Pardoner's Tale and A Simple Plan. Throne of Blood: Shakespeare Transposed. Critics commonly describe Throne of Blood (1957) as Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth.
While this description is certainly not untrue, the film is much more than a direct cinematic translation of a literary text. Kurosawa’s movie is a brilliant synthesis of diverse cultural, aesthetic, and historical sources, only one skein of which derives from Shakespeare. The film’s towering achievement lies in the way Kurosawa seamlessly integrates these and gives them superlative formal expression. Kurosawa often turned to foreign literary works for his films, but in all cases, the result was a transposition of the source rather than anything as straightforward as an adaptation. His appropriations of Shakespeare (here as well as in 1985’s Ran), for example, were acts more of historiography than of analysis, and descriptions of the films as adaptations minimize the true nature of what Kurosawa accomplished.
Kurosawa’s chronicle is a highly selective one, however. "The TV Viewer's Guide to Shakespeare" by J. E. Consolmagno. Originally in the April 1978 American Way, the inflight magazine of American Airlines.
My thanks to the author, Joseph E. Consolmagno, for contacting me with bibliographic information. Back to Shakespeare. Moral Relativism. Moral Relativism – What is it?
Moral relativism is the view that moral or ethical statements, which vary from person to person, are all equally valid and no one’s opinion of “right and wrong” is really better than any other. Moral relativism is a broader, more personally applied form of other types of relativistic thinking, such as cultural relativism. These are all based on the idea that there is no ultimate standard of good or evil, so every judgment about right and wrong is purely a product of a person’s preferences and environment. There is no ultimate standard of morality, according to moral relativism, and no statement or position can be considered absolutely “right or wrong,” “best or worst.”
Moral relativism is a widely held position in the modern world, though it is very selectively applied. Moral Relativism – Is there a fixed standard? All human laws involve some moral principle being enforced by threat of consequences. Explore More Now! Like this information? Pardoner's Tale and A Simple Plan. Ambition and ideology: intertextual clues to A Simple Plan's view of the American dream. In the voice-over narration in the opening sequence of Sam Raimi's 1998 film, A Simple Plan, Bill Paxton, who plays protagonist Hank Mitchell, defines happiness for the American man: a wife who loves him, a good job, and friends and neighbors who respect him.
Hank inherits this definition of the American dream from his father, a midwestern farmer driven to suicide when the American economy shifts, eliminating the possibility that family farmer can be a "good" job. Despite his father's fate, Hank, with a college degree and a job as the accountant for the local feed store, has managed to construct a life that not only provides him an adequate middle-class income but also ensures his comfortable place within his community.
Married to his college sweetheart, a part-time librarian pregnant with their first child, Hank, the film makes clear from the beginning, has apparently succeeded where his father failed. Cowart, however, suggests that pointing out such parallels is not enough. Notes.