New Apps and Old Conspiracies

Tonight was truly an adventure. I began my prep by searching for a Hamlet app. There are currently two free ones. Now I can enjoy Hamlet where ever I go! I looked into the film "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead" and found it was not appropriate to display at all. But, there is a blog dedicated to one aspect of the film: the ancient conspiracy that Hamlet is a vampire. I know there is another blog specifically speaking on conspiracies, but this one is so bad and comical that I had to expose it.

I am not going to dwell on all the imperfections of this conspiracy, but I want to focus on what this latest trend of turning classic tales into horror flicks proves about society. Honestly, I appreciate the effort of using ancient texts and modernizing them to a degree. At the very least, people who would normally never touch the classics become familiar with the stories. However, the hook for modern audiences is violence. That is what newly christens these works, and what makes them popular today. Sadly, I must admit I enjoy a bit of violence in my literature as well. I am more likely to watch an action film than an adaptation of a classic. Am I addicted to the killing and gore? No. I believe it has more to do with the dance of the fight, which includes more than just the choreography. It is how evenly matched the opponents are, and pinpointing where the loser made the small mistake that costs him the match. A good fight is a puzzle to the audience, and finding the solution makes the audience feel smarter. This is what keeps an audience. The puzzle must be difficult enough for the audience to feel accomplished after the solution is found, yet simple enough that they can solve it without exhausting their mental resources. This idea is similar to the scene in Inception where Dicaprio has the new architect spend only two minutes creating a puzzle that takes one minute to solve.

Now that I have given my rant on violence and contradicted myself with a justification and an explanation of a good fight, I will tell you what I did with Hamlet tonight: I read it out loud on my phone, to myself. I would have read it with my wife, but I started reading too late in the night, and she was long asleep. Singing Ophelia's lines in Act 4 Scene 5 freaked me out. I do not suggest singing those lines alone in a poorly lit room after researching vampire conspiracies.