Academic literature on the topic 'Shakespeare film criticism'

This article explores metatheatricality and site specificity in four Shakespeare television films produced by Illuminations Media: Gregory Doran’s Macbeth (2001), Hamlet (2009) and Julius Caesar (2012), and Rupert Goold’s Macbeth (2010). Drawing on metatheatrical theory applied to the screen and recent criticism on site-specific theatre, I explore the films as self-referential and self-conscious works embedded in environments that oppose the artifice of drama to the ‘reality’ of normative television film. Shakespeare’s aesthetic metaphor, presented in self-contained theatrical worlds, does not depict autonomous fictions but is disrupted by outside ‘reality’.

Using William Shakespeare’s name is considered helpful for marketing films in English-speaking regions because of the authority that this name wields. This article reveals a different marketing landscape in Japan, where film distribution companies are indifferent to associations with Shakespeare. For example, when Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus (2011) was released in Japanese cinemas, it was retitled The Proof of the Hero; the Shakespearean association was deliberately erased from the Japanese title. Such a marketing policy should be situated within a wider trend of promoting non-Japanese films in Japan. It is possible to point out three major reasons: the unpopularity of American comedy films, the relative unpopularity of theatre, and Japanese distributors’ heavily localised marketing policies, which are often criticised by fans on social media.

Shakespeare’s plays were first adapted in the Chinese cinema in the era of silent motion pictures, such as A Woman Lawyer (from The Merchant of Venice, 1927), and A Spray of Plum Blossoms (from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1931). The most recent Chinese adaptations/spinoffs include two 2006 films based on Hamlet. After a brief review of Shakespeare’s history in the Chinese cinema, this study compares the two Chinese Hamlets released in 2006—Feng Xiaogang’s Banquet and Hu Xuehua’s Prince of the Himalayas to illustrate how Chinese filmmakers approach Shakespeare. Both re-invent Shakespeare’s Hamlet story and transfer it to a specific time, culture and landscape. The story of The Banquet takes place in a warring state in China of the 10th century while The Prince is set in pre-Buddhist Tibet. The former as a blockbuster movie in China has gained a financial success albeit being criticised for its commercial aesthetics. The latter, on the other hand, has raised attention amongst academics and critics and won several prizes though not as successful on the movie market. This study examines how the two Chinese Hamlet movies treat Shakespeare’s story in using different filmic strategies of story, character, picture, music and style.

The relationship between Prospero and Miranda is fairly typical for Shakespeare’s way of portraying parental authority and filial obligation. A strong and authoritative father, an absent mother and a (potentially) rebellious daughter are character types reused in many of his plays. In The Tempest, authority, power and ownership, be it political or domestic, are important themes. In criticism, Prospero is frequently discussed through the prism of his attitude to his “subordinates” - Ariel, Caliban and Miranda - and the play’s narrative is interpreted in the context of the theatre of power. Parental authority, a social construct, is a dynamic thing, and the Renaissance patterns discernible in Shakespeare’s plays are refashioned and changed in contemporary adaptations and appropriations of his plays. Informed by New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in relation to gender studies, this article seeks to examine the changing dynamics of the Prospero-Miranda relationship in three films - Derek Jarman’s (1979), Paul Mazursky’s (1982), and Julie Taymor’s (2010) - as well as Philip Osment’s 1988 play This Island’s Mine. Focusing on the issue of authority, power and ownership, the article aims at showing how stereotypical social and gender roles resonate with various political contexts of power.

In this article I discuss a moment from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which may be seen to present elements of Biblical Performance Criticism (BPC) techniques. I explore the revealing of Claudio in Act 5, Scene 1 as an example of Shakespeare’s appropriation of Biblical material for use in a stage play. I then examine the attitudes of some theologians and film-makers to the presentation of the raising of Lazarus and to comedic festivity. I suggest that Shakespeare’s use of Biblical material in his plays may afford insight for further exploration by and use in Biblical Performance Criticism.

Abstract Completing his trilogy of adaptations of Shakespearean tragedies, Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj’s film Haider (2014) tackles Hamlet. A generic fusion of realist drama, Bollywood movie, and espionage thriller, the film intersects the Elizabethan source text’s revenge plot with intertextual references to journalist Basharat Peer’s contemporary war memoir Curfewed Nights (2011), detailing the realities in insurgency-torn Kashmir in the 1990s. Taking its cue from the film’s controversial reception, which runs the gamut from censorship, appraisals, and criticism that Indian film does not need the ‘crutch’ of Hamlet to claim attention, this article explores questions about border-crossing, violence, and reconciliation raised on the level of form and content. Haider presents an adaptation of not one but two source texts: one ‘global’ and one ‘local’. The result, this article argues, is astonishingly harmonious and the contested metaphors of adaptation theory and global Shakespeare studies, such as ‘appropriation’ or ‘indigenization’, apply less to it than that of a transcultural ‘contact zone’ (Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd. ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2008) and of a ‘crossmapping’ (Bronfen, Elisabeth. Crossmappings. On Visual Culture. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018). By placing greater emphasis on communality and having the ending turn from revenge to forgiveness, Haider interrogates the transcultural appeal of Hamlet, drawing attention to histories of violent conflict. It also reveals a revisionist agenda that captures both hidden political realities and a haunting refiguration of Shakespeare.

