Love: The Same Old Same Old in Romeo and Juliet

Just as every generation gets the vampire it deserves every era from the time of the Greeks and until today has gotten their very own Romeo and Juliet...

The story, as we know it, began as the Roman myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. Since its inception into our culture there have been close to no changes in the actual plot. It always begins with two households both alike in dignity--whether it be in Babylon, Verona or Manhattan. The children of these rivaling households always happen to be of the same gentle age--a boy and a girl. They meet, they fall madly in love, there families disapprove; tragedy ensues. Our Romeo is banished our Juliet dies and he upon finding this out soon joins her in the after life.

Its nearly impossible to believe that a story that was created in 500 B.C. is still so relevant nearly three-thousand years later. Not only has it been retold and adapted more times than I think it is possible to trace but it has found its way circulating throughout the media since it became possible to. From the page to the stage to the screen this classic story has permeated into every kind of media.

What fascinated us most with the two most recent film adaptations of Romeo and Juliet from 1968 and 1996 was that although they were created nearly three decades apart, they are each posses the same sentimentality. Despite the fact that the Juliet in the '68 version of the film is a brunette and the '96, we still feel them each to be Juliet. The clips from each unfurl in the same manner telling us that while each generation gets the Romeo and Juliet they deserve, in no adaptation has the basic emotion conveyed in the original story been skewed.

-Johanna