Oh God, I'm disagreeing with Maniac again...well, since he mentioned Shakespeare already I suppose I might as well just say "Once more unto the breach, dear friends!" and get on with it.
Yes, Manaic, I WOULD say that it IS better for the kids to never learn Shakespeare or twain or whichever author than to learn them partially or incompletely or, what's worse, in an edited fashion, that last one being the worse because when a work is edited, whether overtly or not, that edit reflects the views of the editor, and so the work, intentionally or not, becomes influenced at best and contaminated at worst by the EDITOR'S views.
To give an example, and a Shakespeare example, appropriately enough, and perhaps the biggest work of art I have yet to take on so far...
Sior Laurence Olivier's version of "Hamlet."
You would think that one of the greatest Shakespearean actors--and arguably just one of the greatest actors PERIOD--directing and playing the lead in my absolute favorite text of all-time would be something I'd LOVE, but Oliver's version of the film, while award-winning, has also enjoyed its share of controversy and criticism from the Shakespeare scholars, and while I'm no scholar--as much as I hope to some day be one--I do definitely side with those in the camp that say that Olivier's cuts and edits here do the play and Shakespeare a disservice.
For those who have never seen the film, the three great edits I here will adress:
-Olivier cuts an IMMENSE portion of dialogue out of the play, which is, in all fairness, not altogether unusual, as Shakespeare plays in their entirety can run four hours or more--and in a REALLY extreme case, if you did one of his historical tetralogies, like Richard II-Henry IV Part 1-Henry IV Part 2-Henry V as one HUGE "cycle performance," as has been done before, you quite literally WOULD be there all day--and so I don't really chastise Olivier that much jsut for cutting and editing. Yes, I'm textual purist for the most part, meaning that while I LOVE adaptations of Shakespeare's works I also hate to see any text cut or changed unless its for a VERY good reason (and I mean a REALLY good reason, as if you're going to edit the greatest playwright to ever live and the most-commonly-called greatest writer PERIOD to ever live, you'd BETTER have a damn good reason) but all that said one of those "good reasons" is, admittedly, not many people will sit through a four-hour film and so if you're going to do Shakespeare on the silver screen and your name's not Kenneth Branagh, chances are you're going to have to make some cuts. (And yes, this IS part of the reason Branagh's epic, full-length, 4-hour-plus, critically-acclaimed 1996 version of "Hamlet" is my favorite adaptation and one of my favorite films, bjut I'll get back to that later.) But there's a difference between cutting dialogue and cutting dialogue that was in the first place crucial to the story and in the second just really great and poetic, and that's what Olivier does, cutting about half of the dialogue, moving some parts of dialogue around in the film, and he even adds his OWN narration and words. Two huge categories of dialogue, at least, are cut: one we'll get to in a moment, and the other being lines that deal with and examine Hamlet's indecision...WHICH IS ONE OF THE CORE ELEMENTS OF THE PLAY! HOW DO YOU CUT OR EVEN WATER-DOWN AN ELEMENT THAT'S AS CRUCIAL TO "HAMLET" AS ACHILLES' ANGER IN "THE ILIAD" OR THE LIGHT/DARK SIDE CONFLICT IN THE STAR WARS FILMS?! It's a terrible edit that, needless to say, has always had me FUMING about it, and it's not just the textual purist in me, again--it's a core theme of the play, and something that you can't cut without ALTERING the play, which Olivier does, which leads to my next point...