Introduction It is very common for children’s films to adapt, rework, or otherwise re-imagine existing cultural material. Such re-imaginings are potential candidates for fidelity criticism: a mode of analysis whereby an adaptation is judged according to its degree of faithfulness to the source text. Indeed, it is interesting that while fidelity criticism is now considered outdated and problematic by adaptation theorists (see Stam; Leitch; and Whelehan) the issue of fidelity has tended to linger in the discussions that form around material adapted for children. In particular, it is often assumed that the re-imagining of cultural material for children will involve a process of “dumbing down” that strips the original text of its complexity so that it is more easily consumed by young audiences (see Semenza; Kellogg; Hastings; and Napolitano). This is especially the case when children’s films draw from texts—or genres—that are specifically associated with an adult readership. This paper explores such an interplay between children’s and adult’s culture with reference to the re-imagining of the horror genre in children’s animated film. Recent years have seen an inrush of animated films that play with horror tropes, conventions, and characters. These include Frankenweenie (2012), ParaNorman (2012), Hotel Transylvania (2012), Igor (2008), Monsters Inc. (2001), Monster House (2006), and Monsters vs Aliens (2009). Often diminishingly referred to as “kiddie horror” or “goth lite”, this re-imagining of the horror genre is connected to broader shifts in children’s culture, literature, and media. Anna Jackson, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis, for instance, have written about the mainstreaming of the Gothic in children’s literature after centuries of “suppression” (2); a glance at the titles in a children’s book store, they tell us, may suggest that “fear or the pretence of fear has become a dominant mode of enjoyment in literature for young people” (1). At the same time, as Lisa Hopkins has pointed out, media products with dark, supernatural, or Gothic elements are increasingly being marketed to children, either directly or through product tie-ins such as toys or branded food items (116-17). The re-imagining of horror for children demands our attention for a number of reasons. First, it raises questions about the commercialisation and repackaging of material that has traditionally been considered “high culture”, particularly when the films in question are seen to pilfer from sites of the literary Gothic such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The classic horror films of the 1930s such as James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) also have their own canonical status within the genre, and are objects of reverence for horror fans and film scholars alike. Moreover, aficionados of the genre have been known to object vehemently to any perceived simplification or dumbing down of horror conventions in order to address a non-horror audience. As Lisa Bode has demonstrated, such objections were articulated in many reviews of the film Twilight, in which the repackaging and simplifying of vampire mythology was seen to pander to a female, teenage or “tween” audience (710-11). Second, the re-imagining of horror for children raises questions about whether the genre is an appropriate source of pleasure and entertainment for young audiences. Horror has traditionally been understood as problematic and damaging even for adult viewers: Mark Jancovich, for instance, writes of the long-standing assumption that horror “is moronic, sick and worrying; that any person who derives pleasure from the genre is moronic, sick and potentially dangerous” and that both the genre and its fans are “deviant” (18). Consequently, discussions about the relationship between children and horror have tended to emphasise regulation, restriction, censorship, effect, and “the dangers of imitative violence” (Buckingham 95). As Paul Wells observes, there is a “consistent concern […] that horror films are harmful to children, but clearly these films are not made for children, and the responsibility for who views them lies with adult authority figures who determine how and when horror films are seen” (24). Previous academic work on the child as horror viewer has tended to focus on children as consumers of horror material designed for adults. Joanne Cantor’s extensive work in this area has indicated that fright reactions to horror media are commonly reported and can be long-lived (Cantor; and Cantor and Oliver). Elsewhere, the work of Sarah Smith (45-76) and David Buckingham (95-138) has indicated that children, like adults, can gain certain pleasures from the genre; it has also indicated that children can be quite media savvy when viewing horror, and can operate effectively as self-censors. However, little work has yet been conducted on whether (and how) the horror genre might be transformed for child viewers. With this in mind, I explore here the re-imagining of horror in two children’s animated films: Frankenweenie and ParaNorman. I will consider the way horror tropes, narratives, conventions, and characters have been reshaped in each film with a child’s perspective in mind. This, I argue, does not make them simplified texts or unsuitable objects of pleasure for adults; instead, the films demonstrate that the act of re-imagining horror for children calls into question long-held assumptions about pleasure, taste, and the boundaries between “adult” and “child”. Frankenweenie and ParaNorman: Rewriting the Myth of Childhood Innocence Frankenweenie is a stop-motion animation written by John August and directed by Tim Burton, based on a live-action short film made by Burton in 1984. As its name suggests, Frankenweenie re-imagines Shelley’s Frankenstein by transforming the relationship between creator and monster into that between child and pet. Burton’s Victor Frankenstein is a young boy living in a small American town, a creative loner who enjoys making monster movies. When his beloved dog Sparky is killed in a car accident, young Victor—like his predecessor in Shelley’s novel—is driven by the awfulness of this encounter with death to discover the “mysteries of creation” (Shelley 38): he digs up Sparky’s body, drags the corpse back to the family home, and reanimates him in the attic. This coming-to-life sequence is both a re-imagining of the famous animation scene in Whale’s film Frankenstein and a tender expression of the love between a boy and his dog. The re-imagined creation scene therefore becomes a site of negotiation between adult and child audiences: adult viewers familiar with Whale’s adaptation and its sense of electric spectacle are invited to rethink this scene from a child’s perspective, while child viewers are given access to a key moment from the horror canon. While this blurring of the lines between child and adult is a common theme in Burton’s work—many of his films exist in a liminal space where a certain childlike sensibility mingles with a more adult-centric dark humour—Frankenweenie is unique in that it actively re-imagines as “childlike” a film and/or work of literature that was previously populated by adult characters and associated with adult audiences. ParaNorman is the second major film from the animation studio Laika Entertainment. Following in the footsteps of the earlier Laika film Coraline (2009)—and paving the way for the studio’s 2014 release, Boxtrolls—ParaNorman features stop-motion animation, twisted storylines, and the exploration of dark themes and spaces by child characters. The film tells the story of Norman, an eleven year old boy who can see and communicate with the dead. This gift marks him as an outcast in the small town of Blithe Hollow, which has built its identity on the historic trial and hanging of an “evil” child witch. Norman must grapple with the town’s troubled past and calm the spirit of the vengeful witch; along the way, he and an odd assortment of children battle zombies and townsfolk alike, the latter appearing more monstrous than the former as the film progresses. Although ParaNorman does not position itself as an adaptation of a specific horror text, as does Frankenweenie, it shares with Burton’s film a playful intertextuality whereby references are constantly made to iconic films in the horror genre (including Halloween [1978], Friday the 13th [1980], and Day of the Dead [1985]). Both films were released in 2012 to critical acclaim. Interestingly, though, film critics seemed to disagree over who these texts were actually “for.” Some reviewers described the films as children’s texts, and warned that adults would likely find them “tame and compromised” (Scott), “toothless” (McCarthy) or “sentimental” (Bradshaw). These comments carry connotations of simplification: the suggestion is that the conventions and tropes of the horror genre have been weakened (or even contaminated) by the association with child audiences, and that consequently adults cannot (or should not) take pleasure in the films. Other reviewers of ParaNorman and Frankenweenie suggested that adults were more likely to enjoy the films than children (O’Connell; Berardinelli; and Wolgamott). Often, this suggestion came together with a warning about scary or dark content: the films were deemed to be too frightening for young children, and this exclusion of the child audience allowed the reviewer to acknowledge his or her own enjoyment of and investment in the film (and the potential enjoyment of other adult viewers). Lou Lumenick, for instance, peppers his review of ParaNorman with language that indicates his own pleasure (“probably the year’s most visually dazzling movie so far”; the climax is “too good to spoil”; the humour is “deliciously twisted”), while warning that children as old as eight should not be taken to see the film. Similarly, Christy Lemire warns that certain elements of Frankenweenie are scary and that “this is not really a movie for little kids”; she goes on to add that this scariness “is precisely what makes ‘Frankenweenie’ such a consistent wonder to watch for the rest of us” (emphasis added). In both these cases a line is drawn between child and adult viewers, and arguably it is the film’s straying into the illicit area of horror from the confines of a children’s text that renders it an object of pleasure for the adult viewer. The thrill of being scared is also interpreted here as a specifically adult pleasure. This need on the part of critics to establish boundaries between child and adult viewerships is interesting given that the films themselves strive to incorporate children (as characters and as viewers) into the horror space. In particular, both films work hard to dismantle the myths of childhood innocence—and associated ideas about pleasure and taste—that have previously seen children excluded from the culture of the horror film. Both the young protagonists, for instance, are depicted as media-literate consumers or makers of horror material. Victor is initially seen exhibiting one of his home-made monster movies to his bemused parents, and we first encounter Norman watching a zombie film with his (dead) grandmother; clearly a consummate horror viewer, Norman decodes the film for Grandma, explaining that the zombie is eating the woman’s head because, “that’s what they do.” In this way, the myth of childhood innocence is rewritten: the child’s mature engagement with the horror genre gives him agency, which is linked to his active position in the narrative (both Norman and Victor literally save their towns from destruction); the parents, meanwhile, are reduced to babbling stereotypes who worry that their sons will “turn out weird” (Frankenweenie) or wonder why they “can’t be like other kids” (ParaNorman). The films also rewrite the myth of childhood innocence by depicting Victor and Norman as children with dark, difficult lives. Importantly, each boy has encountered death and, for each, his parents have failed to effectively guide him through the experience. In Frankenweenie Victor is grief-stricken when Sparky dies, yet his parents can offer little more than platitudes to quell the pain of loss. “When you lose someone you love they never really leave you,” Victor’s mother intones, “they just move into a special place in your heart,” to which Victor replies “I don’t want him in my heart—I want him here with me!” The death of Norman’s grandmother is similarly dismissed by his mother in ParaNorman. “I know you and Grandma were very close,” she says, “but we all have to move on. Grandma’s in a better place now.” Norman objects: “No she’s not, she’s in the living room!” In both scenes, the literal-minded but intelligent child seems to understand death, loss, and grief while the parents are unable to speak about these “mature” concepts in a meaningful way. The films are also reminders that a child’s first experience of death can come very young, and often occurs via the loss of an elderly relative or a beloved pet. Death, Play, and the Monster In both films, therefore, the audience is invited to think about death. Consequently, there is a sense in each film that while the violent and sexual content of most horror texts has been stripped away, the dark centre of the horror genre remains. As Paul Wells reminds us, horror “is predominantly concerned with the fear of death, the multiple ways in which it can occur, and the untimely nature of its occurrence” (10). Certainly, the horror texts which Frankenweenie and ParaNorman re-imagine are specifically concerned with death and mortality. The various adaptations of Frankenstein that are referenced in Frankenweenie and the zombie films to which ParaNorman pays homage all deploy “the monster” as a figure who defies easy categorisation as living or dead. The othering of this figure in the traditional horror narrative allows him/her/it to both subvert and confirm cultural ideas about life, death, and human status: for monsters, as Elaine Graham notes, have long been deployed in popular culture as figures who “mark the fault-lines” and also “signal the fragility” of boundary structures, including the boundary between human and not human, and that between life and death (12). Frankenweenie’s Sparky, as an iteration