Wherefore art thou, Romeo? a study of three late twentieth-century film adaptations and approporiations [sic] of Romeo and Juliet /

by Way, Geoffrey.

This thesis is an audience-centric study of the socio-political aspects of three late twentieth-century film versions of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The three films this thesis covers are Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), Lloyd Kaufman’s Tromeo and Juliet (1996), and Andrzej Bartkowiak’s Romeo Must Die (2000). The thesis explores how each film utilizes elements of popular culture and American society at the end of the twentieth-century in tandem with the themes and concepts from Shakespeare’s play. The focus of this thesis is to analyze the different techniques each director used to create a sense of recognition for the audience through the use of various elements of pop culture and modern American society. While each director took a similar approach, combining pop culture, American society, and Shakespeare, the three films yielded widely different results. The thesis explores these different results, as well as the commonalities between the three films. First discussed is how Luhrmann’s film worked to bring Shakespeare’s language and characters to a new audience. This is followed by discussion on how Kaufman’s film uses the idea of Shakespeare to challenge the establishments of both art and society. The thesis ends with a discussion on how Bartkowiak’s film is indicative of the movement towards Hollywood Shakespeare: films that use some elements of Shakespeare’s play in aggressively modern appropriations with the goal of entertaining an audience.