Thug Notes: YouTube comic brings literary Classics to the masses hip-hop style
Sparky Sweets' self-styled "gangster" approach to education is bringing books like Jane Eyre and To Kill a Mockingbird to new audiences. Miranda Dobson meets him

For those students who hastily scan SparkNotes, Wikipedia or CliffNotes before a seminar, the latest comedy sensation to hit YouTube could be a godsend.
Sparky Sweets PhD invites his viewers to join him as he gives the lowdown on the great and the good of literature, urging his Twitter followers to, āEducate yoāself, sonā, by using his Thug Notes.
Hailing from the streets of L.A. and claiming to have a doctorate in Classics, Dr Sweets delivers literary summaries and analysis in his āoriginal gangsterā style, in a way that he hopes will both entertain book nerds and educate/enlighten those who arenāt into their literature.
With an unprecedented surge of YouTube fans, Sparky has over 99,000 subscribers to his channel, and counting, and nearly 506,000 views on his most popular ādropā on classic American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Also included on Sparkyās reading list are George Orwellās 1984, Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontĆ«, and popular cultureās latest literary buzz courtesy of Baz Luhrmann's film, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Sparky tells me the idea for Thug Notes came about as a result of his āfrustration with the world of academia.ā
āIn my opinion,ā he says, āan academicās job should be to utilise their passion for the classics to make the gift of literature available to everyone. Unfortunately, in my experiences, that is not the case.ā
Sparky believes academia is āenshrouded by a veil of unnecessarily convoluted terminology and intellectual one-upmanshipā, which negates the whole point of education.
āInstead of promoting the universality of these works, they are building them up to a virtually inaccessible plane and saying 'If you want to truly understand classical literature, you have to get on my level.' So Thug Notes is my way of trivialising academiaās attempt at making literature exclusive by showing that these ideas can be communicated to people on the opposite side of the social stratum.ā

In his take on Jane Eyre, Sparky brings the classic English novel back to the streets, explaining how Jane is sent away from her ātwisted Aunt Reed and her punk ass cousins, who aināt showinā no love for his girl, Jane,ā before going on eventually to marry Rochester, when they āhave a little G of they own.ā
Having come from a āpretty generic public school educationā, Sparkyās love of literature stemmed from his high school reading list. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury were the two tomes which had the biggest influence on him while growing up.
The stream of consciousness in the second part of Faulkerās 1929 novel is something Dr Sweets said he had never seen before, and it āopened his eyesā to the endless possibilities in literature.
āI was about 15 when I was first assigned the book,ā he says.āWhen I got to Quentinās section, it was the first time I was introduced to stream of consciousness and my mind was completely blown. Up until then, I had no idea stories can be told in this way.ā
Thug Notes is a tongue-in-cheek way of bringing literature to the masses, and while most of Sparkyās viewers call him a āgeniusā, and beg him to cover their favourite books, there are some that just donāt get it. Despite the impact of a few "haters", Sparky remains upbeat: āYouāre never going to please everybody. There are always going to be some people that just donāt get it. Itās unfortunate, but itās to be expected. I hope that at the very least they still learn something!ā
Further to hoping his audience will see that ābooks arenāt as boring as you might thinkā, Dr Sweets wants students and teachers alike to see the value in combining comedy and education.
āI hope that teachers watch the show and realize that teaching is an art,ā Sparky explained. āJust like theater or cinema, the artist must earn the audienceās attention. Your classroom is your audience and unfortunately a student will not volunteer their attention.
āSometimes you have to seize it, and I hope Thug Notes inspires teachers to explore alternative methods to really engage their students. On a larger scale, I also hope that people realise that comedy is a powerful tool for education!ā

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