the COIanI
qutaPositio:

 

 

pursued and fought with Tybalt (who had, after all, just killed Romeo’s best
friend), and who only survived that fight because of luck. Even the ease with
which Romeo wields his (very big) rock contributes to this: he just picks the
thing up, and with one whack Opens the door. While Rakofi’s Romeo enters the
scene in a more pedestrian way (literally on foot), and does carry some sort of
wrenching iron with him, his threats to Balthasar are delivered in a near
monotone, deemphasizing the violence of his proffer. His working on the door is
photographed in shadow, partly from behind, in long shot. He has to pry the
door open, but is not savage-wild about it: it is more a matter of necessity than
urgency, and the blocking, lighting and camera angle help to deemphasize the
violence of the act. Similarly, Romeo’s initial response to Paris’ challenge is
mild, even matter of fact; that Paris does not take Romeo’s advice makes the
death seem as much the victim’s fault as the killer’s. In Rakoff, Romeo’s
murder of Tybalt is deliberate, an intentional act, but the killing of Paris is
accidental. If anything, Paris’ death is a sad necessity. Although at times an
almost out of control raver, Rakofi’s Romeo can be deliberate, even rational --
certainly that is how he appears in this scene.

The treatment of these elements in Luhrmann differs considerably from
those in Zeffirelli or Rakoff. Eschewing both graveyard and tomb, Luhrmann’s
film seems to take its cue from Paris’ and Romeo’s mention of a “churchyard”

(5.3.5, 36): its final scenes are located in and around the church at the heart of
Verona Beach.4 Like Rakoff’s settings, this one fixes the events as central to

the community. While the attendant textual cuts lose some of the verbal
juxtapositions of love and death, this shift allows the emphasis of the visual

parallels with the 2.5 wedding. Rather than the boy soprano singing in the loft,

191

 

 

 

there is now Ell
contrast to the l
the wedding, JL‘
Romeo walks tl
possible with a
Luhrmann’s pr
which the Rain
church may be
as the settings
consciously an
and flowers) tl
Luhrmz
ideology.5 Rm
Capulet house
to another Fa
Romeo’s decis
cut is talk Of'
Romeo and J1
United in twc
enclosure -. I
Clfllliinate in
rEmillders of
“Edding, the
more obviou

C0111;

 

there is now Elliot Goldenthal’s symphonic score: slow—paced, dense harmonies

contrast to the lighter, simpler vocalizations that accompany the wedding. In

 

the wedding, Juliet walks down the aisle to meet Romeo at the altar; now,
Romeo walks that same aisle to meet his Juliet. Such visual parallels are
possible with a graveyard and tomb, but through the blocking and music,
Luhrmann’s production emphasizes them. Missing, however, are the corpses
which the Rakoff and Zeflirelli adaptations are at pains to reveal. Luhrmann’s
church may be a place of death, but will never be freighted with as much death
as the settings in the two earlier productions. This place is cleaner, more self-
consciously artistic (and probably better smelling, what with all those candles
and flowers) than those of the other productions.

Luhrmann’s Romeo rejoins Juliet in a place set apart from the Capulet

 

ideology“ Rather than in a space dedicated to preserving the notion of a unified

Capulet household, Romeo and Juliet are rejoined in another house, belonging
to another Father. Setting the lovers’ final meeting in the church replaces
Romeo’s decision to make emphatic his joining of the Capulet household (also
cut is talk of Tybalt as “cousin” [1. 101]) with a repudiation of both houses.
Romeo and Juliet will die separated from their families, and in so doing will be
united in two others, one Christian, one their own. The romantic aspects of
enclosure -- privacy, isolation -- which have been developed throughout the film
culminate in this place. Not just differently romanticized, the absent
reminders of death’s hungry maw combine with the lovers’ re-imagined
wedding, the thickly beautiful mise en scene and lush score to make this site
more obviously romantic than those in Zeffirelli and Rakoff.

Complementing this is the presentation of the sav age—wild Romeo in

192

 

 

Luhrmann In I
to bring any boo
that he forgets
Rakoff, Romeo
Balthasar well
wish. In Luhn
mysteriously a
it becomes a te
armed helicop‘
attempt to get.
fragments frm
locations and
hurtling out o
threats of dIS]
around a pha‘
out» against t
in Order to Hi.
clear that R0
not a deSp’ra
doubt arm
g‘mpoint. If
QUlEtly, Her
he is savage
Like f

move outsid

A

 

 

Luhrmann. In Zeffirelli, Romeo is so desperate to reach Juliet that he neglects
to bring any tools (did he think the tomb would just be open?), yet not so hurried
that he forgets to be polite to Balthasar, or to express regret to Tybalt. In
Rakoff, Romeo is more purposeful, and he, too, takes time not only to wish
Balthasar well and to seek forgiveness fiom Tybalt, but to grant Paris’ dying

wish. In Luhrmann, the stress is on Romeo’s desperation. Captain Prince,
mysteriously alerted to Romeo’s presence in the city,6 calls for his capture, and

it becomes a test whether Romeo will reach his wife as prowl cars and sniper-
armed helicopters pursue Balthasar and him through the city. Romeo’s

attempt to get to the church (the dialogue in this sequence is a pastiche of line
fragments from Acts 3 and 57) is a montage showing at least five different

locations and three different points in time. This generates a sense of events
hurtling out of control. After having bid Balthasar a sincere farewell -- no

threats of dismemberment here -- Romeo makes his final dash to the church
around a phalanx skidding cop cars.8 When the police engage him in a shoot

out, against the orders of Captain Prince, Romeo takes the sacristan hostage
in order to make it into the church safely. Through all of this, the film makes
clear that Romeo’s savage-wild behavior is not intended to hurt anyone: “tempt
not a desp’rate man” (5.3.59) is a plea, not a threat. If asked, Romeo would no
doubt argue that the actions of the police forced him to hold a clergyman at
gunpoint. If the cops would leave him alone, Romeo would go off to his death
quietly. Here the notion of Romeo beset by a violent adult world is very clear:
he is savage-wild because the situation has forced him to it.

Like Luhrmann, the derivations of Ferrara and Wise and Robbins also

move outside the tomb and beyond the graveyard, taking their finales into the

193

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

streets. In both
symbolized by t.
the dead. It als
territory. Althc
the Capulet ton
by the feud, ant
houses in favor
and Tye in Chi
adaptations. ”I
schoolyard. B]
deepens that 5
continue to dis
Tony and Mar
conclusion als
neighborhood
her famflyS t,
the young Ita
has Shifted it:
to a lone Itali
PQWaSiveneS
MEWS, like
especially ev
a number of
may be in re

Street Illav l:

A

 

 

streets. In both cases, this decision shifts attention away from patriarchy as
symbolized by the tomb and places the lovers among the quick, rather than

the dead. It also foregrounds that the deaths result from the contestation over
territory. Although the location of the Zeffirelli and Rakoff finales in and near
the Capulet tomb implies a repudiation of the ordering principles represented
by the feud, and through Luhrmann’s location in the church rejects both
houses in favor of a new union, the deaths of Tony in West Side Story and Tony
and Tye in China Girl are more explicitly political than those in the three
adaptations. The particular locale of West Side Story’s conclusion is the
schoolyard. Bringing the production back to where it began, this preserves and
deepens that site’s ironies. The moments immediately before Tony is shot
continue to display fences as barriers, here particularly maze-like, confounding
Tony and Maria as they strive to reach each other. China Girl’s abrupt

conclusion also takes place in a location similar to that where the film began: a

 

neighborhood street. Ferrara alludes to the device of Romeo joining Juliet in
her family’s tomb when Tony and Tye walk together down a Chinatown street:
the young Italian has gone over to the other side, and in fact, the entire film
has shifted its focus from a small group of Chinese in an Italian neighborhood
to a lone Italian in a Chinese neighborhood. This mirroring action suggests the
pervasiveness of the ideological tactic of separation and division, in that the

Italians, like Chinese, can be isolated, perceived as intruders. This is made

 

especially evident through some telling action off the main focus, which reveals
a number of Chinese staring at the lovers with surprise and disapproval. This
may be in reaction to the lovers’ public display of affection -- embracing on the

street may be regarded as impolite, improper or obscene; it may as well be

194

 

 

 

summing, or at
response to the
whose relations
ethnic worlds.
-- one not neces
are surprised a
possibility is fa
youths and the
romance and t]
Shin coming or
reactions of th
Juxtaposing tl
indicate that t
Suggested. In
may even be 1
Ethnic house.
their arms ar.
clothes (she I]
Street and dc
they are 0th

" again, not 1
UDaWare 0ft
Neithi

Story‘g Come

Whom he ho;

 

 

surprising, or even envied. Whatever the case may be, if the looks are in
response to the display, they have the effect of continuing to isolate the lovers,
whose relationship the film has already established as separate from the two
ethnic worlds. Another possible explanation for the reactions of the passers-by
-- one not necessarily distinct from those posited above -- is that the Chinese
are surprised and displeased by the ethnic mixing the lovers represent. This
possibility is far more ominous. Up to this point, it has been only the gang
youths and the Italian adults in Ferrara’s opening sequence who resist the
romance and the cultural mixing it represents. Following a shot of the armed
Shin coming out of a shadowed hallway and catching sight of the lovers, the
reactions of the peOple on the street can come as an unwelcome surprise.
Juxtaposing the absolutist Shin and these brief, background glimpses may
indicate that the gangs’ attitudes are not as isolated as the film has heretofore
suggested. In this case, Yung’s and Shin’s extreme hatreds are not unique,
may even be representative of the reception the two can expect from Tye’s
ethnic house. Notably, the lovers walk against the flow of pedestrian traffic,
their arms around each other, their bodies pressed close, the colors of their
clothes (she in pink, he in white) setting them off from the darker colors of the
street and clothes of those moving around them. As in the dance-club scenes,
they are oblivious to the onlookers, existing in an ideal world of their own amity
-- again, not unlike the Chinese family of the film’s openings scene, who appear
unaware of the hostility their presence evokes.

Neither film’s Tony could be fairly called savage-wild, although West Side
Story’s comes close. He stumbles through the streets, shouting for Chino,
whom he hopes will come kill him. Romeo intends to kill himself, and while his

195

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

suicide may be '
it is also detern
intended to do:
desperate, an a
the young ShaJ
leaving his end
characterizes t
almost inchoat
Romeo who we
die. This clear
beloved are, it
all tea and ros
Tony has no r
Yung, who ha
lovers togethe
remain behin.
OlltcaSIDS, but,
their relation
A seco
this is hue o:
DTOduCthns i
ever thinks t
”MOW. far
for distress 2

does maint a

A

 

 

suicide may be regarded as an act of anger or a reaction to a perceived futility,
it is also determinate. Romeo sets out with a plan and completes what he
intended to do: he chooses to kill himself. Tony’ s screaming for Chino is more
desperate, an act of despair, his intent apparently to wander the streets until
the young Shark finds him and finishes him off. Tony abrogates his agency,
leaving his end in another’s hands. This preserves the sense of rashness which
characterizes the end of Romeo and Juliet. It is also curiously romantic, this
almost inchoate yearning for death. However, it is a step away from the
Romeo who wants to die in his wife’s arms. Tony, lacking Maria, just wants to
die. This clearly is not the case in China Girl, where Tony is happy. He and his
beloved are, in fact, united, and while their life together may not turn out to be
all tea and roses, at the point in the film where they walk down the sidewalk,
Tony has no reason to expect that he and Tye will not have a life together.
Yung, who had the chance to kill him just moments before, did not, and the
lovers together have turned their backs on their respective ethnic families, who
remain behind, dumb-founded (and, for once, not fighting). They may be
outcasts, but, as the film has established, there are places in the city where
their relationship will be accepted . . . if only they can get to them.

A second difference is that, in China Girl, Tye is alive. While strictly
this is true of West Side Story and the three Romeos, none of those four
productions is similar in effect to Ferrara’s film, in which Tony is never told nor
ever thinks that Tye is dead. He has reason to be frightened -- he is in “enemy”
territory, facing down an armed, antagonistic Yung -— but never has such cause
for distress as do the males in the other productions. Despite this, China Girl

does maintain some of the tension that characterizes the ends of Romeo and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Juliet and of West Side Story, substituting uncertainty over whether Tony and

Tye will escape alive for uncertainty about whether Romeo or West Side Story’s

Tony will discover the truth before it is too late.9 The first tension is

 

apparently resolved by Yung’s banishment of his sister, and the couple’s
leaving behind of the two gangs. At this point in a straight romantic fiction,
walking arm in arm down the street would cue the final credit roll. Shin’s

presence disrupts this idyllic possibility, increasing the tension beyond that in

 

the confrontation with Yung, as Shin is more willing than his cousin to enforce
ordering schemes of ethnic purity with violence. The tension is not managed in

this way in Romeo and Juliet, or in West Side Story. This allows for a surge of

 

hope before disaster falls,10 but even that hope is not uncomplicated.

Death’s the end of all

Historically, the final deaths in Romeo and Juliet have been subject to a
wide variety of presentation in performance.11 Examining how each production

answers a particular set of questions -- where do the lovers die? which of the
lovers die? who else dies? how do they die (by which I mean, quickly, loudly,
bloodily, and so on)? what are the means by which they die (literally how --
shot, stabbed, et cetera)? by whose hand do they die? -- in light of the
preparations for those deaths will help to unpack the ideological implications of
those answers.

There is very little preparation for Ferrara’s climax and denouement
(see Appendix F). Tony and Tye walk along, as in the first dance club scene
more or less oblivious to what is going on around them. And, as in that scene,

that obliviousness is going to cause trouble. The initial shot of the film’s final

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scene reveals first the street, then, emerging from the shadows, Shin, a gun in
hand. He checks the street, then focuses off right. The next shot is of Tony
and Tye, arm in arm. They kiss. A cut back to Shin is followed by a pan right
to Tony and Tye, then a dolly in on them. Tye looks up, shouts “No!” and jumps
in front of Tony, her arms out to protect him. There is a gunshot. Four quick
cuts show Tony and Tye being killed: the first bullet hits Tye, a second goes
through both of them, a third hits Tye. Both fall in slow motion out of the
frame at the end of the scene’s seventh shot. Instead of a young married
couple taking their own lives, two unmarried lovers are killed by a third
individual; instead of a dual suicide predicated on mistaken knowledge, at least
one of these murders is intended, and neither victim expects to die; instead of
dying serially and possibly in proximity to each other (the playtext does not say
where or how they fall) the lovers die at once, together. Rewriting the deaths so
that Tony and Tye are murdered enhances the notion of the two as victims,
“Poor sacrifices” of the gangs’ enmity (5.3.303). Their repeated attempts to
forge a space apart from ethnic and criminal conflict -- as depicted in their
dance club scenes or tenement idyll -- have come to nothing. Despite Tye’s
successful resistance of her brother’s ethnic ideology, that same ideology in
more extreme form -- or, less complicated by contesting emotional imperatives
-- reaches out to punish her for her supposed transgressions.12 While these
lovers’ end is more sudden than that of Romeo and Juliet, it is perhaps no less
expected: aside from the well-worn conclusion of the story, and despite the fact
that neither Tony nor Tye spends any time threatening suicide, it is not beyond
the realm of possibility that one of the hard-core gang youths would come

looking for Tony (much as Shin and Yung came looking for Alby in his own

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apartment building). Of the two deaths, Tye’s is the more surprising. One
could even consider it an accident . . . if she had been shot only once. The
second and third bullets are less easily explained away, particularly when her
brother’s repudiation is taken into account. If he can reject her, how difficult
would it be for Shin to see her as sleeping with the enemy, a derogate bastard
unwilling to stay away from the “greaseballs” despite numerous warnings.
That the two die together in place as well as in time, even to the extent that a
single bullet pierces both their bodies, is but a final, bleak reconfiguration of
their paired isolation. Ferrara’s cynical film indicates the dangers of the lovers’
blissful self—involvement. Tye’s desire to get away, vocalized in the tenement
aubade, is well and good, but in the end it is a pipe dream. Even if the lovers
are not aware of the hatred around them, hatred is very aware of them: in
Ferrara, love can get people killed.

Although apparently modelled on West Side Story, China Girl’s
denouement contains some signal differences from the earlier production (see
Appendix G). The most obvious is that Maria does not die, is not even shot.
The other is that Tony has time to gargle his goodbyes and a “plague on both
your houses” kind of line before he checks out. Kael snorts that because Maria
“has the wisdom of all women . . . is the mother of us all” the filmmakers
“depart from Shakespeare’s plot at the end: suffering Maria survives. And, of
course, the appeal to the Catholic audience -- which might otherwise become
uneasy as both gangs are probably Catholic -- is thereby assured” (34).
Cynical? Surely. But also accurate, at least in part. Were Maria to die with
Tony, her lines at the end of the film could, with minor modification, be delivered

by another character, probably Doc. However, keeping her alive not only

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allows for an extended, pathetic farewell,13 but also allows the “suffering”

Madonna her recriminations. Maria’s being left alive does not just allow her to
suffer, as might Juliet as her husband dies in her arms, but also allows those
watching to see her suffer, and participate vicariously in her misery. Kael’s
complaint about the filmmakers playing to a Catholic audience seems unlikely
(though in the age of focus-testing one wonders why it should), an instance of
her habit of rubbishing films (and their makers) which rub her the wrong way.
Keeping Maria alive allows for an appeal to the whole audience. Maria’s living,
knowing she will live, enhances the notion of shattered lives. She has lost her
brother and her true love. This latter fact results not from what could be
construed variously as a misunderstanding, bad timing, rashness or Fate, but
from interconnected acts of viciousness: the Jets’ sexual assault on Anita,
which prompts her to lie about Chino having killed Maria, which in turn
prompts Tony to go looking for the Shark, who is himself looking for Tony
because Tony killed Bernardo (and, equally galling to the young Puerto Rican,
also has Maria’s love). Documenting that cycle of viciousness is part of the
film’s apparent social project, particularly with regard to showing how violence
and hatred spread from the gangs to those constructed as innocents, such as
Maria and Chino.

Part of this project works through Tony’ s dying complaint, that “They
just won’t let us be,” which is at once accurate and ridiculous. It is true that he
and Maria are pressed in on by the demands of their families -- both literal and
metaphoric -- and order. However, Tony seems to forget that moments before
his death he was asking to die. That he gets what he wanted at the moment he

no longer wants it is ironic, but his protest at the omnipresence of the feud

200

 

 

 

 

disguises a bit of ideological fudgery. Tony attempts to use the feud for his own
ends, then blames the feud for doing what he asked of it. However, the
artificiality of his complaint is cloaked by the display of wretchedness. If one
accepts John F. Andrews’ explanation of tragic catharsis as leading to a
broader, more lucid perception than that of the tragic hero (“Falling” 405), then
that certainly can be seen to operate here: both Tony and Maria are unaware
of the role Tony played in his own demise, and both seem disinclined to assign
any responsibility to Tony for his murder of Bernardo. I incline to think that
this knowledge is not only cloaked by the pathos of Tony’s death, but
unrecognized by the filmmakers as well: the film displays no indication that
the couple’s last moments are intended to be understood as anything other

than sincere and revelatory. When the lovers participate in this exchange,

MARIA
Loving is enough.
TONY
Not here. They won’t let us be.
MARIA
Then we’ll get away.
TONY
Yeah, we can.
MARIA
Yes.
TONY
We will.
MARIA
Yes.
[sings]

Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.
Hold my hand and I’ll take you there,
Somehow,
Someday,
Some . . .

[Tony dies]

the emphasis is on the impossibility of their desire to escape, rather than on a

recognition of their complicity in Tony’s unhappy end. Were the film to

201

 

 

 

acknowledge this complicity it would wreck its construction of the lovers beset
by trouble. Acknowledging it to themselves yet disguising it would be a
hypocrisy (imagine!), and while this moment in the film may be hypocritical,
the characters involved in it appear to be sincere. It is the film which does not

question Tony and Maria.14 Two ideal lovers being done ill by a flawed society

preserves both the film’s message of “social determinism” (Hapgood 110) and
the construction of their young love as ideal, distinct from their ailing culture.

While a degree of social determinism is evident in China Girl, as well as
an attempt to maintain the idea of Tony and Tye’s love as distinct from and
victimized by the gang rivalry, even of two kids believing too genuinely in their
ability to remove themselves from the conflicts of their intersecting societies,
Ferrara’s film does not participate in the same sort of obfuscation that
characterizes Tony’s death in West Side Story. There is no opportunity for the
lovers to complain unselfconsciously about their fate. In addition, they do not
tempt Fate by running through the streets calling for Shin to come finish them
off. In having the unrepentant Shin do the killing, the film argues that
innocence and self-involved isolation (as well as family) will be annihilated by
the feud at the same time that it proposes the lovers’ and the families’
complicity in their own annihilation. West Side Story, whose exploration of
those same ideas is flawed by its failure to recognize the internal irony, is more
intent on defining the feud as corruptor, turning the “shy, gentle, sweet-faced
boy” Chino (Laurents et. al. 151) into a killer.

Similar attempts to preserve the lovers as untainted by the feud and
their love as uncompromised by ironic contradiction are made in all three

Romeos. Zeffirelli’s Romeo enters the tomb without recourse to threats or

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violence, takes a moment to proffer his apologies to his “cousin” Tybalt, then
begins his own death scene. Excisions eliminate Romeo’s mention of Paris (ll.
74-7 5), his confusion (11. 76—81), his address to Paris’ corpse (ll. 81-86) and his
apostrophe to Death (II. 87-91) from his 5.3.74-120 speech. What remains is
his address to Juliet, interrupted by his notice of Tybalt, so that, while the
rhetorical complexity of the monologue is reduced, what remains gains in
intimacy: The film can concentrate on the uniqueness of the lovers without
any distracting oratorical flourishes. The cuts provide for a stress on Romeo’s
private, one-to-one connection with his wife while eliminating any direct
reference to the fact that Romeo is killing himself (11. 109—112), to the “bitter . .
. unsavoury . . . drugs” or to their provider (11. 116-20). This preserves Romeo’s
autonomy and tidies up some of the messier attributes of his suicide: he did not
need any help procuring poison (and so did not have to play the apothecary’s
poverty against the man’s fear of punishment), and does not linger overlong,
and perhaps overlovingly, on the grimness of what he is doing. The intimacy
provided by the language is enhanced by the score (the love theme, with strings
predominant) and by his final kisses before he slumps to the floor, first on
Juliet’s lips, then on the back of her hand. This last kiss brings the film back to
its first, when Romeo kissed J uliet’s hand during Capulet’s feast.

In Rakoff, after Romeo’s promise to bury Paris “in a triumphant grave”
(l. 84), there is a cut to Paris’ Page and his transposed “I will go call the watch”
(1. 71). This covers Romeo’s less-than-glamorous task of trying to lug 160 or so
pounds of dead weight around, although Rakoff does show him dragging the
body inside the tomb (in long shot) and depositing it on the floor (where, for the

most part, it remains out of sight for the rest of the scene, making it easier to

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forget what Romeo has done). The majority of Romeo’s ll. 84- 120 speech
remains, although as in Zeffirelli, the apostrophe to Death is cut, as well as
that to the apothecary. These small gestures help limit what can be the
scene’s more ghoulish aspects. Again, the emphasis is on Romeo’s direct
address to Juliet. Despite this, for part of Romeo’s final address, Rakoff
employs an intriguing camera angle, framing the lovers in a long shot over
Tybalt’s foregrounded corpse as Romeo says,
O, my love, my wife!

Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. (ll. 91-93)15
This shot is disquieting in that it implies an audience for Romeo, Tybalt’s
corpse standing in for noncorporeal Death (Zeffirelli’s corpses, on the other
hand, seem to be there for atmospheric and mimetic effect). It also recollects
the feud that has destroyed the lovers’ chance to live happily ever after, and
proposes that idea’s obverse, that their hidden love and secret marriage led to
the fatal escalation of the feud in 3.1, which in turn has led to this latest
disaster. Including Tybalt’s body in a shot of Romeo and Juliet also points out

the difference between actual and perceived death, and reminds the audience of

1.16

Romeo’s hastiness in the 3.1 due The shot complicates the idealization and

intimacy comprised in the close ups of Romeo and Juliet, and conditionalizes
Romeo’s misery and self-pity. He may be suffering, but he shares in the
responsibility for that suffering, as well as that of others. The difference
between this production’s ironic questioning of the tragic romance of Romeo’s
last moments with Juliet and that of the irony at the end of West Side Story is
that the film is unaware of the irony. The selection of this particular angle

hardly seems accidental.

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There is less ironic distance, and considerably more cutting, in
Luhrmann. Although these are not necessarily connected, in this film one does
relate to the other. From the moment that Romeo enters the church, the tone
of the last sequence changes. In a release from the high energy chase,
Luhrmann’s camera lingers on Romeo, who crouches in the darkened, almost-
silent narthex as he listens to Captain Prince’s receding helicopter. Only
gradually does he become aware of the sanctuary, just visible as an
expressionistic blur of intense blue and yellow through a barely open double
door. When he finally moves through the door, Romeo has spent enough time
in the dark, quiet narthex for audience members’ adrenaline levels to come
down, so that they are in a properly subdued flame of mind, prepared to marvel
at what is to come. The sanctuary, seen in a strongly perspectival point of
view shot as Romeo pushes the doors Open, is a wonder of production design: at
least 55 crosses made of flowers and neon, some layered one inside another,
seem to float toward the vanishing point, located directly behind J uliet’s bier;
dozens of small, glowing Virgin Mary statues dot the room, from a distance
themselves resembling stubby-armed crosses; at the end of the aisle, a mass
of flickering candles. The look of wonder on Romeo’s face fits: this could be a
vision of heaven. As Romeo moves down the aisle, the film presents a second
vision, this time of Juliet on her bier. Again, the audience is prepared for the
sight by the showing of Romeo’s increasingly distress as he moves toward his
wife, the glow from the candles brightening on his face. When Juliet is revealed,
it is the most spectacular visual in the film, impressive on video (and an
eloquent argument in favor of widescreen), astonishing in a theatre. Juliet

reclines on her bier, center frame, surrounded by hundreds of candles and

205

 

 

 

glowing Virgins, against a deeply shadowed background -— the shot seems to
float, particularly in a darkened cinema. Aside from showcasing the director’s
impressive visual skills and sense of the dramatic, and providing for a sense of
awe and wonder in his audience, this lead-up to Romeo’s suicide is
characterized by several other qualities. Romeo’s walk is processional, down
the same aisle which Juliet walked down for their marriage, during which they

knelt at the same spot where she now lies in state: the moment is

 

sacramental. It is also private, as inward looking as Tony and Tye’s stroll
through Chinatown, yet uncomplicated by the danger that they unknowingly
face. As noted above, it is a moment separated not only from the ideology of
the households, but from the negatively constructed representatives of order,
the police and their machinery, which have been locked outside. There is no
Tybalt to apologize to, nor a dead Paris to remind the audience of Romeo’s
violent side. These moments also help the audience to forget that Romeo has
just threatened to shoot a clergyman.

While the final scenes of the two other Romeos present something of the
juxtaposition of love and death that characterizes the playtext, Luhrm%n’s
stresses it. Piled high with pillows and dressed with linen, J uliet’s bier is more
bed than stone slab. They are all white, of course: Romeo is coming again to
his bride’s virgin bed. While the other Romeos lean over Juliet, caress, hug and

ldss her, this Romeo climbs onto the bed/bier with her. His ministrations are
those one might expect to see during the 3.5 aubade.17 That this bier is located

at an altar adds an additional layer of sacramental signification: it is not just a

bed/bier on which Romeo and Juliet recline, but an altar, a bed, and a bier.

 

Once he reaches Juliet, this Romeo is the least talkative of the three -- of the

206

 

 

 

 

46 lines in the playtext only these remain:

O my love, my wife!
Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Thou art not conquered. Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is advanced there.

Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And . . . keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
Here . . .
O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.
Arm, take your last embrace, and lips, 0 you
The doors to breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death.

Thus with a kiss I die.
(11. 91-96, 101-05, 108-15, 120)18

This is by far the most intimate of the male lovers’ final moments. There are
no conversations with Paris’ body nor with Tybalt’s, no addresses to Death nor
to the poison. Romeo speaks to himself, to Juliet, and for himself and his love
alone. Tony and Maria, and Tony and Tye may be intimate, oblivious to those
around them, but the combination of this Romeo and J uliet’s privacy and the
freighted significance of where they are provides the scene with an additional
idealizing weight. The scene is also unironic: there are no corpses to remind
that Romeo is a killer, apt to leap to conclusions and act precipitously. The
scene is constructed as a private revelation of sincere emotion in which an
audience is expected to participate. What prevents it from becoming cloying --

a real danger, with the reminders of the lovers’ faults and rnisjudgments

omitted -- is the strength of DiCaprio’s naturalistic acting.19

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Complicating the presentation of this scene is the way in which it has
been rewritten. The Shakespearean playtext is segmented -- for instance, in
one segment, Romeo enters the tomb and commits suicide; in another, Friar
Laurence arrives, confers with Balthasar, enters the tomb and finds Romeo,
Juliet awakens and learns what has happened, and the Friar departs; in a
third, Juliet kills herself -- so that Romeo’s death and J uliet’s death, the scene’s
emotional high points, are separated by 25 lines of dialogue and whatever
length of time it takes to stage them. This is effective writing: it allows an
audience a few moments to collect itself before the next point of the climax, as
well as for the development of the hope that Juliet at least will survive. The
Shakespearean structure teases out the tension. The film’s structure plays off
and heightens the urgency in the earlier part of the closing sequence,
intensifying the emotional content of the scene through the elimination of the
Friar’ s interruption -- there is no time for an audience to collect itself -- and by
moving J uliet’s awakening to a point before Romeo has died.20 Rather than
being a matter of some minutes between Romeo’s death and Juliet’s
awakening, there is no interval at all in Luhrmann’s film: she is already awake.
Instead, it is a matter of about a second between Romeo’s drinking of the
poison and his realization that she is not dead.