-In the place of Hamlet's indecision--and with it a lot of the metaphysical, philosophical, "What a piece of work is man"-type musings of Hamlet that make the character probably one of the deepest and most human characters ever created--the core theme of Olivier's version becomes Hamlet's Oedipal connection to his mother, which really irks me on three levels. In the first place, just from an artistic point of view, less is very often more, in my opinion--which might be odd for someone who's notorious for extremely-long and in-depth posts, but hey, I said "artistic" adn I'm not trying to be artistic here, but rather analytical, if even overly so--and so having this theme shoved in our face as a core theme and idea of the work just doesn't seem as effective as the way Shakespeare originally had it, namely, a bit more in the background but lingering, appropriately enough, like Hamlet's father's ghost and the question of Hamlet's sanity. It was always there but in such a way that it shared the thematic stage with a lot of other ideas and issues, and as a result they all sort of mixed together, the sanity, ghost, and Oedipal questions working off each other, and you never quite knew what was driving Hamlet when, but you could certainly make your interpretive guess. In Olivier's version the issue of Hamlet's sanity and the Ghost take a HUGE backseat, and the play actually seems a lot more like "Hamlet Rex," as if I'm watching Oedipus but in the wrong language and time...and not done as well since this ISN'T "Oedipius Rex" and wasn't meant to be. On that note, the second reason this really bothers me is it fundamentally changes the character if Hamlet IS, definitely, Oedipal and that's his motivation or fixation for what he's doing. Hamlet always did what he did--or, just as often, didn't do something--in the original play for a number of reasons at any given time, it was never just one thing, and it was DEFINITELY never just Hamlet being Oedipal. It was a question, not a definite part of him, and it never was protrayed as the reason he debated killing Claudius, and rightfully so, as, well, think about it--if you say Hamlet's thinking of murdering a man for revenge because that man might have killed his father and is now stealing the throne that was rightfully his father's and then his to inherit, you tend to sympathize at least somewhat with Hamlet, as after all, we ourselves can likely see ourselves at least wanting to kill a person if they killed a loved one of ours and, on top of that, stole our porperty and honor to boot. On the OTHER HAND, how many of us would sympathize with a person for wanting to kill a man solely because that man's married to his mother and HE wants to be possessing her? How creepy and just sick does THAT sound? There's a REASON the Oedipal Complex and the idea, truthful or not, that we all secretly want to kill our fathers and marry our mothers (or, if you're a young lady, to kill our mothers and marry our fathers, to invoke the converse of the Oedipal, the Electra Complex) sounds creepy and unseemly and something we'd want to get treatment for and not do...it IS creepy, and not something we can sympathize with someone for wanting to do! We CAN sympathize with Hamlet wanting to avenge his father's foul and unnatural murder, we CAN'T sympathize with Hamlet wanting to kill his uncle just to get into his mother's pants, er, corsette. And as you might already be able to tell, the third and most damning reason, then, I HATE Olivier's edit here is that this COMPLETELY CHANGES THE TONE AND THEME OF THE WORK ITSELF! This is no longer a metaphysical questioning of man and the debate of to be or not to be, to act or not to act, but rather simply an Oedipal sotry plain and simple, which the original play was NOT about, not at all to that degree, and what's more, never definite! It's all but SAID here Hamlet is Oedipus II, whereas in the play you MIGHT pick up that idea as a possibility, maybe, for Hamlet's actions, in part, but it was never his driving motivation and, again, never the theme of the work! In changing the direction and cutting dialogue, hence, VIA EDITING, Olivier has changed "Hamlet" until it really isn't "Hamlet" so much as, again, "Oedipus At Elsinore." What's even worse is the fact that while Olivier acts the part well, for that period of acting, and certainly deserved the awards and acclaim he won for that aspect of his production, he's really not playing a sympathetic character anymore and, what's worst of all, he's not even playing a complex character or one that cna possibly be justified; Hamlet is as tragic and beloved as he is as a character not because he does terrible acts, which he DOES, but because we really do sympathize with hiom and cna identify with him to an extent where we WANT to overlook all the wrong he's done. Hamlet's a nice guy at heart usually, as he is usually portrayed, and so we're able to feel as if the reason he's acting badly is responsive rather than intrinsic, that is, if this horrible atrocity hadn't occured, Hamlet would be a fun guy to hang around with, instead of a Melancholy Dane and brooding for a good deal, if not most, of the time. This ONLY works, however, if we can identify with Hamlet--and by making him Oedipal and therefore ALREADY establishing him as at best mentally sick and at worst mentally deranged and utterly out of control, Olivier's Hamlet isn't one we can relate to unless we are to relate to wanting to shack up with our mothers...and if that IS anyone out there...seek help, NOW. For the rest, this jsut alientates us from the character, changes the character, changes the theme--CHANGES THE PLAY.
