Disney loves Shakespeare
"West Side Story famously reworks Romeo and Juliet, which resurfaces again in the 1990s, in a movie featuring contemporary teen culture and automatic pistols...Hamlet comes out as a new film every couple of years, it seems" (How to Read Literature Like a Professor Foster pg 39).
This quote reminds me of my two favorite Disney movies. Everyone knows by now that The Lion King is undoubtably supposed to be like Hamlet with young Simba playing the troubled prince himself. The day I discovered this, I was shocked that the story that I grew up with was so close to the classic Shakespearean tale. The lesser known but equally as good The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride tells yet another classic Shakespeare tale. Kiara, Simba's daughter, falls for Scar's hand chosen sucessor from another pride. The two prides are distanced and enemies. Disney just loves to rip off classical story lines but I don't blame them because they are just that good.
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umm no on Disney loves Shakespeare: Disney person: Aladdin is not
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Ha! I love this post! It's so true, Disney does this allllll the time, but why wouldn't they, I mean the story is already written for them, all they have to do is add talking animals and they're done. But other movies are catching on to this too, though not as closely as Disney, movies like Mean Girls are actually relating to Julius Ceaser. (Besides the point when they bring up Brutus in the classroom scene too.) The entire movie was actually loosely based on it. (Yes, I adore the movie, and I watched all the fun extras that came out with it. haha)
Actually, I never noticed any connection between The Lion King and Hamlet until you mentioned it in class. I just never thought about it. That, and I only read Hamlet just a year ago. It does prove how Shakespeare is seemingly the illegitimate father of all modern literature.
i like the examples that were used in the book. those of which most people around our age would have seen or know about, it just made things easier to relate to. dont you think? and then your examples....you could not have been more right!! disney uses shakespeare all the time. what about aladdin? (romeo and juliet) it just fits, its soo weird to think that one story line could make so many different stories come out of it.
I was thinking the other day and Mulan is similar to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." What can I say? Shakespeare is just that good!
"I was thinking the other day and Mulan is similar to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." What can I say? Shakespeare is just that good!"
Absolutely right!
I like the examples which is given in the book.
I cant any connection between The Lion King and Hamlet before reading :)
I like everything about DISNEY....
Also Aladdin and Othello they even kept Iago's name come on.
Disney person:
Aladdin is not Othello. Not even close. Not even a little bit. Except that Jafar is jealous of "Prince Ali" and tried to screw him over. Otherwise, the plots are completely different. Yes, the parrot was named after Iago in Othello, but that's it. A lot of characters in movies and books are named after other characters; it doesn't mean anything. Hermione in Harry Potter was named after Hermione in The Winter's Tale, but Harry Potter and The Winter's Tale don't have anything else in common.
Aladdin definitely has some similarities to Shakespeare's Othello. Othello is a tale of jealousy. Is Jafar not jealous of Aladdin?
Of course the two tales aren't parallel, just as Hamlet and The Lion King are not completely congruent either, but the similarities are there.
It just hit me the other day, Pocahontas is incredibly similar to Romeo and Juliet.
Well remember now, Pocahontus is supposed to be loosely based on real, historical events.