Musings on art and modern audiences

  The Taming of the Shrew and 10 Things I Hate About You As Shakespeare’s beloved comedy Much Ado About Nothing shows us, a pair of lovers who don’t hold back in verbal sparring makes for some rich entertainment. And like in Mean Girls , Shakespeare finds himself revived in some of the most unexpected places. Except this time, we find ourselves once again in an American high school: Padua High. 10 Things I Hate About You takes one of Shakespeare’s more problematic plays and reshapes it into a story which is much more of a recognisable comedy than the play can often be (though not without its own problems). How does it do that? It makes Kat an actual shrew! Shakespeare’s Katherine - the shrew - actually does not have very many lines in the play, and her character ends up cowed into submission out of exhaustion by the end of the story, and Petruchio has no comeuppance for his abuse and manipulation. Julia Stiles’ Kat Stratford is not so. She wants an education at an institution o...

  Challengers : More than a tennis throuple As advertised to audiences, it may come as a surprise that Challengers is really not that interested in sex. It’s curious that the marketing for the film has centred largely around one scene which, whilst pivotal in the story, is not the main concern of the film. Instead, Challengers gives us three characters to pick apart and critique, who have tennis in common. The throuple element is so much more than sex and romance (although those things do play an important part in how their relationships unfold and are held in tension).  So let’s have a look at the three characters who really make this film tick. What is it about Tashi Duncan, Art Donaldson, and Patrick Zweig that is so compelling? Individually, each of these characters are complex and difficult in their own ways, and it’s the collision and entanglement of those personalities and egos which creates and drives the tensions and stakes of the story. The way the film structures ...

The Artful Dodger : Taking the reins and letting rip Oliver Twist is the story of a young boy, the eponymous Oliver Twist, finding his way in the world by searching for his history despite the challenges he faces being thrown into Fagin’s criminal circle. The Artful Dodger follows Jack Dawkins on his quest to become something more than his history, again, despite the challenges of his past. Dodger’s formative years on the streets of London with Fagin and his crew have had a lasting impact on him, but he is trying not to allow those experiences to define him for the rest of his life, or prevent him from becoming a better person The Artful Dodger isn’t a rejection or an erasure of Dawkins’ history, but a reminder that our pasts and our reputations need not be fixed and immutable, but are instead down to us to decide how we wish to be known and remembered. The premise of the show is that Jack Dawkins is starting afresh in Australia, leaving behind the life of crime he led in London as the...

  The Mandalorian : Return of the Sci-Fi Western With Star Wars Day having just passed, I thought it was about time I wrote a Star Wars piece!  When The Mandalorian was released to audiences, no one was really sure what to expect from it, except we all knew it looked promising. And then it blew us all away. Something about it really clicked for people, and whilst partly I reckon most film and TV released during the pandemic offered very welcome escapes from real life struggles, The Mandalorian has something genuinely special going on.  In true Star Wars fashion, family are the people you choose and who choose you, through thick and thin, forsaking all others, when the connections between you might not seem an obvious fit. It’s something we see throughout the franchise and it’s an important part of why it’s so popular and moving.  And of course, we’ve seen various father-son relationships play out across generations of Star Wars but what The Mandalorian gave us ...