-Last and definitely not least here is the fact Olivier eliminates not one, not two, but THREE whole characters from the play, and I don't mena one of the minor characters who have one or two lines to give exposition and then are gone--Olivier's edit to fix the play's theme on the Oedipal connection is made with the sacrifice of losing the political and some of the philosophical elements of the work, and so Fortinbras, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are completely cut. This changes the play's theme RADICALLY in three ways, the first alreay having been (rather lengthily) enumerated in the above commentary on how he shifts the weight of the film dramatically to a once-minor theme, the Oedipal connection, which, again, was once only a possibility and is now all but a certainty and the focus of his entire version. What cutting Fortinbras does, aside from trimming away one of the great parallels in the film as Fortinbras, like Hamlet and Laertes, loses a father (like Laertes, he attributes it to Hamlet as Hamlet the King killed Fortinbras and Hamlet killed Laertes' father, Polonius, and like Hamlet Fortinbras' father is lost before the start of the play) and so that great trinity of sons dealing with and paying for the sins of the fathers as Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras all do is lost, is this strips "Hamlet" of much of the political commentary the play lends itself to, particularly to those who see the play--and while I won't agree outright with this interpretation and crowd I will say they do ahve a great argument and a fair position--as a proto-Marxist critique on government. In the original play, as many forget (possibly due to many watching this version of the play) there is actually a war going on OUTSIDE the little royal-court-bubble we're shown. Not only does this give the play a sense of scope, but it also serves, as the Marxist critique often says, to demonstrate the corruption of the elitist government in "Hamlet," ie, a kingship and a very oppulent one at that, as while their petty squabbles occur within, rotting the kingdom from within, its collapsing without, like Nero fiddling while Rome burns around him. Whether or not you agree with that interpretation is everyone's own decision to make--again, I don't agree with it fully but I will definitely say that it DOES seem nicely structured so that at least part of that can be seen as true, namely, the idea that a society doesn't fall without before its rotted within, as we see in the juxtaposition of the court drama and corruption slowly destroying the royal family and court members and then the kingdom itself falls, and it may also be said on behalf of the Marxist critique that it IS interesting that the only one in that court to survive is the only one who's NOT an elite member of society in some way, Horatio, whow as Hamlt's best friend but held no royal title and no wealth, so you can definitely see a case for interpretting THAT as being in favor of the working class, ie, Horatio, and attacking elitist ideals, ie, the royalty--but you can see without it how much is lost from the play, how much context, that example just scratching the surface of what Fortinbras contributes and why he's so vital in his own way to the story. But even WORSE than cutting Fortinbras is Olivier's decision to cut Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I could go on and on about how much THEY contribute, as I ahve before, but as this is becoming incredibly lengthy, even for me, I'll leave it--for now--at just saying that cutting R+G is like cutting C-3PO and R2-D2 out of a retelling of "Star Wars"--so much is lost thematically and aesthetically by their absence, and with R+G it's even WORSE as 3PO and R2 don't generally have philosophical implications or dialogue, which R+G DO, and so, once again, we come full circle to the main problem of Olivier's editing and editing in general...
IT CHANGES THE THEME, TONE, TEXT, AND STORY.
Does that mean it can never work?
No, it can, but it has to be done very carefully and in such a way as to NOT interfere with the plot, characterization, themes, and tone of the work, which Olivier's version of "Hamlet" does to the nth degree and "Huck Finn" without the N-word does.
There is NOT the same thematic, tonal, and historical implication and feel to "slave" as there is that word.
As for whether you shouldn't bother to edit "Hamlet' for a youth group...I obviously have no place to tell you what you can and can't do with your life, but I WOULD say yes, you shouldn't bother to edit that or any other Shakespeare work, or even jsut any other work in general, for kids. Too much is lost in a diluted version of any work, and the damage could far outweight any gain that might be had.
As I've said before, this is omething I LOATHE the educational system doing, trying to edit and force-feed children Shakespeare and Twain and whoever else when they're NOT ready.
5th graders should NOT be reading "Huck Finn" just to enjoy a fun plot, because its's not meant to be a fun plot, I'd again argue it's not ABOUT the plot so much as it is about the characters, and taking out the N-word makes pallateable and easy what was enver meant to be so, it gives as wrong a message about what "Huck Finn" is as what Olivier's version, however well acted, presents "Hamlet" as.
Huck's story is no more a "boy's tale," as NewSouth books are calling it, as Hamlet's story is or was ever meant to be "Oedipus II."
As for accessibility...well, I'll probably take a lot of flak for this, but that hasn't stopped me before...
