The Outsiders Looking In: Modernized Shakespearian Adaptations Whether it was street hustlers or barbarians, William Shakespeare had a lot of critically acclaimed screen time dedicated to his plays in the 1990s. Gus Van Sant took the stage first with his loose adaptation of Henry IV in his film, My Own Private Idaho. Van Sant’s film delves right into the slums of Portland where the audience meets Mike Waters, a gay street hustler who suffers from narcolepsy, is looking for his mother, and in love with his best friend, Scott. Julie Taymor chimes in eight years later with her visually stunning update of Titus Andronicus with her simplistically titled, Titus. Taymor revamps Titus’s story of revenge and deceit by adding in flashes of the future and snapshots of the past, mixing them together to create a cacophony of colors and emotions that enthralls the audience. When examining both films superficially, it becomes illogical to compare prostitutes in twentieth century Oregon to warriors from ancient Rome, yet both My Own Private Idaho and Titus share more than a long dead author and an affinity for iambic pentameter. Both films deal with the prevalent themes of alienation, banishment and exclusion. Both films focus on the outsiders of society and their plights and tribulations as they struggle to regain a foothold into society. Through the eyes of Scott and Mike and Titus and his family, viewers are given a first hand account of how these exiles and outsiders are viewed in relation to the society that has abandoned them, how they embrace as well as struggle with a way to recreate a society for themselves and view how they are allowed to explore an unconventional morality due to their exclusion from their morally upstanding society. To begin, My Own Private Idaho opens with a shot of the protagonist, Mike Waters and a seemingly never-ending stretch of road that he describes as a “fucked up face” that he always finds himself traveling (Arthur & Liebler 27). As the film progresses, we meet Scott Favor, Mike’s best friend and source of Mike’s unrequited love. Scott, as the audience comes to learn, is the son of the mayor and tricks as a way to rebel against his family and bide time until he turns twenty-one and thus inherits his father’s estate. Scott becomes the perfect juxtaposition for Mike, outlining just how different they are despite the fact they are living in the same social construct. Scott hustles because it is an easy way to make money while he counts down the days until he leaves behind the slums and retreats back to his mansion. Mike, on the other hand, is constantly searching for his mother and for a place to which he can call home. For Scott, going back home is simply a matter of time, whereas for Mike, ‘home’ is the only time he has ever felt like he truly belonged. As Wiseman best describes, “Mike has a past whereas Scott has a future” (227). This sense of belonging is more noticeably seen with the female that purchases Mike, Scott and Gary for the night. When Mike is first approached by the female ‘john’, he exclaims, “This chick’s living in a new car ad” and proceeds to be escorted far, far away from the streets in which he’s hustling, to a luxurious mansion that’s filled with beautiful and expensive artifacts (My Own Private Idaho). Right away, the audience can see the clear break in social status, not only in the divide between the woman and Mike, but also the divide between the prostitutes themselves. Scott is gently poised on an armoire, dressed in an elegant suit and smoking while Mike, who is decked out in tattered clothes and dirty jeans sits down awkwardly on a faraway chair. The distinct breaks between Mike and Scott are numerous in My Own Private Idaho. Mike mentions had he had a “normal upbringing” he would have been a more “well adjusted person” to which Scott scoffs at and retorts, “what is normal?” (My Own Private Idaho). Scott, having been granted the luxury of a family easily mocks Mike’s need for that which he has only the barest of recollections. In the end, as Arthur and Liebler say, “we are on familiar ground: the frontier landscape as liminal zone of individual transformation, in which symbolic death and rebirth of the subject augurs social renewal” (26). Scott stops running away from that which he has abandoned and re-enters the posh and prestigious lifestyle to which he has previously whored himself to, and Mike, the one who is abandoned and continually seeking his ‘private Idaho’ is left unconscious by the side of the never-ending road that we first meet him on, still motherless and with an even more uncertain fate than alluded to at the beginning of the film. EvenVan Sant himself says, “You’re not supposed to know, really… In a way it’s either you who’s the person picking him up or you’re him, just being asleep. Or it’s just a non-ending, and you assume he will go on in his quest” (Bergbusch 211). As well, Titus commences with an elaborate and epically choreographed funeral procession in honor of the fallen sons of the Andronici lineage. Titus, the brave and noble champion of Rome, as the audience comes to understand, has been selected by the people to lead Rome after the death of her emperor. Titus, ever the dedicated patriot, gracefully resigns the thrown and declares the emperor’s first son, Saturninus, is to be crown emperor. In return, Saturninus blesses Titus’ prisoners of war, Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her two sons and her Moor, and takes Livinia, his daughter, to be the empress of Rome. Sadly, Livinia is betrothed to Bassianus and Satuninus’ actions