of the Frankenstein monster, clearly fits this description: he is neither living nor dead, and his monstrosity emerges not from any act of violence or from physical deformity (he remains, throughout the film, a cute and lovable dog, albeit with bolts fixed to his neck) but from his boundary-crossing status. However, while most versions of the Frankenstein monster are deliberately positioned to confront ideas about the human/machine boundary and to perform notions of the posthuman, such concerns are sidelined in Frankenweenie. Instead, the emphasis is on concerns that are likely to resonate with children: Sparky is a reminder of the human preoccupation with death, loss, and the question of why (or whether, or when) we should abide by the laws of nature. Arguably, this indicates a re-imagining of the Frankenstein tale not only for child audiences but from a child’s perspective. In ParaNorman, similarly, the zombie–often read as an articulation of adult anxieties about war, apocalypse, terrorism, and the deterioration of social order (Platts 551-55)—is re-used and re-imagined in a childlike way. From a child’s perspective, the zombie may represent the horrific truth of mortality and/or the troublesome desire to live forever that emerges once this truth has been confronted. More specifically, the notion of dealing meaningfully with the past and of honouring rather than silencing the dead is a strong thematic undercurrent in ParaNorman, and in this sense the zombies are important figures who dramatise the connections between past and present. While this past/present connection is explored on many levels in ParaNorman—including the level of a town grappling with its dark history—it is Norman and his grandmother who take centre stage: the boundary-crossing figure of the zombie is re-realised here in terms of a negotiation with a presence that is now absent (the elderly relative who has died but is still remembered). Indeed, the zombies in this film are an implicit rebuke to Norman’s mother and her command that Norman “move on” after his grandmother’s death. The dead are still present, this film playfully reminds us, and therefore “moving on” is an overly simplistic and somewhat disrespectful response (especially when imposed on children by adult authority figures.) If the horror narrative is built around the notion that “normality is threatened by the Monster”, as Robin Wood has famously suggested, ParaNorman and Frankenweenie re-imagine this narrative of subversion from a child’s perspective (31). Both films open up a space within which the child is permitted to negotiate with the destabilising figure of the monster; the normality that is “threatened” here is the adult notion of the finality of death and, relatedly, the assumption that death is not a suitable subject for children to think or talk about. Breaking down such understandings, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman strive not so much to play with death (a phrase that implies a certain callousness, a problematic disregard for human life) but to explore death through the darkness of play. This is beautifully imaged in a scene from ParaNorman in which Norman and his friend Neil play with the ghost of Neil’s recently deceased dog. “We’re going to play with a dead dog in the garden,” Neil enthusiastically announces to his brother, “and we’re not even going to have to dig him up first!” Somewhat similarly, film critic Richard Corliss notes in his review of Frankenweenie that the film’s “message to the young” is that “children should play with dead things.” Through this intersection between “death” and “play”, both films propose a particularly child-like (although not necessarily child-ish) way of negotiating horror’s dark territory. Conclusion Animated film has always been an ambiguous space in terms of age, pleasure, and viewership. As film critic Margaret Pomeranz has observed, “there is this perception that if it’s an animated film then you can take the little littlies” (Pomeranz and Stratton). Animation itself is often a signifier of safety, fun, nostalgia, and childishness; it is a means of addressing families and young audiences. Yet at the same time, the fantastic and transformative aspects of animation can be powerful tools for telling stories that are dark, surprising, or somehow subversive. It is therefore interesting that the trend towards re-imagining horror for children that this paper has identified is unfolding within the animated space. It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully consider what animation as a medium brings to this re-imagining process. However, it is worth noting that the distinctive stop-motion style used in both films works to position them as alternatives to Disney products (for although Frankenweenie was released under the Disney banner, it is visually distinct from most of Disney’s animated ventures). The majority of Disney films are adaptations or re-imaginings of some sort, yet these re-imaginings look to fairytales or children’s literature for their source material. In contrast, as this paper has demonstrated, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman open up a space for boundary play: they give children access to tropes, narratives, and characters that are specifically associated with adult viewers, and they invite adults to see these tropes, narratives, and characters from a child’s perspective. Ultimately, it is difficult to determine the success of this re-imagining process: what, indeed, does a successful re-imagining of horror for children look like, and who might be permitted to take pleasure from it? Arguably, ParaNorman and Frankenweenie have succeeded in reshaping the genre without simplifying it, deploying tropes and characters from classic horror texts in a meaningful way within the complex space of children’s animated film. References Berardinelli, James. “Frankenweenie (Review).” Reelviews, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=2530›. Bode, Lisa. “Transitional Tastes: Teen Girls and Genre in the Critical Reception of Twilight.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 24.5 (2010): 707-19. Bradshaw, Peter. “Frankenweenie: First Look Review.” The Guardian, 11 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/oct/10/frankenweenie-review-london-film-festival-tim-burton›. Buckingham, David. Moving Images: Understanding Children’s Emotional Responses to Television. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. Cantor, Joanne. “‘I’ll Never Have a Clown in My House’ – Why Movie Horror Lives On.” Poetics Today 25.2 (2004): 283-304. Cantor, Joanne, and Mary Beth Oliver. “Developmental Differences in Responses to Horror”. The Horror Film. Ed. Stephen Prince. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2004. 224-41. Corliss, Richard. “‘Frankenweenie’ Movie Review: A Re-Animated Delight”. Time, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/04/tim-burtons-frankenweenie-a-re-animated-delight/›. Frankenweenie. Directed by Tim Burton. Walt Disney Pictures, 2012. Graham, Elaine L. