#this is fun I'm glad my first post to get big was about R&J and not something I'd get sick of seeing in my notes

[fweet-prince]

Okay I looked through all the responses so far including tags, I've got some responses to some patterns I've seen:

To everyone who said this is why they hate West Side Story, this why they love West Side Story, that I'm wrong because West Side Story is great, etc.: I have never seen West Side Story I have no opinions on West Side Story please stop @ing me about West Side Story

Related, to everyone who mentioned Gnomeo and Juliet, Noughts and Crosses, or any other stuff: I haven't seen any of those either, except AtLA. To which my responses are: yes, comparing Zutara to Romeo and Juliet is real unsettling to me, but also doesn't make sense because them having a romantic relationship wouldn't be any more forbidden than all the treason Zuko is doing anyway. And: yes, the Gan Jin and the Zhang are pretty close to the kind of senseless hatred I'm talking about, good example!

To both the people saying that I'm wrong because forbidden love stories across race and/or class lines can be really good and the people saying this is why forbidden love stories across race and/or class lines suck: I didn't say there aren't good stories about forbidden love across race and class lines. I said that comparing those stories to Romeo and Juliet creates some really unfortunate implications.

To the person who said "op you really expect ppl to have read romeo and juliet" and, more seriously, to the person who made a very good and valid point about how Romeo and Juliet as a concept that exists in the collective consciousness isn't necessarily the same as the text of the play: you're right! I don't expect everyone to interpret the comparison the way I do, and I think most people who make the comparison either aren't thinking of the implications past "forbidden love" or don't know much about Romeo and Julliet past that in the first place. I respect and appreciate that the cultural understanding of Romeo and Juliet isn't entirely connected to the play (hmu about gothic lit and especially Frankenstein sometime because the way that stuff has become something completely different in collective consciousness than it was originally written as is fascinating). I'm not upset for anyone minding their own business on tumblr making the comparison. I'm frustrated with big studios' marketing teams for making the comparison without thinking through the implications, especially when it's a deliberate parallel and not a one-off comment, because they should be able to hire someone who's read and really examined the material they're alluding to.

To the people who were surprised there's Shakespeare discourse in 2020: fuck yeah there is come check it out! More seriously, study of Shakespeare is still really common even in public schools, which means there's gonna be a bunch of teens and young adults with strong opinions yelling about it on tumblr the same way there is for everything else a lot of people know about. Shakespeare tumblr tends to be more chill about the discourse though, a lot of us are English majors and know how to disagree about a text like grown-ups.

To the two people who brought up that Romeo and Juliet is derivative of Pyramus and Thisbe in the first place: 1) I'm not very familiar with Pyramus and Thisbe, but would love to hear thoughts on how it relates to Romeo and Juliet and the "alike in dignity" aspect, and 2) even so, Romeo and Juliet is the text people refer to explicitly, so Romeo and Juliet would be the one carrying the connotations of that allusion.

There's also a really interesting reblog on the post that I wanna reblog and respond to on its own but I'm gonna have dinner first!

Tired of people comparing every forbidden love story to Romeo and Juliet, especially ones about class or racial divides. It’s important to how the story works that the Capulets and Montagues are alike in dignity and that the feud is baseless and petty on both sides. If the Capulets had spent centuries systematically disenfranchising the Montagues, it wouldn’t be Romeo and Juliet. The play relies on both families facing roughly equal losses and being able to make roughly equal apologies and roughly equal reparations. Romeo and Juliet is a play about two kids who weren’t allowed to love in a world full of senseless hatred, and if you give one side a valid reason to hate the other—if either the Capulets or the Montagues are right—it stops being that and starts implying that the opressed have as much to do with the environment of hatred as their opressors do