Choosing girl power as my motif has opened up a wonderful world of options for me to find “another, non-literary work of art”. Before I realized it had to be non-literary, I had was going to keep this blog very classy and say some wonderful insightful things about Twelfth Night, which is always dear to my heart. Being the cautious person that I am, I re-read the directions and caught myself. I have decided that after a week of reading 10 acts of Shakespeare, stopping only to study the anatomy of a fetal pig, I am going to choose a modern work that is fun. And since it is three minutes past midnight, twelve hours and twenty-seven minutes before this blog is due (I wasn’t going to start timing myself responsibly 12 days before I graduate.), I am going to choose a modern work with absolutely no artistic merit, that will probably rot my brain while I watch it!
Reader, let’s talk about the modern day chick flick, the girl power it embodies, and how Shakespeare helped us to accomplish such cinematic gems as Love Actually, Bridget Jone’s Diary, 27 Dresses and the new release He’s Just Not That Into You. During this blog I will focus on Bridget Jone’s Diary because it is my favorite. Feel free to email me if you need to discuss the other films or want to paint nails and set up a viewing party.
From Shakespeare to Colin Firth, how does one make this jump? In a couple hundred years will high schools the world over be staging their own versions of Maid of Honor? Who knows. I can safely say that Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets to did start out with all the literary merit that is now attached to them. They were written to entertain and to make money. That is exactly what a good chick flick does, they entertain, they provide laughs, they throw in a moral here and there. They show common women that there is something out there. If you want culture go see an RSC production…
Essentially, Shakespeare’s heroines and Bridget are the same, common women trying to make it though to world on there own. They give the audience that “you can do it feeling” when they leave the theatre. The only difference is that with time Shakespeare has become fine art, and Bridget is just cheap thrills. However, strip away the language, the prestige and the dogma and The Tempest becomes something starring Sharon Stone and the Olsen twins star in Twelfth Night. In writing strong women into his plays, Shakespeare opened the door for other people to create strong women and thus, the modern road to girl power was paved.
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