Today Shakespeare boom in Hollywood, which started in the 1990s, is getting hotter and hotter. But is Shakespeare conquering Hollywood or conquered by Hollywood? This seems to me a very important and urgent problem to Shakespearean studies and educati...
Today Shakespeare boom in Hollywood, which started in the 1990s, is getting hotter and hotter. But is Shakespeare conquering Hollywood or conquered by Hollywood? This seems to me a very important and urgent problem to Shakespearean studies and education, which are totally exposed by multimedia environments and ready to use them.
Although the explosion of Shakespeare on film seemed to reach the culmination with Shakespeare in Love(I998), Hollywood didn't stop the boom of Shakespeare. In some respects, the real boom of Shakespeare in Hollywood can be shown to occur with Shakespeare in Love. For two years just after that movie, Hollywood has been producing more Shakespearean films than for the last decade: Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream(I999), Anthoy Hopkins and Jessica Lange's Titus(l999), Gil Junger's 10 Things I Hate About You: an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, Tim Blake Nelson's 0(1999): an adaptation of Othello, David Dobkin's Near in Blood: an adaptation of Macbeth(2000), Donald McAlpine's William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (2000), Ethan Hawke's Hamlet(2000), Jet Li's Romeo Must Die: an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet(2000), Greg Lombardo's Macbeth in Manhanttan,2000), and Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost(2000).
Since Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespearean movies and especially with Kenneth Branagh's, Hollywood has kept to demystify Shakespeare, and make him accessible and entertaining to the common audience. But today most of Hollywood Shakespearean films show the collective inclinations to Americanize Shakespeare.
Now we have to consider the power of Hollywood which has already conquered most of the world cinema market. Hollywood is one of the biggest industries in U.S, and it has its own ideologies for its own benefit: conservative nationalism, capitalism and commercialism. Additionally Hollywood is suspected of representing the cultural imperialism of U.S.
Hollywood's popular Shakespearean films are rapidly replacing the original texts for young students, not only in the movies such as "Clueless" or "The Last Action Hero", but also in reality. Although Shakespeare has been localized and modernized in so many different ways untill now, Hollywoodization or Americanization of Shakespeare is very special and demands our another attention because their power is too overwhelming for other cultures and other thoughts. It is possible that many Shakespeare teachers would play the roles of the propagandists for the cultural imperialism of Hollywood or America against their own will.
Hollywood Shakespeare boom should be welcomed. But it also should be watched. This paper is to define the realities and orientation of Hollywood Shakespeare boom from 1990 to the present, and finally to explain Hollywood Shakespeare boom in the relation of Shakespeare and Hollywood ideology.