This provided a jolt when I first saw the film, not so much from the act of
rearrangement, a common enough occurrence in film adaptations of literary
and dramatic texts, but from the resulting uptick in the scene’s emotion.21 In
Zeffirelli and Rakoff, Romeo never realizes he has made a mistake. He is not
made to confront his impetuosity. Neither of these is true in Luhrmann. In

Zeffirelli and Rakoff, the audience is aware of Romeo’s mistake, and this can

208

 

 

 

provide for some ironic distance. As a result, the conclusion is affecting,
perhaps even painful, but knowledge of and/or empathy with Romeo’s suffering
may be conditioned by his belief that his misery will end shortly, or that he will
be reunited with his beloved, beliefs which the audience may share. In the
audience, this may exist alongside recognition of the character’s failings. But in
Luhrmann, the audience positioned to identify with Romeo has been insulated
from such a recognition, and is made to suffer not only the perceived loss of
Juliet and Romeo’s own impending death, but also Romeo’s realization of his
mistake, followed by Juliet’s realization that he has not died, her pain at
recognizing and understanding Romeo’s error, then her pain at seeing Romeo
die, all at the same time. This stacking-up of realizations provides for a striking
intensification of the scene’s emotional potential, leaving the audience no time
to gather itself before the next point in the climax. There is a sense of futility
to Romeo’s death in Rakoff and Zeffirelli but less of a sense of disaster that
could have been avoided. In Luhrmann both are enhanced. As a result,
Luhrmann’s conclusion provides for a sharper awareness of Romeo’s mistake.
Providing for an increased sense of Romeo’s error contributes to a
diminishment in the romanticization of the character, and the romanticizing of
his death. This, combined with the extreme pathos of the scene and the
overdetermined lushness of the scenery and the score, intensifies the scene’s
emotional complexity.

The structure of the film’s conclusion means that J uliet’s suicide is more
directly tied to Romeo’s. In Luhrmann’s film, she witnesses not just the
aftermath of Romeo’s death, but his death itself. The segment, shorter than

Romeo’s in the playtext, is even more attenuated in the film (nine shots taking

209

 

 

 

 

two minutes two seconds, compared to 69 shots taking seven minutes three

seconds for Romeo), and, as noted above, follows directly upon Romeo’s
death.22 As a result, Juliet is allowed to converse after a fashion with Romeo

before he dies. Unable to respond to her vocally, he manages to shake his head
when she asks “drunk all and left no friendly drop / To help me after?” (5.3.163-

64).23 Moving J uliet’s lines up so that she speaks to him before he dies is yet

another gesture toward intimacy. Not only are the pair’s last moments
private, they are made to share one last miserable moment, rather than each
dying alone. This impulse reaches its epitome when the film collapses Romeo’s
and J uliet’s last kisses -- placed in the Norton edition after “Thus with a kiss I
die” (1. 120) and “Haply some poison doth yet hang on them, / To make me die
with a restorative” (ll. 165-66), respectively -- into one, so that Juliet’s lines
precede Romeo’s, her agency replaces his, and he responds to her action. This
generates a mutuality lacking in the playtext, so that their final kiss is one to

which Romeo can respond, instead of a series of individual efforts which can
evoke no reaction from the recipients?4 After Romeo’s death, J uliet’s suicide is

played out in near-total silence, suggesting interiority: her only sounds are
breathing, some sniffles and a single sob. Two possible readings of this, that
J uliet’s grief is beyond words or does not require words, further support the
construction of their love as deeply felt, beyond description, ideal.

In Luhrmann, Juliet’s brief happiness is shattered, not by seeing Romeo
dead, but by seeing him die. This is not the case in Zeffirelli and Rakoff. When
she awakens in the former, she is dazed and groaning with confusion, repeating
“Where is my Romeo? (1. 150) three times. In both she wakes on her own,

although Zefiirelli’s presentation is more detailed, close ups of her hand

210

 

 

 

 

revealing her fingers twitching, clenching into a fist, then travelling up her body
to her lips in a kind of visual blazon. Luhrmann’s Juliet awakens as Romeo

kisses her: his kisses seem to revive her. In Zeffirelli, the Friar tries to conceal
Romeo’s death, which Juliet discovers by accident.25 The man’s failure is the

latest in a line of adult failings the film documents. In Rakoff, the Friar tells
Juliet what has happened. The J uliets react with some difference to the
realization: Zeflirelli’s resists the Friar’s attempts to pull her away, yanking
her hand from his grasp and returning to the body as he flees, Rakofl’s by
ignoring the Friar’s gentle attempts to pull her away from her contemplation of
the body. Zeffirelli cuts Juliet’s “Go, get thee hence, for I will not away” (I. 160)
-- her actions make this clear; Rakoff keeps the line, but Juliet delivers it as an
afterthought, more to herself than to the Friar, who in fact has already fled —-
her concentration is entirely on her husband’s corpse.

In both Zeffirelli and Rakoff, Juliet kills herself after hearing noises
outside the tomb. In the former, during an extended moment of sobbing and

kissing Romeo’s face, Juliet hears the watch and reacts violently, seizing the
dagger and killing herself.26 In Rakoff, J uliet’s reaction to hearing the watch is

like that to the Friar’s departure: she registers the fact, but seems remote
from it. Her death does not seem an impulsive act, but more one of her taking
of the next best option: lacking any poison to help her along, she uses the just-
discovered dagger. Zeffirelli’s Juliet, unable to kiss any poison off Romeo’s lips,
and so unable to join her husband in death, falls into a prostrated despair, only
to be pushed into a desperate, affirmative act by the others’ arrival on the
scene. In neither film is J uliet’s suicide characterized as foolish or ill

considered. In Zeffirelli’s film it is an act of resistance, even defiance (Olivia

211

 

 

 

 

Hussey adds a sharp “No!” when she hears the watch), in Rakofi’s one of
sorrow. Both deaths take place in close proximity to Romeo’s body -- in Rakoff,
on the bier, in Zeffirelli on the floor -- and both J uliets die in physical contact
with their husbands, although in Zeffirelli the arrangement of the bodies is
presented as the more physically intimate: Juliet dies with her head on
Romeo’s chest, her chin touching his, so that their faces are next to each other
in close up, whereas in Rakoff the two die side by side, face to face. Pursell sees
this “perfectly assumed and composed attitude” as one “that declares the
fulfillment of the narrative pattern [toward artifice] through conscious visual
artifice” (“Artifice” 175, italics mine), a valid point if one discounts the

dominant stress on the spontaneity and naturalness of the deaths and the love
of which they are made to seem the natural end.27

All three Romeos characterize J uliet’s last moments as intimate. Not
only are the lovers’ bodies physically proximate, but in Luhrmann and Rakoff,
the suicides happen on an object at a minimum resembling a bed. In Rakoff,
Juliet has a double-Wide bier and along pillow with depressions for two heads,
leaving Romeo a convenient space in which to do his own dying, and in
Luhrmann J uliet’s bier is tricked out in a complete set of linens and an
assortment of pillows for her to recline upon. These accoutrements help
conditionalize and prettify death; they also preserve the death-bed/wedding—bed
analogy from the playtext and help romanticize the suicides as escapes from
worldly cares into an untroubled mutuality. This notion is furthered by how
tidy the three J uliets’ deaths are. In Zeffirelli, it looks like Juliet stabs herself
just below the xiphoid process (“looks like” because the entry of the blade into
her body is hidden by Romeo’s body). In Rakoff, Juliet stabs herself through

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the sternum, an act requiring a good deal of force; after a cut to a close up of
her face in agony, the film returns to a medium shot of Juliet (the dagger now
stuck higher in her left breast), a dribble of blood staining her white gown. Any
of these wounds would be more painful than depicted, and both J uliets could
survive for several minutes with such injuries. Even more decorous is the
Luhrmann presentation of J uliet’s suicide. When she shoots herself in the
temple, there is a cut from a close-up of Juliet to a long, high shot of the
sanctuary, with the camera positioned at about where Christ’s head would be
on the crucifix affixed to the front wall of the church. This sudden
diminishment makes another unsubtle reference to the Christ figures who look
on unmoved as deaths happen all around the city, as well as hides an
extremely violent end. Romeo’s gun looks to be a .45 or 9 mm. semi-automatic
pistol, both powerful weapons. Either would create a significant wound. Yet
there is no blood-spray on the pristine white pillows when Luhrmann’s camera
next looks down on the lovers at rest next to each other on the bier, and Juliet
has only a small hole in her temple, a rivulet of blood trailing toward her cheek.

As was the case with Romeo’s poison, all three acts prettify death, help make
it seem an escape into eternity rather than an ugly, painful way to die.28

Staging the deaths as violent or bloody does not guarantee de-
glamorization, however, a point which China Girl illustrates. That film not
only provides a graphic representation of what a bullet can do to a human
body, but does it in slow motion. Despite this, the circumstances of Tony’s and
Tye’s deaths help to alleviate the disturbing way they die. Their deaths are
visited upon them by another, which provides for an intensified understanding

of their roles as victims, stressed in this film to a greater degree than in any of

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the other four productions. And the physical arrangement of their bodies after
they have been shot continues to develop the notion that the moment of their
deaths, already more mutual than any of those in the Romeos, is transcendent,
unifying. Although Tye was standing on the sidewalk directly in front of Tony
when they were shot, when the camera next turns its attention to them, they
are both spread-eagled in the middle of the street, their outstretched fingertips
almost touching. How they got out there is a mystery, as is how they managed
to fall down in so artful a way. They are reaching for each other, their
fingertips just touching, a comment on the success of the rivalries which have
striven to keep them apart, and at the same time a reflection of that rivalry’ s

futility: even death cannot stop the lovers’ perpetual straining toward union.

 

Clear, these ambiguities

The paradoxical idea that death prevents yet cannot attenuate the
lovers’ desire for unity is present as well at the end of West Side Story, whose
signal difference from the playtext is that its female protagonist lives.
Properly speaking, Tony’s death begins the film’s denouement, in which the
characters seek to “know” the “true descent” of the “Pitiful sight” that greets
them (5.3.217, 17 3). That quest for knowledge is not explicitly stated, although
the film’s aftermath is constructed as presenting clarity and truth. Rather
than the film’s nominal surviving authority figures -- Krupke or Schrank --

seeking the explanation, Maria initiates it, in the form of an Escaline
castigation?9 She is not compelled to reveal the truth, as are the Friar,

Balthasar and Paris’ Page, whose accounts are authorized by the Prince and

lent further authority by Romeo’s own written version of events. Instead,

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Maria is prompted to it by the intention of the Jets and Sharks to continue
fighting and by her own desire to speak the truth, as she sees it, of what has
happened; her authority derives from her construction as Virgina]
intercessor/lover.

As the gangs move toward each other, Maria orders them to “Stay

back,” positioning herself between the two groups. Maria helps sinners avoid
temptation.30 That her intervention is successful is surprising, given that

neither gang accords much respect to women; the Jets in particular have
demonstrated their disregard for Puerto Rican females. However, since Maria
is the only moral authority the film has left, and in order for the film’s final lines
to be taken as serious expositions of truth, Maria needs to be the one to say
them. Her excoriation of the feud both lays blame and establishes how far it
has gone in contaminating the innocent:
How do you fire this gun, Chino? Just by pulling this little trigger?
[Points gun at Chino, who shies away] How many bullets are left,
Chino? Enough for you? [Points gun at another] And you? [Points gun
at Action] All of you? You all killed him, and my bother, and Rifl. Not
with bullets and guns, with hate. Well, I can kill too, because now I have
hate. How many can I kill, Chino? How many, and still have one bullet
left for me?31
This removes Maria from responsibility for Tony’s death, implicating the
others in his downfall, as well as in Maria’s own descent from a girl who is
“pretty and witty and gaf’ to one who wants to kill. This is some distance from
Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet ascribes no blame at the time of her death
(beyond aggravation with Romeo for not leaving her any poison), and evinces
no desire to kill anyone other than herself at any point in the playtext. Since
West Side Story establishes its adults as ineffective or corrupt, the film can

only make a valid point about how the feud corrupts everything and everyone

 

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by shunting the responsibility for assigning blame to the girl it has constructed
as innocent and blameless. In forcing Maria out of her inward-looking love

relationship, the filmmakers are able to use her idealization as a central, moral
focal point for their call for social change.32

Set in the same place as was the first appearance of the Jets, the
drama’s resolution plays out against a backdrop of fences. However, here, at
the end of the film, the camera does not look into the schoolyard as it did at its
beginning. It looks out. Everyone, Maria, Sharks, Jets, police and Doc, is
trapped, and when Tony’s body is carried out, the characters seem to have

been freed as the ad hoc cortege passes through the gate, down the sidewalk
and out of sight.33 This notion is supported by the affirmative result of Maria’s

laying of blame, when two of the Sharks step forward to help carry Tonys body
out, and the two Jets struggling to lift the corpse allow it. The Sharks’ gesture
implies an asking for forgiveness, the Jets’ acceptance its having been granted.
At this time, for this moment, brought together by more than their shared
dislike of Schrank, the gangs cooperate. Some members of the gangs do
retreat into the maze of fences, but more leave together. This is hopeful,
though not entirely so: some remain trapped in a retrograde way of thinking.
Further, although the leaders of the “families” make the first, significant
gestures toward reconciliation, they do this apart from any involvement by the
representatives of order, who can only take Chino into custody after the
funereal procession passes out of flame. Krupke and Schrank do this in the
background of an extreme long shot; the timing of the action and its distance
from the camera -- and even the diffident quality of the action itself -- diminish

its impact. The arrest seems more an afterthought than a positive assertion

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of legal authority, which has been superseded by Maria’s moral authority.
“Some shall be pardoned, and some punished” (l. 307), but the importance of
this scene is the reconciliation prompted by Maria’s words.

Close to this in tone is Zeffirelli’s final scene (see Appendix H), which
moves outside the tomb and later in time, returning to the square where the
film began. This preserves the idea of the lovers as intimate, private: the
whole community does not “crowd in” (Belsey, “Name” 7 8) to the tomb and
violate the lovers’ privacy. Instead, the families take the bodies to the Prince
in a scene paralleling the aftermath of the Mercutio-Tybalt-Romeo duel, in
which the families bought their dead to the Prince, as well as the opening brawl,
in which the families streamed into the same square, the crucial difference
being that this time they come from the same direction, rather than opposing
ones (J orgens, Shakespeare on Film 90). This implies reconciliation without
any of the characters saying anything about it, and affirms as well the
authority of the Prince, who here is less interested in inquiry -— those lines are
cut -- than scolding, a typical mode for this character. Photographed fiom
below as in his earlier scenes, Escalus is still presented as a dominant, even
terrifying presence. The handheld camera again emphasizes this, lending an
air of nervous unsteadiness to the proceedings, as well as one of immediacy as

it peeks through the ranks of townspeople looking at the somber procession.
The funeral procession itself is of some interest.34 Aside from the

implied reconciliation, the arrangement and direction of the procession are
reminiscent of a wedding. Two families, side by side, take the young lovers
toward a church. The procession pauses at the front door for some words by

an authority figure, after which the group moves inside. The scene could easily

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be that of a wedding with but a few small changes in the staging.”5 This

furthers the suggested reconciliation beyond that of West Side Story, on which
this scene seems modelled. Not only do the households share space, move in a
single direction and mix together while being addressed by Escalus, but they
tacitly acknowledge their children’s marriage, giving it their imprimantur by
ceremonially reenacting the walk down the aisle.

Zeffirelli’s reconciliation extends beyond this sharing of space and intent,
although the reason for it is left a mystery. Whereas Maria’s last speech
shames the Jets and Sharks, there is no truth—telling in Zeffirelli. When he
cuts from the shot of Juliet, dead on Romeo’s chest, to the square, the director
also cuts the explanations. The result is the elimination of any specific reason
for the households to act in so unified a way. The time shift (from night, just
falling when Romeo arrives at the tomb with Balthasar, to full daylight) masks
this to an extent, allowing for the inference that some inquiry has gone on, that
the households know what happened, and why. That is one reason why they
might enter the square from one direction. Another possibility is that the
houses are so stunned by the deaths that they have just decided to get along,
or are incapable of further aggression at the moment. The two lines do not
commingle, but at least they are marching more or less in step. The glooming
peace implied in the parallel processions is further defined by what happens
after Escalus’ final castigation of the two houses, on whom he squarely places
blame (which the production does not qualify, presenting the deaths and
eliminating the subsequent explanations as it does). As Capulet and Montague

enter the church after the Prince, they pause and share a look before passing

out of the frame. This action is repeated by their wives.36 These slight

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gestures are amplified by Nurse, who gives Balthasar a pat on the neck, then
two other members of the Capulet and Montague households, who hug. These
symbolic gestures fulfill the promise of the opening voice over, that the
parents’ strife would be buried with their children’s deaths. Capulet does not
offer to take Montague’s hand, but then this does not provide Montague the
chance to refuse it. Neither offers to erect a monument to the other’s child, but

then neither engages in a bit of unseemly one-upmanship over the construction
of the memorials.37 J orgens characterizes this ending as “missing” the “insight

and defiant anger” of the playtext as he understands it (Shakespeare on Film
92), a fair reading if one privileges the playtext. If one regards the
Shakespearean version of the Romeo and Juliet fiction as Zeffirelli does, as a
tragedy of two kids who believed too sincerely, then this ending works quite
well.

As cautionary, as “gloomy” as Zeffirelli’s ending may be, it is altogether
more hOpeful than that of China Girl. Ferrara’s film posits not only that the
lovers’ self-involvement has gotten them killed, but offers as well the
possibilities that their deaths are necessary for the restoration of civic order
and that their deaths will make possible the more effective functioning of the
criminal orders that rule Little Italy and Chinatown. After showing Tony and
Tye being shot, the film cuts to Shin, who is run down and shot by a group of
figures all shadowed so deeply as to be little more than silhouettes. Following
this, there is a cut to a low long shot of the street, travelling toward Tony and
Tye. As the camera conducts its leisurely survey of the bodies, Yung runs in,
shouts “No!” and kneels by Tye, cradling her. Bystanders continue to gather in

a circle around the three, which gradually closes in on the tableau as the fade to

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black begins.

This ending eliminates the most potent disordering force in the film,
Shin, at least in part by the citizens on whom he preyed: the people running
into the hallway after Shin are fairly clearly people of the neighborhood but
those coming down the interior stairs and from deeper in the building could also
be members of the Triad, who have been looking for the errant and
unrepentant gang member. In the case of the former, the community has its
own ordering if extra-legal mechanisms (implied in the vaguely hostile reactions
to the pairing of Tony and Tye as well as by an earlier scene showing some
Italians chasing Yung and Shin through the street feste) quite apart from those
of the nominal guarantors of order, the police (already shown to be ineffective)
and the uncles (also unable to control Shin). Shin not only caused local
disorder, terrorizing the owners and patrons of Canton Garden, but through
such acts of predation threatened a more profound disruption to the balance of
power between the two criminal houses. He also helps to foment dissension in
Yung’s family, exacerbating his cousin’s own xenophobia, which in turn led to
escalating tensions with his sister, and causes disruption in Yung’s gang. This
causes further disorder for Yung, who is ordered by his superiors to control his
gang and his wayward cousin. Shin’s death alone would provide for increased
harmony and order on any number of levels, personal, familial, social and
criminal.

The authority so thoroughly resisted by Shin is both reasserted and
discounted in this final segment. When Shin, as an agent of disorder, is struck

down, it simultaneously promotes and subverts order: Shin is dead, but his

 

death results from an illegal act that will allow criminal order to continue to

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flourish. At the same time, Yung, who represents order and the family not only
in his role as gang leader but as elder brother, is shown to be powerless.

Unable to control his sister, he is also unable to control his cousin. All he can
do is protest his sister’s death. By the time Yung races to his sister’s side, two
families, his own and Tony/s, have been destroyed, as well as his gang “family.”
Love, too, has been severely threatened: although it can be seen to continue to
struggle to exist through the positioning of the lovers’ bodies, it is notable that
Yung embraces Tye alone, and leaves Tony on the street. Even in death, the
feud threatens the lovers’ unity. The criminal bosses have lost a metaphorical
“brace of kinsmen” (5.3.294), but however disagreeable this may be (which
does not appear to be much), their criminal efforts take precedence. The
“uncles” can get on with solidifying their new, multi-ethnic family and with their
business. Like West Side Story and Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, China Girl
ends with an affirmation of order. In its cynical way, Ferrara’s film is even
more hopeful than those two films: the tragic end of the two lovers will result
in a strengthening of the, or at least a, community: Gung Tu and Enrico Perito
are getting on great guns. As to whether Little Italy and Chinatown need
healing of this stripe, the film remains mum.

Ferrara never stages a reconciliation. In this, his film’s ending is
implicative. This is not the case in Rakoffs production (see Appendix 1),
although the cessation of hostilities seems as complete in both. In Rakoff, the
Prince, the Capulets and Montague enter to the bodies, but not the Page, the
three watchmen, Balthasar and the Friar. This maintains the centrality of the
lovers to the story, and characterizes the proceedings as a private family

affair. Despite this, the rearrangement and cutting of the BBC Romeo’s final

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scene provide a public sense to the deaths as well:
EXT. THE SQUARE OUTSIDE CAPULET’S HOUSE -- NIGHT

[Some townspeople run by the steps to Capulet’s house in a
hubbub.]
CAPULET What should it be that is so shrieked abroad?
CAPULET’S WIFE O, the people in the street cry ‘Romeo’,
Some ‘Juliet’, some ‘Paris’, and all run
With open outcry toward our monument.
[Townspeople continue to stream by as Capulet’s wife starts down
the steps]

EXT. THE CAPULET MONUMENT -- NIGHT

PRINCE What fear is this which startles in our ears?
CHIEF WATCHMAN Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain,
And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before,
Warm, and new killed.
[Crowd reacts with alarm]
PRINCE Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can clear these ambiguities.
Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
Where are the parties of suspicion?
FRIAR I am the greatest, able to do least,
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excused.
PRINCE Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
[Capulet and his wife pass by the Prince and enter the monument]
FRIAR Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet.

INT. THE CRYPT -- NIGHT

CAPULET O heavens! Wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
This dagger hath mista’en, for 10, his house
Is empty on the back of Montague,
And it mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom.
CAPULET’S WIFE 0 me, the sight of this is as a bell
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

 

EXT. THE CAPULET MONUMENT -- NIGHT

[Camera follows Montague as he enters to the Prince]
PRINCE Come, Montague, for thou art early up
To see thy son and heir more early down.
MONTAGUE Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight.
Grief of my son’s exile hath stopped her breath.
What further woe conspires against mine age?
PRINCE Look, and thou shalt see.

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INT. THE CRYPT —- NIGHT
MONTAGUE O thou untaught! What manners is in this,
To press before thy father to a grave?
(ll. 189-96, 215-16, 197, 221-22, 225-27, 230, 201-14)38

As the Prince and the watch try to figure out what has happened, the
production cuts to a high shot of the square outside Capulet’s house.
Townspeople -- as in 1.1 and 3.1, eager to get a look at what new calamity has
presented itself —- hurry by. At the monument, they burst into a round of
“walla-walla—rhubarb” when the Chief Watchman announces his findings.
Their excited reaction pulls the Prince away from his inspection of the crypt,

impelling him to order the crowd to calm down: “Seal up the mouth of outrage
for a while, / Till we can clear these ambiguities” (11. 215-16).39 This again
shows Rakoffs Veronese as tolerant of disorder, even accepting of it if it
provides them a little safe excitement, and establishes a public component to
the otherwise private, family scene. The Montagues and Capulets are
spectacle. At this point, Rakoff’s Prince is at his most commanding,
maintaining control of the situation despite his own almost total lack of

information. In the playtext, his imperative “Seal up the mouth of outrage”

 

follows Montague’s “O thou untaught! What manners is in this, / To press
before thy father to a grave” (11. 213-14). This can be taken as a command to
the old man to calm himself, or to the Prince’s retainers to close the tomb.
Positioning the crowd as the object of the command helps to construct a Prince
who disapproves of the slow-down-and-look-at-the-accident mentality of the
Veronese, as well as a more kindly Prince than that in Zeflirelli. Rakoff’s
Prince allows Montague to enter the tomb by himself, where he can have an

almost-private moment in which to grieve before the Prince himself enters to

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deliver his soft-voiced summation of the ills the feud has wrought upon
Montague and the Capulets.

The Friar’s role as an authority figure —- in the final part of the playtext
arising not so much from his religious capacity but instead from his function as
oral historian, the one character able to provide context and thus sort out the
confusion -- is greatly reduced in Rakoff, his 40 line explanation being cut to
one, as though telling the Prince that “Romeo, there dead, was husband to that
Juliet” (l. 230) explains anything. Of course, in this conception of Romeo and
Juliet, it explains almost everything, since the emphasis of the final moments
is on the lovers’ relationship and their parents’ loss, rather than on the
personal faults and failings, and the mis- and missed chances that characterize
the narrative. The Friar’s reduced revelation spares the Prince and the
townspeople -- and the parents -- what Holmer identifies as an essential
element of the tragedy: the on-stage hearing and realization of their role in the
children’s downfall and their own misery and confusion (“Violence” 173-74).40
Neither Montague nor the Capulets are told why Romeo is in the Capulet
monument, nor why his dagger is sticking out of J uliet’s chest. Yet despite
witnessing a scene ideal for encouraging further suspicion, the parents
reconcile. This is a true “it’s in the script” moment: the parents reconcile
because they have to.41 Otherwise Romeo and Juliet will have died in vain.

The Friar’s part in this reconciliation is negligible; it occurs miraculously,
otherwise it would undermine the production’s construction of Romeo and Juliet
as “Poor sacrifices of our enmity” (l. 303). The Friar’s authority is effectively
eliminated. (It is even more effectively eliminated in Luhrmann, in which

Father Laurence does not appear after at least trying to prevent disaster as

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Romeo hurtled into Verona Beach, and in Zeffrrelli, in which the Friar’s last on-
screen appearance is fleeing the tomb in a panic.)

If reconciliation in the other productions is variously constructed as
symbolic, presumed or taken-for-granted, there is none at all in Luhrmann (see
Appendix J). Set to the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in which
Isolde, revived from apparent death, looks on the face of her dead lover and
sings her hallucination of bliss before spiralling into death, the denouement of
Luhrmann’s film concentrates almost exclusively on the deaths of Romeo and
Juliet, and what has been lost because of those deaths. For the first part of
the segment, moments from scenes earlier in the film are intercut with the
long, slow crane up from the bodies on the bier: Romeo and Juliet looking at
each other through the fishtank during Capulet’s feast; Romeo and Juliet
running through maskers at the feast; the ring engraved “I love thee,” given to
Romeo by the Nurse just before he leaves for Mantua; Romeo and Juliet
playing under the sheets the morning after their wedding; and their underwater
kiss, which slows, freezes, and fades into white. With these visuals
Luhrmann’s film intercuts what is and what was before freezing on a shot that
encompasses passion, death and eternity, then burns in an idealized and
idealizing white screen which lasts for a comparatively long five seconds -- a
filmic tunnel of light, leading toward paradise. But then the film cuts fi'om its
paradisal white screen to the bodies being wheeled to the waiting ambulance, in
particular to a shot concentrating on the white sheets covering the bodies. The
film proposes that the lovers ascend into an untroubled afterlife, but
immediately challenges this proposition with a visual of the grim fact of the

death necessary for that ascent. This does not obviate the possibility of

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everlasting love waiting for Romeo and Juliet -- the emphasis of the aftermath
outside the church is on the misery of the parents and the futility of the feud,
rather than on the corpses, squirrelled away under those tidy white sheets --
but it does qualify it. The suicides do have an aftermath. An even more bleak
complication may be found in the possibility that the final montage of the
joyful lovers shows the last thoughts that flit through J uliet’s mind before she
dies, with the white screen signifying only unconsciousness and death, and not
a tunnel of light into bliss. The cut to the white sheet, then, shows what may
be the waste of two young lives and the destruction of their families’ hopes.

This, then, may be the “glooming peace” which follows their deaths, and
to which the film now turns. This turn is accompanied by some crucial textual
excisions.42 The inquiring watch is gone, replaced by silent armed figures
glimpsed in some of the backgrounds. Also gone are Paris’ Page, Balthasar and
the Friar,43 along with any conversation between Capulet and Montague.
Instead, Luhrmann shows disheveled Capulets and Montagues standing eyes
downcast while they are scolded by Captain Princef‘4 This places blame on the
adults. The lovers are past caring, and as their bodies are wheeled out, the
adults stand dumbly by not responding to Captain Prince’s beration. (This lack
of response mirrors the silence with which Montague and Capulet greeted his
1.1. castigation. The new moment comments on the end as having resulted in
part from the earlier obstinacy.) This nihilism exceeds even Ferrara, who at
least showed an action to restore order (even if it was an illegal one), and whose
gangsters can be expected to get back to business as quickly as possible, now
that the disruptive elements have been purged.

