EXAMPLE
A Comparative Study of the Fool in King Lear and King of Texas
Set in 1842, a year after the establishment of Texas as an independent republic, the film King of Texas (2002) draws on many of the core themes contained in Shakespeare’s King Lear, yet it also deviates from many of the specific technical characterizations and stage devices that make the original so compelling, especially when performed on stage.
In Uli Edel’s 2002 adaptation, Lear’s kingdom is two hundred acres of farmland stretching along the Rio Grande, which forms the border with Mexico, and the eponymous Lear is now John Lear, a frontiersman and cattle baron who retains much of the machismo reminiscent of the Wild West. Shakespeare’s Fool is replaced by the slave Rip (played by David Alan Grier), who reminds Lear that he is a survivor of the Alamo, a battle notorious for its massacre of Texan regulars by the Mexican Army. In one pivotal scene, Rip also takes on Kent’s role when he is embroiled in a fight with Susanna’s (Goneril) henchman Warnell (Oswald), who assaults Rip on the pretense of being a runaway slave. While the characters’ treatment of Rip helps to foreground Texas’ role as a slave state, Edel’s version also seeks to replicate a modern master-slave power dynamic that is so crucial to the Lear-Fool relationship. When Lear remarks the following to Rip – “I don’t know why I let you talk to me that way” – it serves as a reminder of the Fool’s truth-affirming capability which tragically goes unheeded, as Rip reminds the audience in his response to Lear: “you ain’t not interested in anybody’s opinion but your own”. Similarly, when Rip retorts several minutes later – “Don’t ask me if you don’t want the truth” – we see once again the irony invested in the Fool character who has more sense of what’s really happening than Lear himself.
In terms of how Rip’s comments parallel those of the Fool’s in King Lear, we are given a few snippets when Rip quips the following: “I used to think old people was wise, but they ain’t – you sure the proof of that”. Such a line echoes with what the Fool says early on in Act 1 Scene 5, after Lear’s first confrontation with Goneril: “If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time […] Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise” (1.5.37-41). Yet, while the Fool’s comic status is affirmed in the movie, with Lear’s lament that Rip is “the only son of a bitch in this whole outfit can make [him] laugh”, in Edel’s version the Fool’s contribution to Lear’s madness, via the hovel scene in Act 3 Scene 4, is missing. Instead, Rip’s presence in the film serves as a conduit for mapping the audience’s own anticipated response to Lear’s plight; his face-pulling and shakes of the head when Lear edges closer to his doom work according to the design of Shakespeare’s Fool, whom the audience look to as the one omniscient figure in the play.
2.
STUDENT EXAMPLE: Kurosawa’s Japanese reading of Macbeth
Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood is the cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The discussion of whether an adaptation is faithful or not is one of the most concerned discussions in Shakespeare studies. In his essay Shakespeare in the Movies, Frank Kermode refuses to accept that Throne of Blood is a serious Shakespeare adaptation. For Kermode, Throne of Blood is “an allusion to, rather than a version of, Macbeth” (18-21).
It is very easy to understand why some western critics are so annoyed by Kurosawa’s adaptation. Kurosawa almost cuts out most of the Shakespearean elements in the original version, for example, the monologues. One might notice that in Throne of Blood, characters don't have many dialogues, but they do have exaggerated facial expressions and body movements. These features cannot be seen in most of the Shakespearean adaptations in the western world, for example Polanski or Goold’s versions.
But there are also many scholars who try to examine Kurosawa’s works from an affirmative perspective. Tetsuo Kishi and Graham Bradshaw believe that “Kurosawa is finding cinematic, visual and spatial equivalents for what Shakespearean’s words and images might convey to the Japanese” (132). Anthony Dawson also argues that Kurosawa is not following Shakespearean language, but looks to Shakespeare for “deeper thematic possibilities.” Based on these arguments, I would like to discuss how Kurosawa adapts Macbeth to the screen and to the feudal Japanese context.