cause Livinia and Bassianus to reject the royal proclamation, which leads to Titus killing his youngest son and shaming the Andronici name. Despite slaying his youngest son, Saturninus takes Tamora to be his new bride and declares, “No, Titus, no; the emperor needs her not / Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stock” (Titus). Satuninus’ communal humiliation of Titus is the first of multiple banishments for the Andronici line. Titus, the once the publicly elected emperor of Rome, is now disgraced and tossed to the side with the blood of his son on his strong hands. Tragically, the suffering does not end there for Titus. Tamora, seething in anger and vengeance, devises a plan that obliterates the Andronici family by slowly tearing them apart at the seams. Quintus and Martius are accused of murdering Bassianus and are sentenced to death while Tamora’s sons Demetrius and Chiron rape and defile Livinia. Lucius, Titus’ eldest son is exiled from Rome and Titus is left to stew in his slowly encroaching madness. Once crucial and powerful Roman family, the Andronici are now reduced to Titus, now sporting one less hand due to Tamora’s evil will, his disfigured Livinia, his grandson Lucius Jr., his brother Marcus and enough revenge in his soul to take down an entire regime. As well, the street hustlers in My Own Private Idaho have their own community to which they all retreat. The audience meets Bob Pigeon, Van Sant’s modernized ode to Shakespeare’s Falstaff. Bob is the heavyset and philosophically eloquent leader of the prostitutes, who bands them together, takes them off the rooftops and into a dilapidated house that provides the hustlers with a sense of home and morale. Bob’s house becomes the only place in which all the prostitutes can ban together and rest without fear. What becomes ironic and deeply saddening is although it is very apparent that Bob is an outsider, he is even further outside society than the prostitutes, all the while leading his own subgroup. Bob is, an insider and outsider, outcast and leader at once. Though, one should note that Bob’s gathering of lost boys and girls becomes a chief display of the break between the insiders of society and the outsiders. When Bob dies at the end of the film, his funeral is adjacent to the funeral of Scott’s father. Despite Scott habitual repetition of the fact he loves Bob more than his own father, he is seen at his father’s somber and bleak funeral, pretending to ignore the rowdy and rambunctious funeral that his once brethren host (Wiseman 232). The prostitutes band together to celebrate and mourn the loss of Bob without a priest, without a proper coffin, and without the socially accepted norm of what proper funeral behavior is supposed to be (Wiseman 232). Scott, who at this point has slipped back into accepted society, sits not fifty feet away and has to ignore Bob’s funeral despite the fact his conflict is clearly outlined on his face (Wiseman 232). In Titus Tamora and her family are captured by Titus and taken from their home and brought to Rome. As Goths, the enemies the Romans have been fighting against for ten years, Tamora and her family are clear outsiders being brought into a foreign city. Yet, due to Tamora’s charms and good looks, she is quickly made empress of Rome and integrates her family into high society. This becomes ironic, due to the face that her family becomes royalty, whereas Titus, the valiant and devoted general who lost twenty-one of his sons fighting for Rome’s honor, has his family’s name humiliated and shamed. As Walker says, “there is no clear dividing line between citizen and alien… for example, Tamora, the Queen of the Goths is absorbed as royalty into Roman identity” (196). Within the span of half an act, Tamora has successfully wrapped the weak-minded Saturninus around her finger and her fellow Goths begin to take over Roman society. Tamora, essentially, is the driving force that forces Titus and his family to the outside and from her insider position, Tamora is allowed to destroy Titus’ family systematically, without any repercussion to herself. Though, Tamora’s cunning becomes her eventual downfall, seeing as how she does manage to make a name for the Goths in Rome, but excludes herself from her Goth peoples. This has a heavy influence over the Goths when Lucius travels to them and builds an army (Walker 196). Lucius, although playing a relatively small part in the film, becomes the avenging force in his family as well as becoming the emperor of Rome after he slays Saturninus. Lucius, the only true exile in Titus, in a sense, becomes Tamora in reverse for he manages to transplant himself into the Goth society as a leader, but unlike Tamora, falls back again into Roman society. Finally, there is an underlying theme of depravity and morality that Van Sant imbues in his film. Wiseman points how how Van Sant covers how “questions around the family, paternity, place, home, maternity, sexuality, and status” all linger in the viewer’s peripheral vision for the duration of the film (225). The characters, specifically Mike who is a culmination of all four, shamelessly parade their sexuality to rope in customers. Despite the fact Mike initially rejects Hans due to his belief that he has a deviant sexual appetite, he and Scott use sex as a means of swindling Hans out of his car and money so they can travel to Italy. Bob himself justifies thievery as acceptable, just as long as he does not know who the person is. On that note, when Bob first returns and falls asleep, Mike and Scott steal his cocaine and Mike is seen scrambling