The film’s final visuals return it to the point at which it began. As the

226

 

 

 

 

 

 

anchorwoman from the opening scene reads the Prince’s final lines, the images
of the bodies being placed in the ambulance continue. Now, however, the
visuals are pixillated, their grain denoting them as footage shot for and being
shown on television: it is the conclusion of the report that audience members
were slam-zoomed into some 110 minutes earlier. The moralizing tone in
Escalus’ closing sestet works well reassigned to the Choric news anchor:
A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardoned, and some punished;
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. (5.3.304-09)
This fits the current state of tv news, in which summary reportage is often
combined with semi-poetical editorial comment, even down to the hyperbolic
final couplet; in particular it sorts with the blend of investigative and advocacy

journalism that characterizes one-hour newsmagazines like Dateline, and to an
even greater degree half-hour tabloid shows such as Hard Copy or Inside
Edition. Platitudes stand in for knowledge.45 Luhrmann’s tv fiame at once
documents how contemporary media -— film included -- thrive on spectacle
while missing the point of what is being shown, and asserts that there is no
reconciliation to be had.46 The feud has ended, if it has ended, because the
patriarchs are too shattered to fight any further. Leech’s complaint that the
playtext’s finale is a complacent withdrawal from the tragic, a failure to
confront evil (73, 7 0) would seem to be a fair one to level at this film. However,
an equally pertinent possibility, noted by Hodgdon, is that this ending’s denial of
answers points to a lack of answers to contemporary American social ills

(“William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” 14). Rather than the too-easy

227

 

 

 

reconciliation of Rakoff’s production, Luhrmann’s offers instead a lyrically

beautiful final montage of perfect love, love that lives on after death, love that
perhaps can survive only in death.47 Romeo, baptized before his first meeting

with Juliet, has been unable to redeem society, although he has been able to
show it a better way. This can be seen as a partial validation of the Friar’ s
plan. Yet existing alongside this is the complicating cut following the fade to
white and its implication of wasted lives and destroyed hopes, in which the
lovers’ sacrifice may go for naught. Further, the reflexive character of
Luhrmann’s ending calls attention to the film’s narrative flame, re-focusing
attention on the constructedness of the fiction, as something put together for
others’ consideration. This has a dual effect: though apparently contesting the
tendency of “Most adaptations of literature in performance” not to “draw
attention to the fact that they are fictional rather than rea ” (Reynolds 1), the
flame, which establishes the film as constructed, also establishes the body of
the film as reportage, as a constructed recreation of fact, and so cloaks its
artificiality within its foregrounded artifice. Yet even as the flame works to
hide the ideology of young love, it calls attention to another. The flame, which
promised an end to the strife in its opening moments, is incomplete -- there is
no reconciliation shown, no conciliatory words spoken. The “glooming peace”
may be permanent, or it may be temporary -- the film does not say. As such,

the broken flame is one more instance of the failure of an arbitrary ordering
System in a film crammed full of them.’8

This combination of lack of fulfillment, assertion of failure and idealizing
impulse is unique to William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, although the

conditionalizing energy of its last visual is not. China Girl’s last look at the

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lovers, as the circle Of bystanders closes in around them, shows their wrecked
relationship, and the sacrifice of the nuclear family to the imperatives Of the
criminal “families.” This last circle, mirroring that formed by the dancers as
they draw away flom Tony and Tye in the film’s first club scene, moves in
instead Of away, a gesture Of community and concern both tOO little and tOO
late. Ferrara’s citizens may have mobilized, but that doesn’t do the lovers or
their families much good. This is part Of the film’s cynicism: the lovers,
communal sacrifices, are at last embraced, but only as sad spectacle. And,
more particularly, only Tye is embraced. When Yung leaves Tony on the street
as he lifts his sister in his arms, it has the effect Of pulling her away flom Tony,
an action mirroring Shin’s in the film’s first dance club scene. Tony is part Of
the metaphoric embrace Of the onlookers, but the unity Of the lovers is a the
last broken by Yung’s gesture. West Side Story’s final visuals are not so grim,
but they, too, work tO generate a final ambiguity. The last flames Of the film
do not show its characters, or its most recognizable set; they do not even
return tO the Opening device Of travelling over the city, which would have
reaffirmed the film’s situation Of Tony and Maria’s story in a larger social
context. Instead, the final credits are presented as graffiti sprayed and painted
on a series Of walls. One might imagine that walls, well-established as
confining and divisive, would not be a choice in keeping with the more or less
hopeful conclusion Of the fiction. However, the graffiti suggests that whatever
progress the Jets and Sharks have made, and however painful that progress
may have been, there are still Obstacles to overcome. Bernardo is dead. Riff is
dead. Tony is dead. Chino is a murderer under arrest. Anita, whose voice

mocked the artificial barriers Of the feud early in the action, is now as bitter as

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Bernardo was because Of the attempted rape. Maria now has hate, not just for
others, but for her “own kind” as well. The film proffers a vision Of
reconciliation, perhaps even hope in the shared labor Of the Jets and Sharks.
This goes some way tO ameliorating Maria’s claim that she now hates, that she
could fill not only others but, her last speech intimates, herself as well: “How
many can I kill, and still have one bullet left for me?” Despite this
amelioration, the final credits imply that maintaining that reconciliation will
not be easy. One might infer flom Escalus’ command that Capulet, Montague
and the rest Of the Veronese lockers—on “GO hence, to have more talk Of these
sad things” expresses a degree Of dissatisfaction with the explanations and
proffers he has heard. Similarly, West Side Story’s graffiti credits hint that the
conflicts, though resolved, are not yet over, and imply as well the existence Of
strife beyond that Of the fiction; they require of the audience not just attention,
but talk, and seem to express a hope for affirmative acts like the final gestures
Of the Jets and Sharks even while acknowledging that rancor and division still
exist, and, as Maria’s words attest, can grow.

The crenellated stone walls Of Zefiirelli’s final visual recall not only the
opening shot over the city, but West Side Story’s final walls as well; they, tOO,
provide an ambiguous close to the production. Romeo and Juliet may have
died, but their deaths have provided a chance for reconciliation, and this in turn
will lend solidity, symbolized by the walls, tO the city, and so to social order.
However, this “final, sweet sadness” (Evans 48) is unmarked by an explicit
acknowledgement of the negative role the houses (or the lovers) played in that
end, and at the same time that the walls represent solidity, they are also

battlements, reminders that while this feud may be over, feuds themselves still

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exist, and that this one may yet flare up again. After all, the masters Of each
house still seem wary Of each other, as do their mistresses. Zeffirelli’s ending
does have its notes Of hope, but those notes come flom the lower echelons of
the households, those least able to effect change. The rigidity of those stone
walls also speaks to Romeo and J uliet’s absolute commitment to one another
and to their love, hinting that such absolutism might be as dangerous as that
underpinning the division between the two families. Finally, after Rakoff’s
Prince has provided his final summation, there is a cut to the slowly dispersing
crowd outside the Capulet monument; following this is a cut to the square as
the townspeople return to their homes, leaving the space outside Capulet’s
house, busy at the beginning Of the production, empty; then, the camera
returns tO the Capulet monument before the final fade to black. Aside from
showing people going hence tO talk Of these sad things and establishing
contrasts with the Opening scene, the penultimate shot helps to fix this
production as centered on Romeo and Juliet. At rest in the Capulet crypt, they
appropriate the structure as a monument tO their love. At the same time, it is
the Capulet monument, and so a fit visual with which to end a production that
has devoted considerable energy tO depicting that household. Showing the quiet
square shows the return of order tO Verona; ending on the monument reaffirms
knowledge Of the cost Of that order, not just the deaths of the lovers, but the

death Of a family.

So orderly all things
I have found that, for my own part, it is very difficult to think about

Romeo and Juliet in terms other than being about love. In this sense, the

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playtext is a strong one, especially in that this notion about it has tended tO
govern how I understand the three adaptations and two derivations considered
in this dissertation. I have wanted them to be confirmation that Romeo and
Juliet is considered to be a story about pure, true love. This want -- need? —— is
a clear example Of Hodgdon’s theory of the expectational text in action, and I
have had tO work at not using the productions tO confirm my own
predispositions. Clearly, the five productions are about young love; as clearly,
they are also about schemes Of order and the family. West Side Story,
Zeflirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, Rakoff’s Romeo and Juliet, China Girl and
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet all present troubled affirmations Of the
value Of young love, even as they Offer what might best be described as
qualified challenges to schemes Of order and the family, ideological constructs
that the societies Of the five productions typically prize. Just as none Of the
productions completely subverts schemes Of order, none idealizes young love
neatly; none Offers a vision Of young love, or order, or the family flee flom
complication or contradiction.

None Of the productions, it seems tO me, aggressively questions whether
the lovers’ intense passion for each other is itselfan unqualified good. As noted
in chapter 4, shifting consideration flom Romeo and J uliet’s love tO Love helps
to defer such questioning. Given this, Catherine Belsey’s inquiry about
whether “we have been unduly reluctant to attend to the problems that reside
in the (excessive) desire which the Renaissance theatre so remorselessly
dramatizes” (“Desire’s” 98) is an apt one. Earlier in this chapter, I argued that
Ferrara’s film intimates the deadly risk that the lovers’ self-involvement

entails, that Zeflirelli’s film, and before it West Side Story, suggest through the

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final shots of walls that the lovers’ absolute commitment to each other and
their love is not so different flom the rigidly maintained distinctions between
the families as the lovers themselves -- or we, their audience -— might wish to
believe. Luhrmann’s film, with its out to the sheeted dead seems tOO to be
throwing cold water on the notion Of an ideal love, especially when seen in the
context of the lack of any clear, or even hinted-at, reconciliation that results
flom knowledge Of that love. DeSpite gestures such as these, however, I am
uncertain whether these productions really dO “attend to the problems that
reside in . . . (excessive) desire.” The final moments in the Luhrmann, Zeffirelli
and Wise/Robbins films seem to be tO be tOO little, tOO late; similarly, Rakoffs
crypt-cum-monument, which entombs the lovers, also glorifies their
commitment to each other. Ferrara’s film alone seems to engage in an
extended campaign tO question young love, beginning with his first dance club
scene and ending with the shooting deaths Of the lovers -- but it should be noted
that I have used “seem” deliberately here, for this idea is not pursued as
assiduously as it could have been. Young love is not uncomplicated in these
productions, but neither is it challenged with the same rigor that schemes Of
order are.

That those schemes Of order are challenged would seem to mitigate
Leech’s complaint about the “hardly tolerable” complacency Of the ending of
the playtext (73), in which the lovers’ deaths are excused as “poor sacrifices”
necessary for ending civil disorder, but I find that flom one point Of view the
reverse is actually the case. As I have noted, ideological slippages indicate
deep er commitments to schemes Of order than the productions’ surface

challenges would otherwise indicate. If the productions only scratch the

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surface in their challenges, then the charge of complacency is a fair one: if
order is not seriously threatened, the sacrifice of the lovers to restore what was
never endangered is gratuitous. I myself find complacent the way that West
Side Story and China Girl obfuscate their respective lovers’ roles in their own
downfalls: both films excuse the deaths as sad necessities in the project to
expose social corruption. Similarly, the adaptations by Zeffirelli and Rakoff do
not directly conflont the way in which young love contributes to the lovers’
deaths; instead, love and the deaths are excused because they expose social
iniquity in the case of Zeffrrelli’s film, and help to repair it in Rakoff’s
production. The problem -- the complacency -- is that neither plumbs the root

and cause of that inequity. Even what Hodgdon calls the “denial Of the social”

 

(“William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” 14) in Luhrmann’s film should be
regarded with some suspicion. Although the film challenges complacency by
refusing a clear or even an implied reconciliation (which would thereby excuse
the deaths), the easy, almost reflexive rejection of politics, authority and
answers in late 19903 youth culture, to which the film clearly plays, can call
this challenge into doubt: is the film serious, or is it playing to a self-
consciously cynical and disaffected audience?

In fact, four Of the five productions move away flom a clear, overt
reconciliation -- only Rakoffs Offers definitive evidence Of a cessation Of the
feud. That this is so can be taken to indicate a Leech-like challenge of
playtextual complacency. However, what Leech regards as complacent may
have shifted in form since he wrote his essay. As my comments (immediately
above) on Luhrmann’s conclusion suggest, in the latter years of the twentieth

century it is easy to reject reconciliation, or to conditionalize it. If anything,

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that is my own era’s complacency, a thoroughgoing mistrust Of any purported
and/or apparent answers and solutions. It is Zeffirelli’s youths who reconcile,
not the distrustful elders; in West Side Story, the youths do all the wor --
literally, the heavy lifting -- while the adults lOOk on; of course the criminals
come out on top in Ferrara; and in the final moments of Luhrmann’s film, it
should come as no surprise that all the adults do is look shocked at the
enormities their enmity has wrought, cast blame, and editorialize. By these
standards, Rakoffs ending is so hopeful that it borders on the hokey, yet even
that production qualifies its hopefulness with the empty, silent square and the
final shot of the brooding, silent Capulet monument. In their refusal to
interrogate the full range of the causes Of the tragedy, all Of these endings
appear to fulfill Davies’ assertion that “in its projection of love and hate spread
across two generations, the play will tempt directors -- in film and theatre -- to

tilt it towards social and political commentary and away flom dramatic
tragedy” (“Film” 162).”9 The productions all reject a complacent reconciliation

to one degree or another, but this should not distract one flom the knowledge
that such a rejection may itself arise flom yet another complacency.

The ideological exchanges in which these three adaptations and two
derivations of the Romeo and Juliet story participate would, on their first face,
appear to support assertions such as James C. Bulman’s, that performance
theory “has challenged traditional assumptions about textual authority and
the production of meaning” (“Introduction” 8). The difliculty with Bulman’s
claim is that, as he would have it, performance theory seems to take
“performance” to refer either to a singular entity -- a performance -- or an

abstraction -- Performance. In doing do, the theory loses sight of what a group

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of performances all based to one degree or another on a particular playtext can
dO to notions of what that playtext is “about.” Douglas Lanier comes close to
this problem when he worries that even if “the central insight of performance
criticism is that performance is radically contingent, Open to historical and
material pressures that may not outlast a performance (or even an act), the
stability Of the” film, tv and video texts “from which we work may be false to
the very historicality performance criticism seeks to address (204). Even this,
though, does not fully account for the problem posed to performance theory by
a set of productions, all available in the highly—repeatable, “stable” medium of
video. If one film adaptation Of Romeo and Juliet can contest historicality,
then three adaptations and two derivations spread across a span of 35 years
can do so to a far greater extent, especially when they tend to share certain
points Of View. It is unlikely that similar reactions to and interactions with the
flee floating ideological constructs Of schemes of order, young love and the
family would not act in much the same way as would a single performance,
screened over and over again. These similarities could suggest to an audience
that there is an immanent, ahistorical meaning, an authorial intention, tO
Romeo and Juliet. As individual entities, the productions may have “a peculiar
power to subvert ‘authoritative’ Shakespeare” (Bulman, “Introduction” 2), but
in the aggregate they may actually work to restore that notion, if only in part,
and performance theory needs to more fully account for this possibility. In
arguing this, I have, I see, returned to the point flom which I began. This
examination of the implications of the ideas, assumptions and commitments
expressed in the three adaptations and two derivations of Romeo and Juliet for

understanding that playtext closes on a call to develop further a current

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theoretical discipline. As much as it has been a study Of how film, television
and video manage Romeo and Juliet, this dissertation manages the playtext
and its adaptations and derivations. It considers how Romeo and Juliet is put

to work, and in doing so, puts the playtext to work itself.

 

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GLOSSARY

 

 

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GLOSSARY

ANAMORPHIC LENS An anamorphic photographic lens compresses a wide
image to fit standard flame dimensions (usually 1.85:1). An anamorphic
projection lens decompresses it. Allows for extremely high aspect ratios
such as Panavision 70, Sovscope, Cinerama or Cinemascope.

ASPECT RATIO The ratio of the image’s width to its height. In classical
Hollywood fihns and American tv, the aspect ratio is 1.33:1, i.e., for
every foot and a third Of width, there is a foot of height. Most American
films today use a 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio; anamorphic
formats like Panavision 70, used in West Side Story, can range up to
2.55:1. See also Pan and Scan, and Widescreen.

BIRD’S EYE VIEW The camera shoots straight down on its subject. A bird’s
eye View can range in length flom an extreme close up to an extreme
long shot or wide shot.

BLOCKING The arrangement and movement Of bodies within the flame.

BLOCKING IN DEPTH Because Of its reduced screen size, tv makes
considerable use of the z-axis in its blocking. This allows for the
inclusion Of more people in the flame than would be possible were they
to stand side by side along the x-axis, as well as for a greater range Of

movement (forward and back, rather than side to side) within the flame.
Also called z-axis blocking.

BOOM A form of camera movement. A boom is a long arm upon which the
camera is mounted. The boom can be raised or lowered as well as moved
side to side. While on a boom, the camera can tilt, pan or roll. A boom
can be mounted on a dolly, or be coupled with tracking or travelling
shots. See also Crane.

CLOSE ON A description Of a close up, i.e., The camera is close on Juliet’s
expression of alarm.

CLOSE UP A shot that shows the human body flom the shoulders up. The
term is variable, however: a close up Of a coffee mug would show the
mug filling the flame. An extreme close up of the mug would show its

handle filling the flame.

CRANE A form of camera movement. I use crane to refer to a very large
boom. A crane can move up or down and side to side. The last shot Of
Romeo and Juliet in Luhrmann seems to be a crane, because of how
high above the two lovers it moves. (The bird’s eye shot of Rose and
Jack, standing on the stern of the sinking Titanic in that film is a crane
shot: the camera was 100 feet above the actors, who themselves were
200 feet above the water line.) While on a crane, the camera can also

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tilt, pan or roll.

CROSSFADE As one shot fades out, another fades in simultaneously, so that
the two shots are temporarily superimposed. Also known as a dissolve,
or a lap-dissolve.

CU See Close up.

CUT (1) In film, the transition between one piece of film and another. A cut
does not physically exist in tv and video -- there are no pieces of celluloid
to splice together. In those media, a cut refers to the transition between
one shot and another. (2) “The cut” is a highly theorized element in film,
tv and video, referring not only to the transition itself, but to its
narrative, psychological and semiological ramifications. (3) “Cut” also
functions as a verb, i.e., Zeffirelli cuts between low and high angles when
depicting Escalus’ 1.1 and 3.1 appearances.

DISSOLVE See Crossfade.

DOLLY A form of camera movement. A dolly is a wheeled cart on which the
camera is mounted. Often used to follow a mobile subject, or to depict
mobility. See also Pull, Push, Track and Travelling shot.

DUTCH ANGLE A shot in which the camera is rolled to the left or right off a
straight horizontal-vertical alignment. Often used subjectively to
suggest emotional or psychological instability, intense confusion or
disorientation. See also Roll.

ECU See Extreme close up.
ELS See Extreme long shot.

ESTABLISHING SHOT Usually a long or wide shot, used to provide
information so audience members can orient themselves for the
following scene or scenes.

EXTREME CLOSE UP A variation on the close up, used to reveal detail. In
general, the field of view is anything smaller than the human head,
although, as with close up, the term is variable. An extreme close up of
a person may concentrate on the person’s eyes; a photograph of a Virus
taken through an electron microscope is also an extreme close up.

EXTREME LONG SHOT A variation on the long shot. Can be used to show
vast spaces, large crowds of people, buildings, etc. Tends to be used
interchangeably with wide shot, although I prefer to use long shot to
refer to visuals of a particular subject photographed at a great distance.

EYELINE MATCH Two characters, one standing on the ground at screen left

and the other on horseback at screen right, are shown speaking to each
other in long shot. A close up of the first character shows him still

240

 

 

speaking, looking up and to the right. A subsequent close up of the
second character shows him listening while looking down and to the left.
Even though the second and third shots do not show both individuals,
their eyelines still appear to intersect, as though they are looking at
each other, even though when photographed there may have been only
one actor present. Eyeline matching helps audience members establish
continuity in edited sequences. See also Index Vector.

FADE IN The gradual brightening of the screen flom black to normal
intensities.

FADE OUT See Fade to black.

FADE TO BLACK The gradual darkening of the screen flom normal
intensities to an all-black screen.

FADE TO WHITE The gradual lightening of the screen flom normal
intensities to an all-white screen.

FORESHORTEN IN G A physiological phenomenon. If a person holds his arm
straight out to his or her side, then holds it straight toward a viewer or
visual recording device, the arm appears shorter -- it is foreshortened --
than when held to the side.

FPS Frames per second. (1) Film is projected at a standard rate of 24 flames
per second. It can be recorded at variable speeds. Recording film at a
faster rate, for instance 30 fps, then projecting it at standard speed
makes slow-motion effects. Recording film at slower speeds, then
projecting it at standard rate makes for fast-motion effects. A ten-
second fleeze-flame in film is really 240 identical photographs in a row;
the visual phenomenon known as persistence of vision makes audience
members think they are seeing one stable image. (2) TV and video are
recorded at 30 flames per second. In this case, the term is misleading,
since tv and video do not have flames in the sense that film does. A tv
or video flame is the visual generated by one complete passage of a tv
set’s or monitor’s electron beam across the screen, a process repeated
thirty times per second. A still flame of a crowd scene on tv, or in a
paused video, may show a characters who do not move, but the screen
itself is not still: the electron beam still scans at the set rate. The
picture constantly changes as the dots that make up the screen are
energized by the impact of the electron beam, then fade away. See also
Persistence of Vision.

FRAME (1) In film, a single photographic unit on a strip of motion picture
film. (2) In tv and video, a flame can be numbered and identified
electronically, but not pointed to in the same way that a film frame can
be. In tv and video an electron beam scans the entire surface of the tv
screen once every thirtieth of a second. As it strikes the mosaic of dots
that makes up the tv screen, the dots light up. A single tv or video
flame is the image that the electron beam creates every thirtieth of a

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second. For more on tv flames, see Zettl 262-65. See also FPS. (3) The
horizontal and vertical borders of any given visual. Film, tv and video
flames vary in proportion: see Aspect ratio. Any given flame may
have flames enclosed within it. These are usually called flame-within—a-
flame, or flame-in—flame. See also Widescreen and Pan and Scan. (4) A
narrative technique, used to enclose and contextualize another
narrative. Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet uses
Chorus to create the flame of a news report around the story of the two
lovers.

GRAPHIC VECTOR “A vector created by lines or by stationary elements
arranged in such a way as to suggest a line” (Zettl 389). A graphic
vector can be seen in the line formed by the top of a stone balustrade, by
the corner of a building, or by a roof line. See also Vector.

HANDHELD A type of photography using a portable camera, usually
operated by a single individual. Produces a deliberately unstable,
constantly shifting flame which often is used to connote documentary-
style or unpremeditated footage. Can be used to imply haste, physical
or psychological tension or instability, or for subjective point of view
shots.

INDEX VECTOR “A vector created by something that points unquestionably
in a specific direction” (Zettl 389). An index vector can be the imaginary
line which extends in the direction a person is looking, established by the
orientation of the person’s face, or the line established by a pointing arm.
The pikes carried by Escalus’ armed retainers in Rakoff and Zeffirelli
generate index vectors. See also Vector.

INSET A visual inserted inside the flame of another visual, often with a
separate flame of its own. Accomplished most often today often
through the use of digital technology, in the past often through the use of
an optical printer.

IRIS A circular mask contracts or expands to isolate or highlight a particular
element Within the flame. An iris can be an actual device mounted on a
camera lens, or an effect added after the image has been recorded.

JUMP CUT A sudden transition between shots. Can be used to call attention
to editing, to add energy to a segment, scene or sequence, or to suggest
or cause excitement or disorientation in on—screen characters and/or the
audience. See also Shock cut.

LITERAL SOUND Sound which comes flom a referential, diegetic source, i.e.,
the sound of Juliet saying “Ay me.” Literal sound can be source-
connected or source-disconnected. See also Nonliteral sound.

LONG SHOT Although defined by Giannetti as a shot with a field of vision

roughly corresponding to the View a person sitting in a theatre would
have of the area Within a proscenium arch (514), the long shot is a

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highly variable term. In general, any shot that can show an entire
human body is a long shot.

LS See Long shot.

MATTE PAINTING A painting usually used as the background in a matte
shot.

MATTE SHOT In a matte shot, part of the area inside the flame is opaque --
matted. This allows the shot to be printed with another shot, masking
unwanted elements of the first shot. This can then be combined with
a third shot through the use of a reverse matte.

MEDIUM SHOT A shot whose field of view roughly equals that required to
show the human body flom the waist or the knees up. The term is
variable.

MONTAGE (1) A highly-edited sequence used to communicate large amounts
of information in a short space of time. (2) A theory developed by Sergei
Eisenstein that holds that shots presented in series create meaning
beyond that suggested by the content of the individual shots
themselves. (3) Cutting, or editing.

MOTION VECTOR Motion vectors are established by objects “actually
moving in a specific direction” (Zettl 390), or by objects which appear to
be moving. See also Vector.

MS See medium shot.

NONLITERAL SOUND Sound that does not have a diegetic source -- it does
not come flom within the fiction. The tender music that plays on the
soundtrack While Juliet says “Ay me” is nonliteral sound. Nonliteral
sound is always source-disconnected. See also Literal sound and Source-
disconnected sound.

180-DEGREE RULE When two characters are speaking to each other, there
is an imaginary axis which connects them. The camera, no matter
Whether it is pointed at character A, character B or both of them, must
remain on one side of that axis, so that the background remains
constant. The 180 degree rule helps audience members establish
continuity between discontinuous shots. See also Eyeline match.

PAN A form of camera movement. In a pan, the camera pivots on a vertical
axis, flom left to right or flom right to left. Typically used to follow
movement, as when a person standing still turns his or her head to
watch a passing car. Also used to signal a shift in attention, or to
introduce another element in the flame during a shot or scene.

PAN AND SCAN A technical term, usually in reference to video. A
widescreen film, when transferred to video or tv, loses part of its image

243

 

 

 

 

 

due to the reduced aspect ratio. The pan and scan process shuttles
back and forth across the widescreen image to show as much of it as
possible, or the‘ ‘important” parts. Poorly done pan and scan can be
jerky in its movement, or simply lop off part of the film flame. Some
pan and scan video will insert cuts 1n a scene which, on film, has none, so
that a widescreen two- shot turns into a shot—reaction shot series.

PERSISTEN CE OF VISION The physiological basis for the functioning of
film and tv. A still image flashed on a screen imprints on the retina, and
remains there for a short period of time even after the image has left the
screen. If another still image is flashed on the screen immediately after
the first, the eye does not perceive that there were two images: the
retained image is elided with the new one, so that they appear to be one,
continuous image.

PERSPECTIVE SOUND A technique of British television. In perspective
sound, point sources farther flom the camera are not as loud as those
closer to it. (American practice, especially when mixing and miking
conversations, tends to be to balance sound levels to that they are
uniform, no matter where the point sources are in the flame.) See
Willis, BBC for a review of American reactions to British sound during
the American broadcasts of The Shakespeare Plays.

POINT OF VIEW (1) A shot which appropriates a particular character’s field
of vision, so that the audience is made to see what the character sees.
(2) What is visible in the camera’s field of View.

POV See Point of View.

PULL When a dollying or tracking camera precedes a character or object
moving at roughly the same rate of speed in roughly the same direction,
it “pulls” it.

PUSH When a dollying or tracking camera follows a character or object
moving at roughly the same rate of speed in roughly the same direction,
it “pushes” it.

ROLL A form of camera movement. During a roll, the camera tips flom side
to side, to the right or the left of vertical.

SCENE A shot or group of shots apparently set in one continuously
represented place, which apparently happen without interruption.

SCORE The musical accompaniment to a tv or video production, or film.

SEGMENT A flagment of a scene. The portion of Luhrmann’s Prologue which
shows still flames of the characters with on—screen captions providing
their names and relationships to other characters is a dramatis
personae segment.

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SEQUENCE A series of scenes. Zeflirelli’s tomb sequence is composed of

 

scenes outside and inside the tomb, and taking place at different times.

SHOCK CUT A variety of the jump cut, specifically intended to disorient.

SHOT An uninterrupted recording of images. A shot can last for several

minutes (as in the famous opening to Welles’ Touch of Evil, a seven-
minute shot), or a flaction of a second.

SLAM ZOOM An extremely rapid zoom, disorienting in its effect on the viewer.

Term borrowed flom Pearce and Luhrmann.

SOUNDTRACK ( 1) All the literal and non-literal sound of a tv or video

production, or a film. (2) A film, tv or video score recorded and made
available for purchase.

SOURCE-CONNECTED SOUND The source of a sound heard on the

 

soundtrack comes flom a Visible, on-screen source. Juliet’s “Ay me” is
source-connected if she is on—screen, with her lips moving at the same
time the words are heard. Also called synchronous sound. See also
Source-disconnected sound and Literal sound.

SOURCE-DISCONNECTED SOUND The source of a sound is not visible on

screen. If Juliet says “Ay me” in voice over while a one-shot of Romeo is
on the screen, it is an example of source-disconnected literal sound: the
sound comes flom an off-screen but still diegetic source. The score that
plays while Juliet says “Ay me” is source-disconnected nonliteral sound:
the source is off-screen and nondiegetic. Also called asynchronous
sound. See also Source-connected sound, Literal sound and N onliteral

sound.

SUPERIMPOSITION Two or more separate visuals “sandwiched” together,

so that they are visible on screen at the same time. Also called a
multiple exposure.

SWISH PAN A pan which moves so quickly that the image begins to blur.

TILT A form of camera movement. In a tilt, the camera pivots on a

 

horizontal axis, pointing up and/or down.

TRACK A form of camera movement. A camera is mounted on a cart which

is pushed or pulled along a set of railroad-like tracks. See also Boom,
Dolly, Pull, Push and Travelling shot.

TRAVELLING SHOT A form of camera movement. A travelling shot refers

to any kind of shot in which the camera changes its physical position. A
travelling shot can be a dolly, boom, track or crane shot. A handheld
shot can travel, for instance following a character on a walk over rough
or broken terrain. During a travelling shot the camera can be mounted
on the side of a moving car, a helicopter or appear to move around the

245

 

 

 

outside of a space ship flying through hyperspace. Travelling shots can
become quite visually complex, as with the opening shot of Touch of Evil,
or the long steadicam shot of Henry Hill’s movement flom his car to his
seat in the nightclub in Goodfellas.

VECTOR Zettl defines a vector as “a perceivable force with a direction and
magnitude” (392). Although Zettl classifies several types of vectors, I
refer only to three: Graphic, Index and Motion.

VO See Voice over.

VOICE OVER (1) Spoken dialogue with no on-screen source. Chorus can
Speak on screen, or Chorus can speak off screen, in which case, his or
her words would be in voice over. See also Literal sound and Source-
disconnected sound. (2) A voice over can be used with the “speaking”
character on screen, usually to suggest thought.

WHIP PAN Term used in Pearce and Luhrmann. An extremely fast swish
pan.

WIDESCREEN (1) In tv and video, widescreen refers to a format which adds
black bars to the top and bottom of the screen, altering the aspect ratio
of the image. Widescreen videotapes can restore the original aspect
ratio of a theatrical film, so that the entire image is visible, rather than
the portion seen in pan and scan tape. Also known as letterboxed, or
letterboxing. (2) In film, widescreen refers to an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 or
greater.

 

WIDE SHOT Similar to along shot, in that the subject is usually
photographed flom a distance. This sort of shot tends to stress large
expanses of area, as in exterior shots in westerns. The first shot of
Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet is a wide shot that also happens to be a long
shot: its emphasis is on the panorama it reveals, rather than a single
subject within that panorama.

WIPE A transition effect. A wipe draws a line flom one part of the flame to
another. This line moves across the screen, appearing to pull one image
on while pushing another off.

WORM’S EYE VIEW The camera looks straight up at its subject. Usually
taken in close up or medium shot.

X-AXIS The imaginary line running flom one side of the flame to the other.
XFADE See Crossfade.
Y-AXIS The imaginary line running flom the top to the bottom of the flame.

Z-AXIS The imaginary line extending flom the screen back into the flame.
Zettl notes that while the x- and y-axes are limited, the z-axis provides a

246

 

 

 

 

nearly infinite amount of space in which the camera and characters can
move (159). See also Blocking in depth.

ZaAXIS BLOCKING See Blocking in depth.

ZOOM A change in focal length. Zooms can be in, as flom medium shot to
close up, or out, as flom long shot to extreme long shot. In a zoom, the
camera itself does not move closer to or away flom its subject. A zoom
is traditionally a photographic effect, in which the optical elements
inside the camera lens change physical relationship to each other during
the zoom; now, digital technology has made zoom effects possible. A
director can zoom on a prerecorded image which does not itself show a

zoom, and the effect, if smoothly done, is virtually indistinguishable flom
an Optical zoom. See also Dolly and Track.

 

247

 

 

 

APPENDICES

248

 

 

 

U)

 

H

a

0:02
0:11

0:17

0:30

0:32

0:50

0:57

0:58

1:03
1:05

1:09

APPENDIX A

Sound Content

Romeo and J uliet’s
love theme:
Renaissance-style
music -- lute, strings
and winds -- through
to shot 7.