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. Hastings, A. Waller. “Moral Simplification in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.” The Lion and the Unicorn 17.1 (1993): 83-92. Hopkins, Lisa. Screening the Gothic. Austin: U of Texas P, 2005. Jackson, Anna, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis. “Introduction.” The Gothic in Children’s Literature: Haunting the Borders. Eds. Anna Jackson, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis. New York: Routledge, 2008. 1-14. Jancovich, Mark. “General Introduction.” Horror: The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London: Routledge, 2002. 1-19. Kellogg, Judith L. “The Dynamics of Dumbing: The Case of Merlin.” The Lion and the Unicorn 17.1 (1993): 57-72. Leitch, Thomas. “Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory.” Criticism 45.2 (2003): 149-71. Lemire, Christy. “‘Frankenweenie’ Review: Tim Burton Reminds Us Why We Love Him.” The Huffington Post, 2 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/frankenweenie-review-tim-burton_n_1935142.html›. Lumenick, Lou. “So Good, It’s Scary (ParaNorman Review)”. New York Post, 17 Aug. 2012. 3 Jun. 2015 ‹http://nypost.com/2012/08/17/so-good-its-scary/›. McCarthy, Todd. “Frankenweenie: Film Review.” The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Sep. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/frankenweenie/review/372720›. Napolitano, Marc. “Disneyfying Dickens: Oliver & Company and The Muppet Christmas Carol as Dickensian Musicals.” Studies in Popular Culture 32.1 (2009): 79-102. O’Connell, Sean. “Middle School and Zombies? Awwwkward!” Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2012. 3 Jun. 2015 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/paranorman,1208210.html›. ParaNorman. Directed by Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Focus Features/Laika Entertainment, 2012. Platts, Todd K. “Locating Zombies in the Sociology of Popular Culture”. Sociology Compass 7 (2013): 547-60. Pomeranz, Margaret, and David Stratton. “Igor (Review).” At the Movies, 14 Dec. 2008. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2426109.htm›. Scott, A.O. “It’s Aliiiive! And Wagging Its Tail: ‘Frankenweenie’, Tim Burton’s Homage to Horror Classics.” New York Times, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/movies/frankenweenie-tim-burtons-homage-to-horror-classics.html›. Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. “Teens, Shakespeare, and the Dumbing Down Cliché: The Case of The Animated Tales.” Shakespeare Bulletin 26.2 (2008): 37-68. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1993 [1818]. Smith, Sarah J. Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Stam, Robert. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Eds. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 1-52. Wells, Paul. The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch. London: Wallflower, 2000. Whelehan, Imelda. “Adaptations: the Contemporary Dilemmas.” Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text. Eds. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan. London: Routledge, 1999. 3-19. Wolgamott, L. Kent. “‘Frankenweenie’ A Box-Office Bomb, But Superior Film.” Lincoln Journal Star, 10 Oct. 2012. 18 Aug. 2014 ‹http://journalstar.com/entertainment/movies/l-kent-wolgamott-frankenweenie-a-box-office-bomb-but-superior/article_42409e82-89b9-5794-8082-7b5de3d469e2.html›. Wood, Robin. “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s.” Horror: The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London: Routledge, 2002. 25-32.

IntroductionThis paper argues that the industrial contexts of re-imagining, or transforming, literary icons deploy the promotional strategies that are associated with what are usually seen as lesser, or purely commercial, genres. Promotional paratexts (Genette Paratexts; Gray; Hills) reveal transformations of content that position audiences to receive them as creative innovations, superior in many senses to their literary precursors due to the distinctive expertise of creative professionals. This interpretation leverages Matt Hills’ argument that certain kinds of “quality” screened drama are discursively framed as possessing the cultural capital associated with auterist cinema, despite their participation in the marketing logics of media franchising (Johnson). Adaptation theorist Linda Hutcheon proposes that when audiences receive literary adaptations, their pleasure inheres in a mixture of “repetition and difference”, “familiarity and novelty” (114). The difference can take many forms, but may be framed as guaranteed by the “distinction”, or—in Bourdieu’s terms—the cultural capital, of talented individuals and companies. Gerard Genette (Palimpsests) argued that “proximations” or updatings of classic literature involve acknowledging historical shifts in ideological norms as well as aesthetic techniques and tastes. When literary brands are made over using different media, there are economic lures to participation in currently fashionable technologies, as well as current political values. Linda Hutcheon also underlines the pragmatic constraints on the re-imagining of literary brands. “Expensive collaborative art forms” (87) such as films and large stage productions look for safe bets, seeking properties that have the potential to increase the audience for their franchise. Thus the marketplace influences both production and the experience of audiences. While this paper does not attempt a thoroughgoing analysis of audience reception appropriate to a fan studies approach, it borrows concepts from Matt Hills’s theorisation of marketing communication associated with screen “makeovers”. It shows that literary fiction and cinematic texts associated with celebrated authors or auteurist producer-directors share branding discourses characteristic of contemporary consumer culture. Strategies include marketing “reveals” of transformed content (Hills 319). Transformed content is presented not only as demonstrating originality and novelty; these promotional paratexts also perform displays of cultural capital on the part of production teams or of auteurist creatives (321). Case Study 1: Steven Spielberg, The Adventures of Tintin (2011) The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is itself an adaptation of a literary brand that reimagines earlier transmedia genres. According to Spielberg’s biographer, the Tintin series of bandes dessinée (comics or graphic novels) by Belgian artist Hergé (Georges Remi), has affinities with “boys’ adventure yarns” referencing and paying homage to the “silent filmmaking and the movie serials of the 1930s and ‘40s” (McBride 530). The three comics adapted by Spielberg belong to the more escapist and less “political” phase of Hergé’s career (531). As a fast-paced action movie, building to a dramatic and spectacular closure, the major plot lines of Spielberg’s film centre on Tintin’s search for clues to the secret of a model ship he buys at a street market. Teaming up with an alcoholic sea captain, Tintin solves the mystery while bullying Captain Haddock into regaining his sobriety, his family seat, and his eagerness to partner in further heroic