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February 2016


#somethingwickedthiswaycomes

It seems I may have been dwelling these last few days on innovative ways to get people reading.  After the comments I made in my previous post about possible future iterations of "the book", I stumbled across this example whilst aimlessly surfing the Googles:

Macbeth is #killingit (link to Booktopia)

 Yep, it's #Macbeth.  And apparently #Macbeth is #killingit.

 This is somewhat stretching my idea of what I was talking about in my previous post, i.e. innovative ways to engage kids in reading.  I dunno, this just seems somewhat... lame.  I mean, on the cover Lord and Lady Macbeth appear to have their heads substituted with emoji.  With. Emoji.  And they are checking in to their various locations and presumably hash-tagging their adventures whilst snap chatting the latest #epicdeadbody or #crazylady.  Students can see though this guise pretty quickly, they are very wise to these adult attempts to appear "cool".  The fact that I just used the word cool probably instantly dated to me another era.  We can't help it.

 Don't get me wrong I guess I appreciate the effort, but hoping that Macbeth et al. plus smartphones will somehow make Shakespeare more appealing?  I think it kind of underestimates the intelligence of the students, and also the complexity and nuance of Shakespeare.  Does it take away from the telling of the story, or add to it?  Does it reduce the impact of these glorious words for the sake of a passing gimmick?  You be the judge.  I am almost tempted to buy one of these and test it out on a student.  Just to get the empirical evidence and all that.  Maybe I will #eatmywords.


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