Commenter 9/15

Although I understand it, I don’t agree with Rebecca Mead’s Anger towards Ira Glass’s tweet saying that Shakespeare is not relatable.  Mead makes a valuable point in saying that the works were not written to fit our new age meaning of the word relatable, but that doesn’t excuse her bitter resentment of another viewers feelings towards the play as a whole, Mead very childishly infers Glass is exposing his most stupid self by saying “Shakespeare Sucks”. As a person who has been involved in theatre their whole life I understand Mead’s frustration, the Arts are not made to be relatable to everyone during every period of life and Glass’s comment was blunt, but the truth is that it is his opinion and getting upset about it isn’t going to change it. Of course Shakespeare’s works aren’t relatable to us, they were written over 400 years ago! I think Mead needs to take a step back and realize that the real issue isn’t “relatable”, but rather her need to prove that the Arts have nothing to prove. She goes on and on about how relatable is a disgrace and how we should stop trying to find ourselves in everything, but the truth of the matter is that as a society we have conditioned ourselves into finding ourselves in characters or another form of art to re-enforce to ourselves that the things we feel/believe are socially accepted. Instead of criticizing the opinion of someone Mead should look at the bigger picture and see that it’s a bigger social issue regarding our self acceptance rather than someone not enjoying Shakespeare’s works.