adventures. Spielberg’s industry stature allowed him the autonomy to combine the commercial motivations of contemporary “tentpole” cinema adaptations with aspirations towards personal reputation as an auteurist director. Many of the promotional paratexts associated with the film stress the aesthetic distinction of the director’s practice alongside the blockbuster spectacle of an action film. Reinventing the Literary Brand as FranchiseComic books constitute the “mother lode of franchises” (Balio 26) in a industry that has become increasingly global and risk-adverse (see also Burke). The fan base for comic book movies is substantial and studios pre-promote their investments at events such as the four-day Comic-Con festival held annually in San Diego (Balio 26). Described as “tentpole” films, these adaptations—often of superhero genres—are considered conservative investments by the Hollywood studios because they “constitute media events; […] lend themselves to promotional tie-ins”; are “easy sells in world markets and […] have the ability to spin off sequels to create a franchise” (Balio 26). However, Spielberg chose to adapt a brand little known in the primary market (the US), thus lacking the huge fan-based to which pre-release promotional paratexts might normally be targeted. While this might seem a risky undertaking, it does reflect “changed industry realities” that seek to leverage important international markets (McBride 531). As a producer Spielberg pursued his own strategies to minimise economic risk while allowing him creative choices. This facilitated the pursuit of professional reputation alongside commercial success. The dual release of both War Horse and Tintin exemplify the director-producer’s career practice of bracketing an “entertainment” film with a “more serious work” (McBride 530). The Adventures of Tintin was promoted largely as technical tour de force and spectacle. Conversely War Horse—also adapted from a children’s text—was conceived as a heritage/nostalgia film, marked with the attention to period detail and lyric cinematography of what Matt Hills describes as “aestheticized fiction”. Nevertheless, promotional paratexts stress the discourse of auteurist transformation even in the case of the designedly more commercial Tintin film, as I discuss further below. These pre-release promotions emphasise Spielberg’s “painterly” directorial hand, as well as the professional partnership with Peter Jackson that enabled cutting edge innovation in animation. As McBride explains, the “dual release of the two films in the US was an unusual marketing move” seemingly designed to “showcase Spielberg’s artistic versatility” (McBride 530).Promotional Paratexts and Pre-Recruitment of FansAs Jonathan Gray and Jason Mittell have explained, marketing paratexts predate screen adaptations (Gray; Mittell). As part of the commercial logic of franchise development, selective release of information about a literary brand’s transformation are designed to bring fans of the “original,” or of genre communities such as fantasy or comics audiences, on board with the adaptation. Analysing Steven Moffat’s revelations about the process of adapting and creating a modern TV series from Conan Doyle’s canon (Sherlock), Matt Hills draws attention to the focus on the literary, rather than the many screen reinventions. Moffat’s focus on his childhood passion for the Holmes stories thus grounds the team’s adaptation in a period prior to any “knowledge of rival adaptations […] and any detailed awareness of canon” (326). Spielberg (unlike Jackson) denied any such childhood affective investment, claiming to have been unaware of the similarities between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and the Tintin series until alerted by a French reviewer of Raiders (McBride 530). In discussing the paradoxical fidelity of his and Jackson’s reimagining of Tintin, Spielberg performed homage to the literary brand while emphasising the aesthetic limitations within the canon of prior adaptations:‘We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live-action film’, Spielberg explained during preproduction, ‘and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created. Hergé’s characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul that goes far beyond anything we’ve been able to create with computer-animated characters.’ (McBride 531)In these “reveals”, the discourse positions Spielberg and Jackson as both fans and auteurs, demonstrating affective investment in Hergé’s concepts and world-building while displaying the ingenuity of the partners as cinematic innovators.The Branded Reveal of Transformed ContentAccording to Hills, “quality TV drama” no less than “makeover TV,” is subject to branding practices such as the “reveal” of innovations attributed to creative professionals. Marketing paratexts discursively frame the “professional and creative distinction” of the teams that share and expand the narrative universe of the show’s screen or literary precursors (319–20). Distinction here refers to the cultural capital of the creative teams, as well as to the essential differences between what adaptation theorists refer to as the “hypotext” (source/original) and “hypertext” (adaptation) (Genette Paratexts; Hutcheon). The adaptation’s individualism is fore-grounded, as are the rights of creative teams to inherit, transform, and add richness to the textual universe of the precursor texts. Spielberg denied the “anxiety of influence” (Bloom) linking Tintin and Raiders, though he is reported to have enthusiastically acknowledged the similarities once alerted to them. Nevertheless, Spielberg first optioned Hergé’s series only two years later (1983). Paratexts “reveal” Hergé’s passing of the mantle from author to director, quoting his: “ ‘Yes, I think this guy can make this film. Of course it will not be my Tintin, but it can be a great Tintin’” (McBride 531).Promotional reveals in preproduction show both Spielberg and Jackson performing mutually admiring displays of distinction. Much of this is focused on the choice of motion capture animation, involving attachment of motion sensors to an actor’s body during performance, permitting mapping of realistic motion onto the animated figure. While Spielberg paid tribute to Jackson’s industry pre-eminence in this technical field, the discourse also underlines Spielberg’s own status as auteur. He claimed that Tintin allowed him to feel more like a painter than any prior film. Jackson also underlines the theme of direct imaginative control:The process of operating the small motion-capture virtual camera […] enabled Spielberg to return to the simplicity and fluidity of his 8mm amateur films […] [The small motion-capture camera] enabled Spielberg to put himself literally in the spaces occupied by the actors […] He could walk around with them […] and improvise movements for a film Jackson said they decided should have a handheld feel as much as possible […] All the production was from the imagination right to the computer. (McBride 532)Along with cinematic innovation, pre-release promotions thus rehearse the imaginative pre-eminence of