King Lear as Western elegy
2007; Salisbury University; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)Law in Society and Culture
ResumoGenre-based approaches to cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's plays have resulted in production of multitude of generic films, ranging from those that openly embrace framework to those less readily acknowledged as fare. And yet, there remains critical resistance to readings of screen Shakespeare and an academic disregard for film adaptations that openly identify their roots. With exception of writings of film critic Neil Sinyard, who approaches Shakespeare from decidedly cinematic standpoint,1 and Harry Keyishian's interesting but brief critique of three key productions of Hamlet from perspective,2 genre-based readings of Shakespearean adaptations remain minimal. Robert Wilson, Jr., offers some discussion of Hollywood cinematic off-shoots3 and Tony Howard opens up debate within more meaningful ideological framework,4 but there is very little critical engagement with what are primarily genre-based adaptations, especially in relation to King Lear. In reading Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971) as a of horror film and film noir,5 Sinyard is one of few critics who openly explore generic properties of canonical Shakespearean screen adaptations. Those adaptations of King Lear that are deemed canonical-Grigori Kozintsev's Komi Lir (1970), Peter Brook's King Lear (1971 ), and Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985)6-are subject of extensive academic interrogation though there remains conspicuous absence of any scholarly debate in relation to their generic status despite fascinating ideological parallels that can be drawn between Shakespeare's play and properties of resultant screen adaptations. Peter Brook's fragmented, nihilistic King Lear, with its distancing counter cinematic techniques reminiscent of French New Wave, remains resistant to mainstream reading. It is, however, possible to read Kozintsev's Komi Lir as road movie; it shares cinematic connections, on an iconic and an ideological plain, not only with such road movie forerunners as John Ford's Grapes of Wrath (1940) but with Crisis Cinema road movies7 like Bannie and Clyde (1967), Easy Rider (1969), or Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid (1969), which emerged in late sixties. Similarly, Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985) can be read as fusion of western and horror film, Kaede emerging as vampire-like monstrous feminine8 castrator more readily associated with horror genre. It remains distinctly Japanese film product, historically placed within feudal Japan and belonging to very Japanese jidai-geki genre, but it has decidedly western affiliations, not least through its appropriation of ideological premise underpinning mainstream western and its allusions to western's topographical and iconic signifiers. Academic prejudice against concept of is, according to Leo Braudy, consequence of its perceived inability to exude the uniqueness of object, making criticism incompatible with an aesthetic point of view.9 Such prejudice is particularly acute when one is examining works by writer of Shakespeare's literary status, and offers rationale as to why criticism-with exception of heritage/period genre-is not an established mode of engagement with Shakespeare's films in an academic sense. Yet if, as Braudy states, work of high art is defined by its desire to be uncaused and unfamiliar, as much as possible unindebted to any tradition, popular or otherwise,10 Shakespeare's plays fail to qualify as high art. They are hybrids, indebted to tradition, populist in intent, and they in recycling of familiar narratives. Indeed, Shakespeare's creative processes have much more in common with Braudy's definition of genre creativity that works through manipulation of past motifs to create new work.11 Keyishian argues that films which are adapted from Shakespeare's plays must be viewed as part of cinematic tradition that produces them if we are to avoid readings that are constantly freighted with our prior knowledge of Shakespearean text and its performance history; for only then do we engage actual film product before us, rather than our preconceptions, based on our knowledge of Shakespearean text and its critical and performance traditions. …
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