Chorus: Prologue 1-3.

Chorus: Prologue 4.

Chorus: Prologue 5-8

Chorus: Prologue 9-
14.

Chorus finishes 1. 14
as camera starts to
move.

249

Romeo and Juliet (1978): Opening Sequence

Visual Content

Fade in on a masked CU of two
family insigniae set next to each
other, their edges superimposed so
that they blur into each other.
Slow zoom on the insigniae.

XFade to LS Chorus, wearing a
long, damasked gown and cap, in a
small courtyard set. He is
surrounded by a few stalls, and
some people.

Chorus approaches the camera,
which rises to meet him, speaking
in direct address.

Chorus pauses.

Chorus takes two more steps.

Camera booms up and away,
Chorus watching it go.

Chorus exits to down left. Citizens
continue to move about the
courtyard.

Fade in superimposed title:
“ROMEO & JULIET.”

Title fades out.

Fade in superimposed title: “by
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.”
Title drops out with cut to shot 3.

LS the courtyard shot through an
arch. Credits for major cast
members, producer and director,
respectively, fade in during this
and each subsequent shot through
#7, dropping out with cuts to
following shots.

1:16

1:22
1:27

Love theme fades out.

250

LS the courtyard flom inside an
arcade.

LS the courtyard by the fountain.

LS the couryard flom some stone
stairs.

CU piles of oranges and lemons.

 

 

m

 

l"

 

d-

 

0:08
0:12
0:21

0:29

0:44

1:16

APPENDIX B

Romeo and Juliet (1968): Opening Sequence

Sound Content

 

Vaguely Renaissance
music.

Text 1.1.1-5

Text 1.1.6-8

Music ends.

Atmospheric sound
begins.

251

Visual Content

Fade in on aerial WS Verona.
Fade in superimposed title card:
“A BHE Film . . .” Pan right over
the city.

2d card: “FRANCO
ZEFFIRELLI’S PRODUCTION
OF”; tilt up and zoom to a blurry
MS of the sun. 3d card:
“WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S”.

WS, an apparently empty plaza,
mist drifting in foreground. 4th
card: “ROMEO AND JULIET”.
Men enter through gate in deep
background, leading horses and
carts. Pan left with them to
reveal a market in LS at left.

High WS the market, busy.

 

 

 

 

Looorflf-nf’lfp‘g’o

10.

11.

 

APPENDIX C

Time Sound Content

 

 

0:22 Electronic static.

Click of changing
channel and static.
Channel click and
static.

Channel click.
1.1.1— 12.

1:08 “ . . . is now the two
hours traffic of our

stage,” and electronic
rushing noises.

1:09

1:10

1:1 1 Choir and orchestral
score.

1:16

252

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996): Opening Sequence

Visual Content

An old tv superimposed on a black
field, static on its screen.

Inset on tv screen “20th Century
Fox presents” and a static flash.
Inset “A Bazmark Production”
and a static flash.

Inset a television anchor; slow
zoom effect on the tv itself.

Slam zoom to the tv, apparently
into the inset image.

Aerial shot, a city street. Slam
continues.

Jump cut. Shot 2 repeats.
Intertitle: “IN FAIR VERONA”.
Repeats shot 2.

Repeats shot 4.

Repeats shot 2.

Repeats shot 4.

Aerial LS of Christ, right hand
raised in the sign of the Trinity,
flamed between two buildings.
Slam continues, as though
completing action begun in shot 2
and repeated in shots 5 and 7, til

statue is in blurred CU.

Repeats shot 4.

CU Christ statue; slam back

 

 

 

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.
18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

1:18

1:19

1:20

1:21

1:22

1:23

1:24

1:25
1:26

 

Second Chorus reads
111-6 through shot

50.

253

revealing flaming buildings to be
Capulet and Montague office
towers.

Handheld effect: a dark car,
moving right to left.

Handheld effect: blurred CU on
the side of a Verona Beach police
car. Zoom out.

Aerial LS of Christ statue.

Jump cut. Longer shot of Christ
statue.

High angle LS of Christ statue,
zooming in on head.

Repeats shot 16, zooming on hips.

MS of top of Montague building.
Pan left to top of Capulet building.

Repeats shot 9, zoom in to
distorted CU.

Aerial WS of the city, travelling
forward V. quickly.

Aerial WS of the city, a police
heIiCOpter in the foreground,
passing in flont of a second Christ
statue, hands held as for a
blessing, atop a cathedral.

LS Verona Beach police arresting
someone held face down on a
mattress in the street; zoom in on
the arrestee.

Aerial LS, 2d Christ statue,
travelling left to right, as if seen
flom copter in shot 21.

Repeats shot 16.

CU of black and white photo of lst
Christ statue; zoom back to
reveal it is similar to shot 11. It is

 

 

 

26.

27.

28.
29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

1:30

1:31

1:32
1:33

1:34

1:35

1:36

1:38

1:39

1:40

1:41

Orchestral score
continues, now in
background.
Helicopter sounds

begin.

Second Chorus: “In
fair Verona . . .”

Second Chorus says
“ancient grudge” as
the words appear on-
screen.

Second Chorus says
“new mutin)?’ as
words appear on-
screen.

254

flamed by inset black and white
photos of “Caroline Montague,”
“Ted Montague,” and a young
“Romeo Montague,” all three
headed “THE MONTAGUES”;
and “Fulgensio Capulet,” “Gloria
Capulet,” and a young “Juliet
Capulet,” headed “THE
CAPULETS.”

Crossfade (XFade) to a burning
banner.

XFade to CU on The Verona Beach
Herald with headline “Montague
vs Capulet.” Below and to the
right of the headline is the photo
array in shot 25.

XFade to flames.

Repeats shot 4.

Aerial LS, a highrise building,

zoom out.

Aerial WS, the city, zooming in;
swish pan left.

Aerial LS, police helicopter,
handheld effect.

CU, Verona Today with headline
“Ancient grudge,” falling onto The
Verona Beach Herald flom shot
27.

MS, a police heliCOpter on ground
at night; assault rifle-armed police
run right to left.

MS, 2d helicopter on ground at
night; armed cops on foreground
move toward helicopter.

CU, newspaper with headline
“NEW MUTINY” with photo of
Benvolio, gun held in his extended
right hand, yelling, falls onto

 

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.
47.

48.

 

1:42

1:425
Second Chorus says
“civil blood” as words
appear on-screen.

1:43

1:44

1:44.5

1:45

1:46

1:47

1:48

1:49
1:51

1:53

255

 

 

Verona Today.

MS, two helicopters on ground at
night, travelling left to right.

CU, The PeOple’s Eye, with
headline “Civil blood makes civil
hands unclean,” falls onto
newspaper flom shot 36.

CU, Escalus, wearing a radio
headset.

CU, “POLICE,” moving right to
left.

LS, handheld effect, two riot-gear
clad, armed policemen by a
cruiser, seen through a broken
window.

MCU, blurry handheld effect,
armed person running away flom
camera.

High angle LS, four people running
right to left across an empty,
desolate site, smoke in foreground;
camera moves right to left.

XFade to CU, a magazine array,
panning left to right: Verona
Beach Life, “Riot and Dishonor;”
Timely, “Montague vs Capulet:
Youth Brawl” and “Private
Grudge;” Prophesy, “Venom’d
Vengeance;” Bullet, “Shoot Forth
Thunder.”

XFade to LS, blurry handheld
effect, zoom in on police in
foreground, rioters in back.

Aerial LS, a helicopter, zoom out.

MS, Old Montague and Lady
Montague in an open car door.

MS, Old Capulet and Lady
Capulet, lit by police flashers, at

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

59.

1:55

1:58

2:00

2:03

2:06

2:09

2:12

2:15

2:20

2:21

 

Second Chorus says
A pair of star cross’d

lovers”

Second Chorus says,

“take their life.”

Helicopter sounds
st0p.

Orchestral score
comes up.

256

 

 

night.

Intertitle: “A PAIR OF STAR
CROSS’D LOVERS”

Intertitle: “+AKE THEIR LIFE,”
the initial “t” replaced by the cross
flom the film’s “Romeo + Juliet”
logo.

Zoom to MCU of Old Capulet, then
fleeze-flame; superimposed
caption, “Fulgencio CAPULET

J uliet’s father.”

MCU, Lady Capulet turns; fleeze-
flame and caption, “Gloria
CAPULET J uliet’s mother.”

MS, Old Montague revealed as
limo window rolls down; fleeze-

flame and caption, “Ted
MONTAGUE Romeo’s father.”

CU Lady Montague; fleeze—flame
and caption, “Caroline
MONTAGUE Romeo’s father.”

CU Escalus turning left to right,
camera moving right to left; fleeze
and caption “Captain PRINCE
Chief of Police.”

CU Paris, slight turn and fleeze;
caption “Dave PARIS The
Governor’s son.”

CU Mercutio, raising a finger and
pointing; fleeze and caption,
“MERCUTIO Romeo’s best
frien .”

CU Romeo looking through a
slowly opening door.

Reverse angle looking into the
cathedral aglow with crosses and
blue neon-rimmed crosses.

 

60.
61.
62.
63.

64.
65.
66.
67.

68.

69.
70.
71.
72.
73.

74.

75.

76.

77.
78.

79.

2:22

2:23

2:24

2:25

A sung “aahh” added.

257

Intertitle: “two households”
Intertitle: “both alike in dignity”
Repeats shot 4.

Intertitle: “where we lay our
scene”

Intertitle: “from ancient grudge”
Intertitle: “break to new mutiny”
Intertitle: “where civil blood”

Intertitle: “makes civil hands
unclean”

Intertitle: “flom forth the fatal
loins”

Intertitle: “of these two foes”
Repeats shot 49.

Repeats shot 50.

LS, a firework burst.

CU, the Apothecary opening his
door, shotgun in his right hand.

Low angle MS, a priest, outside, at
night.

MS, a young black choir boy,
singing.

MS Juliet in a wedding gown, head
down, inside her house at the foot
of the stairwell.

Repeats shot 75.

Repeats shot 76, Juliet lifting her
veil.

MS Tybalt raising his gun, moving
right to left.

 

80.

81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

86.

87.

88.
89.

90.

91.
92.

93.

94.
95.

96.

97.

2:26

2:27

2:28

2:29

2:30

A gunshot.

258

CU Tybalt pointing gun at
camera.

CU, a little boy in suit and tie,
scared; behind, his mother
reacting.

CU Benvolio, screaming, pointing
gun at camera.

Low MS Romeo shooting at
helicopter, night.

Low MS police sniper aiming down
and firing, night.

High LS Romeo hemmed in by cop
cars, night.

MS, car headlights, rushing left to
right, night.

CU Tybalt, bloody, driving car,
night.

MCU Mercutio, outside, day.

Aerial high angle LS 2d Christ,
night.

Low angle MS Tybalt, tossing and
catching gun, outside, day.

LS exploding firework.

MS Lady Capulet putting on
Cleopatra costume.

Worm’s eye MS Tybalt, twirling
gun.

MS, a mask floating in water.
MS Tybalt, firing gun off right.

MS Gregory getting shot in
shoulder.

MS Tybalt falling onto Window on
sand.

 

 

98.

99.

100.

 

2:30.5

2:33.5

Segue into a fast
drum roll for the wipe.

259

ECU, a red cross with an
ampersand at its center; zoom
out.

Around the cross, “William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet.”

Wipe right to left to MS of a car
carrying Montague boys down a
highway.

 

U)
L3"
0

re-

 

l"

4-
21.

22.

Time

0:17
0:30

4:47

4:57

5:02
5:07

5:11-
6:35

5:11
5:15
5:20
5:24
5:28-
6:23
6:17

6:23

6:28

 

APPENDIX D

West Side Story (1961): Opening Sequence

Sound Content

The Jets’ whistle.
Bernstein’s Prologue

begins.

Music stops.
Atmospheric sounds:
boat horns, traffic, car
horns.

Musical prologue
starts with variations
on Jets’ whistle,
drums; atmospheric
sounds continue
throughout.

Music begins to build.

260

 

Visual Content

Black screen.

Fade in an abstract figure, black
and gray on backgrounds which
XFade between yellow, red-orange,
blue, orange-yellow.

Pull back to reveal “WEST SIDE
STORY” at bottom of figure.

Fast XFade to a negative image of
the title card.

XFade to aerial ELS of lower
Manhatten, travelling right to left.

A series, each a bird’s eye ELS, all
travelling right to left:

a bridge

a Cloverleaf interchange
ships and docks

a park and buildings

a series of 13 cityscapes

Bird’s eye ELS, densely packed
apartment buildings, travelling
right to left; zoom in as music

builds.

XFade to bird’s eye ELS of a
playground and kids playing.

 

23.

24.
25.
26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

6:33
6:34

6:35
6:43
6:48

6:52

7:13

7:24

7:33

7:54

7:58

8:19

8:27

 

Music crescendos.

Music becomes jazzy,

ironic; the Jets
snapping fingers

incorporated as part

of score.

 

261

Bird’s eye ELS, the Jets gathered
by a chain link fence; zoom in.

CU Riff; pan right over other Jets.
Slightly wider shot of the Jets.

Slightly wider shot, still on the
Jets.

LS the Jets. A ball bounces in,
which Action catches and holds,
intimidating its owner. At a nod
from Riff he throws it back. At a
signal flom Riff, the gang begins to
move into the playground.

Slightly longer shot, camera
travelling right to left with the
Jets as they walk, seen through
chain link fence in foreground.

High LS, craning up, a little girl
making chalk drawings; the Jets
walk around her, heading off flont
left.

WS, two kids playing pickup
basketball. When the Jets walk
between them, one kid puts the
ball down and the Jets play with it
a couple seconds before Riff tosses
it back to the kid. The gang
moves off flont left.

CU the Jets looking back, off
right.

LS travelling right to left as Jets
walk on sidewalk; camera pulls
them into street, they begin to
dance, and jump up.

LS the Jets land on a sidewalk and
head into street, still dancing,
camera pulling them. They jump,

spinning.
High LS, the gang lands and

 

 

 

 

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

8:38

8:45

8:56

9:05

9:10

9:22
9:26

9:31

9:36

 

Music stops, then
turns ominous:
drums, with atonal
and dissonant chords.

Two Jets whistle and
make kissing sounds,
as though calling a
dog. (Most dialogue in
the opening sequence
is not noted here, as it
is apparently
extemporary.)

Music lightens in tone
-- becoming ironic and
jazzy again.

 

 

dances on a “JETS” tag painted
on the street. They spin off left.

MS the Jets enter right, coming to
a sudden stop face to face with
Bernardo; slight zoom on Riff and
Bernardo.

Reverse MS as Riff laughs, then
leads the gang off left.

Same angle shot 35, the Jets
leaving. Pull back with Bernardo
as he approaches camera, two
Jets following, taunting; they
block his path.

Low MS 3-shot, Bernardo and the
two Jets, who sneer and move off
left.

Same angle shot 37 . Bernardo
watches Jets go off left, moves
quickly off right.

CU Bernardo stopping by a wall,
looking flont left. He makes a fist
and hits the wall. Travel left to
right with him.

He picks up another Shark.

Tilt down to their hands as they
begin to snap their fingers.

A third Shark joins them. They
turn and approach, the camera
pulling them.

LS the three Sharks in an alley,
still pulling them. They begin to
dance, approaching camera
quickly.

Apparent reverse: High LS as
they dance away flom camera,
over the “JETS” tag.

ELS the Sharks, still dancing and
approaching; then stop in low MS.

LS two Jets stealing flom a fluit
stand; they turn, run toward

 

 

 

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

10:04

10:23

10:26

10:35

10:40
10:41

10:49

10:51

10:54

11:04

11:05

Music stops as Jets
stop.

Ominous music again.
Sharks make kissing
sounds, wolf whistles,

say “Hey chickie,” and
“Hey, J et-boy.”

Jazzy music again.

Jets shout, “Beat it!”

263

 

 

camera, st0p in MS.

MS the Jets and Sharks squaring
off. Bernardo takes fruit flom one,
bows and gives way. Travel left to
right as Sharks follow the Jets,
mocking; camera passes five Jets
in CU foreground as the Sharks
notice them.

Bernardo’s POV: MS the Jets,
looldng flont right.

MS, the Jet takes his apple back,
repeating Bernardo’s bow. The
Sharks exit flont right.

LS Sharks walking away as Jets
mock, then chase them off right.
Jets dance off left.

LS travelling right to left with Jets
as they dance down sidewalk,
stopping as they notice three
figures in shadowed foreground.

POV shot: MS three Sharks
playing cards notice the Jets and
start to rise.

Same angle as at end of shot 47 .
The Sharks scatter.

Wipe right to left to high LS Jets
dancing toward camera on
sidewalk. Camera tilts down with
them, stops in bird’s eye as three
Sharks enter left flame and are
chased off left. The Jets jump,
arms extended, at the camera.

Apparent reverse: worm’s eye MS
of hands reaching to sky. A
basketball falls into flame flom
right.

Low MS a backboard and hoop,
the Jets trying for the rebound.

 

 

 

 

55.

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

61.
62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

11:08

11:19

11:20

11:23

11:26

11:29

11:32

11:34
11:37

11:42

11:49

11:57

12:01

Music stops as ball is
caught.

Finger snaps. Riff:
“Come on.”

Riff: “Beat it.” Music
starts, at first
ominous, then
increasingly dramatic
and jazzy as the
scuffle expands.

“Chico, Chico! Allez,
Chico!”

264

LS playground as about ten Jets
play basketball, moving toward
camera, which tracks the ball,
into MS. Riff dishes to the left,
panning with the ball, which is
caught in CU as Jets stop in MS
behind.

LS Bernardo, with the ball, backed
by Sharks at left, the Jets at
screen right.

MS the Jets. Riff snaps his
fingers and speaks to Bernardo.

Same angle shot 56. Bernardo
drops the ball.

Same angle shot 57, slightly
tighter. Riff picks up ball, passes
it behind him.

MS Bernardo.
CU Riff.

CU Bernardo, who nods to Sharks
and begins to move off flont right.

Same angle shot 58. Sharks
move right past the Jets. Jets
move through the departing
Sharks, taunting.

Reverse LS Sharks moving off
right, Jets off left; one of each
remains on-screen in LS. As the
Jet starts left, Shark trips him,
offers a sardonic, bowing apology;
he starts to leave when Jet stops
him with a gesture.

Reverse LS the Jet offering a
hand as the two approach each
other.

Reverse LS pushing Jet as he
approaches, then strikes Shark,
who falls; Jets turns off left; Shark

L _

 

 

 

 

67.

68.

69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

74.

75.

76.

77.

78.

12:05

12:17

12:27

12:32

12:35

12:37

12:39

12:40

12:43

12:45

12:52

13:05

“Jets! Hey, Jets!”

“Mira, mira, mira!’

1

“Hey, hey!” Shouting.

Shouting.

sits up, spits off left.

LS Jet struck by spit, jumps the
Shark; 2d Shark enters back
right, stops the scuffle.

LS two Sharks moving off right;
the Jet follows, kicks 1st in
behind; 2d attacks, they scufi‘le,
Jet calls for help.

WS playground through chain link
fence. Gangs rush in, Sharks
fleeing as Jets approach, leaping
toward gate in fence.

Apparent match cut. CU feet
landing by wrought-iron fence by
street, gang members running on
and off in LS.

Low WS playground, people
running back and forth in CU, MS,
and LS.

Another angle on playground,
people running in LS.

Another angle on street flom shot
70, people running in MS and LS.

WS playground as Jets dance
away, gangs running in ELS; Jets
leap toward a distant opening in
chain link fence.

Apparent match cut. Same angle
as shot 73, MS Jets landing.

WS, an alley. A Shark runs on
right back, off left flont, followed
by three Jets who stop in MS.

LS the three Jets, same alley,
pulling them; they are chased; a
scuffle; camera moves forward as
people run off screen.

MS a Shark, taunting, then runs
off left, followed by three Jets.

 

If

79.

80.
81.

82.

83.

84.

 

87.

88.

89.
90.

91.

85.

86.

13:08

13:14
13:16

13:17

13:29

13:30

13:38

13:41

13:42

13:43

13:44
13:45
13:49

13:50

Sharks: “Hey, Jets!”

Sharks: “Hello!”

Shark: “Hey, Jets,

come on, Julio

Shouting.

Shouting.

Shouting.

Music stops.

'3)

Music starts, sharp

and urgent.

266

LS Shark running left under
scaffolding, pursued by Jets,
camera tracking along. Camera
stops, tilts up to see two Sharks
pour yellow paint to down left.

MS the three Jets getting doused.

Swish effect right masks cut to
shot 82.

LS Shark taunting and running
from two Jets, who chase him left,
camera panning with them, into a
doorway tagged “Sharks.” They
are chased out by four Sharks,
who run off right.

Swish effect right masks cut to
shot 84.

High LS Shark taunting, then
running back, up and over pile of
rubble, followed by three Jets, who
stop at top of pile, looking down.

High WS, three Jets in MS are
pelted with garbage by eight +
Sharks in LS.

Swish right and left to WS empty
street.

Swish effect left masks cut to
shot 88.

WS a derelict lot, one person in
ELS.

Jump cut to LS, same person.

Jump cut to MS, Baby John
defacing a “Sharks” tag. Camera
tilts up left to Bernardo in MS on
top of wall.

CU Baby John looking off up left;
pan left as he starts to run,
encounters a 2d Shark on the wall

 

92.

93.

94.

95.

96.

97.

98.

99.

100.

101.

102.
103.

 

13:54

13:59

14:05

14:09

14:16

14:23 Baby John shouts,
“Jets! Jets!”

14:32

14:34
Baby John screams.

14:37

14:43 Shouting throughout.

14:46

14:48 Police whistles.

267

 

 

inlow MS.

MS Baby John spins to run again,
stopped by 3d Shark in
foreground; pan with him as he
dodges right into a 4th.

LS Bernardo jumps down. Baby
John, trapped, backs away,
camera panning and closing; he
slaps a Shark with paint and runs
off right.

ELS panning to LS as Baby John
runs right through lot, chased by
Sharks.

Panning ELS as Baby John
chased right through alleys.

Very high WS Baby John running
right, then left and down into
playground; camera pans and tilts
down with him.

Low WS Baby John runs in MS
flom right, then to LS; caught by
Sharks he is brought into MS and
surrounded on ground.

Bird’s eye ELS Sharks,
surrounding Baby John, extend
hands to sky; zoom as Bernardo
kneels over the Jet.

MS Baby John on ground,
surrounded, Bernardo kneeling on
him.

Bird’s eye ELS the playground as
gang members flood in flom all
sides.

MS Jets and Sharks fighting,
others coming in flom back.

MS two people fighting.

MS other people fighting.

 

 

 

”—7 _

104.
105.
106.

107.

108.

109.

14:50
14:51
14:52

14:55
14:57

14:58

15:04

Police whistles.

Police whistles.

Shrank: “Break it up
you cocksuckers.”
Music breaks up,
returns to ironic mode.

Shrank yelling, “Come
on, break it up. Come

,1

OIL

Shrank: “How many
times have it told you

punks to cut this stuff
out?”

268

MS other people fighting.

MS other fighters.

Low LS cop car pulls up in LS;
Officer Krupke and Lieutenant
Shrank run out of car and off left.

MS Krupke wades into the brawl.

LS Krupke and Shrank separate
fighters.

LS, Krupke and Shrank at center,
Sharks at right, Jets at left.

 

 

 

U)
13‘
O

:1-

H l

N

9°

10.

11.

 

1:04

1:12

1:26

1:40

1:48

1:56

1:58

APPENDIX E

China Girl (1987): Opening Sequence

Sound Content

Slow, melancholy
Italian music,
continued to the fade-
out at shot 25.

Sounds of children at
play to shot 5.

Chinese conversation.
Atmospheric noises --
street sounds, moving
objects -- through to
fade out.

269

Visual Content

MS a porcelain Buddha
surrounded by flowers and
American flags.

MS a fire escape, early-morning
sun reflected off a window behind
it.

MS a sign: Luna Restaurant.
Behind it, another sign: Ferrara
Pastry.

Sky, panning left to MS of a frieze
with “Anna Esposito 1926” carved
in it.

WS a street, with Luna

Restaurant at left. Pan right to
men working on a storeflont.

MS a fire escape. Tilt down, pan
left and dolly in on a pizzeria’s
flont window. In it, Alby Monty
stares outside in MS.

LS on some of the workers: it is a
group of Chinese, removing the
exterior sign flom D’Onoflio
Bakers.

MS an Italian waiter, watching
the Chinese.

Low CU the Chinese, taking the
sign down their ladders.

LS an old woman, watching flom
her apartment window.

CU a younger woman.

 

12.

13.
14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.
22.

23.
24.

25.

2:07
2:10

2:28

2:31

2:33

2:39

2:44

2:49
2:53

2:59
3:03

3:10
3:15

Chinese dialogue.

Chinese man: “Very
good. [Chinese
dBlalogue] Beautiful.
eautiful sign, isn’t it?
£11111? Oh, beautiful. .

“ . . . beautiful,
beautiful. Huh? Oh
hold the end up! . . . i”

Electronic drum
beats.

270

LS the Chinese, carrying the sign
away.

CU an old man.

CU, panning right as a Chinese
man scrapes “D’Onoflio” flom the
inside of the bakery’ s flont
window.

MS two young waiters come
outside and watch off left.

CU, panning right and tilting up, a
Chinese woman sweeping out the
window.

MS a Chinese man looking off
right. Flanking him are two
women, one younger, the second
older.

MS Chinese workers putting up a
new sign: Canton Garden. Tilt up
with the sign.

 

CU a second old man.

Continues shot 18. Low CU
workers and sign.

CU Chinese man from shot 17.

As shot 6 ended. MS Alby in the
window.

As shot 20.

As shot 17 . Chinese man hugs
the two women.

CU Alby.
Fade to black.

U)
D"
0

cr-

 

!“

1:24:50

1:25:03

1:25:15

1:25:21
1:25:30

1:25:31

1:25:32

1:25:32.

1:25:37

 

APPENDIX F

China Girl (1987): Closing Scene

Sound Content

Street noises,
footsteps,
conversations in
Chinese.

Ominous music -- an
electronic tone,
stroked cymbal,
keyboard.

Music grows more
urgent.

Tye: “No!”
Gunshot.

Gunshot.

Gunshot.

A woman screams.

Shouts in Chinese.

271

 

 

Visu ontent
Night, a Chinatown street.
Booming down to a doorway into a
deeply shadowed hallway. Shin
comes down stairs at back, comes
to doorway, checks both ways,
and looks off right.

Slightly high LS Tony and Tye
walking arm in arm along the
street Boom down and in as they
approach to MS, kiss and hug.
Chinese merchants, shoppers,
passers by glance at them or
stare outright.

Same angle as ended shot 1. Pan
right to Tony and Tye then travel
toward them. Tye looks up and
steps in flont of Tony, arms out to
shield him.

MS Tony and Tye flamed flom
neck to waist as a bullet hits her
in the chest, passing out her back.

MS Tony and Tye, different angle.
A bullet comes out Tony’s back.

Low MS Shin firing gun off right.

Same angle shot 4. Another bullet
hits Tye and both fall back off
right in slow motion.

Same angle shot 6. Shin ducks
into hallway, camera moving left
as he runs up stairs. He is
blocked by two people coming
down, tries further into the

 

 

 

Shin screams.

Gunshot.

1:25:49 A mournful music.

1:26:39 Yung: “No!”
Yung: “Get some
help!”

1:27:06

272

 

hallway, and is blocked again.
Merchants run through doorway.
A struggle in the deep shadow.

Low LS the street, travelling
toward Tony and Tye, then crane
up and tilt down into a bird’s eye
MS on Tony, chest bloody, eyes
open and staring.

Boom along his outstretched arm
to where his fingers just touch
Tye’s, then follow her arm into
bird’s eye MS, her chest bloody
and eyes open. Camera pivots
180 degrees as it cranes up into
bird’s eye LS.

As they are revealed in two-shot,
Yung runs in, kneels by Tye,
cradles her. Bystanders continue
to gather in a circle, which
gradually closes in on the tableau.
Fade to black.

 

 

 

 

 

U)
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O

et-

 

!"

pore

F"

10.

2:21:32

2:21:45

2:21:48

2:21:50

2:21:55
2:21:59

2:22:00

2:22:12
2:22:17
2:22:21

2:22:25

2:22:27

 

APPENDD( G

Sound Content

“Someday”
instrumental, played
quietly.

Maria: “Stay back.”
Music stops.

Maria: “How do you
fire this gun, Chino.
Just by pulling this
little trigger.”

Maria: “How many
bullets are left,
Chino? Enough for
you? And you? All of
you?”

273

—~—

 

West Side Story (1961): Closing Sequence

Visual Content

Low CU Maria, looking at Tony,
then lowering him out of flame to

ground.
Low WS the Jets, looking down.

Low WS the Sharks, looking off
right.

Low MS Maria, looking at Tony as
she touches his face.

Same angle shot 2. Pan with Jets
as they turn and start left; they
and Sharks converge at center,
then stop.

Reverse angle WS, Jets at left,
Sharks at right, Maria at rear
center. She rises, and boom down
and in as she approaches Chino,
then stops.

MS Chino handing Maria the gun.

MS Maria turning gun in her
hands, Sharks at her right, Jets
left and behind; she points gun off
flont right.

Same angle shot 7. Maria points
gun at Chino, who jumps back.

Same angle as ended shot 6.
Maria pointing gun right; she then
points gun at Sharks, who step
back as camera moves in; pan left
as she points gun at Jets.

 

 

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.
17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

2:22:36

2:22:41

2:22:43

2:22:50

2:22:56

2:23:06
2:23:08

2:23:09
2:23:13

2:23:19

2:23:21

2:23:26

2:23:32

2:23:39

2:23:41

2:23:45

Maria: “You all killed
him, and my brother,

andRiff.

Not with

bullets and guns,
with hate.

Well I can
kill too, because now
I have hate.

How

many can I kill,
Chino -- and still
have one bullet left

for me?”

OS: Car pulls up,
stops; car doors

slam.

Music starts again.

Maria: “Don’t you

touch him!”

 

274

 

Reverse MS Maria turning,
pointing gun.

Low MS Sharks.

CU Maria, holding gun out.

MS Maria, pointing gun off left
flont; pan left and dolly in to 2-
shot as she approaches Chino
again; she starts to cry, dr0ps gun;
tilt down as she falls to knees.

MS Shrank and Krupke running
up, looking off down right.

Same angle as ended shot 14.

Low WS, Maria on knees, Shrank,
Krupke, Doc center midground;
Sharks at left, Jets at right;
Shrank picks up gun, comes
forward toward Tony’s body;
Maria runs to and cradles body,

yelling.

