Bachelor of Arts
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Browsing Bachelor of Arts by Author "Chan, Adeline Pek Yee"
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- PublicationRestrictedPop! Goes the bard : the deployment of popular culture in the re-presentation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on screen(1998)Chan, Adeline Pek YeeThe artistic realization of Shakespeare's plays on the modem screen has met with disapproval by the traditionalists who believe that Shakespeare's art must be prese~edin its original condition for authenticity. But Shakespeare's plays are "timeless" and "universal" because they have the capacity to generate artistic relevance in varying contexts. Hence, the four-century-old plays must go through the processes of adaptation, contextualization, and conceptualization if they are to be meaningful for contemporary audiences.
Recalling that Shakespeare deployed Elizabethan popular culture in his plays, and his theatre welcomed both the plebeian and the aristocrat, this academic exercise explores the validity of the thesis that the deployment of popular culture in the re-presentation of Shakespeare's plays on screen is a positive, contributive factor towards making Shakespeare accessible to a wide-ranging modem audience. An analysis of the screen adaptations of Romeo and Juliet by Baz Luhann (1996), Franco Zeffirelli (1968), and the BBC Television Shakespeare (1978) will provide evidence for what is artistically and commercially rewarding in the deployment of popular culture in these productions.
Chapter One answers the question: "What is popular culture? and looks at the artefacts and activities that mark Shakespeare's Renaissance England and our Age of Cyber-technology. Chapter Two explores the bearing of the director's socio-historical location on his concept, and how it shapes the process of contextualization to make each production specific and relevant to its target audience. Chapter Three zooms in on two scenes to examine if the translation of the archaic text into the modem language of film diminishes or enriches Shakespeare's text for the contemporary audience. Chapter Four analyses the changing deployment of popular culture in the productions of Luhrmann and Zeffirelli, focusing on the youth concerns of sex, violence, drugs, and music. Finally, Chapter Five presents a review of the analysis and its limitations.119 15