Unspeakable Shaxxxspeares: Queer Theory and American Kiddie Culture - Hardcover

Richard Burt

3.77

22 ratings by Goodreads

9780312213633: Unspeakable Shaxxxspeares: Queer Theory and American Kiddie Culture

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312213638 ISBN 13: 9780312213633

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998

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Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares is a savvy look at the wide range of adaptations, spin-offs, and citations of Shakespeare’s plays in 1990s popular culture. The Bard has permeated contemporary film, television, video, and electronic media such as Internet Websites and CD-ROMs in direct translation, interpretation, and as a cultural icon. While we may be familiar with Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptations of the plays, what does it say about our culture when Shakespearean references turn up in television episodes of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, films like In and Out and My Own Private Idaho, and hardcore porn adaptations of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet? Instead of lamenting this unusual dissemination of Shakespeare from a position of literary authority, Burt reads the reception of these often quite bad replays in relation to contemporary youth culture and the "queering" of Shakespeare. Documenting a fascinating array of Shakespearean citations that are so far from their originals that they no longer count as interpretations of the plays, Burt considers what Shakespeare enables American popular culture to do that it couldn’t otherwise do without him and scrutinizes academic fantasies about fandom and stardom. This book puts Shakespeare studies on the front burner of popular culture.

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About the Author:

Richard Burt is Professor of English and Film and Media Studies, University of Florida. He is the author of Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares: Queer Theory and American Kiddie Culture; Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship; and the editor of Shakespeare After Shakespeare; Shakespeare After Mass Media; and The Administration of Aesthetics. Burt also co-edited a special issue of Exemplaria on “Movie Medievalism” and held a Fulbright scholarship in Berlin, Germany from 1995–96.

Review:

“...Brilliant...A dazzling tour-de-force: one of the most original works to have appeared recently, be it in the field of Shakespeare studies or popular culture.” —Early Modern Literary Studies

“...his study is invaluable insofar as it challenges us to rethink our assumptions, whether affirmative or dismissive, about the value of attending to unspeakable Shakespeares.” —Theatre Journal

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