It's already well-known I'm someone who celebrates the fact that people are all different and have different strengths, and that if I ahd my way we'd teach the way Plato, more or less, suggested, namely by teaching according to personality, wish, and strength.
If a child is adept enough with English he WILL eventually find his way, either by himself or through teacher guidance, towards "Hamlet" and Shakespeare.
As much as *I* love Shakespeare--can't you tell?--he should NOT be forced down every kid's throat.
Really, for me, this is both logical and a tradeoff of an almost ethical kind, schoolyard ethics--do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Would I love to see to it that every kid on Earth read Shakespeare in middle and high school?
You'd better believe it!
But by the same token, would *I* want to be made to study upper-level algebra and calculus and trigonometry in those grades?
Oh, HELL NO! :D
So to each his own and his own strength--mostly--and kids will learn a lot more and a lot better because they'll WANT to learn, kids LIKE learning what they're good at and, what's more, they generally like learning even better when they get to learn with their friends, who often, though not always, share at least some of their strenghts; I know a couple of friends of mine who are INSANELY GOOD with numbers, which I loathe, but at the same time, all of my friends are at least competent and enjoy some aspect or another of literature, whether they're theatre people, poetry fans, folks who devour novels, or folks who strive to have a ridiculously in-depth knowledge and understanding and love of literature and devote their lives to it as well as theatre and philosophy as doggedly as Sherlock Holmes pursues his case and, like Holmes, will forego food in times of deep thinking and contemplation on a topic, even for a few days.
OK, maybe that last one's jsut me. ;) But I think the point's relatively clear and valid that kids want to learn what they're good at, waht they like, and what their friends like.
Now, does this mean that in my own ideal system I'm free from taking albebra?
No, as like it or not basic algebra IS a necessity in our world today.
But by that same token, does that mean the math and science majors are scot-free from ever reading Shakespeare or Twain?
Oh no--EVERYONE should have to read those two in the West, they've just had such an impact in literature, thought, culture and, in Twain's case, American culture...maybe kids in England I could see not reading Twain, but every American kid? YES. IN FULL.
By that same token, does that mean that every kid should have to read "Hamlet?"
No, because not every kid will GET "Hamlet," and probably not even most kids, even factoring those who are on the literature-side of this equation, will be able to before college or, at the earliest, junior or senior year of high school, 16-18 years old, adn I wouldn't want those kids turned off from the work by either a watered-down version (even if it's done with the best of intentions) or by experiencing it at too young and age and being frustrated by grappling with one of the most advanced and complex works Western Civilization ahs yet to produce.
Still, just as every kid should have a basic knowledge of algebra, there's no reason every kid can't read Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), a Shakespearean comedy--since those are generally easier for younger people to digest, especially in a school setting--and for that I'd recommend something like "The Taming of the Shrew," which is relatively short, to the point, hilarious, and at the same time really has some interesting commentary on the gender differences (an important topic in those teen years, and handled in a comedy it can be a fun one to discuss for a class of kids) and such, and then MAYBE the "To be or not to be" speech just because it IS the most famous and culturally-transcendent portion of text in the West this side of "In the beginning..."
One poem, one comedic play, and then one serious monologue.
I think that's enough for the non-literature person to experience Shakespeare-wise to get the point of things, enough to function in society.
And then, yes, I WOULD include regional/national/cultural reading in there, as that is just as important, if not more so, hence my reason for NOT recommending a Shakespearean History, as such a work might be good and even important to students in England--and I'm NOT English, so you who are can tell me and decide for yourself, I know the histories are one part entertainment and then one part forced-propoganda quite often, and then maybe one part fact, so let the English decide for the English what literature's important to teach to reflect their own cultural past--but probably doesn't matter as much for American students.
Conversely, I'd have EVERY American kid read "Huck Finn" and in full, with all 200+ usages of the word "nigger," as that's an extremely important and still-highly-relevant literary text for our own cultural past...and I wouldn't have kiddies reading this thing, either, again, junior or senior year in high school.
The truth is the most prized possession, and a half-truth or a partial truth via omission is NOT the truth...it's just a nicer lie, the antithesis of the greatest prize--the greatest detriment and harm man can do.
Dante reserved his deepest circles in his Inferno not for the lusting or the greedy or even fort the wrathful and murderous...
Rather, he reserved it for those who not only murdered, but murdered the truth and were false.
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