MS Maria huddled over Tony; she
looks up off left as she sits up.

MS Shrank backing away, Jets
behind.

Same angle as ended shot 18.
Maria looks off down.

MS Sharks looking off down flont
right.

Same angle shot 20. Maria looks
off up.

Same angle shot 21. Sharks look

 

away.

Same angle shot 20. Maria looks
off left.

MS Jets, nervous. Action steps
forward, camera moving right with

 

111111.
2:23:58 Low CU Maria looks at Action,
2:24:15 Maria: “Te adoro, turns to and kisses Tony, Action
Anton.” over her right shoulder.
27 . 2:24:22 Low WS Maria by body. Three

Jets step forward, struggle to lift
body; Baby John comes foward to
help, stops as two Sharks move
2:24:35 Music swells briefly, right to help. All stop, then the

then shifts mood, Jets allow the gesture. As they

becomes dirge-like. carry the body off back left, Baby
John puts Maria’s black shawl
over her head as a veil. Jets begin
to follow body off back left.

 

 

28. 2:25:17 MS Maria alone, kneeling, looking
off right. She stands, camera
booming up with her, pulls veil
around herself and starts to move
off right, camera pulling her.

29. 2:25:32 WS booming back and up, Maria
leaving playground, passing
between two gangs, following body
carried off left in procession.
Sharks leave left, Jets right. Doc
follows body. Shrank, Chino, and
Krupke remain. Shrank leads

Chino out, Krupke following.
2:26:30 Fade to black.
30. 2:26:32 Music ends. Intertitle: “THE END”.

31- 2:26:36 Music starts again. XFade to final credits, some shown
as graffiti on a series of walls,

doors and signs.
2:3 1:37 Music ends. Fade to black.

 

 

APPENDIX H

Romeo and Juliet (1968): Closing Scene

 

 

Shot Time Sound Content Visual Content

1. 2:12:39 Atmospheric sound WS the plaza. At left back, a
to 2:15:37, including: funeral procession enters;
a tolling bell, mourners enter flont left; boom up
footsteps, wind, as two groups converge, pan right
snorting horses, etc. as procession moves along. Other

mourners enter at left and back
right; soldiers on horseback are
revealed at rear.

 

 

2. 2: 13: 18 MS handheld, panning right as
Romeo and Juliet are carried by
on litters.

 

3. 2:13:29 Same angle shot 1, moving right
and panning as procession climbs
steps.

 

 

4. 2:13:42 MS 2-shot Romeo and Juliet’s
bodies carried to top of steps,
placed on stones. Pall bearers

clear away.
5. 2: 13:59 Escalus: “Where be Low LS Escalus in church door,
these enemies?” flamed by Montagues at right,
Capulets at left.
6. 2: 14: 18 POV shot. High LS the bodies at
Escalus: “Capulet? low center, mourners beyond,
Montague?” soldiers at far back. Old and Lady
Capulet step up to bodies. Old and
Lady Montague step up.

7- 2: 14:29 Escalus: 5.3.291-92 MS Escalus, looking down.

8- 2: 14:41 Escalus: 5.3.293 CU Balthasar, pan right past
another Montague to three nuns,
weeping.

9. . .

2‘14-5 1 Escalus: 5.3.294 CU Paris, pan left past a weeping
Capulet and tilt to Nurse.

276

— 1

 

 

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

2:15:01

2:15:08

2:15:13

2:15:17

2:15:21

2:15:24

i—H—A

0101

2:16:00

2:17:13

1.0
3

73
.18:0

Escalus repeats “All
are punished.”
“Punished” echoes
once.

Music begins.
Chorus: 5.3.304-05,
308-09

Music shifts to love
theme.

Music ends.

277

Same angle shot 7. Escalus steps
forward, shouts.

POV shot. High WS the mourners
cowed.

CU Lady Capulet, veiled, looking
down.

CU Lady Montague, veiled, looking
down.

High MS Romeo and J uliet’s
bodies.

Same angle shot 5, Escalus much
closer. He turns and leaves, back.

High LS Romeo and Juliet.
Pallbearers step forward and lift
the bodies, start forward into
church, camera tilting down as the
bodies near.

Low MS Old Montague and
Capulet flamed by church doors.
They stop, glance at each other,
pass by camera off left and right,
respectively.
Superimposed credit roll begins.
Ladies Montague and Capulet
approach, pause, look at each
other, repeat husbands’ exit.
Benvolio and Nurse approach; she
reaches out, pats his neck, and
they pass by. A Montague and a
gapulet approach, hug, and pass
y.
A Montague and Paris approach;
the Montague touches Paris’
shoulder, and they pass by. The
mourners enter, passing off left
and right. When all have gone,
crenellated city walls are revealed
in LS.
Fade to black.

L

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shot Time
1, 2:40:33
2. 2:40:56
3. 2:41:03
4. 2:41:05
5. 2:41:12
6. 2:41:20
7. 2:41:26
8. 2:41:41
9. 2:41:52

APPENDIX I

Romeo and Juliet (197 8): Closing Sequence

Soumflnntem

5.3.171-71, 181—82

53187-88

Crowd hubub.

5.3.189-92

Hubub continues.

5.3.193-96

5.3.215-16

5.3.197, 221(1. 221
changed to “Where
are the parties of
suspicion?”)

278

L

 

Visual Content

WS the Capulet monument, night,
Chief Watchman outside door to
crypt in LS. Balthasar and
Second Watchman enter in
foreground MS.

High MS Prince entering and
ascending steps, panning left and
pulling back with him.

Same angle shot 1. Prince enters
crypt.

High WS, Capulet’s courtyard.
Capulet emerges to the balcony
above, crosses to Lady Capulet,
already outside on stairs, as
Citizens rush by below.

 

 

Low MS, Capulet and Lady
Capulet.

Low LS, Capulet and Lady
Capulet start down stairs,
Citizens streaming by in
foreground.

LS Chief Watchman and Prince at
door to Capulet crypt.

Same angle shot 1. Citizens
crown the foreground. Escalus
goes to crypt door, returns and
speaks.

MS Escalus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10.
11.

12.

13.
14.

15.
16.

17.
18.

19.

20.
21.

22.
23.
24.
25.

2:41:59
2:42:09

2:42:17

2:42:22
2:42:45

2:42:54
2:43:06
2:43:11
2:43:15

2:43:20

2:43:33
2:43:40

2:43:52
2:43:54
2:43:55

2:44:11
2:44:19

5.3.222, 225-26

5.3.227, 230

Lady Capulet
screams as she
reaches the bodies.

5.3.201-06
5.3.209-11

5.3.212

5.3.213-14
Escalus: “Where be

these enemies?
Capulet . . .”

“. . . Montague?”
5.3.291-94
5.3.295-97

A mournful music
starts at “This is my

279

High MS Friar.

LS Escalus and Chief Watchman,
Friar and soldiers in foreground
MS. Capulets enter crypt behind

Escalus.

Pulling Capulets down steps into
crypt leaving Romeo’s and J uliet’s
bodies in foreground, Capulets in
MS behind them.

CU Capulet and Lady Capulet.
Same angle shot 1, dollying with
Montague as he approaches the
monument’s steps.

High MS Montague.

Low MS Escalus.

Same angle shot 15.

 

Camera pulls back flom where it
stopped in shot 14 to show
Montague ascending steps and
entering crypt.

Same angle shot as ended shot 12.
Montague descends into crypt,
camera pulling back slightly as he
comes around right to cradle
Romeo.

CU Montague.

Same angle shot 19. Escalus
enters behind.

Same angle shot 13.

Same angle shot 20.

CU Escalus.

MS 4—shot initially favoring

Capulet: camera follows him
moving left around bodies, then

L _

 

26.
27.
28.

29.
30.

31.

32.

33.

 

2:44:25
2:44:38
2:44:46

2:45:03
2:45:10
2:45:15

2:45:18
2:45:24

2:46:20

NM

ppm

cult-i
AQD

’

daughter’s jointure.’

5.3.298-301
5.3.302-03
5.3.304-07

5.3.308-09

Music shifts to love
theme.

Music fades out.

280

 

tilts and zooms to CU of his hand
clasping Montague’s.

CU Montague.
CU Capulet.

MS 4-shot, LadyCapulet and
Escalus flamed by Capulet and
Montague; when Capulet and
Montague part, camera booms
down slightly to reveal the two
corpses.

CU Escalus.

Same angle shot 28. Camera
booms down and dollies right to
more fully reveal bodies as
Capulet, his wife, Montague and
Escalus leave crypt.

End credits begin.

WS Capulet monument and
courtyard before it.

Slightly high WS Capulet’s
courtyard.

Same angle shot 31.
Fade to black.

 

 

 

 

 

I !

 

 

 

 

 

CD
D"
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10.
11.

12.

APPENDIX J

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996): Closing Sequence

mg Sound Content Vieofl Content

1:50:10 Fade in “Leibestod” Bird’s eye MS Romeo and Juliet
flom Wagner’s dead on the bier, candles on floor
Tristan und Isolde. below, pulling back.

1:50:38 CU Romeo and Juliet looking at
each other through the fish tank.

1150340 MS Romeo and Juliet at the
masked ball, running through
crowd, smiling at each other.

1:50:41 ECU the wedding ring; it is turned
to show the inscription, “I love
thee.”

1:50:48 Bird’s eye LS Romeo and Juliet on
the bier, still pulling back, as
though motion has continued
through previous three shots.

1:50:55 Blurred ECU flapping sheet.

: :56 The sheet masks a cut to a CU of
1 5O Juliet.

15057 The sheet masks a cut to a CU of
’ O Romeo.

As shot 6.

16058 CU Juliet.

Bird’s eye LS Romeo and Juliet,
1:50:59 very high now and still pulling

back, the bier at center and

surrounded by candles.

XFade to CU Romeo and Juliet

1251310 kissing underwater; their
movement slows.

281

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1:5 1:17 The shot fleezes.

13. 1:51:22 Fade to white.

14. 1:5 1 :26 Wagner fades out. Fade in: MS, handheld effect,
shrouded body being taken to an
ambulance.

15. 1 :5 1:32 Muted atmospheric MS, handheld, Old Montague and

sounds: footsteps, wife in limo door, him climbing out.
stretcher moving,
16. 1:51:34 etc. CU, handheld, Lady Capulet 1n
limo door; pan right and tilt up to
CU Old Capulet.
17 . 1:5 1:37 MS, handheld, a second body
brought out of church.

18. 1:5 1:41 A quiet, deep bass MS, handheld, Escalus; he walks
tone begins. left to CU, looking left and right,
speaks left and right; walks
forward, camera pulling him;
camera pans right to show Old

 

 

1:51:53 5.3.292-95: “See Montague, then left to show Old
what a scourge is Capulet; Escalus goes off left,
laid upon your hate . revealing Old Montague and
. . All are punish’d.” Capulet in MS 2-shot.

19. 1:52: 17 Escalus repeats “All CU, handheld, Escalus.
are punish’d”
20. 1:52:22 Atmospheric sounds MS, grainy and handheld, of body
fade out. being put into ambulance.
: :24 MS, grainy and handheld: another
2 1' 1 52 angle of body being put into
ambulance.
. CU grainy and handheld Old
: 2.25 , ’ r
22' $22126 TV anchor speaks 1n Montague.
' V0 5 3 305 10: “A
glooming peace
Juliet and her
Romeo.”
8 CU, grainy and handheld, driver
23. 11522 closing ambulance door.
CU, grainy and handheld, Old
24. 1:52:30 Capulet.

282

 

 

 

 

25.

26.

27.

1:52:33

1:52:35

1:52:41

1:52:48
1:53:08

Static flom tv
speaker.

283

MS, grainy and handheld, doors
being closed, shot flom inside
ambulance; a tv cameraman is
visible in midground.

MS, the old tv flom first shot of
film. Inset bird’s eye LS of
ambulance and cop cars on tv
screen. Pull back flom tv,
reversing film’s first shot.

Inset news anchor, behind her a
graphic: “for never was a story of
more woe . . . .”

Pull back continues. Inset image
fades out; static fills tv screen.

Fade to black.

 

 

 

 

ENDNOTES

284

 

 

 

 

 

EN DNOTES

Introduction

1. China Girl was retitled China Doll for its British release. The title for
Luhrmann’s film has been variously printed as William Shakespeare’s Romeo +
Juliet, William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, and William Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet. I use the “+” variant because it is a prominent feature of
the film title’s graphic display and because of its evocation of scribbled, carved
and painted graffiti announcing romantic attachments to the world, a sense
the film courts.

Donaldson notes that the titular “+” also evokes the Christian cross, and
that in the film its image

plays a role in the artistic and political strategy Debord called
detournement, the appropriation of the motifs of the spectacle by its
adversaries. The “plus” in Romeo plus Juliet is such a detournement,
marking the appropriation of classic text by youth culture, rendering
[the] Shakespeare[an] title as graffiti. (“‘In Fair Verona’”).

Donaldson goes on to note that the symbol “also serves to mark that
appropriation with the violence of the feud” when it is conflated with the “cross
hairs of a pistol,” Tybalt’s falling body (which “becomes the ampersand in” the
cross’ center as well as evoking “the trace of the crucified body”) and “punk and
heavy metal typography.”

Worthen also adds to an understanding of how Luhrmann’s title can be
seen to work at the conclusion of his complex and provocative essay “Drama,
Performativity and Performance” when he writes that

Romeo “+” Juliet makes visible what most performances work to
conceal: that dramatic performance, like all other performance, far
flom originating in the text, can only cite its textual “origins” with an
additive gesture, a kind of “+.” (1104)

I am indebted to Peter S. Donaldson, who has graciously allowed me to
quote flom his unpublished script to “‘In Fair Verona’: Media, Spectacle and
Performance in Romeo + Juliet,” part of the Re-Mediating Shakespeare:
Stages, Screens, (Hyper)Texts, Histories paper session at the 1999
Shakespeare Association of America annual meeting. His presentation
combined both spoken text (the script) and QuickTime video and digitized
image files. The script, which came to me in electronic form, has no page
numbers. Such descriptions of the visuals as I may employ are based on my
notes, taken during the original presentation.

2. Ferrara’s film and the BBC production are perhaps the hardest to find, the
former because of its comparative age (over ten years) in a video rental
market focused on recent, popular releases, its more specific appeal to film
aficionados and its limited availability, the latter due to its expense (about

285

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

US$100) and correlative scarcity. Generally, the BBC Romeo is found in
college and university libraries, municipal libraries that have funds to purchase
such an expensive item, or in private collections often comprised of tapes
recorded off-the—air.

3. A recent example is Titanic (1997, dir. James Cameron). In that film, a
privileged young woman, not accidentally named Rose, meets a less-than-
privileged bohemian artist, Jack. Initially separated by powerful social and
economic codes, they are brought together in a moment of intense emotion;
they must keep their relationship secret, and are physically threatened by
individuals of the upper class and their functionaries when the relationship is
discovered. Despite this, Rose and Jack continue their relationship, which is, in
part, defined by this defiance, as well as by an intense, developing eroticism on
Rose’s part not unlike that which Juliet expresses on her wedding night. All
this happens against a background of great turmoil, the sinking of the luxury
ship, which writer-director Cameron uses to display some of the social wrongs
of the early twentieth century, just as it could be argued Romeo and Juliet
displays some of the ills of its playwright’s culture. Furthermore, because the
fate of the Titanic is so well known, it could be argued that at least one of the
lovers is a priori doomed (the movie does at points suggest this, as there is no
record of a Jack Dawson ever being on the ship or among its survivors): in this
way the lovers are star-crossed.

4. Ball notes that at one point, “Romeo and Juliet was clearly the most
popular subject for [early] Shakespeare film” (235), identifying “at least
nineteen short films that touched, however vaguely, on Shakespeare’s pla}?
flom 1914- 18, and 71 silent films flom 1900- 28 which present, adapt, or
contain references to or elements of the playtext, including some which bear
“no other discernable relationship to Shakespeare” beyond the names of the
playtext’s principles (217). The makers of those films apparently felt that
invoking the famous playtext would begin the ideational process in their
filmgoers before they ever made it to their seats. Audiences would have at
least some idea of what the film would be about, or at least a set of
associations against which they could judge the film.

McKernan and Terris list 49 “programmes” of Romeo and Juliet flom
1911-93, some ten percent of the “ninety years of parodies, borrowings,
quotations, homages, documentaries, operas, ballets, newsfilms, home movies .
. . comic sketches” and other works comprising the “more than 400 references
to Shakespeare and his plays and characters among the films and television
programmes preserved by the NFTV ” (J eavons ix). See also Holderness and
McCollough, who identify 23 productions of Romeo flom 1900-7 8; Willis, BBC
who catalogues five BBC Romeos in less than 50 years; and Rothwell and
Melzer, who list 63 productions and derivations of Romeo flom 1902-88. Even
allowing for the repeated listing of productions among these surveys, Romeo
and Juliet is clearly a playtext of astonishing popularity.

5. J orgens and Holland’s approaches are particular to film, although their
categories can be exported to other media. In a study similar to J orgens
Willems addresses Shakespeare on television, although she tends to privilege
approaches which serve the text best while J orgens is more neutrally

286

 

 

 

 

descriptive. See N. Taylor for another study categorizing Shakespeare
produced for television.

6. McKernan provides an example of such an approach: it “looks for faithful
reproductions of the text, judging . . . films by the standards of theatrical
performance or literary criticism” (1).

McKernan identifies another type of criticism that “looks at the
phenomenon of Shakespeare on film” (1). This includes such scholarly works
as filmographies, and taxonomic studies such as those which attempt to bring
a sense of order to the field through classification. See Holland; Homan;

J orgens, Shakespeare on Film; N. Taylor and Willis, BBC.

7. Willis’ comments refer to criticism of The Shakespeare Plays in particular,
and to Shakespearean film and tv criticism in general.

8. Hodgdon defines “performance texts” as

theatrical events that grow primarily flom rehearsal and laboratory
work and, at times, are supported only by a minimal printed text. I
appropriate the term [flom Richard Schechner] , then, to refer to the end
result of a process that begins with a (usually) cut version of any
existing text. (“Absent” 355-56)

Bulman locates the term as being flom Marco De Marinis’ 1987 “Dramaturgy
of the Spectator,” and explains it thus:

the performance text, in the words of Marco De Marinis, “is conceived of
as a complex network of different types of signs, expressive means, or
actions, coming back to the etymology of the word ‘text’ which implies
the idea of texture, of something woven together” (100). The literary, or
dramatic, text, furthermore, which is but one element of the
performance text, is itself subject to historical inscriptions, the result of
a process Patrice Pavis [in Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture] calls its
concretization, wherein “signifier (literary work as thing), signified
(aesthetic object), and Social Context . . . are variables . . . which can be
more or less reconstructed” (27). This idea of text as process, as an
interweaving of variable elements, reflects a post-modem desire to
replace the logocentric idea of theatre with one in which performance
becomes the site of cultural and aesthetic contestation. . . .
(“Introduction” 1—2)

Hodgdon uses “performance texts” to refer to “theatrical events.” This could be
expanded to include film, television and video “events.”

9. Ferrara identifies a related threat to the post-modem project of challenging
assumed “essential” meanings and textual authority:

unlike the most outrageous theatrical performance, filming

Shakespeare involves changing media, and producing a permanently
available performance . . . [whose] characteristics are bound to become

287

 

 

 

 

 

sticky questions when the critical atmosphere changes, and the films
remain behind. (168)

Worthen might argue that “permanently available” performances (and the
“sticky questions” they can engender) accomplish a critical good when they
“destroy the unity of the text” (Ferrara 168). However,

Video and film have encouraged us to assimilate those performances to
the condition of texts, stable artifacts rather than contingent, unstable,
ephemeral experiences. . . . If the central insight of performance
criticism is that performance is radically contingent, open to historical
and material pressures that may not outlast a performance (or even an
act), the stability of the records flom which we work may be false to the
very historicality performance criticism seeks to address. (Lanier 203-
04)

To a degree, this is an artificial distinction and an overstated concern:
individuals with access, such as some film critics, film students and scholars,
have long been able to do close study of films and video texts, even if the
possibility of such study was, for most, remote. Film and video are more
enduring than theatrical performance (their very nature, on semi-permanent
celluloid, attests to this, even while the flagility of the recording media, or the
lack of any recording at all of some early live tv broadcasts, supports Lanier’s
assertion) even if the material conditions of individual film, television and video
performances (that is, their screening or broadcasting) are as transitory as
any that might be encountered in a theatrical milieu. If film and video “allow
us repeated viewings of a single performance” and “encourage us to assimilate
that performance to the condition of a literary text -- a stable artifact rather
than a contingent, ephemeral experience” then,

Our challenge . . . is to discover how not to replace the old textuality with
a new form of performance textuality. . . . Such readings of video as text,
increasingly common in the academy, risk an elision of the very
historical and material contingencies which the return to performance
has sought to recover. (Bulman, “Introduction” 2-3)

One (it seems to me easy) way to do this is to study the material contingencies
of different film screenings, of the reception of a single television broadcast, or
of different showings of the same video, in order to see the differences (if there
are any) among historically and socially specific groups or individuals. See, for
example, Hodgdon’s work with Robert Lepage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(“Looking”). Such an examination is not the province of this study, although I
think it an important project.

For a recent, detailed examination of different kinds of reception study,
sleze Anderson. See also Ang, J oyrich, Lull 90-112, and Walker and Ferguson

1-34.

10. For similar arguments, see Bingham 223, along with Hapgood 100;
Harrison 159; McKernan 8; and Pilkington, Screening 96.

288

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11. Pilkington notes “an uncritical idealization of the stage and an equally
uncritical condemnation of television and film” (Screening 40). At its worst,
this sort of bias descends into a nudge-nudge jokiness which replaces actual
critical inquiry. See, for example, Coursen, Shakespearean 207 and
“Shakespeare” 5, and Welsh.

Other writers suffer flom similar weaknesses, criticizing television for
being televisual, often in terms that could be —- but are not -- applied to film and
even some forms of theatrical performance as well. See Banham 214;
Coursen, Shakespearean 139 and Watching 163; J orgens, “BBC” 415; and
Zitner 1. Stam 16-17 and Coursen, Watching 22 display similar biases against
commercial television which they do not apply to commercial film.

12. Bulman’s concern is echoed by Banham 214 and Wilders 60.

13. Having taught Shakespeare to students unfamiliar with the playwright
and the playtexts -- in this particular instance, Much Ado About Nothing and
The Taming of the Shrew -- I can assert that seeing films of those plays before
or during reading was immensely helpful to some. There were problems of
confusing films with playtexts, but those were to my mind outweighed when
students who had given up on a difficult, demanding read returned to the
playtext full of a sense of possibility and, when they finished, accomplishment.
These students were also often able to subsequently discuss performance
options as ably as those who saw the films after reading. Bulman’s assertion
seems elitist when seen against students who used, and maybe needed,
videotapes to help them complete their work.

14. For examples of criticism supporting this view either wholly or in part, see
Banham 215; Ferrara; Halio, “Finding” 664; Manvell 1 and 3; Pearson 69;
Reddington 368-69; and Zitner.

15. At times Collick elides significant technological, cultural and social
differences between film, television and theatre by asserting that he will
discuss their “real relationships.” At others, even while making valuable points
about film and television’s differences not being “innate characteristics of the
two media but of the institutions that have brought them into existence and
continue to determine their economic and ideological positions” he badly
gverreaches by asserting that “Television and cinema are wholly dissimilar”
52).

Nevertheless, his point does have merit: the connections between film
and other art forms are deeper than many of the above critics suggest. N 0 less
an authority than Sergei Eisenstein addressed this very point in discussing the
editing style he helped invent, finding the “rudiment” of “basic montage
structure . . . in Dickens’s work was developed into the elements of film
composition in Griflith’s wor ” (372). Eisenstein caps his argument with a
personal note:

for me personally it is always pleasing . . . that our cinema is not
altogether without parents and without a pedigree, without a past,
without the traditions and rich cultural heritage of the past epochs. It is
only very thoughtless and presumptuous people who can erect laws and

289

 

 

 

 

 

an esthetic for cinema, proceeding flom premises of some incredible
virgin-birth of this art! (379)

See also Brewster and Jacobs, and Thorburn 167.

16. In this it is much more preferable than “derivative,” which carries
connotations of being left over, as well as of excessive waywardness.

For some recent work on how the definition of a presentation of a
literary or dramatic text on film, tv or video can effect understandings of that
presentation, see Starks’ Introductions to Post Script 17.1 and 17.2,
Thompson, esp. 11, and Whelehan and Cartmell 2-3.

17. For views similar to Worthen’s, see Coursen, Shakespearean 47 -48 and
123-24; Holderness, Shakespeare in Performance: “The Taming of the Shrew”
50-51; Rothwell, “Hollywood” 345; and Waller.

18. In addition to those writers noted in the main text, several other artists
and critics either borrow Hodgdon’s term or parallel its meaning in addressing
their own or others’ reactions. See Brook 251; Charney 291; Collick 1; Gilbert
609-10; Homan 289; Pilkington, Screening 158; Reddington 367; and Willis,
BBC 53 and 7 9.

19. See also Harrison 159; J orgens, Shakespeare 34; Pilkington Screening 95-
96; Waller 21; Willems 70; and Willis, BBC 80.

20. My statement that “This kind of personal reaction admits it is active, not
passive” foregrounds an issue which similarly troubles Collick: “literature is a
commodity to be consumed within a capitalist economy” (189). Collick objects
to the assumption that a playtext’s meaning can be determined, translated,
and passed on in the different forms of film or television. Addressing the idea
that culture does “consume” Shakespeare, sometimes for capitalist ends, is a
similar result of foregrounding the personal role of the critic, as well as the
multiplicity of meanings that can be mined flom a playtext. While this
dissertation does not address this form of “consumption,” it does acknowledge
that such criticism is possible. Studying how meanings are made and
exchanged is a necessary step in the study of how, why, where, and to whom
they are marketed.

21. See Williams, Keywords 126-29, for a historical contexualization of the
definitions of ideology. See also Dollimore, Radical 6-21; Eagleton, Ideology: An
Introduction; and Kavanagh, “Ideology” 306-08.

22. Kavanagh’s “Ideology” is an excellent introduction to the history of and
current issues surrounding ideology and ideological criticism. See also
Dollimore, Radical 9-10 and Kavanagh, “Shakespeare” 145. Eagleton,
Ideology 1-2, indicates 16 currently circulating definitions of the term.

To ideological practice, Kavanagh adds “economic, political, and
theoretical practice,” which combined are

the four major practices whose work constitutes a social formation.

290

 

 

 

 

Each of these interrelated practices is a process of production, using raw
materials (including the products of other practices), instruments of

labour, and labour processes to produce specific effects necessary for
the functioning and reproduction of the social whole. (“Shakespeare”
146)

23. If an ideological perception of the world “enable[s] various social subjects
to feel at home, and to act (or not act), within the limits of a given social
project” (Kavanagh, “Ideology” 314) by disguising the constructed way of
perceiving as natural, invisible, then the question arises as to whether any
given individual can be said truly to have identified an ideology governing her or
his way of perceiving. I am indebted to Philip C. McGuire for raising this
question.

24. See also Gitlin 531, Hawkes 298 and Kellner 470 and 486.
25. See also Kellner 486.

Fiske offers a useful explanation of the difference between hegemony
and dominance.

Hegemony is a constant struggle against a multitude of resistances to
ideological domination, and any balance of forces that it achieves is
always precarious, always in need of re—achievement. Hegemony/”s
“victories” are never final, and any society will evidence numerous
points where subordinate groups have resisted the total domination that
is hegemonis aim, and have withheld their consent to the system. (41)

Hegemony is the process by which dominant ideologies are challenged yet
maintain their dominance. See also Dollimore, “Introduction” 10; Gitlin 532;
and Mayne 126—27.

26. Challenge can come flom making “moments of protest and opposition
within mainstream popular culture . . . the focus of left cultural criticism and
production (rather than restricting radical analysis to ritualistic denunciations
of ‘bourgeois ideology’ within popular culture),” which will result in
“emancipatory popular culture” (Kellner 486, 489), or increasing critical
awareness of ideological systems, as might be found in a study of how “‘the
pursuit of happiness’” is used to justify “corporate domination of the economy”
(Gitlin 533). It also can come through Williams’ alternative ideologies, which
present “a distinct but supplementary and containable view of the world,” and
oppositional ideologies, “rarer and more tenuous within commercial culture,
intimating an authentically different social order” (Gitlin 532). (Within
alternative and oppositional ideologies, Williams distinguishes between
“residual forms, descending from declining social formations, and emergent
forms, reflecting formations on the rise” [Gitlin 532].) Challenge might also

come from questioning generalizations, as in Spellerberg’s assertion that one
cannot speak of “the repressive system and the cinema” (7 73).

27 . When Dollimore addresses “The importance of the concept of
appropriation” in terms of Early Modern culture, he demonstrates how

291

 

complex and runnelled with contradiction appropriation can be In his words
appropriation

indicates a process of making or transforming. If we talk only of power
producing the discourse of subversion we not only hypostatise power but
also efface the cultural differences -- and context -— which the very
process of containment presupposes. Resistance to that process may
be there flom the outset or itself produced by it. Further, although
subversion may indeed be appropriated by authority for its own
purposes, once installed it can be used against authority as well as used
by it. Thus the demonised elements in Elizabethan culture -- for
example masterless men -- are, quite precisely, identified as such in
order to ratify the exercise of power, but once identified they are also
there as a force to be self-identified. But this didn’t make them a power
in their own right; on the contrary, for masterless men to constitute a
threat to order it was usually -- though not always -- necessary that
they first be mobilised or exploited by a counter—faction within the
dominant.

But appropriation could also work the other way: subordinate,
marginal or dissident elements could appropriate dominant discourses
and likewise transform them in the process. (“Introduction 12)

28 Th1s idea of ideological play is informed in part by Comolli’s argument that
realist representations are ‘a game, requiring the spectator’s participation not
as ‘passive,’ ‘alienated’ consumers, but as players, accomplices masters of the

game even if they are also what is at stake” (759); Comolli argues further that
this game is why these representations are successful (759)

29 Eagleton in fact writes that “A dramatic production does not ‘express’,
‘reflect’, or ‘reproduce’ the dramatic text on which it is based; it ‘produces’ the
text, transforming it into a unique and irreducible entity” (Criticism 64) but
does so by way of analogy, part of his attempt to explain how ideology produces
a text.

