FUZZY GENRES IN LITERATURE

There is this hierarchy of genres in literature. From most to least prestige and renown, it goes:
Prose - Poetry - Drama - Essay - Graphic Literature (graphic novels, graphic poetry...)
When most people use the word "literature" on a prototypical level, excluding the other literary genres (at the subordinate level of vertical polysemy), they are always referring to prose, the dominant genre since the Victorian era. The other genres have been underrated ever since.
But the boundaries are not clear-cut. A story can be told in any of these five ways, actually. A nice style exercise would be to retell a short, familiar story (Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, the Princess and the Pea...) in all five genres, Five Obstructions style.
Then there are the works that are liminal. Is Beowulf, or the Homeric epics, prose or poetry? Originally it was narrative poetry, bridging this gap, but most translations are literal, prosified. Closer to prose.
Are Lemony narrators' digressions prose or essay? There's another case of genre liminality. Don Quixote's speech of academic vs. military life, for instance... is Cervantes, through his hidalgo, giving us a snippet of essay in the middle of the prose or is it just a soliloquy in the prose world?
When we've got Hamlet, or Iago, giving us a soliloquy on human nature (whether on page, stage, or screen)... is it drama or essay (or poetry, if it's in pentameter)?
Is The Invention of Hugo Cabret a prose or a graphic novel?
Genres in literature will intersect and have fuzzy boundaries, in these cases. It's these points where boundaries blur that make literature have part of its allure for me.

FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS - REVIEW

The Five Obstructions is a 2003 Danish documentary film directed by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth. The film is conceived as a documentary, but incorporates lengthy sections of experimental films produced by the filmmakers. The premise is that von Trier has created a challenge for his friend and mentor, Jørgen Leth, another renowned filmmaker. von Trier's favorite film is Leth's The Perfect Human (1967), and von Trier gives Leth the task of remaking The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different "obstruction" (or obstacle) imposed by von Trier.

The obstructions

1. Leth must remake the film in Cuba, with no set, and with no shot lasting longer than twelve frames, and he must answer the questions posed in the original film; Leth successfully completes this task.
2. Leth must remake the film in the worst place in the world but not show that place onscreen; additionally, Leth must himself play the role of "the man." The meal must be included, but the woman is not to be included. Leth remakes the film in the red light district of Mumbai, only partially hiding it behind a translucent screen.
3. Because Leth failed to complete the second task perfectly, von Trier punishes him, telling him to either remake the film in any way he chooses, or else to repeat it again with the second obstruction in Mumbai. Leth chooses the first option and remakes the film in Brussels, using split-screen effects.
4. Leth must remake the film as a cartoon. He does so with the aid of Bob Sabiston, a specialist in rotoscoping, who creates animated versions of shots from the previous films. As such the final product is technically an animation but not a cartoon. Nevertheless, von Trier considers the task to be completed successfully.
5. The fifth obstruction is that von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voice-over narration, ostensibly from his own perspective but in fact one written by von Trier.

STYLE EXERCISE

Think of five obstructions for different retellings of:

1. Othello (on a plane, in the world of tennis, with an all-female cast at a boarding prep school, as a minimalistic shadowplay... can you think of the fifth?)
2. The Snow Queen
3. Beauty and the Beast
4. Red Riding Hood
5. Romeo and Juliet
6. Hamlet