Spielberg’s vision, alongside Jackson and his WETA company’s fantasy credentials, their reputation for meticulous detail, and their innovation in the use of performance capture in live-action features. This rehearsal of professional capital showcases the difference and superiority of The Adventures of Tintin to previous animated adaptations.Case Study 2: Andrew Motion: Silver, Return to Treasure Island (2012)At first glance, literary fiction would seem to be a far-cry from the commercial logics of tentpole cinema. The first work of pure fiction by a former Poet Laureate of Great Britain, updating a children’s classic, Silver: Return to Treasure Island signals itself as an exemplar of quality fiction. Yet the commercial logics of the publishing industry, no less than other media franchises, routinise practices such as author interviews at bookshop visits and festivals, generating paratexts that serve its promotional cycle. Motion’s choice of this classic for adaptation is a step further towards a popular readership than his poetry—or the memoirs, literary criticism, or creative non-fiction (“fabricated” or speculative biographies) (see Mars-Jones)—that constitute his earlier prose output. Treasure Island’s cultural status as boy’s adventure, its exotic setting, its dramatic characters long available in the public domain through earlier screen adaptations, make it a shrewd choice for appropriation in the niche market of literary fiction. Michael Cathcart’s introduction to his ABC Radio National interview with the author hones in on this:Treasure Island is one of those books that you feel as if you’ve read, event if you haven’t. Long John Silver, young Jim Hawkins, Blind Pew, Israel Hands […], these are people who stalk our collective unconscious, and they’re back. (Cathcart)Motion agrees with Cathcart that Treasure Island constitutes literary and common cultural heritage. In both interviews I analyse in the discussion here, Motion states that he “absorbed” the book, “almost by osmosis” as a child, yet returned to it with the mature, critical, evaluative appreciation of the young adult and budding poet (Darragh 27). Stevenson’s original is a “bloody good book”; the implication is that it would not otherwise have met the standards of a literary doyen, possessing a deep knowledge of, and affect for, the canon of English literature. Commercial Logic and Cultural UpdatingSilver is an unauthorised sequel—in Genette’s taxonomy, a “continuation”. However, in promotional interviews on the book and broadcast circuit, Motion claimed a kind of license from the practice of Stevenson, a fellow writer. Stevenson himself notes that a significant portion of the “bar silver” remained on the island, leaving room for a sequel to be generated. In Silver, Jim, the son of Stevenson’s Jim Hawkins, and Natty, daughter of Long John Silver and the “woman of colour”, take off to complete and confront the consequences of their parents’ adventures. In interviews, Motion identifies structural gaps in the precursor text that are discursively positioned to demand completion from, in effect, Stevenson’s literary heir: [Stevenson] was a person who was interested in sequels himself, indeed he wrote a sequel to Kidnapped [which is] proof he was interested in these things. (Cathcart)He does leave lots of doors and windows open at the end of Treasure Island […] perhaps most bewitchingly for me, as the Hispaniola sails away, they leave behind three maroons. So what happened to them? (Darragh)These promotional paratexts drop references to Great Expectations, Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, Wild Sargasso Sea, the plays of Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard, the poetry of Auden and John Clare, and Stevenson’s own “self-conscious” sources: Defoe, Marryat. Discursively, they evidence “double coding” (Hills) as both homage for the canon and the literary “brand” of Stevenson’s popular original, while implicated in the commercial logic of the book industry’s marketing practices.Displays of DistinctionMotion’s interview with Sarah Darragh, for the National Association of Teachers of English, performs the role of man of letters; Motion “professes” and embodies the expertise to speak authoritatively on literature, its criticism, and its teaching. Literature in general, and Silver in particular, he claims, is not “just polemic”, that is “not how it works”, but it does has the ability to recruit readers to moral perspectives, to convey “ new ideas[s] of the self.” Silver’s distinction from Treasure Island lies in its ability to position “deep” readers to develop what is often labelled “theory of mind” (Wolf and Barzillai): “what good literature does, whether you know it or not, is to allow you to be someone else for a bit,” giving us “imaginative projection into another person’s experience” (Darragh 29). A discourse of difference and superiority is also associated with the transformed “brand.” Motion is emphatic that Silver is not a children’s book—“I wouldn’t know how to do that” (Darragh 28)—a “lesser” genre in canonical hierarchies. It is a writerly and morally purposeful fiction, “haunted” by greats of the canon and grounded in expertise in philosophical and literary heritage. In addition, he stresses the embedded seriousness of his reinvention: it is “about how to be a modern person and about greed and imperialism” (Darragh 27), as well as a deliberatively transformed artefact:The road to literary damnation is […] paved with bad sequels and prequels, and the reason that they fail […] is that they take the original on at its own game too precisely […] so I thought, casting my mind around those that work [such as] Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead […] or Jean Rhys’ wonderful novel Wide Sargasso Sea which is about the first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre […] that if I took a big step away from the original book I would solve this problem of competing with something I was likely to lose in competition with and to create something that was a sort of homage […] towards it, but that stood at a significant distance from it […]. (Cathcart) Motion thus rehearses homage and humility, while implicitly defending the transformative imagination of his “sequel” against the practice of lesser, failed, clonings.Motion’s narrative expansion of Stevenson’s fictional universe is an example of “overwriting continuity” established by his predecessor, and thus allowing him to make “meaningful claims to creative and professional distinction” while demonstrating his own “creative viewpoint” (Hills 320). The novel boldly recapitulates incidental details, settings, and dramatic embedded character-narrations from Treasure Island. Distinctively, though, its opening sequence is a paean to romantic sensibility in the tradition of Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1799–1850).The Branded Reveal of Transformed ContentSilver’s paratexts discursively construct its transformation and, by implication, improvement, from Stevenson’s original. Motion reveals the sequel’s change of zeitgeist, its ideological complexity and proximity