292

 

EN DN OTES

Chapter 1

1. For example, see Willis, BBC 3-57 for a description of the ideological
influences on The Shakespeare Plays.

2. The phrase “the playtext’s Prologue” is ambiguous and even misleading.
The Prologue exists in one form in Q1 ([A1v]), another in Q2 (A2r) and not at all
in F1. For discussions of the playtext’s complex Quarto and Folio issues, see
Dessen “Q1” 107; Evans 206-12; Farley-Hills; Foster, esp. 134 and 136-38;
Gibbons 1-26; Greenblatt, General Introduction 6576 and esp. 70-74, and
Introduction 871; Halio, “Handy-Dandy”; J owett; Kahan; and Pearlman 328-
29n.

All references to Rom. Q1 are flom Shakespeare, EXCELLENT;
references to Rom. Q2 are flom Shakespeare, MOST; Rom. F1 references are
to Shakespeare, TRAGEDIE.

3. See Pearlman for an argument that the Q1/Q2 Prologues and Choruses are
vestiges of Shakespeare’s early work on the playtext.

4. Donaldson sees Luhrmann’s device as initiating an examination of “the
urban mediascape” where “representation is not only coterminous with . . .
territory, but seems to generate it.” Part of this mediascape is tv news “in
which the world cannot be distinguished flom its media representation” (“‘In
Fair Verona’”).

5. Eventually she will be revealed as “anchorwoman” in the closing credits.
See also Pearce and Luhrmann 1-2 and 162.

6. Pearce and Luhrmann’s published screenplay offers no reason for the
change flom Friar to Father. One possibility is that the youth audience at
whom the film is targeted might not recognize the title “Friar,” or what such an
individual’s institutional function might be. A Father, though perhaps no less
mysterious to some, bears what may be a more recognizable title.

 

7. I did only after a number of viewings, largely because of his distinctive vocal
timbre and speech rhythms.

8. See Hart 550 for a description of how the Overture was presented in movie
theatres.

9. The soundtrack’s Prologue is six minutes, 37 seconds long. “The Story of
West Side Story” notes that Bernstein wrote “additional music for the
expanded ‘Prologue’.” The additional time in the film’s Prologue seems to come
flom both incorporated silences and several atonal percussion riffs between
shots 35 and 61.

 

 

 

 

10. All references to passages in, along with modem-spelling quotations flom
Romeo and Juliet are flom Shakespeare, Most, ed. Greenblatt et. al.

11. West Side Story does have Chorus-like figures: Doc, a morally normative
character, is modelled on Friar Laurence (Hemming 7), but also functions as a
Greek chorus of one, commenting on the ills of society; and Glad Hand, a well-
intentioned goof who voices some pleas for peace and good relations similar to
those a chorus might offer. Neither appears in the Prologue sequence, nor
anywhere near it. Neither functions as the playtext’s Chorus does, offering an
audience guidance to the story’s dramatic arc. China Girl does not even have
a Chorus-like figure such as Doc or Glad Hand.

12. See Garebian for more detail on the musical’s evolution. Hapgood (106-08)
provides a helpful capsule summary of the evolution of Robbins’ conception.
On the stage production’s development into a film see Garebian 142-50 and
Hemming 7 -9.

13. For references contemporary to the original stage production which
establish links between West Side Story and Romeo, see Atkinson, “Theatre”
and “‘West’”; Driver 561; Evett; Gibbs 64; “The Making of a Musical” 89; “On
Broadway” 16; Peck 60; and “The Show’s the Thing” 104.

14. For references contemporary to the film’s 1961 release which establish
links with Romeo, see Alpert, “Ernest Lehman”; Crowther; Hart 552; Johnson
58; Kael 30 and 34; “Natalie Wood”; “Origin of ‘West Side Story’”; “Richard
Beymer”; Schumach; “The Story of West Side Story”; J. Taylor 94; and Weiler.

15. See Lloyd 27 and Rothwell and Melzer 265-66. Janet Maslin’s review,
“Action and Stars,” notes that China Girl contains “‘a blatant mixture’” of
influences flom Romeo, West Side Story and Martin Scorcese’s Mean Streets
(Rothwell and Melzer 265).

16. This issue relates to one facing literature on film critics on a regular basis,
that of finding a pre-existing text in an adaptation. The links of a film like
Clueless (1995, dir. Amy Heckerling) to Emma are both clear and clearly
drawn. So too with more liberal adaptations, such as Apocalypse Now (1979,
dir. Francis Ford Coppola) and its take on Heart of Darkness. Films such as
The Bad Sleep Well (1960, dir. Akira Kurosawa), an adaptation of Hamlet, are
more problematic. Kurosawa not only updated and transferred the playtext’s
setting to mid-twentieth century corporate Japan, but redesigned the
playtext’s plot, characters, and conflicts. When I first saw this film, as part of
Kenneth Rothwell’s film festival at the 1996 World Shakespeare Congress in
Los Angeles, I spent most of the time trying to dOpe out where Hamlet was,
and consequently have little memory of the film itself. Sometimes, just letting
the movie unroll on its own terms provides a more helpful (or at least less
bumpy) way into the movie than spending intellectual energy trying to make it
fit into one’s own perceptions of important structural and thematic elements of
a text upon which the production might only loosely be based.

Hapgood, though writing of West Side Story in particular, provides what
can be taken as a general summary of this process:

294

 

 

 

We are not, I believe, continually being invited to draw parallels -- to see
Friar Laurence in Doc the concerned druggist, Paris in the approved
suitor, Chino, and so on. Such identifications take place only in
retrospect. Only at high points does the Romeo and Juliet story come to
mind: as the lovers first meet at the neighborhood dance, make their
balcony-scene declarations of love on Maria’s fire-escape, and are torn
apart by the “rumble” between the two “houses,” climaxing in the
deadliness not of the sword but of the switchblade. (“West” 103)

While I agree that the “identifications” can take place in retrospect, I would
argue that they can also happen simultaneously to on-screen occurrences, and
that, once the first identification has taken place, those that Hapgood lists, as
well as others (Doc was, in fact, conceived as a Friar Laurence analogue -- see
Hemming 7 ), can happen more easily, whether “invited” by the filmmakers or
not.

17. This assumes that audience members have any knowledge of Romeo and

Juliet at all. Without such information, a connection, even one clearly
suggested, might well make no sense.

18. See Whittier 27-28 for her commentary regarding Chorus’ opening sonnet.
19. Rothwell writes of this shot that

the burning sun over Verona half-hidden in a haze . . . joins with Lord
Olivier’s voice over of the Chorus’ sonnet and [Nino] Rota’s score to
adumbrate Romeo’s ‘my mind rnisgives / Some consequences yet
hanging in the stars.” It serves as emblem for “a fair Verona” that is
really not so fair, of a Juliet who is the “sun” but one to be eclipsed, of a
Romeo whose fate hangs in the “stars,” and of a city that finally must
endure a “glooming peace” when “the sun for sorrow will not show his

head.” Shakespeare’s fourteen references to the sun have received their
cinematic equivalents. (“Zeffirelli’s” 337)

20. Pilkington addresses what he sees as Zeffirelli’s belief that contemporary
filmgoers are incapable of listening for or to poetry in “Zeffirelli’s” 168—69.

21. Unless otherwise noted, dialogue in Zeffirelli, Rakoff and Ferrara is
transcribed flom what I have heard. Dialogue in Wise/Robbins and Luhrmann
has been checked against the Laurents et. al. script for West Side Story’s stage
version, and Pearce and Luhrmann’s published screenplay, respectively.
Readers should note that scripted dialogue can differ flom what is heard in a

production’s final version, sometimes extensively, due to changes made to the
script during both production and post-production.

22. This pose is adOpted because cameras always present events as though in
the present, and because of the industry’s need to maintain the impression of
up-to—the—minute accuracy. In this tv news resembles literary criticism, in
which critics also adopt a rhetorical pose of temporal currency, i.e.,

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)2,

“Shakespeare writes that ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.

23. The excision may also address a perceived unwillingness of tv news to
acknowledge, much less apologize for, errors in reporting.

24. In shots 49 and 51, the Jets are photographed through the supports of a
construction arcade; shot 50 shows three Sharks playing cards through those
same interfering beams. As Baby John flees the Sharks he has to navigate
around a blockade of storage sheds in shot 95.

25. Regarding this depressing comment, Hapgood reports the artists “drew
inspiration flom first-hand observation of West Side street life” (103).

26. While the Jets and Sharks are not alone in the city -- there are a few
pedestrians, some cars on the street, and children play in the schoolyard --
these people differ flom those in the Shakespearean text. Those citizens
actively engage the Capulets and Montagues (see 1.1.66-67 and 85-88), but
the citizens in this vision of New York tend to avoid engagement. Other than
Krupke and Schrank, the only outsiders to have any role in the film’s action are
Doc and Glad Hand. There are citizens in this city aside flom the gang
members and these ancillaries, but the unclean hands belong to those involved
in the conflict. The rest of the city seems unaffected.

27 . For a contrast, see Zeffirelli’s presentation of Escalus upon his entry to the
initial flay. Filming him flom low angles, and employing high angle point of
view shots, Zeffirelli makes his Prince, astride his horse, seem to tower above
those around him. (Although on horseback, he could have been photographed
at eye level, a common enough practice in Westerns.) His movements are
swirling, dramatic, and Zeflirelli’s handheld camera lends the shots a sense of
wavering instability, as though townspeople are unable to look at him for very
long. Escalus’ power and authority are also shown through proximics: no one
approaches him. He is surrounded by space. Then there is his formal
language, in contrast to the bawdy concatenations of Samson, Gregory,
Abraham and others.

28. Hart notes how the opening visuals called attention to themselves in 1961
(550), an effect still noticeable today.

29. The film actually was shot on location in Tuscania, Pienza and Gubbio,
Italy (Zeffirelli, Zefiirelli 227).

30. As J orgens writes, the opening shot is “a visual equivalent to the godlike,
d1stant, formal tone and style of the prologue which contrasts so vividly with
the passion and violence inside Verona’s walls” (Shakespeare on Film 81).

31. Levenson provides an anecdote that conveys Zeffirelli’s penchant for
realism. In his London stage production,

According to Zeffirelli’s aesthetic, the sets displayed realism to the last
detail. When [John] Stride approached the stage on opening night to get

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a feel of the sets and lighting, he discovered Zeffirelli flicking a brush with
dirty, watery paint about eighteen inches above the floor. “This is where
the dogs pee on the walls”, the director explained. Then he flicked a little
higher, saying, “and this is where the men pee”. (Shakespeare in
Performance: “Romeo and Juliet” 100; see also 93)

With regard to his casting of Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey as
Romeo and Juliet, Cirillo writes that because “These actors have no existence
until the film begins . . . they are simply Romeo and Juliet, an illusion
deliberately heightened by the suspension of the cast credits until the very end
of [the] film” (75).

32. For a fuller description of negations, as well as an application of their
fimctioning, see Iser 212-25.

33. Chorus’s direct address to the camera breaks the de facto fourth wall and
thereby foregrounds both the recording device and the audience, revealing the
means and the fact of production. While the direct address itself might be
overlooked -- it is common enough on television -- the subsequent action, in
which the camera booms up and away flom Chorus, who watches it go (and, by
inference, its platform and operator/s), calls attention to itself as well.

Another reflexive gesture which helps to reveal the constructedness of
the production is the pile of fluit Rakoff shows in shot 6, located structurally in
the same place as the very similar third shot in Zeffirelli, immediately following
Chorus’ speech. Rakoff noted that he was “‘trying to erase flom my mind
Zeffirelli’s production —- which I think I did. I didn’t knowingly pinch anything
flom him’” (Fenwick 21), but whether a visual quotation of this sort is
deliberate is irrelevant. It “puts one text in relation, whether manifest or
secret, with other texts’” (Stam, Reflexivity 22-23), here a relation
characterized by “the . . . effective co-presence of two texts in the form of
quotation, plagiarism, and allusion” (23). The relationship both may be secret,
(viewers may not notice the reference) and is secret, if one takes Rakoff at his
word, flom the man who generated the quotation in the first place, but it is still
a quotation, and as such reveals the connection between the productions. In so
doing, it makes plain the latter’s indebtedness to the former, and thus makes
plain its constructed nature.

34. Pursell makes a sound argument that Zeffirelli’s camerawork “moves
beyond naturalism at key moments.” Audience members “are visually and
emotionally detached flom it [the fiction] as history” but “are visually and
emotionally involved in it as story” (175). Despite Zeffirelli’s use of such
artifices as the fade—in or voice-over, which Pursell ably elucidates, I believe
audiences’ familiarity with these techniques obviates their distancing effects --
they don’t notice what are basic elements of film, tv and video grammar.
Zeflirelli’s Prologue does not force the audience into a critical, removed analysis
of the fihnic artifact: if anything, the lyrical opening visuals fight against such
consideration. They seduce fihngoers, who may indeed notice the conventions,
but not attend to what Pursell sees as their functioning. (Levenson sums up
the differences between my argument and Pursell’s with this: “In effect, when
the artificial jostles the naturalistic in this film, some viewers have felt the

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impact more acutely than others” [Shakespeare in Performance: “Romeo and
Juliet” 122].)

Ferrara acknowledges his own film’s constructedness: “this feudal world,
two worlds separated by one block . . . almost does exist, and as much as it’s a
fable it’s also close to being a documentary” (Smith, “Gambler” 22). His
Chinatown and Little Italy are stylized approximations of real places —- a
description which fits the playtext’s Verona as well -- their apparent
authenticity supported by the location shooting and low-key camerawork of
the film’s Prologue.

Although West Side Story takes pains to establish its action “on location,
in the heart of Manhattan” (Alpert, SynOpsis), the film quickly starts to out
between location shots and what are obviously studio sets. The filmmakers
are deliberate in their attempt to “avoid ‘slice of life’ realism” (Hapgood 103),
regularly drawing attention to the film’s constructedness through techniques
such as jump cuts (shots 8890), swish effects (shots 83, 86 and 87) and wipes
(shot 52), through revealing that the sets are sets (shot 95), and particularly
through the moments when the gang members erupt into accomplished,
complex song and dance numbers. Despite all this, the film’s beginning so
strongly places the film that some critics still understood it as a realistic
document (see J. Taylor 94 and Crowther).

35. The superimposition may also result flom s10ppiness, or reflect its
producer’s attitude of not caring for “too sensational” or “arty-crafty shooting”
(Andrews, “Interview” 137).

36. Whether a gang can be considered as a metaphoric household is an issue I
will take up in detail in chapter 3.

37 . Cukor’s 1936 Romeo uses a similar device, though to different effect. For a
helpful description, see Davies 154.

38. Matthews believes this and other such devices indicate that “The director
takes it as read that today’s fidgety moviegoers need shock cuts, speeded-up
trick motion and a spanking pop design to persuade them that Shakespeare

was the Scorcese of his day” (55).

39. Although I am unable to identify the source, I recollect reading or hearing
that the fleeze-flame credits allude to the title sequences of tv shows that
display actors’ names over visuals of those actors’ characters. This would
constitute one aspect of the film’s citationality, on which see Donaldson, “‘In
Fair Verona,”’ Hodgdon, “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet: Everything’s
Nice in America?” and Worthen, “Drama” 1103-04.

I am indebted to Barbara Hodgdon, who has graciously provided me a
typescript of her essay, forthcoming in Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999).

40. On Luhrmann and media spectacle, see Donaldson, “‘In Fair Verona’.”
41. I will develop this idea at greater length in chapter 2.

42. Such is the case with my own interest in this film. In an early version of

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this study, “O Romeo! Shakespeare, the Mafia, the Triads and Ferrara’s China
Girl,” presented as part of the Shakespeare on Film and the Continuity of
Ideas seminar at the 1994 Shakespeare Association of America annual
meeting, I made no mention of China Girl’s indebtedness to West Side Story
because I was unaware of the earlier film: I had heard of it, and heard music
flom it, but never seen it. Several members of the seminar drew the
connection to my attention, and Patricia Solomon generously provided me a
copy of the videotape and the stage musical’s script.

43. Even more notable is the first shot after the Opening chase and brawl,
which themselves developed out of Tony and Tye’s first meeting. It is of a city
street; prominent in the flame is a man carrying a slaughtered pig slung over
his shoulder. Ferrara indicates early on what his lovers’ end will be, and what it
will be like.

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ENDNOTES

Chapter 2

1. A range of critics has addressed the issue of order in Romeo and Juliet, in
relationship to such topics as masculinity and masculine display (Applebaum
255; Donaldson, Shakespearean Films 153-54; Kahn, “Coming” 337 and Man’s
84, 86 and 89); violence (Novy 359-60); dancing (Levin, “Form” 85 and
McGuire); dreams (Holmer, “No”); subversion (Laroque 18); codes of
gentlemanly behavior (Limon 98-100 and 104; see also Holmer, “‘Draw’”);
rhetorical style (Clemen 69); verbal patterning (J. Black 152) and visual
patterning (J. Black 154; Dessen, “Q1” 110-11 and 117-18; see also Rothwell,
“Zeffirelli’s” 329); Fate (Charlton 14 and 27 -33; Peterson, esp. 308); and even
the playtext itself as challenge to literary order (Charlton, and Ronald Knowles
70 and 72).

2. This technique is more effective in a movie theatre, with its larger-than-life
scale set above eye level, than on tv or video, with their reduced scale and the
screen’s flequent positioning at or below eye level.

3. For more on the BBC’s recording and presentation of sound, and some of the
controversy surrounding it, see Willis, BBC 66-68.

4. A sensible construction, given the production’s setting in the kind of dense
metropolitan area where police use helicopters for crowd surveillance and
control, it may also constitute a sly visual allusion to Zeffirelli and Rakoff:
military units comprised of helicopters are sometimes known as air cavalry.

5. Luhrmann adds the last line, apparently to make clear for the audience
what has just happened.

6. I suppose the threat of punishment is implicit in the police themselves, and
although the gangs appear to take it seriously enough, they also easily avoid it
by fleeing.

7. As with Luhrmann’s helicopters, the mounted police are a realistic detail
recollecting the enhorsed Escalus of earlier productions.

8. It could be argued that the Prince is cracking down on that contemporary
bogey, quality of life crime.

9. These ideas are further developed later in the film, when Schrank says,

I get a promotion, and you P.R.s get what you been itchin’ for: use of the
playground, use of the gym, the streets, the candy store. So what if they
do turn this whole town into a stinking pig sty? Hey, don’t stop him. He
wants to get home, write a few letters to San Juan, tell ‘em how he’s got
it made over here. Things are tough all over. Beat it! What I mean is,

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clear out, you. I said clear out! Oh, yeah, sure, Iknow: it’s a flee
country and I ain’t got the right. But I got a badge. What do you got?

Most of the elements flom Schrank’s earlier rant are present in this screed.
The Lieutenant acts individually, rather than as a corporate, corporeal agent
of the state. Rather than Escalus’ attempts to assert the authority of the
state vested in his person to preserve society, in the film of West Side Story
Schrank asserts himself for his own interests. Civic-mindedness and duty
have turned inward. Authority and law, symbolized by the badge he carries,
are no longer tools for promoting the public good: they are devices through
which he can bully a detested Other. When Schrank tells both gangs that they
had better “be sure to finish each other off. Because if you don’t, I will,” there
is more to it than even the threat Of his own personal involvement in violence.
Romeo and J uliet’s Prince does not want the feuding houses to keep at it. His
threat is delivered against continued action. Schrank encourages further and
more effective violence. This agent of the state invites increased disorder on
the questionable assumption that, in time, increased order will result flom it.

10. While this is a necessary change in West Side Story and China Girl, due to
their realist twentieth-century New York City settings, Luhrmann’s fictional
Verona Beach, although resembling any of the Southwestern United States
metroplexes or Mexico City, where it was in part filmed, does not have to have

a Chief of Police named Prince. Luhrmann’s world could have a Prince.

11. In many American Chinatowns, as in the one depicted in Ferrara’s film,
authority and order do come in part flom societies like the Triads, “originally
formed by monks to fight Manchu dynastic corruption and to restore the Ming
emperors” (D. Black 23). On the evolution of the Triads flom their origin in
medieval China to the present, see Booth; see also Posner 30-31. Developing
over a span of centuries into secret and often criminally-associated societies,
the Triads (or Tongs -- literally, “town halls” -- the American term for the
groups), tend to run American Chinatowns through their association with
legitimate Chinese societies and organizations, and fear. See Chin 11-19 for a
detailed description of this complex relationship.

As suggested in Gung Tu’s remarks to Yung, the Triads conceive of
themselves as maintainers of order within their hybridized, not-quite-Chinese-
yet-not-quite-American neighborhoods. Posner argues that in the United
States Tongs evolved to shelter Chinese flom attacks by white Americans
(207-08). Owing to traditional Chinese suspicion of government and
vulnerability to racist attack and Oppression, “the Tongs became unofficial
local governments” (208). See also Booth 43 and 107.

12. Chinese street gangs tend to be riven by factionalism which often erupts
into internecine warfare. See Chin 114-16.

13. Sent on this errand by the Triad uncles, Yung tells Shin, “You’ve been
served” after delivering the order. This deeply ironic appropriation of the
language of jurisprudence is also an indication of Gung Tu’s power as judge,
jury, and if need be executioner.

 

 

 

 

14. As Elyot puts it, order has such preeminence in “thinges . . . naturall” that
“the incomprehensible maiestie of god is declared” (1: 3).

15. The Friar’s conception of orderly nature relates to his concern with
moderate conduct. He chides Romeo “For doting, not for loving” (2.2.82) and
counsels him that “They stumble that run fast” (I. 94), comments to Paris that
the suddenness Of the wedding to Juliet is “Uneven. . . . I like it not” (4.1.5), and
warns Romeo that

violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph do like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. (2.5.9-11)

Passions, no matter which way they may be running, offend because of their
immoderation. They distort nature’s -- and therefore God’s -- design. It is a
measure Of how taxed the Friar is when Juliet attempts to kill herself in flont
of him that he proposes

a kind of hope
Which craves as desperate an execution
As that is desperate which we would prevent. (4.1.68-70, italics mine)

The poor man must be near his wits’ end to suggest a “desperate” solution, let
alone generate so morbid a pun.

16. Zeffirelli’s panorama is the more effective of the two, since the wide flame
allows for the greater display of nature’s broad array; Rakoff’s potted plants
and painted backdrop are not convincing simulacra, but they manage to
suggest a natural setting, and naturalism is not a goal Of the BBC productions
anyway. (On pan and scan videotape, Zeffirelli’s panoramic views are less
effective because the shots are cropped down to two thirds their original scale.)

17. The shape of the plant Father Laurence holds up to the camera as he
speaks of “the powerful grace that lies / In plants, herbs, stones, and their true
qualities” (2.2. 15- 16) is identical to the Playboy bunny graphic, why I can only
guess.

18. West Side Story deals only briefly, and China Girl only tangentially, with
Christianity and marriage as ordering principles. Ferrara’s film may indicate
the lack of respect faith has in his society when a statue of the Virgin being
carried in a parade is knocked over and broken by the gang youths; and his
lovers never even consider marriage. West Side Story touches on marriage as
an ordering principle. It is assumed by Bernardo that Maria will marry Chino
and have a passel Of kids; coming flom a character who is regularly and
hypocritically demanding, this expectation has the effect of calling marriage
into question. This mild challenge is more than countered by Maria’s
assumption that marriage is the inevitable end of her relationship with Tony,
with which Tony is in complete agreement. The film never really suggests that
their presumptions are anything less than right.

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19. The film mocks adults and their schemes most memorably in the number
“Hey, Officer Krupke.”

20. He employs Tony, and the job in combination Doc’s being a “sweet guy”
has inclined the youth to pull away flom the gang he helped found. Now,
instead of pursuing conflict with the Sharks, he prefers to fulfil his promise to
Doc to “clean up the store.” Tony even becomes something Of an agent of order
himself. Calling the gangs “chicken,” he uses their pride to talk them down
flom an all-out battle to a one-on—one fist fight. It is also he who later, at
Maria’s behest, tries to stop the rumble. Although he never says so, Doc could
not help but be pleased with these efforts.

21. Riff runs the Jets, Ice takes over when Riffis killed, and both have to ride
herd on Action; Baby John needs to be protected and corrected; Anybodys, a
girl, has a place in the gang only as the butt of misogynist humor. (The film
expresses a misogynist ideology throughout, a subject I will address
tangentially in chapter 4.) A similar hierarchy exists in the Sharks, with
Bernardo at its pinnacle, Pepe and Indio below him, and Chino nearer the
bottom.

22. Religious sites are suggested to be places of order in the three Romeos. In
Rakoff this results in part flom the Renaissance architecture of the Friar’s
cloister. Zeffirelli’s church, like his square, is large, Open, spacious; it, too, is a
place of quiet. Luhrmann’s church, a marvel of set design, is orderly as well.
Quiet like the others, it is also symmetrically laid out. Right and left sides of
the sanctuary balance each other. In Luhrmann and Rakoff, these balanced
sites are where at least some of Laurence’s scolding of Romeo for extremity
and haste takes place; in all three the plan for reconciling the houses begins in
the context of orderly architecture.

23. “Neighborhood” has denotative (a place with demonstrable boundaries)
and connotative (a place Of friends, acquaintances, relatives, cO-workers,
enemies, home a way of life, and so on) meanings. It is both a physical place
and an abstract idea. In both senses it is a powerful ordering principle.

There is no concern with neighborhoods in the performances and
playtext of Romeo and Juliet. Capulets and Montagues go pretty much where
they will. There may be tensions when they encounter each other, but
(Tybalt’s and Paris’ complaints about Romeo aside) their differences do not
result flom trespassing on others’ turf. China Girl and West Side Story
demonstrate profound attachments to neighborhoods, however, as indicated in
the very names Chinatown and Little Italy: these places help provide a sense
of belonging and groundedness to the gang members. References to “up there”
and “down there” not only suggest geographical relation, but a place of
Otherness, where people unlike the speaker dwell. The neighborhood is a place
where one belongs: “You were born in this neighborhood,” Alby tells Tony. Yet
it is more: as Yung tells Tye, it is also a place where one is safe.

One scene reveals with particular clarity the power that the
neighborhood has as an organizing principle. It happens after Shin and his
faction firebomb Canton Garden. Rather than racing off after the Chinese, the
Italian gang first goes across the street to help the people in the Chinese

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restaurant. It may be owned by Chinese, and the Italians may not like that the
restaurant is there, but it is in their neighborhood, and neighbors help
neighbors in time of need.

This attachment to neighborhood would be familiar to the gangs in West
Side Story, particularly to the Jets, who are dedicated to defending their
territory flom the Sharks. As Riff puts it, “We fought hard for this territory
and it’s ours.” It may be “small, but it’s all we got.” Similarly to Mercury’s
understanding of the neighborhood, the Jets’ identity is bound up in no small
way with their territory: they worked for it, it is theirs, and they are going to
keep it. The plural in the preceding clause is crucial, for the Jets worked
together, cooperatively. It is something they have, and something they have,
and for both reasons the territory is a source of pride. The Sharks threaten
that. Not only will the Jets lose something they fought for, something that is
theirs, but their way of life -- in the film, generically white European —- will be
displaced by an alien one, leaving them nothing.

On the characteristic attachment Of gangs to their neighborhoods see
O’Kane 117-18; Sanders 126, 132 and 140; Thrasher 57; and Vigil 22. C.
Taylor 6 and 96 addresses gang attachment to territory, which may or may
not be coterminous with a particular neighborhood. For the role of
neighborhoods in establishing and maintaining gangs, see Sanders 37 and 63;
Thrasher 391; and Vigil 95.

24. West Side Story and China Girl both use streets to represent order, the
former through the tidiness of the streets, the latter through Canal Street,
which represents to most of the film’s characters a clear organizing principle:
Chinese live below it, Italians above it, and woe betide him who questions that.

25. Luhrmann’s film also has a “public place” at the beachflont, where people
hang out, drink, reel drunkenly along the street or stare at hookers. Although
this location might not seem intended as a visualization of order, there does
appear to be some understanding of what does and does not constitute
disruptive behavior: the beach denizens either do not notice or take as a
matter of course Benvolio’s and Mercutio’s playing around with their guns
during Mercutio’s 2.3 disquisition on Tybalt, as well as Mercutio’s shooting at
fish at the top of 3.1. Presumably this congregation of cholos, boyz,
nymphettes, low lives and slumming suits is disrupted by the fight between
Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo, although the film does not show people fleeing or
acting as though they feel threatened. It is the storm that drives people away,
not the fight.

26. My thanks to Philip C. McGuire, who first suggested this connection to me.
27 . This connection between business and order is more developed in the script
for the stage musical: “Them PRs’re the reason my old man’s gone bust”; “My
Old man says them Puerto Ricans is ruinin’ flee ennaprise” (Laurents et. al.
140, 141).

28. West Side Story’s Jets worry about the Puerto Ricans’ encroachment too:

“They multiply. . . ”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“They keep comin’ . . .”

“Like cockroaches!”

“Close the windas!”

“Shut the doors!”

“They’re eatin’ all the food!”
“They’re breathin’ all the air!”
“I’m drowning in tamales!”

This fear of supplantation of a way of life by an insidious, pestilential foe is
understood and mockingly echoed by the new immigrants:

“Your mother’s a Pole, your father’s a Swede, but you were born here,
that’s all that you need. You are an American. But us? Foreigners!”

“Lice!”

“Cockroaches!”

The expressions borne by China Girl’s Italian onlookers encode the Chinese as
economic interlopers, thus taking the place of the Puerto Rican Sharks, in their
time regarded with the same sort of suspicion.

29. Additional ways in which order can be expressed through the houses can be
found in the following possibilities. Visuals of the Capulet homes themselves
suggest order, such as Zeffirelli’s Renaissance palazzo, filled with spacious,
well-appointed rooms, or Rakoff’s High Renaissance great hall, with its
symmetrical stairways flanked by colonnades. Activity in the homes can also
illustrate order or its lack, such as the ways in which the servants go about
preparing for the feast (industrious in Zeffirelli, slightly harried in Rakoff,
flantic in Luhrmann). The way in which Capulet says “I would not for the
wealth of all this town / Here in my house do him disparagement” (1.5.66—67,
italics mine) can do much to indicate his attitude to how closely he takes the
connection between houses and order to be.

Depictions of houses in West Side Story and China Girl focus on the
kitchens, which are places where family members attempt to enforce the
obedience Of their ldn: Bernardo tells Maria she has to Obey him until she is
much older; Alby complains about Tony’s not helping prepare for the festival;
Yung tells Tye to shape up and stay in Chinatown.

30. The widescreen videotape, which preserves the film’s 1.85:1 aspect ratio,
makes this much more apparent than the pan and scan version.

31. This basic rhetorical mode of high wide shot, low wide shot, tighter angle,
wide shot, is preserved in the majority of the film’s dance sequences, all Of
which are highly patterned and orderly. As with Zeffirelli’s Romeo, the
widescreen video shows the balance and complexity Of the visual compositions
and the choreography much more clearly than the pan and scan version.

