Taylor Swift - Love Story: A Reimagining/[Re]Construction of Shakespeare
fanglekai
Regular
In Taylor Swift's "Love Story" she does a remarkable thing - she [Re]Constructs and Reimagines Shakespeare by turning the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet into a Comedy. This might sound absurd, but in truth if you understand the limits and functions of tragedy and comedy, you will see how Ms. Swift is, in fact, reimagining the classic story within the confines of a separate genre.
To understand this concept you must follow how Comedy and Tragedy function at their most basic levels: Tragedy ends in death, and Comedy, as it were, ends in marriage, which is, to say, the perpetuation and continuation of human life, which, despite knowing that continuing on that same timeline, though extended, will end in death, makes one focus on what is, supposedly, a happy event, with an emphasis on life, in the form of the human species, triumphing over death.
Which is to say that Ms. Swift has twisted what Shakespeare envisioned as a tragedy into a comedy. In this way she has Reimagined and, consequently, [Re]Constructed the old narrative through her own.
To understand this concept you must follow how Comedy and Tragedy function at their most basic levels: Tragedy ends in death, and Comedy, as it were, ends in marriage, which is, to say, the perpetuation and continuation of human life, which, despite knowing that continuing on that same timeline, though extended, will end in death, makes one focus on what is, supposedly, a happy event, with an emphasis on life, in the form of the human species, triumphing over death.
Which is to say that Ms. Swift has twisted what Shakespeare envisioned as a tragedy into a comedy. In this way she has Reimagined and, consequently, [Re]Constructed the old narrative through her own.
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