to snort it all before Bob wakes up. Yet, above the drugs and the thievery, even past the prostitution, My Own Private Idaho is a story about a boy in love with another boy that will never return his affections. Van Sant plays with Mike’s affections beautifully, stringing his feelings for Scott along countryside’s and continents, only to have Mike emotionally break down in Italy when Scott chooses an Italian girl over him and “returns to a new life in Portland” (Wiseman 227). Despite a clear bond that goes deeper than mere brotherhood, Van Sant has Scott denouncing homosexuality when Mike admits his feelings for him, claiming how he believes two men can never love each other. Mike, as Bergbusch attests, stands in “metaphorically for a homeless, orphaned, homosexual Van Sant” and can clearly not change his biology (218); whereas Scott, under the guise of a gay-for-pay hustler is allowed to explore the world of homosexuality without any commitment or fear that he will “grow wings” (My Own Private Idaho). As Arthur and Liebler mention, by “bracketing gay sex as purely economic transaction [one] will avoid the taint of homosexual identity” (30). By contrast, the outsiders in Titus go on a bloody and ruthless killing spree that ends with the deaths of virtually every main character. Starks begins with a neat little summary of Titus, claiming that the play “stages the abject in all its manifestations, to the extreme” (125). Taymor herself describes Titus as, a “dissertation on violence [that includes] war, ritual sacrifice, infanticide, rape, nihilistic torture, honor killing, suicide and vengeance” (Walker 196). Said ‘dissertation on violence’ primarily begins with Chiron and Demetrius and their lust for the virginal Livinia, which leads to her brutal rape and horrific disfiguration. Livinia’s rape becomes just one of the notches on Titus’ belt of justice. After his sons are beheaded, Titus devises a plan that will make Tamora suffer the way he has and after feigning madness, manages to capture both Chiron and Demetrius, slay them, and then bake their flesh into a pie that he later feeds to Tamora. This grotesque and disgusting display of morals is deemed appropriate by Titus, who once upon a time would have defended Chiron and Demetrius with his own life, for they are the sons of Rome, the city to which Titus loves so dearly. Also, after Titus has revealed that he has essentially turned Tamora into a cannibal who is eating her own children, he plunges a knife through her neck, killing her in front of the magistrate of Rome and the generals in the Goth army. This public execution is met only moments later by his death at the hands of Saturninus, who is then shot in the heart by Lucius. Murder, rape, torture, nothing seems too immoral for Titus and his thirst for revenge, proving that even the noblest and most honorable of men can be pushed to the most corrupt acts with the right amount of prodding. One could say that these outsiders, to a certain extent, define their own morality. Yet, the way they define what is morally just or not is partially determined by whether they are forced into it or whether they choose it. In some ways, theses character’s unconventional morality, if one wishes to call it that, does seem to develop in response to the blows they take from the dominant society. The more Titus loses as a result of Tamora and her vengeance, the deeper he plummets into an insanity that consumes his soul. With Scott, as things escalate between himself and Mike, he chooses to return to the more conventional world of his father and the wealth. Titus’ actions, in his mind, can be justified as a response to the wrongs that have befallen him due to Tamora, which is in direct opposition to Scott, who actually joins back up with the dominant society when his way of life is threatened by another outsider - Mike. In the end, the outsiders and exiles in My Own Private Idaho and Titus meet with the same destructive end. Scott abandons the one person that loved him for who he was and Mike is left alone, once again stuck in the middle of uncertainty but still on the same road to nowhere and Titus avenges his family at the cost of his own life. There is no happy ending or silver lining and the sense of foreboding and apprehension is greater at the end of the movies than at the beginning. Work Cited Arthur, Paul, and Naomi Liebler. “Kings of the Road: My Own Private Idaho and the Traversal of Welles, Shakespeare, and Liminality.” Post Script 17.2 (1998): 26-38. Bergbusch, Matt. “Additional Dialogue: William Shakespeare, Queer Allegory, and My Own Private Idaho.” Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital. New York: Palgrave, 2000: 209-225. My Own Private Idaho. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Perf. River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves. 1991. DVD. Touchstone, 1991. Starks, Lisa S. “Cinema of Cruelty: Powers of Horror in Julie Taymor’s Titus.” The Reel Shakespeare: Alternative Cinema and Theory. Eds. Lisa S. Starks and Courtney Lehmann. Madision: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2002: 121-142. Titus. Dir. Julie Taymor. Perf. Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming. 1999. DVD. Tri Star, 1999. Walker, Elise. “‘Now is a time to storm’: Julie Taymor’s Titus.” Literature/Film Quarterly 30.3 (2002): 194-207. Wiseman, Susan. “The Family Tree Motel: Subliming Shakespeare in My Own Private Idaho.” Shakespeare the Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, and Video. Eds. Lynda Boose and Richard Burt, New York: Routledge, 1997: 225-239.