32. The segment illustrates similarities between the gangs which they
themselves would never admit.

33. The second dance-club scene, set in a club called the Metro, is also

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characterized by mixed-ethnicity dancers. Beyond reiterating utopian
possibility, the scene suggests through the club’s name that less polarized
conditions exist in the areas outside Little Italy and Chinatown. Tony’s
meeting with Tye in a subway station before going to the club suggests that
they had to travel some distance to get there. Distancing the club flom the
rivalries of the lovers’ home neighborhoods, this further implies the
abnormality of the Chinese-Italian feud, as well as allows for the possibility of

escaping it.

34. Dyer seems to slide flom considering desire -- “something we want deeply” -
- to need. However, he is not addressing all needs, but created needs, the
implication being that such needs are artificial, even if strongly felt. This is an
expression of uses and gratifications theory, which holds that “Needs are
influenced by culture not only in the ways they are formed, but in how they are
gratified.” Because of this, “culturally situated experience reinforces basic
biological and psychological needs while simultaneously giving direction to their
sources of gratification” (Lull 99). People trying to gratify basic needs are
constantly exposed to “suggestions about how to gratify those inner
necessities” (Lull 102), as well as about what those necessities are.

35. This formulation follows Snyder, who argues that “the classic way . . . of
ideology” is that “it creates meaning by differentiating” (90).

36. For more detailed discussion of the way in which this scene in Luhrmann

represents disorder, see chapter 3; for more on how this scene addresses love,
see chapter 4.

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F_.L

EN DNOTES

Chapter 3

1. Granville-B arker argues a similar point when asserting that the Montagues
and Capulets would be happy to end the feud (41); Witt, arguing that the
editorial shifting of speech assignments flom Capulet to Montague in 3.1
emphasizes the feud, implicitly concurs that the feud has run its course.

2. See Kahn, Man’s 89, for a similar point, that the feud limits language.

3. Sorting out an understanding of family, kin, house and household can be a
sticky business. Although complexly understood, concepts of family and
household in the English Renaissance had some clear basic organizational
principles. Christian Oeconomie (1609) defines a family as,

a naturall and simple Societie of certaine persons, having mutuall
relation one to another, under the private governement of one. These
persons must be at least three; because two cannot make a societie.
And above three under the same head, there may be a thousand in one
familie, as it is in the households of Princes, and men of state in the
world. (M. Perkins Bv)

 

According to a subsequent explanation, “mutuall relation” consists Of the
paterfamilias, who governs in his various roles his spouse, children, and
whatever servants may have been retained, who, though not blood relations,
are in this formulation treated as rough equivalents to children (163-64). This
definition of family is modified to varying degrees by such writers as M. Slater,
who understands family to mean “the primary kinship unit, parents and their
children, although contemporaries used the word to include kin and even
servants” (26); Stone, who writes that “In the late middle ages the nuclear
family of the landed elite was no more than a loose core of the centre of a dense
network of lineage and kin relationships,” with kinship connections
“increasingly limited to the closer relatives” between 1500 and 1700 (Family
69 and 94); and Wrightson, who argues that “large and complex households
containing resident kin, or even several cohabiting conjugal families . . . are
notable for their comparative rarity” although “More complex households were
formed on occasion for a variety of reasons” (44).

An extended, extensive household might then include a parent or
parents, children, and servants; in-laws, cousins, even people to whom the
householder had no direct relationship, but who may have fallen under the
general rubric of “kin.” A family was probably more limited to parents,
children, and close relatives like brothers- and sisters-in-law. A household,
even one closely constructed by the nuclear, core family and their servants,
may have been subject to the pressures brought to bear by various kin and
associates. Despite this, the kin most likely would not have had a direct or
active role in that individual’s household; however, these same kin had the
potential to have an impact on the household, either for good or ill. The

 

 

 

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Montague and Capulet households, then, may have contained many individuals
not directly related to the householder, but who would have seen those two men
as their respective superiors, or their households could have been
comparatively small, with “kin living nearby . . . perhaps flequently
cooperating” with the nuclear core (Wrightson 45).

Given these ideas, I will be using terminology in the following ways:
family refers to immediate, nuclear relations -- parents, children, close in-laws,
and aunts and uncles; kin refers to relations beyond the nuclear core, such as
cousins, understanding that in early modern England “cousin” was used fleely
to refer to relations of various sorts, any of whom may have had their own
families and households; a household refers to the physical building in which the
family dwells, and which may include family servants; a house is the network of
family, household, kin, and possibly even the kin’s households and houses.

In addition to the sources already noted, Houlbrooke’s English Family
Life 9-10, 7 2-7 3, 218- 19 and 222-23 has proven very helpful in developing the
above outline.

4. This idea, that the household was a basic representative and guarantor of
order was widespread in early modern England. An Exhortacion concernyng
Good Ordre and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates, made the relationship
clear in 1547:

Every degre of people, in their vocacion, callyng and office, hath
appoynted to them theyr dutie and ordre. Some are in high degre, some
in lowe, some kynges and princes, some inferiors and subj ectes, priestes
and laimen, masters and servauntes, fathers and chyldren, husbandes
and wifes, riche and poore, and every one have nede of other: so that in
all thinges is to be lauded and praysed the goodly ordre of God, without
the whiche, no house, no citie, no common wealth can continue and
endure. (161)

The Exhortacion was part of Certayne Sermons or Homelies (1547), a collection
authored by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of
London Edmund Bonner and his chaplain, John Harpesfield, among others
(Bond 27) and authorized by “both the Privy Council and, by the advice of the
Duke of Somerset, the king [Edward VI] himself” (4). As such, it could
reasonably be expected to represent official thinking on the subject. A text
published 62 years after Certayne Sermons demonstrates the extent to which
these ideas had penetrated into the national psyche: M. Perkins’s Christian
Oeconomie: OR A SHORT SURVEY OF THE RIGHT MANNER OF erecting
and ordering a familie according to the Scriptures would proclaim in its
dedication to Robert Lord Rich, Baron of Leeze, that

Among al the Societies and States . . . the first and most ancient is the
Familie. For if we looke into the Scriptures; The writings of Moses,
which in time goe beyond all the Histories and Records of men, doe
evidently declare, it was the will Of God, to sanctifie that first coniucntion
of Adam and Eve, as the roote wherein mans whole posteritie was
virtually contained, and whence in the ages succeeding, both Church and
Common-weale should spring and grow to their perfection. (1]2r-v)

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Not only do the church and commonwealth arise flom the family, but

the holie and righteous gouernment thereof, is a direct meane for the
good ordering, both of Church and Common-wealth; yea that the laws
thereof being rightly informed and religiously Observed, are auaileable to
prepare and dispose men to the keeping of order in other gouernements.

(‘ll3r)

Perkins continues that, “the corruption or declination of this first gouernment,
must of necessitie give way to the ruinating of the rest. For an error in the
foundation, puts the bodie and parts of the whole building in apparent hazard”
(‘][3v). Not only does a properly maintained family lead to a solid, stable body
politic, but a disordered family threatens it. This belief reflected that of the
English Attorney General, who, in 1608, reported that villages were “‘the first
societies after [the] propagation of families wherein people are united . . . in . . .
the mutual comforts of neighbourhood and intercourse one with another”
(Amussen 50).

5. Feud in early modern England is usually addressed as part Of a larger
investigation into crime and social disorder in the period. Although there were
various forms disorder could take, such as unlawful assembly, rout or riot
(Emmison 100), I have not been able to identify in the literature about crime
and disorder in early modern England a definition of feud, although descriptions
of feuds indicate that one can be described as a sustained series Of unlawful
assemblies, routs and/or riots (along with assaults, murders, disseisin [“the
unlawful dispossessing of a man’s house or lands” (Emmison 117)], trespass,
and legal challenges) between two groups.

Of these, there are numerous examples. Emmison relates a series of
home invasions and instances of disseisin over the ownership of the manors Of
Great Stonebridge and Colemans, in which William Poley and Thomas Shaa
repeatedly engaged each other, aided by gangs of retainers as a minor example
of a feud (118), along with several other more complicated examples (119-23).
Ingram reports that “Stoneax v. Blathat, a defamation case which came before
the bishop of Salisbury’s consistory court in 1617” shows evidence of a feud
between William Pettibone and Blathat. The former had been the latter’s
“‘deadly enemy’ for seven years” and was claimed to have said “that he would
do Blathat any mischief he could” (117). Ingram also notes a feud carried out
largely in court: “one group of five indictments” spanning 1617-18 “involved
conflicts among the yeomen and gentry families of Bigges, Tattershall and
Pavy.” Associated “with lawsuits in the bishop’s consistory court, Star
Chamber, the court of Common Pleas, King’s Bench and Chancery,” the
dispute began with “an indictment for riot and trespass” and evolved flom that
point (120-21). Stone lists an array of feuds during Elizabeth I’s reign,
including Stanhope-Markham (in Nottinghamshire), Fiennes-Dymock
(Lincolnshire), Danver—Long (Wiltshire), Muschampe-Collingwood
(Northumberland), and Mansell-Haydon (Norfolk). These ‘Vvere dangerous
since they drew in with them by family alliances not only most of the other
squires of the count[ies], but also the magnates” (Crisis 229). Whitaker Offers
this description of a violent encounter between two houses:

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On the banks of this lake [called Semerwater] is Rodale, the valley of the
Roe, which two centuries ago was possessed by a family of the name of
Robinson, nearly allied to the Asshetons of Downham, in Lancashire;
and in the hand-writing of Nicholas Assheton, Esq. I had the good
fortune to discover an account of a most extraordinary attack made in
the year 1617 upon this house by Sir Thomas Metcalfe, of Nappay, with
a number of armed followers, who, in the absence of the owner, basely
laid siege to it with fire-arms, when the lady, her children, and domestics
only were within. N O violence appears to have been offered or intended
to the female part of the family and what was the origin of the quarrel
does not appear. But the siege continued several days; during which,
besides several persons wounded, two were killed, and until the lady’s
nephew, Mr. Assheton, had time to march with a few stout men to the
relief of the family at least fifty miles. This is perhaps the latest
instance of private war which ever took place in Great Britain south of
the Tweed. (1: 412; see also Raines 9—11)

Clearly, even though houses were charged with maintaining order, they were
also a source of disorder. Baker’s argument that blood-feuds were a matter of
law and prosecution “in a remote past,” and that by the Tudor period they
“were decidedly outside the law” (15) may be correct, but there is no shortage
of examples of extra-legal, familial feuding in early modern England. A
Montague—Capulet type of rivalry may not have been common, but it was not
unheard Of, either.

The sources of these rivalries were various. Lenman and Parker identify
one in the landowning class’ subscription to “an ethical code which required
extra-judicial satisfaction for an injury, normally by a feud” (27). Injuries could
have ranged flom such mundanities as “breaches of courtesy (keeping stray
livestock, refusals of aid during harvest time)” to “actual blows or insults” (27 ),
arguments over the rights to goods or possessions (34), or homicide, “which
was regarded not so much as a crime, but rather as the legal justification for
starting a blood feud” (24). Since taking an individual to court depended on
personal initiative, as well as the willingness Of witnesses to undergo the time,
expense and risk of testifying, there might never be a trial for a criminal
offense. Given this, a feud might erupt for any Of the above reasons, and
continue because “the costs of taking a case to court might constitute as
serious a disincentive to prosecution as the time and trouble entailed” (Sharpe
“Enforcing” 110-11). Ingram, in a surprising essay, argues that the courts
themselves could also lead to disorder, “exploited as a covert form of violence
by a vicious and quarrelsome breed of men who perverted the very instrument
of justice for the satisfaction of their contentious passions.” If “even litigation
that did not involve abuse could be regarded as a regrettable breach of the
harmonious relations which neighbors ought to enjoy” (110), then vexatious
prosecution, as anyone who has ever been involved in any drawn-out legal
battle might well attest, could be as great an impetus for a feud as even
murder. This would be particularly true if, as in the case ofAtnoke v Hichcock,
accusations of sexual immorality eventually involved “a substantial section of”
Rebecca Atnoke’s “small home village” (1 17). Two families being roughed
about in court is one thing; an entire village being dragged into the affair might

)

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well prompt hostilities beyond the original complaint. Ingram takes his data
“to indicate that recourse to the law did not normally lead to violence or threats
of violence” (118), but “normally” leaves not a little leeway.

All of this is intended to show that Romeo’s “airy word” (1.1.82) could
have been anything. Escalus could be reporting exactly -- the feud could have
resulted flom a breach of courtesy -- or he could be sarcastically denigrating
the reaction (or over-reaction) to some other Offense.

6. Stone reports that in 1588 the Earl of Pembroke had at his disposal 500
foot and 300 horse “‘at the leaste’,” which he had armed and maintained at his
own expense (Crisis 206). Additional instances of significant groups of men
being used to wage what was in effect private war can be found in these
examples: in 1554, the Rokebys, Bowes and Wycliffs were able to attack the
Earl of Westmorland with 300 men; in 1589, the Earl of Lincoln attacked
Weston Manor with 40 men and scaling ladders; in 1598, the Earl of
Shrewsbury sent 120 men to arrest one, and was countered with a force of 60;
in 1593, the same Earl used between 400 and 500 men to destroy a rival’s fish-
weir; in 1589, Sir Thomas Langton attacked Lea Hall with 80 men, overcoming
a force of 60 and killing Thomas Hoghton; in 1592, Lord Dudley used 600-7 00
men to force another’s cattle out of Prestwood (215). At Kenilworth, the Earl
of Leicester built a castle surrounded by “extensive flooded ground” (217) and
armed with 100+ guns, 1500 shot, powder, 450 small arms, and weapons for
200 horse and 500 foot, with a value of at least £2000 (220). In 1600, the Earl
of Lincoln tried to bribe men 1s. per day to help in his feud with Sir Edward
Dymock, which suggests that the trend of heavily manned estates was
beginning to die out (215). By any of these standards, the Capulet/Montague
conflict seems a piddling affair, although one that would have been familiar,
through report if not actual familial involvement, to Romeo and J uliet’s
potential audience.

7. For just such an argument, see Snyder, “Ideology.”

8. Houlbrooke’s third pillar is expected advantage (English Family Life 221;
see 221-22 for further detail). See below for how this is expressed in the gangs.

9. See Salisbury 121; C. Taylor 104; Thrasher 20 and 79; Vigil 35, 44, 90 and
106. Sheu contests the idea that social disorganization produces gangs, but
does not address specifically whether weak families contribute to gang
membership (1-3).

10. See Abadinsky 43-46; Albanese 57; O’Kane 128, 130; Robertson 155-59;
and Vigil 87, 90, 95, and 106. See also Thrasher 277—28.

11. In this, Donaldson participates in such feminist discussions of the playtext
as presented by Kahn, Novy, Levenson and Snyder.

12. This supports my assertion of the feud arising flom ordering distinctions.

13. I have already noted the links to the choreographed violence of the fights.
See chapter 2.

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14. Anita also alludes to this connection when trying to explain to Maria why
the Sharks have to have a rumble:

ANITA
You saw how they dance: like they got to get rid of something, quick.
That’s how they fight.

MARIA
To get rid of what?

ANITA
Too much feeling. And they do get rid of it: after a fight, that brother of
yours is so healthy!

15. When violence is directed at Tony in the first dance club scene, it does not
come flom Yung, but flom his (and Tye’s) cousin, Shin, and the reasons for it
are ambiguous: it may be because Tony is dancing with Tye, because Tony is
in Shin’s territory, because he is alone and therefore vulnerable, or any
combination of these possibilities. Similarly, when Shin kills Tony and Tye at
the end -- he is trying to kill Tony; Tye steps in flont of her lover to protect him
and is shot by accident -- he could have attacked for any of the above reasons.

16. The tumbling movement of J uliet’s body when she is thrown onto the bed
also recollects Tybalt’s fall off the stage when he is attacked by Mercutio.

17 . The scene is extensively restructured: there are new locations, reordered
lines and even some that are rewritten. The film’s “Hang the young baggage”
takes place before Lady Capulet’s “are you mad?” (I. 157). It does not appear
in the playtext. The line may be a conflation of “Out, you baggage” (l. 156) and
“Hang thee, young baggage” (l. 160), or more simply a revision of the latter line
flom “thee” to the definite article “the.”

2

18. The shot is an elegant evocation of the analogous relationship of father (as
head Of the family) to Prince (as head of the state).

19. Q2 has Romeo and Juliet entering 3.5 “aloft” (H2v) as does F1 (tln 2032).
Stage directions for Capulet’s wife and the Nurse only read “Enter” (H3r and
HBV in Q2, tln 2069 and 2098, respectively). Neither version of the playtext
gives any indication of whether the women entered to Juliet, or she at some
point descended to the main stage for her encounter with her father.

In Q1, Romeo and Juliet enter “at the window” (G3r), after which “She
goeth downe” (G3v), where presumably the rest of the scene is played out.

20. According to English jurisprudence, at less than a month shy of her 14th

birthday Juliet has the legal right to refuse consent to be married (see Stone,

Crisis 652-56). Her recalcitrance predicts a future humiliation for both her

father and his friend. This may be another reason her refusal would enrage
apulet.

21. Maria’s father’s voice is heard on the soundtrack during the fire escape
scene, calling to “Maruca.” She also refers tO him in the dress shop wedding

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scene, telling Tony that “Papa might like” him.

22. Casting these actors in these roles also reduces the threat they pose as
rivals to their respective Romeos.

23. It could be argued, I suppose, that an attack on Maria is redirected to
Anita, who is sexually assaulted in Doc’s candy store by the Jets. For more on
this possibility, see chapter 4.

24. In all three Romeos, the Montagues are shown so little that they bear little
comparison to the Capulets. In Zeffirelli, Montague’s wife helps to bandage the
wounded after the 1.1. brawl as she and her husband speak in soft tones with
Benvolio. She looks with affection at Romeo when he appears, but Romeo,
seeing his family and kin, stops walking up the alley and moves to the side, as
though looking for a place to hide. In Rakoff, the Montagues are worried about
their son, standing together in flame flom “Black and portentous must this
humour prove” (1.1.134) through the end of the segment. In Luhrmann, the
Montagues sit at opposite ends of the seat in their limousine. When in two
shot, the wide screen emphasizes the distance between them; when in one-shot
close ups, they are positioned at opposite edges of the screen, he at the left, she
at the right. Often, they do not look at each other. She appears worried about
Romeo, he disgusted with his son’s behavior. When Romeo sees their car, he
stands; in extreme long shot, silhouetted by the sun, Romeo watches for a
moment then turns away. In Luhrmarm in particular, the flaming, shot
selection and postures suggest a family at best distant flom, if not hostile to,
each other. (Zeffirelli’s Romeo seems more the self-aware romantic mope —- he
wants his parents to see him being sad -- while Rakoffs does not even appear
in the segment: his parents are fletful because they have not seen him, so
there is little to suggest what that relationship is like.)

25. These behaviors may have been characteristic. M. Slater argues that
“Parental attitudes toward and dealings with children were predicated on their
role in the kinship structure rather than on emotional response to him or her
as an individual or considerations of their needs and aspirations as unique
persons” (28). In essence, this position is a reiteration of Stone’s earlier claim
that the relationship between upper class children and their parents, like that
between the parents themselves, “was also usually fairly remote” (Family 82).

26. At one point during Lurhmann’s “old accustomed feast,” Capulet’s wife
gasps at an unnamed woman while holding Paris’ hand in such a way that it
looks like she is pressing it against her derriére. The flaming does not show
this definitively, and she may just be holding his hand close to her, but, given
her overall behavior, it seems at least possible that she is helping, or maln'ng,
him grope her.

27 . Both films suggest the character’s vanity by having her spend part Of her
mterview with Juliet studying herselfin a mirror.

28. In Zeffirelli, when Juliet pleads with her mother after Capulet’s departure,
she does so on her knees as her mother tries to get away; a similar angle of

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Juliet and the Nurse shows the Nurse holding onto the young girl, her
comforting tones a clear contrast to the mother’s flustrated rebuke. In
Luhrmann, the Nurse (here dressed in white like Juliet, establishing a visual
bond between the two) holds Juliet while comforting her.

29. Rakoff’s lamentations scene is an effective counter to Moisan’s argument
that

the rhetoric of the “lamentations” scene “gets in our way” . . . disguises . .
. ulterior insincerity and . . . is an instance of the kind of “art” that for
Plato made the use of rhetoric indissociable flom its abuse -- that
inherent “duplicitie” by which rhetorical utterance may so transfigure
what it ostensibly represents as to suppress and obscure what it
pretends to express and elucidate. (389)

The Rakoff scene also counters Rabkin’s and Kermode’s contentions “that
Shakespeare deliberately undercuts the rhetoric of grief in this scene to
underscore, by contrast, the less ‘artificial’ language and, by implication, the
more genuine emotions, of Romeo and Juliet, especially as we perceive them in
the final act” (Moisan 390).

30. Rakoff offers no hint of an incestuous relationship between Tybalt and
Capulet’s wife.

31. All of the productions have ethnic houses, but in two of them, Zeffirelli’s
and Rakoff’s, the two houses share a single ethnicity, and neither production
makes, so far as I can determine, any effort to distinguish the houses in terms
of Italian regional affiliations which might help explain the origins or reasons
for continuing the feud. Both houses are Veronese, not Sicilian and Calabrese,
or Florentine and Roman.

32. Kael snipes that

the only real difference between these two gangs of what I am tempted
to call ballerinas -- is that one group has faces and hair darkened and the
other group has gone wild for glittering yellow hair dye; and their stale
exuberance, though magnified by the camera to epic proportions,
suggests no social tensions more world-shaking than the desperation of
young dancers to get ahead -- even at the risk of physical injury. (35)

33. Arroyo Speaks of Luhrmann’s film; his comments apply to West Side Story.

34. This is arguably already some distance flom the playtext, particularly
versions which prefer to adopt the Q4 reassignment of

Not Romeo, Prince. He was Mercutio’s fliend.
His fault concludes but what the law should end,
The life of Tybalt. (3.1.178-80)

flom Capulet to Montague. This change, which eliminates moderation on the

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part of Capulet (who identifies Romeo as “a portly gentleman” of whom
“Verona brags” during his 1.5 contention with Tybalt), reduces any suggestion
that the houses are “trying to come together,” all such efforts being shunted
onto the Friar and his scheming. In fact, the idea that two groups are trying to
come together is at best a tenuous one in West Side Story: the two gangs are
certainly not interested in unity, despite things that they have in common such
as their hatred of Krupke and Schrank. Maria wants to stop the fighting, but
that is not the same as trying to bring the gangs together; if anyone does want
to do this, it would be Doc and Glad Hand, whose efforts prove ineffective.

For a discussion of the Q4 reassignment of 3.1.178-80, see Witt.

35. This is a fine example of the way that Dyer theorizes the functioning of
entertainment: the film generates a problem, contains it by seeming to
address it in the numbe -- after which the men and the women get along again
-- but leaves actual, underlying problems of racism and social inequity
unchallenged.

36. The irony that home, Hong Kong, was in 1987 a British crown colony,
seems to pass unnoticed by Yung.

37. Mercury, studying the new restaurant, calls it a “Grand GOOk opening,”
calls its owner “the fish head,” notes that the Chinese “don’t even look human”
and wonders why “they’ re squintin’ even when it’s cloudy.” Shin complains that
Yung’s refusal to toe the absolutist line makes him “the problem,” and that this
will allow “the greaseballs . . . [to] go on fucking your sister.” These comments

echo the Jets’ references to “cockroaches” and “tamales” when complaining
about the Sharks.

38. For example, see THE COURT OF good Counsell; An Exhortacion
concernyng Good Ordre and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates; J. Hall; An
Homelie agaynst Contencion and Braulynge; An Homelie Against Disobedience
and Wylful Rebellion; THE House-keepers GUIDE; M. Perkins; and the 1547
and 1559 Prefaces to Certayne Sermons or Homelies.

39. See G. Elton, esp. 6, and Sharpe, Crime 4; see also Weisser 3 and 7.

40. This difference informed “A moral distinction between crime and error,”
which in turn led to “the extensive use of discretion in legal practice” (Herrup
110). On the use of discretion in legal practice, see: Baker 16-17 and 17;
Ingram 128-34; Lenman and Parker 15, 22, 23, 29-30; and Sharpe, Crime 7,
39, 42-48, 7 6, 77, 83, 86, 104 and “Enforcing” 108.

41. Although a distinction between “‘good’” criminals and “‘those who commit
crime without qualification’” is necessary to understanding social crime, it is
incumbent that one watch against too easy a distinction, especially since, even
if the two kinds of criminals can be distinguished, “there is every possibility
that they inhabited a common culture” (Sharpe, Crime 123). In other words, a
social protestor and a criminal may be involved in the same riotous action,
although for completely different ends; it is hard to tell when social crime ends

and “normal” crime starts (140).

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42. Sharpe’s study addresses enclosure riots, grain riots and apprentice riots,
along with Specific incidents like the 1566 Colchester weavers’ rebellion (Crime
133-40).

43. In addition to biting his thumb, ZefIirelli’s Samson also spits, which
recollects a Spitting incident that helps spark the first fight in West Side Story;
Luhrmann’s Samson bits his thumb and makes some moronic noises.

44. Greenblatt specifies the Watch at this point. Q2 specifies that an
“Offi[cer]” makes the call ([A4r]), as does F1 (tln 71); the call to action is
absent flom Q1, although that version of the playtext does have “other
Citizens” enter to “part” the brawlers ([A3v]).

45. Luhrmann modifies Abraham to fit the cholo mold of his Capulet
gangbangers. In Spanish “abra” is an imperative, meaning “open” (i.e., Abra la
puerta, Open the door). It also functions as a diminutive for Abraham, in
Spanish pronounced a-’bram (Sayers).

46. Accordingly, Luhrmann cuts Escalus’ line about Verona’s ancient citizens,
who

Cast by their grave-beseeming ornaments
To wield old partisans in hands as old,
Cankered with peace, to part your cankered hate. (1.1.86—88)

47 . On the difference between state and community attitudes toward crime,
Lenman and Parker write that, “With respect to other offenses [than
witchcraft], only when they reached a level or achieved a barbarity which was
seen by society as a threat were suspects readily reported, keenly prosecuted
and severely punished” (15). See also 23 and 29-30.

48. If Yung and Tye have parents, they are never shown, nor ever referred to.

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vil-'41:.“

,.:r_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ENDNOTES
Chapter 4

1. Any such list can be extensive. In addition to specifics I cite in the body of
this chapter, see, for example, Andrews, “Falling” 407; Belsey, “Desire’s” 84-86,
96 and 98; M. Hall xv-xvii; Howard, “Sex” 171-72; Leech 60-61; LOW 18;
Starks, “Veiled” 66; Stone, Crisis 584-668; Summers and Pebworth; Traub 7 -
22; and Zimmerman 3.

2. As with love in the early modern period, love in Romeo and Juliet is a far-
flung area of study. In addition to those sources cited in the text and notes to
this chapter, see Atkinson, “‘West’”; Ball 45, 70-71 and 264; Burt, “Love” 244;
Cirillo; Crowther, Driver; Fenwick 19; Levenson, “Romeo and Juliet before
Shakespeare,” “Definition” and Shakespeare in Performance: “Romeo and
Juliet” 88; N ovy 359-60, 363, 366 and 368; Pursell, “Artifice” 174; Rothwell,
“Zeffirelli’s”; A. Slater 129, 131 and 138; Snow; Snyder, “Romeo” 76 and 81;
Whittier; Wilders 15; and Willson.

3. Draper argues that Romeo and Juliet “is not tragedy, but mere melodrama”
(285). Charlton finds that “as a pattern of the idea of tragedy, it is a failure”
(Annual 39). Among other problems he has with the playtext, Leech believes
that “the pressing home of the moral that their deaths will bring peace, runs
contrary to the notion of tragedy” (7 3). Bly sees it as the genesis of “an odd
sub- genre, that of romantic comedies whose heroines display a ribald humour”
(97), while Evans finds it to be a “separation—romance,” showing “obvious
analogies with the stories of Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan
and Isolde, and with later medieval works like Floris and Blanchefleur and
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde” (6).

 

4. The range of answers is impressive: Draper (who argued that the play was
not a tragedy) defines the play as a “whole tragedy of humours” (292) and an
“astrological tragedy of humours” (296); Leech, who like Draper questions
whether the play is a tragedy at all, also like Draper tries to define what kind of
tragedy it is, and ends by calling it “a tragedy about love” (60). Zeffrrelli
believes the “tragedy is these poor kids who believed so genuinely” (“Filming”
265). Waters finds it to be “a successful tragedy of fate . . . in a somewhat
Similar manner as that of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex” (86). For Hunter, it is a
“tragedy which was so clearly a diversion by malign fate of materials that
would normally form the basis of comedy” (2). Granville-Barker calls it a “lyric
tragedy (38) and “a tragedy of youth, as youth sees it” (68).

 

5. See Evans 16; Holmer, “‘Draw’” 163; and Waters 7 6.

 

6. It is “a play of transition” in Shakespeare’s style and in Elizabethan drama
(Clemen 69). It is a play of “domesticity” (Hunter 3). It is a play of urgency
(Granville-Barker, esp. 53—55) and “often incandescent” verse, as well as of
“self-conscious literariness” (Wells, “Challenges” 4). It is even a play “of value

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to the Veronese tourist industry” (1).

7. For similar assertions, see Atkinson, “Theatre”; Denson; Greenblatt,
Introduction 866 and 870; and Levenson, “Changing” 152.

8. These styles are, musical (West Side Story), mainstream youth film
(Zeflirelli’s Romeo), conservative (Rakoff’s Romeo), independent (China Girl)
and post-modern youth film (William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet).

9. Extending this thesis, ascribing spiritual qualities to Romeo and J uliet’s
love, in our culture Often taken as a foundational exemplar of what love ought
to be -- for a striking example of which, see Denson passim -- suggests that love
in general is believed to be, at its “best” or most rarified, spiritual and
sacramental as well.

10. This danger ironically reflects the threat that their relationship poses to
patriarchy in Verona. On this threat, see Greenblatt, Introduction 868; Kahn,
Man’s 82-83 and 93; Laroque 18-19 and 23; Moisan 129; and Snyder, “Ideology”
95. For a counter to arguments such as Kahn’s classic stance that marriage
may conflict with paternal allegiance, subverting patriarchal authority, see
Goldberg 84.

