{"id":660,"date":"2011-02-03T15:04:18","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T23:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=660"},"modified":"2011-02-03T21:54:52","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T05:54:52","slug":"redefining-romeo-and-juliet-reclaiming-the-%e2%80%9cghetto%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=660","title":{"rendered":"Redefining Romeo and Juliet: Reclaiming the \u201cGhetto\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Teaching ninth graders, the past month has been one centered around themes of conflict as my class analyzes Romeo and Juliet<\/em>. Over this and a couple of future posts, I wanted to share some of the work my students and I have been engaging in. Essentially, the role of the seminal, ninth grade text, has shifted. No longer can students simply read and analyze Romeo and Juliet<\/em>. Instead, it is not an option to include materials that exist outside of the original text; it is an imperative part of understanding the text. I\u2019ll return to this idea after sharing some examples.<\/p>\n

Utilizing the Flip Cams that Peter and I used for our What Son Productions course<\/a>, the students will be recreating their own versions of scenes from the play. This is not an original or a very creative idea (more about that in a minute). What is interesting, though, is the process of reading Romeo and Juliet across<\/em> different interpretations. As we read a scene, we may screen a scene from the 1996 Lurhmann<\/a> interpretation as well as the 1968 Zeffirelli<\/a> interpretation. We are then utilizing a 4×4 graphic organizer to note key differences between the original source, two films, and our own ideas of how the scene could be produced. These products are becoming the basis for a production log the students are creating as they note where one version may fall short \u2013 Tybalt being too aggressive to Romeo in the 1996 version before Mercutio becomes a \u201cgrave man,\u201d for instance.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, the concept of asking students to recreate their own versions of scenes isn\u2019t a very new one. In fact, as more and more students have easy access to tools of production \u2013 as these tools have become ubiquitous \u2013 it\u2019s easy to see student work samples online. However, the vast, vast majority of these samples appear to be from overwhelmingly white communities. And these versions are taking significant liberties in their portrayal of urban reenactments of Romeo and Juliet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Over the course of a week, I began each class by screening a 3-7 minute YouTube clip. I simply searched \u201cGangster Romeo and Juliet\u201d and a deluge of student-created videos showed up showing \u201cghetto\u201d versions of the play. [This was inspired by a conversation about developing this unit with my colleague Peter Carlson.]<\/p>\n

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This ghetto, however, is technically the community my students live and go to school in. This ghetto is stereotyped by white students in ways that at first issued guffaws. My students found the videos funny at first. However, after a couple of days, students said they felt \u201cmocked.\u201d They said that the videos didn\u2019t show things correctly, were making fun of the community, and actually lacked textual understanding of Shakespeare\u2019s words (several of the films, for instance, abbreviated Abraham\u2019s name the same way that Luhrmann\u2019s did).<\/p>\n

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Often times, these videos are posing these ghetto versions in lush, rural or suburban communities:<\/p>\n

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I want to underscore that I am not using these examples to criticize the students that have made them. However, when discussing them with students, we have noticed that there are not similar \u201cghetto\u201d versions made by people of color. And if they are not creating them, essentially, an incorrect truth about what the ghetto is and how people act within it is being reified. My students shifted uncomfortably in their seats as they began thinking about the messages that a critical mass of lighthearted \u201cghetto\u201d student clips are sending; these paired with YouTube clips of student fights are furthering stereotypes of student behavior and expectations.<\/p>\n