What is it about?
With case studies of three Hamlet films: Haider (India, 2004), The King and the Clown (South Korea, 2005), and Prince of the Himalayas (Tibet, 2006), this article examines how Asian films negotiate with Asian cultural norms, ideas of Ophelia as an iconic victim, and the image of Hamlet as a brooding male intellectual.
Featured Image
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Asian directors leverage Shakespeare’s own propensity to undermine dominant ideologies of gender—notably through the Ophelia figure—in their effort to renew Asian performance traditions.
Perspectives
Outside their country of origin, these films attract audiences who are enthralled by the performance of the exotic, whether it’s Shakespearean or Asian motifs. Within their local market, the name brand of an editorialized Anglophone Shakespeare helps to boost their production value. Filmmakers see the co-presence of Shakespearean and Asian motifs as an asset, as “double kisses.” They use selective elements, such as conventionalized Bollywood dance and Chinese martial arts sequences, as common denominators and bonding agents between different periods and cultures.
Ms Alexa Alice Joubin
George Washington University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ophelia Unbound in Asian Performances, Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, January 2019, OpenEdition,
DOI: 10.4000/shakespeare.4887.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