11. Donaldson, “‘In Fair Verona.’”

 

12. The presentation of the “old accustom’d feast” in Luhrmann seems to me
to be conflicted. At the same time that it is partly set as a drug hallucination,
in the screenplay it is called "a depraved musical routine" containing
"grotesque images of avaricious decadence" and music which "contorts to a
horrifying, nightmarish cacophony" (Pearce and Luhrmann 45, 46). Donaldson
notes that the director’s

repurposing of Catholic imagery . . . can seem a momentary triumph of
alternative cultures and styles; a benign form of the merger of illusion
and reality, as if the Mardi Gras, with its liberationist energies, had
moved permanently flom the margin to the center. (“‘In Fair Verona’”)

I do not think Luhrmann is making a comment, at least a conscious one, on the
Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, but a negative association is present. I agree
that the scene can be read as Donaldson does, and successfully so; however,
the scene’s context, and its parallels to other moments coded as excessive or
out-of-order (if not control), such as the gun fight at the gas station or the first
appearance of Capulet’s wife, can be taken by an audience member in a
direction Oppsite to that which Donaldson prOposes.

13. Donaldson qualifies this moment as only “a (partial) emergence flom drag,
drugs and dress-up . . . if we are encouraged to experience this moment as
‘purer’ in feeling than the ball, it remains tinged by the hyperreal and
hallucinatory” (“‘In Fair Verona’”).

 

14. The dunking also ritually cleanses this crusader before his (unintended)

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journey toward (possibly) purifying an unholy land.

15. During his SAA presentation, Donaldson made this unscripted observation
while showing a QuickTime video clip of Romeo and Juliet studying each other
through the fishtank (“‘In Fair Verona”’).

16. In “‘In Fair Verona’” Donaldson reads Luhrmann’s use of Catholic imagery
as more deliberate than I have to this point. His argument is well taken: he
sees Luhrmann as “repurposing” the Christian iconography throughout the
film, part of a process of “detournement, the appropriation of the motifs of the
spectacle by its adversaries.” Donaldson sees this appropriation as part of a
complex

spiralling of reference. Cross and sacred heart are at once signs of the
domination of the Spectacle, appropriations of its tokens by the youth
culture, and also retain their force as images of fidelity, compassion,
charity and seriousness. The Friar’s vision of the heart is folly, but it
also conveys what the director considered the film’s central message --
one of compassion and tolerance in the face of the domination of ‘brand
names from the dark ages’ labelling differing religions, ethnic groups, and
sexual communities as enemies. The sacred heart [for example] is in
one sense, prominent among those Medieval trademarks; in another

sense, it stands for values the film affirms.

At the same time that Donaldson offers this perceptive and helpful critique of
the film’s imagery, in his oral presentation he softly mocked the film’s
strategies through his ironic reading of the following comment:

In creating the Christian hyperreal, the art director brought so many
images into the sacristy that the “real” priest became suspicious, and
she had to explain that they were necessary to portray the faith and
customs of another time.

17. She later and even more obviously protects him in the swimming pool,
when the armed Capulet security guard comes to investigate their splashing.

18. Arroyo sees the submerging lovers as part of a strategy of enclosure (9).
Donaldson, on the other hand, argues that “the permeability of the Capulet
space, its openness to the lovers’ meetings and desires . . . contrastfs] sharply
with Zeffirelli’s more anxious construction of privacy and seclusion under
surveillance” (“‘In Fair Verona’”). Donaldson’s point about permeability is well-
taken, although that permeability and openness it seems to me is always
subject to interruption and unobserved supervision.

19. Surprised, Romeo and Juliet stare at each other underwater after they
first fall into the Capulet pool; Romeo seems in real danger of running out of air
as he hides underwater while Juliet charms an investigating guard; they sink
kissing beneath the pool’s surface, a screen of tiny bubbles rendering them
insubstantial; Tybalt, shot and dying, falls backward into a pool of water; the
last visual of Romeo and Juliet is of the two of them, miraculously alive again --

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resurrected, perhaps? -- locked in their underwater kiss in a shot that
increasingly slows down before the screen fades to white. (This moment when
the lovers kiss in the field of bubbles is an amplification of the insubstantiality
lent them while they tread water -- underwater, their bodies seem to fluctuate,
constantly changing shape, while above, their faces are constantly
reconfigured in the wavering patterns thrown by the refracted underwater
lights.)

Mantua, where Romeo soj ourns away fiom Juliet, is a desert plain, with
no lush greenery or water to be found . . . hardly, given the film’s fixed
association of water and gardens with Romeo and J uliet’s love, an accident.
Donaldson describes Luhrmann’s Mantua as a “bleak and hopeless domain . . .
media outlands or eschatia” where the “community . . . defined by media
coverage” fails, as demonstrated by the inability of the Post Post Haste
Dispatch driver to deliver Father Laurence’s message in time (“‘In Fair
Verona’”).

20. This idea, originally suggested to me by a post by Chris Kendall on the
electronic listserv SHAKSPER, is related to a Lacanian understanding of
desire as being predicated on an absence, or lack, and a Platonic conception of
love as well.

My thanks to Philip C. McGuire for indicating the Platonic aspect of this
construCtion. For consideration of Lacan’s theory in the context of early
modern constructions of desire, see Belsey, “Desire’s” 85 and 86; L. Davis 59;
Low 18; Stanwood et. al. 270; Traub 7 and 22; and Zimmerman 3.

21. Andrews addresses Augustine’s dichotomous understanding of cupiditas
and caritas (“Falling” 407) without challenging it, while Evans preserves T. J.
Cribb’s distinctions between eros and caritas (15); Leech, too, in discussing
different views of love in Shakespeare’s time, implicitly preserves the idea that
those views are distinct (61). Charlton argues that

Like Romeo’s, J uliet’s love is completely unintelligible to the people in
her familiar circle. To her nurse, love is animal lust. To her father . . .
and to her mother, it is merely a social institution. . . . This earth, it
would seem, has no place for passion like Romeo’s and Juliet’s. (43)

L. Davis argues that “Romeo and Juliet stages a paradigmatic conflict
between ways of representing and interpreting desire” (58); M. Hall, in
constructing his typology of love, argues in part that “it is impossible to define
true love without reference to relationships based on seduction, domination and
lust” (XV), implying that those are distinct states of feeling; Kahn sets love in
opposition to death, relegating to a footnote (and so marginalizing) Rabkin’s
conception of the “death-wish inherent in the love of Romeo and Juliet itself”
(Man’s 98).

22. See for example Goldberg, whose point that “gender and sexuality in Romeo
and Juliet do not subscribe to the compulsions of modern critics of the play” to
“enforce a compulsory heterosexuality” (90, 89) can be extended to arguments
about spirituality or sexuality in love. His argument is in line with those such
as Belsey’s, that “in practice desire deconstructs the opposition between mind

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and body . . . undoes the dualism common sense seems so often to take for
granted” (“Name” 64) and Low’s, that early modern “Writers . . . thought there
were important connections, as well as differences” between sacred and
secular love (1).

Howard challenges the idea that heterosexual relations were more
dangerous than male friendship (“Sex” 172), while Traub’s argument that
“desire is always . . . a matter of both bodies and minds” (7) is part of her larger
project to foreground the idea that “norms are neither repressively imposed
from without nor dutifully internalized from within, but produced by the ever-
active combination and recombination of only temporarily dominant and
always contestatory discourses” (15).

23. This moderation leads one to wonder upon what the Friar bases his tut-
tutting to Romeo in 2.5.

24. Although frequently dressed in white, there does not seem to be much
imagery related to the spiritual attached to Maria beyond that lent by her
name, beyond such details of characterization as the small shrine to the
Madonna in her bedroom.

25. The visual is recollected by Luhrmann’s firework burst over his Juliet,
wearing her angel wings. In his presentation of “‘In Fair Verona’” Donaldson
displayed a still image that hinted that Luhrmann’s fireworks may also have
been inspired by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

26. On Garrick’s elimination of Rosaline from his Romeo, see Branam.

27 . To be fair, there is in China Girl Rosetta. Introduced some time after
Tony and Tye begin their relationship, she is never constructed as a serious, or
serio-comic love interest for Tony, being shown once, in long shot, and
mentioned only twice. She seems to be the neighborhood girl everyone
assumes Tony will hook up with, and with whom Tony enjoys cordial relations.

28. Kael’s is a fair criticism, albeit laced with her habitual arrogance: as M.
Hall demonstrates, “almost all of us recognize” love’s representation “through
the use of certain conventional qualities” and that “we still understand at least
the basic elements” of the representational system “in much the same way as
did playgoers in the sixteenth century” (Structure xvi, xvii).

29. The acerbic Kael offers this description of their first meeting:

When the fruity, toothsome Romeo-Tony meets his J uliet-Maria,
everything becomes gauzy and dreamy and he murmurs, “Have we met
before?” That’s my favorite piece of synthetic mysticism since the great
exchange in Black Orpheus: “My name is Orpheus.” “My name is
Eurydice.” “Then we must be in love.” When Tony, floating on the

clouds of romance (Richard Beymer unfortunately doesn’t look as if he
could walk) is asked, “What have you been taking tonight?” he answers,
“A trip to the moon.” Match that for lyric eloquence! (You’d have to go
back to Golden Boy.) (34)

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30. “Mambo” in particular comes to represent not just sexual energy, but the
dangerous, dark side of sexuality: it is playing on the jukebox in Doc’s when
Anita arrives in search of Tony, only to be sexually assaulted by the Sharks.
This scene, the film’s most disturbing, pulls its punch at the last moment.
Anybodys, the tomboy wanna-be, participates in the verbal assault on Anita,
but when the Jets begin to physically assault her, the camera reveals
Anybodys squeezed into a corner, a frightened look on her face. A more
committed depiction of the dehumanizing effect of the feud ideology would have
had the young girl helping physically, too.

31. In another scene, Velma and Graziella, girlfriends to Riff and Ice, also
shoulder some of the burden of erotic representation. When told they have to
leave Doc’s before the war council begins because it “ain’t kids’ stuff,” Graziella,
clothed like Velma in a clinging dress, purrs that “I and Velma ain’t kids’ stuff,
either.” She pulls sexuality away from Maria even as the context of her
comment implies that sex is dangerous.

32. Praying for what? There are at least four implications that follow upon
Anita’s warning: praying for forgiveness after having committed the sin of
fornication; literally praying for help either in fear of or upon discovering a
pregnancy; praying at the marital altar after having “gotten into trouble”; and
the prayer-like posture that can be assumed while engaging in fellatio. The
film tends to cloak its sexual innuendi in such apparently innocuous language.
An example: in the Sharks’ rooftop scene, just before “America” begins, the
teens are bantering back and forth. The stage musical’s script has this
dialogue:

BERN ARDO
Well, it is true. You remember how we were when we first came! Did we
even think of going back?
BERNARDO and ANITA
No! We came ready, eager --
ANITA [mocking]
With our hearts open --
CONSUELO
Our arms open --
PEPE

You came with your pants Open. (Laurents et. al. 165)
The film’s dialogue has been changed:

BERNARDO
Hey, but it’s true. When I think of how I thought it would be for us here .
. . we came like children, believing, trusting --
ANITA [starts with Bernardo]
-- trusting with our hearts Open --
CON SUELO
Our arms open --

PEPE

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You came with your mouth Open.

The alteration tones down Pepe’s overt sexual reference while retaining the
comment’s sexual content. “Mouth,” if anything, is more obviously sexual,
although it deflects the surface misogyny from Consuelo’s always available
pudendum to her always open mouth.

The implications of the film’s description of Consuelo as open mouthed
would have been clear to an early modern audience. See J ardine 101-24 and
Traub 81 on the meanings that circulated around constructions of open-
mouthed women.

33. Later, however, her sexual fears alter in tone and direction, and she begins
to embrace Bernardo’s vision of dangerous sexuality. After Bernardo’s death,
Anita sings a warning to Maria that she should “Stick to . . . [her] own kind”
and avoid Tony:

A boy like that wants one thing only,
And when he’s done he’ll leave you lonely.
He’ll murder your love; he murdered mine.
Just wait and see --

Just wait, Maria,

Just wait and see!

Maria’s sung response, another example of the spiritualization of love,
temporarily pulls Anita away from her position:

I love him; I’m his,

And everything he is

I am, too.

I have a love and it’s all that I need,
Right or wrong, and he needs me too.
I love him, we’re one;

There’s nothing to be done, . . .

Maria and Anita can then sing together, instead of at odds, about an idealized,
mystified love --

When love comes so strong,
There is no right or wrong.
Your love is your life! --

before the assault at Doc’s fixes Anita’s perceptions in line with Bernardo’s
bestialization of the Americanized Jets: “Bernardo was right.”

34. As Van Watson puts it, “Although Juliet is the object of Romeo’s gaze,
Romeo remains the object of Zeffirelli’s” (316).

35. In this, the film participates in the misogyny and bigotry of the Jets while

condemning them for holding that view, and at the same time complicates her
character so that Anita is more than the stereotype.

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36. Zeffirelli’s Romeo dances as well, but not with Juliet. Romeo’s dancing in
Rakoff is qualitatively different from similar moments in China Girl and West
Side Story. The Tonies make public moves toward the objects of their interest,
but they do so in neutral places, not the households of their enemies, where to
be noticed is to risk being attacked, perhaps even killed.

37. It may be that Rakoff was aiming at a slow build, so that this touch would
have a more profound impact than the initial, explosive meetings in Zefiirelli
and Luhrmann, but the effect is nothing like that, say, between Harrison Ford
and Kelly McGillis in Witness (1985, dir. Peter Weir), whose slow circling toward
each other throughout the film culminates in a passionate nighttime embrace.

38. This effect is on the videotape of the production. I have seen no
descriptions of the broadcast of the BBC Romeo which explain how the
intermissions were handled.

39. Bly and Knowles offer useful recent essays dealing with the bawdy in
Romeo and Juliet. Proceeding from the thesis that “J uliet’s erotic fluency had
a marked influence on the shaping of comic heroines in the four to five years
after the play’ 3 first performances” (97), Bly argues not simply that J uliet’s
“bawdy puns do not mask desire but flaunt it” (98), but that her bawdy is
significantly different from that of Mercutio:

When Mercutio juggles puns, as in his “Prick love for pricking, and you
beat love down” (1.4.28), he does so to display his wit. He relies for
humour on the fact that he has wrangled three priapic references into
one sentence. But J uliet’s erotic puns and metaphors are not directed,
for the most part, at a display of her wit. . . . Juliet’s epithalamic images
of Romeo lying on her, like snow on a raven, like day on night, are
personally referent. Mercutio does not address his own desire; Juliet . . .
do [es]. . . . Shakespeare used puns in two ways in Romeo and Juliet: as
witty conversation (between Mercutio and Romeo, for example) and as a
device by which Juliet expresses erotic anticipation. (108-O9)

Knowles provides an extension of what I had come to regard as the typical way
of regarding bawdy such as Mercutio’s, as a foil to Romeo and J uliet’s language.
That it may be, setting off and brightening by contrast their relationship.
However, even as it does that, it also “demystifies the romantic with the
physical” (7 5). In this, Knowles Offers a useful reminder of the complexity Of
the playtext.

40. See Applebaum 254; Belsey, “Name” 74; Davies, “Film” 158-59;
Donaldson, Shakespearean Films 145, 153 and 161; Hapgood, “West” 105;

J orgens, Shakespeare on Film 80, 84, 85, 86-87; Kael 34; Kahn, “Coming” 343
and Man’s 82, 83, 93 and 98; Manvell 99; Matthews 55; Rothwell, “Hollywood”
350; and Zeffirelli, “Filming” 265.

41. See Snyder, “Ideology” 93, and Witt. Charlton makes a good argument,
not simply that Capulet is tired of the feud, but that the feud itself is almost

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dead, maintained only by “one or two high-spirited, hot—blooded scions on either
side, and in the kitchen-f0 ” (Annual 36). For further detail, see his Annual
34-36.

42. Zeffirelli and Luhrmann don’t need the line. They ably demonstrate the
tensions in the relationship elsewhere.

43. See McGuire 217, Knowles 7 4-75 and Berry 138.

44. The film is missing even the fragmentary, pantomime scene which exists
in the screenplay (Pearce and Luhrmann 114).

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ENDNOTES
Chapter 5

1. Dessen points out that the place Paris and the Page enter to is defined by
what Paris carries, “flowers and sweet water” (5.3.0sd), as much as by the
atmospherics of 11. 1-9 and after. See Recovering chapter 9, and esp. 191.

2. Dessen notes that Q1 indicates Benvolio’s death as well, and with it the
obliteration not just of the houses’ youth but also good will (“Q1” 113).

3. Despite this, neither Romeo evinces any reaction to what such a space
would smell like upon entering, and none of the corpses displays any visible
putrescence. Compare this to similar moments in Zeffirelli’s Hamlet. The
director sets the Prince’s “To be, or not to be” (3.1.58fl) in the royal crypt,
lights it in thin blues and grays, and makes it a point to show both decayed
bodies and Hamlet’s horror at them. Later, when considering Yorick’s skull
(5.1.171-80), Hamlet has to choke down his gorge. Death’s messy aftermath is
much more present in the later film.

 

4. The interior of the church does seem crypt-like, with its shadowy spaces,
flickering candles, drifts of flowers and glowing blue crosses.

5. If the church is associated with any one family, it would be the Montagues,
since it is a place evidently frequented by young Romeo.

6. The script provides a reason for this: the police, driving by where Balthasar
is parked outside the Apothecary’s, see Romeo exiting the old man’s apartment
(Pearce and Luhrmann 149). In the film, the police seem to be looking for
Romeo before this point.

7. After Romeo leaves the Apothecary‘ s, the screenplay has lines fi‘om 5.3.49;
3.1.188; 5.2.18-19, 14-15 and 17-20; and 5.3.42 and 59. See Pearce and
Luhrmann 149-52.

8.. The high angle shot of him dodging the cruisers concludes a series of spotlit
high angle shots of Balthasar’s car ducking around corners, in and out of
shadows, and recollects someone trying to navigate a constantly shifting maze.

9. This is a tension all but lost to our culture, the conclusion Of Romeo and
Juliet being one of the most widely spoiled endings of all time. One of the
strengths of Shakespeare in Love (1998, dir. John Madden) is the way it makes
Romeo and Juliet seem new, through juxtaposing the well-known tale with the
uncertainty of whether Will and Viola will live happily ever after. Despite long-
established knowledge of what happens at the end of Romeo, this fiesh
uncertainty, combined with the reaction of the audience in the film’s staging of
the playtext, prompted in me something of the wonder that an individual
unfamiliar with the fiction might experience on seeing it staged for the first

326

 

 

 

time.

10. Such hope is not unprecedented: in 1660, James Howard altered the
playtext so that it had a happy ending (Wells, “Challenges” 2).

11. Not only was there a happy ending for a time in the seventeenth century,
but Ball’s note that the 1911 Thanhauser two-reel film of Romeo and Juliet
was distributed in two parts, one telling the love story, the other the tragedy,
with each part capable of being shown independently of the other (70-71),
implies that early in this century there was the potential, and, one supposes,
some perceived if not actual demand for an “up” ending as well. Juliet has
awoken earlier as well as later, actor-managers have added portions to as well
as eliminated segments of the scene, along with intensifying or restricting some
emotional responses. See Branam; Evans 44-45; Hodgdon, “Absent”; R.
Jackson; Levenson, “Changing” 154; and Wells, “Challenges.”

12. Tye’s leap in front of Tony indicates a change in their relationship, and in
Tye herself. When Shin and his gang surround Tony in the first dance club
scene, Tye remains silent, passive; Shin pulls her away from Tony, placing her
behind him and within the circle of Chinese youths. Here, she asserts herself
to Shin, putting herselfin front of Tony deSpite the threat represented by the
gun. While it is possible to take her defense of Tony as suicidal, this seems less
tenable than seeing her attempt to save her lover as an expression of their
growing mutuality as well as of her emergent refusal to occupy the subj ect-
position of meek, subservient female. Not long before this moment while in
the alley with Yung and Shin after the police have accidentally saved Tony’s
life, she meekly submits to her brother’s demand that she return to Chinatown
with his, and his physical abuse; now she defies her brother, her culture, and
stands up to an assassin. It is the short happy life of Tyan-Hwa Gan.

 

13. This extending of the lovers’ final moments is not new to Romeo and Juliet:
Otway, Cibber and Garrick all added material and time to the death scenes.
See Branam 17 4-76 and Wells, “Challenges” 2. See also R. Jackson 192-94
and Levenson, “Changing” 154.

14. Zeffirelli may have picked up on this when developing his own Romeo and
Juliet, which was influenced by this production: he claims that “the tragedy is
these poor kids who believed so genuinely” (“Filming” 265).

15. After cutting to a tight close up of Romeo, a subsequent shot of him
weeping on Juliet (after 1. 96) returns to the same angle.

 

16. Belsey points out that Tybalt still can keep the lovers apart (“Name” 78).

17 . His caresses are similar to the ones Rakoff’s Romeo tenders to his Juliet in
3.5.

18. The format of the quoted passages follows that of the Norton edition of
Romeo. I have changed “Arms” (1. 113) and “of” (l. 114) to “Arm” and “to”

respectively, to match the dialogue in the film. The published screenplay has

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one more line than the film (1. 106). For Romeo’s entire speech, see Pearce and
Luhrmann 155-58. On Luhrmann’s staging of Romeo’s “Thus with a kiss I
die,” see below.

19. In certain quarters it is something of a hobby to trash-talk DiCaprio’s
performance (and Claire Danes’, as well), I think largely because it does not
comply with expectations about how Shakespearean poetic drama ought to be
spoken. For example, see Welsh. See also Hodgdon’s summary of four
colleagues’ reactions to her recent work on Luhrmann’s film (“William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” 1).

For all of this, DiCaprio’s is a formidable talent. For examples, see
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993, dir. Lasse HallstrOm), This Boy’s Life
(1993, dir. Michael Caton-J ones) and Celebrity (1998, dir. Woody Allen); one is
tempted to suggest avoiding Titanic, where he was hobbled by very weak
dialogue and a director probably more attuned to his technical and budgetary
woes than his actors, although he has some sharp moments there as well.

20. Rozett points out that prior to the Boiastuau, Brooke and Shakespearean
versions of the story, da Porto and Bandello kept Romeo alive until Juliet
awakens (155).

Donaldson notes that J uliet’s awakening happens very early from the
standpoint of performance history (“‘In Fair Verona’”), although Wells offers a
reminder that Otway had Juliet awake and converse with Romeo, a device
which Cibber borrowed and which Garrick improved upon, having the two go
mad after their conversation, in an ending which subsequently became
traditional (“Challenges” 2). On this, see also Branam.

 

21. This resulted from my not being aware of the eighteenth-century revisions
of the playtext’s ending, and being familiar with the drama mainly through
reading and seeing Zeffirelli’s film along with two theatrical performances.

22. In the screenplay, Pearce and Luhrmann retain the Father’s attempted
intervention although again with some striking reordering. Juliet is about to
kill herself with Romeo’s gun when Father Laurence interrupts her. He has
almost convinced her to leave when the noise of the police breaking open the
church door distracts him for a moment during which Juliet shoots herself,
leaving the Father to realize What he almost averted, and Captain Prince to
realize what storming the church has caused (159-60). This is a significant
move toward rehabilitating the craven Friar of the playtext. It can also be
seen as generating some positive agency for the Prince, who in the playtext is
again left to sort out the scraps; conversely, it is a precipitous action by a
quasi-military authority figure trying at long sorry last to assert himself. For
whatever reason, this segment of the scene was eliminated from the final
version of the film.

 

23. The poison in Luhrmann is very fast acting, perhaps the fastest of the
three productions. Despite this, like those other poisons, it kills with
remarkable efficiency: it is quick and relatively painless. Luhrmann’s Romeo
cannot speak and suffers some minor convulsions; Zeffirelli’s has to endure
some shortness of breath; Rakoff’s goes through the most severe reaction,

328

_—— _.

 

 

 

 

M'W—T -..-_... _ . _

 

 

crying out and clutching his stomach, although those may be sobs of grief.
Given the physical reactions that potent toxins can cause, all of these potions
help to maintain a romanticized view of suicide. Compare this again to
Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, in which the poison causes convulsions in the Queen and
almost totally enervates Hamlet. Qualms about Romeo and Juliet
encouraging teen suicide might be assuaged were performances of the play to
show death as something more than a slightly bumpy slipping into sleep.

24. Donaldson sees this ending as a refusal of mutuality: Romeo and Juliet are
together, but not reunited (“‘In Fair Verona’”). Following his line of reasoning,
all the productions can be characterized in this way.

25. “Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead” (1. 155) is cut; Zeffirelli seems
to take the line to mean “Your husband, on your bosom there lies dead.”
Another possible meaning, “Your husband of your heart, there lies dead,” may
have been deemed too elliptical, or simply not correct. Cutting the line also
helps the construction of the Friar as trying to keep the truth from Juliet.

26. This recalls Brooke, in which Juliet kisses Romeus 2000 times (11. 2731-
32).

 

27. Pursell sees Zeffirelli’s ending as reaffirming the drama’s ironies (“Artifice”
17 5), whereas Donaldson (Shakespearean Films 183) and Evans (48) do not.

28. The playtext Offers little guidance in this regard: the stage direction reads
“She stabs herselfi falls [and dies] ” (l. 169sd), which is consistent with the way
in which other versions present the event. The Oxford Shakespeare, on which
the Norton is modelled, reads, “She stabs herself, falls, and dies” (Wells et. al. ,
5.3.169sd); F1 reads “Kils herfelfe” (tln 3035); Q1 has “She ftabs herfefle and
falles” (K2V); and Q2 offers no stage direction at all ([L4r]).

29. In fact, Maria denies Schrank the chance to investigate Tony’s death,
screaming “Don’t you touch him” and running to shield the corpse when the
lieutenant approaches it.

30. The impulse of the gangs to continue fighting can be supported by the
playtext, which leaves Open the possibility that Capulet’s and Montague’s final
lines are not intended as competitive, even hostile, or that the Prince’s
summation cannot be performed as a sad, stem or ironic address to himself, to
others on stage, or to the audience.

Though silent, Capulet’s wife, whose privileging of the family over order
is demonstrated by her plot to kill Romeo at 3.5.87 ~92, could again be planning
revenge, indicating via gestures to a servant like Samson that she wants the
Montagues killed; the Montagues might be preparing for a confrontation as
well. The servants could also prepare to do this on their own hook.

 

31. This is a modification of the stage musical’s script, which reads,

How do you fire this gun, Chino? Just by pulling this little trigger? . . .
HOW many bullets are left, Chino? Enough for you? . . . And you? . . .All

329

‘;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

of you? WE ALL KILLED HIM; and my bother and Riff. 1, too. I CAN
KILL NOW BECAUSE I HATE NOW. . . . How many can I kill, Chino?
How many -- and still have one bullet left for me? (Laurents et. al. 223)

The film removes Maria from all responsibility, whereas she accepts it in the
script for the musical.

 

32. Hapgood notes that for the musical’s “adapters . . . the pattern of divided
groups trying to come together was basic and longstanding (107).

33. The performance of Cavelleria Rusticana at the end of Coppola’s The
Godfather, Part III (1990) ends in a similar way.

34. This device is not new -- Garrick added a funeral procession to his
eighteenth-century stagings of the playtext (Branam 179).

 

 

35. It resembles Petruchio’s approach to the Paduan cathedral in the same
director’s 1966 The Taming Of the Shrew.

36. Zeffirelli resurrects Montague’s wife, which helps to stress the tragedy as
particular to the lovers. Also, the characters’ silence makes it impossible to
explain why Romeo’s mother is not at his funeral.

 

37 . Snyder, “Ideology” 96, notes that cutting the proposal to raise a “statue in
pure gold” (5.3.298) prevents an audience from unfavorably comparing the
project to Romeo’s railing against gold as “worse poison to men’s souls” than
the concoctions the apothecary Offers him (5180-83).

38. As with the earlier transcription of Romeo’s last speech in Luhrmann the
format of this passage follows that of the Norton edition, with the following
changes. I have added markers for scene locations in standard screenplay
format (e.g., INT. THE CRYPT -- NIGHT, which denotes an interior scene, set
in the Capulet family crypt, at night). Line 221, which in the playtext reads
“Bring forth the parties of suspicion,” has been changed to match spoken
dialogue. Bracketed stage directions are my own.

 

39. This differs from what had been my understanding of the lines, that the
Prince was ordering the closing of the tomb while he tried to dope out what had
happened and Why.

 

40. See also Leech 70.

41. It stretches logic to think that Capulet would make the cognitive leap from
seeing his daughter killed by a Montague dagger to thinking that she must
have been married to that dagger’ s owner, or that his wife would entertain such
an idea even for a second; and Montague never really has time to think about
it, as the Prince enters the crypt hard upon the old man’s discovery of his son.

42. Hodgdon sees Luhrmann’s turn here as a dissolve from fantasy into the
real (“William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” 13). I tend to agree with this,

330

 

¥

 

 

although her understanding closes off Donaldson’s reading of the vision as
apotheosis (“‘In Fair Verona’”), which I also see the film as pursuing.

43. I am at present developing an idea that the Friar is virtually present in
this scene. If it is he who speaks during the second part of the Prologue, then
he has already offered his summary of the events the film depicts.

44. As in Zeflirelli, and with much the same effect, Montague’s wife is returned
to life for Luhrmann’s conclusion.

45. Berry points out that “The choric sonnets (to which one can add the
Prince’s final sestet) do not seek to grapple with the inwardness of events and
are, in a profound sense, the play” (141).

46. On Luhrmann’s treatment of spectacle and illusion, see Donaldson, “‘In
Fair Verona.”’

47. Hodgdon observes that the vision of the bier

inverts and disorients point of View so that instead Of looking down at
them, we seem to be looking up at a Tiepolo-like ceiling fresco, and the
candle-flames have become radiant catherine wheels that evoke the
exploding fireworks at the ball, as if to visualize J uliet’s fantasy of
“cut[ting Romeo] out in little stars.” At the center of their jeweled
orrery, they appear a treasured artifact, a pair of saintly pilgrims joined
in an eternal embrace.

The sequence exalts their love—death, “its visual and aural saturation” turning

it into an “intensely pleasurable present” (“William Shakespeare’s Romeo +
Juliet” 13)

48. Greenblatt argues along this line when claiming that civic order “seems
almost behind the point, as inadequate and uncomprehending as the statues in
pure gold” (Introduction 870).

On how the film’s target teenage audience understands the film’s ending,
see Hodgdon, “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” 5-6.

 

49. Davies continues on to fret that “This is more dangerous for film than for
theatre, for while social attitudes are fickle film is fixed, both as text and
interpretation” (“Film” 162). Despite this, the endings of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and
Juliet, West Side Story and China Girl do not seem overly dated, even given the
nearly 40 years that have elapsed since the release of West Side Story, the
Oldest of those three films.

 

 

 

 

 

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