Ever the Question

Why?

Keats’ life was tragic—he lost his parents at a young age, consistently had trouble with money and lost relatives to tuberculosis, including his younger brother, Tom. And granted, the project was based on his life and not his poetry. But there is an image of Keats floating in the internet ether, that strikes the young as memorable, as akin to an action-hero.

Keats as James Bond, saving the damsel in distress, getting the girl, and looking good while doing it.

Keats as Die Hard John McClane, fighting until the very end.

Keats as more than another name of a dead poet that every kid reads at some point in a giant anthology.

“John Keats: Movie” and “Brokeback Keats”—the latter’s title alone playing with the connections between the Keats of the 1800s and the pop culture of today—was based on information found on Wikipedia, another popular website, this one dedicated to encyclopedic knowledge anyone can edit. The film is a thrilling suspense a la “Mission: Impossible.” We should all remember that Keats was “a poet, damn it, not a scientist.” Honestly, this was funny, and the Charlie Brown references really took it to a deeper level.

Charles Brown's House, 1818

His mother dies, and Tim Berculosis then kills his younger brother and uncle.

From this film, one is drawn into the world of Keats within the internet. YouTube has the curious ability to draw a viewer in for hours. From one piece to another, a chain link grows until the beginning is lost and one finds oneself traveling from link to link without any sense of where it’s going to end. That’s the key. It doesn’t end. And sometimes one may stumble onto a video they’ve seen already and that will lead to others they’ve never imagined.