In terms of thematic possibilities, I think Kurosawa interprets the Shakespearean theme of “isolation” successfully in the Japanese context. Throughout the film, Macbeth's counterpart Washizu is always, to some degree, trying to rely on other people. For example, in the original version, after the killing of Duncan, Macbeth alson plans the murder of Banquo and his son, telling Lady Macbeth to be “innocent of the knowledge… Till thou applaud the dead” (3.2.45 – 6). Macbeth still has a sort of individuality in this plan of murdering. However, in Throne of Blood, Asaji/Lady Macbeth is the one that proposes the plan and Washizu/Macbeth has to accept it. There is a growing sense of dependency in Washizu. He has to depend on his wife completely. That makes the theme “isolation” become more significant in the later scene where Asaji becomes mad. As Anthony Dawson notes, “having Washizu witness directly his wife’s descent into madness gives a special tonality to his isolation, stressing once again the crucial importance of community and its loss.” What follows is the news that the forest is moving towards the castle and the betrayal of his armies. Washizu does not have time to mourn his wife. He has become utterly alone.
Except for the theme of isolation, another often-addressed point in Throne of Blood is its use of Noh elements, especially the use of Noh masks. In Macbeth, one of the things that makes the figure lady Macbeth so threatening is her challenge to Macbeth’s masculinity. As she asks Macbeth to kill Duncun: “When you durst do it, then you were a man” (1.7.49). But in Throne of Blood, Kurosawa’s women are seemingly wearing Noh mak-like make ups, both Asaji and the witch in the forest. They are terrifying because they function as symbols of evil. Unlike Polanski’s witches, who are physically revolting, or Trevor Nunn’s usage of Christian motifs, Kurosawa uses Noh demons to present the horror of the witches. As Tetsuo Kishi and Graham Bradshaw note, the witches “are culturally untranslatable from the modern West”, Kurosawa’s usage of eastern elements seems to be more capable to bring the chilling effect to the audiences. Kurosawa exploits the "unspeakable" horror from occidental culture and brings it to the screen.
Therefore, I believe that the “faithfulness” to the original works of Shakespeare is not completely about how identical the adaptations are, but also about the creative reading of it.
Works Cited
Anzai, Tetsuo, Shakespeare in Japan. 9. Vol. Lewiston, N.Y: Edwin Mellen, 1999. Print.
Henderson, Diana E, A Concise Companion to Shakespeare on Screen. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Print.
3.
Student Example: Melancholy in the Age of Late Capitalism
Michael Almereyda’s 2000 film Hamlet is a very interesting and experimenting adaptation of William Shakespeare’s original play. Despite the fact that many elements in the film are very different from the original play, Almereyda’s film embodies certain cultural relevance to the new millennium.
In Almereyda’s film, the Hamlet played by Ethan Hawke shares the same temperament of melancholy with the Hamlet in the original version. Through re-contextualizing the story of Hamet in the 21st century, the director offers contemporary audiences different interpretations of the theme “Melancholy”.
In the original play, Hamlet’s melancholy stems from his hatred of his uncle and Denmark. Following Hamlet’s words that “Denmark’s a prison”(2.2. 243), Almereyda connects the idea of “Denmark as a prison” with contemporary consumer culture. In the film, Denmark becomes Denmark Corporation in the modern city Manhattan. Elsinore becomes Elsinore Hotel in New York. Maurice Hindle argues, “for this postmodern Hamlet with conscience, Manhattan is a prison-house of ruthless commercialism” (199). In this sense, the meaning of “melancholy” is made different by contextualizing it in the age of 21st century. In this late capitalist society, the world is a corporate world and in this world individuals struggle to affirm their identity. As Samuel Crowl comments, “He’s [Hamlet] trapped in a corporate world of surveillance images and sounds controlled by Claudius and Polonius, and his attempt to define himself and his world is doomed to failure” (105). Therefore, the notion of “Denmark’s a prison” is re-interpreted with certain cultural relevance in this film. Contemporary consumer culture becomes the subject matter for the director to resonate with the notion of “imprisonment”. Modern Hamlet’s melancholy is not just about hatred and revenge, but also about the personal identity in the commercial world. The film thus offers us a culturally relevant interpretation of melancholy and this interpretation “springs naturally from our own cultural milieu” (Crowl, Cineplex 125).
Works Cited
Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare at the Cineplex. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2003. Print.
---, Shakespeare and Film: A Nortorn Guide: New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008, Print.
Hindle, Maurice. Studying Shakespeare on Film. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
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