to contemporary environmental and postcolonial values. These are represented through the superior perspective of romanticism and the scientific lens on the natural world:Treasure Island is a pre-Enlightenment story, it is pre-French Revolution, it’s the bad old world […] where people have a different ideas of democracy […] Also […] Jim is beginning to be aware of nature in a new way […] [The romantic poet, John Clare] was publishing in the 1820s but a child in the early 1800s, I rather had him in mind for Jim as somebody who was seeing the world in the same sort of way […] paying attention to the little things in nature, and feeling a sort of kinship with the natural world that we of course want to put an environmental spin on these days, but [at] the beginning of the 1800s was a new and important thing, a romantic preoccupation. (Cathcart)Motion’s allusion to Wild Sargasso Sea discursively appropriates Rhys’s feminist and postcolonial reimagination of Rochester’s creole wife, to validate his portrayal of Long John Silver’s wife, the “woman of colour.” As Christian Moraru has shown, this rewriting of race is part of a book industry trend in contemporary American adaptations of nineteenth-century texts. Interviews position readers of Silver to receive the novel in terms of increased moral complexity, sharing its awareness of the evils of slavery and violence silenced in prior adaptations.Two streams of influence [come] out of Treasure Island […] one is Pirates of the Caribbean and all that jolly jape type stuff, pirates who are essentially comic [or pantomime] characters […] And the other stream, which is the other face of Long John Silver in the original is a real menace […] What we are talking about is Somalia. Piracy is essentially a profoundly serious and repellent thing […]. (Cathcart)Motion’s transformation of Treasure Island, thus, improves on Stevenson by taking some of the menace that is “latent in the original”, yet downplayed by the genre reinvented as “jolly jape” or “gorefest.” In contrast, Silver is “a book about serious things” (Cathcart), about “greed and imperialism” and “how to be a modern person,” ideologically reconstructed as “philosophical history” by a consummate man of letters (Darragh).ConclusionWhen iconic literary brands are reimagined across media, genres and modes, creative professionals frequently need to balance various affective and commercial investments in the precursor text or property. Updatings of classic texts require interpretation and the negotiation of subtle changes in values that have occurred since the creation of the “original.” Producers in risk-averse industries such as screen and publishing media practice a certain pragmatism to ensure that fans’ nostalgia for a popular brand is not too violently scandalised, while taking care to reproduce currently popular technologies and generic conventions in the interest of maximising audience. As my analysis shows, promotional circuits associated with “quality” fiction and cinema mirror the commercial logics associated with less valorised genres. Promotional paratexts reveal transformations of content that position audiences to receive them as creative innovations, superior in many senses to their literary precursors due to the distinctive expertise of creative professionals. Paying lip-service the sophisticated reading practices of contemporary fans of both cinema and literary fiction, their discourse shows the conflicting impulses to homage, critique, originality, and recruitment of audiences.ReferencesBalio, Tino. Hollywood in the New Millennium. London: Palgrave Macmillan/British Film Institute, 2013.Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987. Burke, Liam. The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre. Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 2015. Cathcart, Michael (Interviewer). Andrew Motion's Silver: Return to Treasure Island. 2013. Transcript of Radio Interview. Prod. Kate Evans. 26 Jan. 2013. 10 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/booksplus/silver/4293244#transcript›.Darragh, Sarah. "In Conversation with Andrew Motion." NATE Classroom 17 (2012): 27–30.Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1997. ———. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York UP, 2010.Hills, Matt. "Rebranding Dr Who and Reimagining Sherlock: 'Quality' Television as 'Makeover TV Drama'." International Journal of Cultural Studies 18.3 (2015): 317–31.Johnson, Derek. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. Postmillennial Pop. New York: New York UP, 2013.Mars-Jones, Adam. "A Thin Slice of Cake." The Guardian, 16 Feb. 2003. 5 Oct. 2015 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/16/andrewmotion.fiction›.McBride, Joseph. Steven Spielberg: A Biography. 3rd ed. London: Faber & Faber, 2012.Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York UP, 2015.Moraru, Christian. Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning. Herndon, VA: State U of New York P, 2001. Motion, Andrew. Silver: Return to Treasure Island. London: Jonathan Cape, 2012.Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Paramount/Columbia Pictures, 1981.Wolf, Maryanne, and Mirit Barzillai. "The Importance of Deep Reading." Educational Leadership. March (2009): 32–36.Wordsworth, William. The Prelude, or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem. London: Edward Moxon, 1850.

Apparently some people upon coming across [Down Syndrome dolls] were offended. […] Still, it’s curious, and telling, what gives offense. Was it the shock of seeing a doll not modeled on the normative form that caused such offense? Or the assumption that any representation of Down Syndrome must naturally intend ridicule? Either way, it would seem that we might benefit from an examination of such reactions—especially as they relate to instances of the idealisation of the human form that dolls […] represent. (Faulkner) IntroductionWhen Joanne Faulkner describes public criticism of dolls designed to look like they have Down Syndrome, she draws attention to the need for an examination of the way discourses of disability are communicated. She calls, in particular, for an interrogation of people’s reactions to the disruption of the idealised human form that most dolls adopt. The case of Down Syndrome dolls is fascinating, yet critical discussion of these dolls from a disability or cultural studies perspective is conspicuously lacking. To address this lack, this paper draws upon theories of the cultural construction of disability, beauty, and normalcy (Garland-Thompson, Kumari Campbell, Wendell), to explore the way ideas about disability are communicated and circulated. The dominant discourse of disability is medical, where people are diagnosed or identified as disabled if they meet certain criteria, or lists of physical impairments. These lists have a tendency to subsume the disparate qualities of disability (Garland-Thompson) and remove people considered disabled from the social and cultural world in which they live (Snyder and Mitchell 377). While Down Syndrome dolls, produced by Downi Creations and Helga’s European Speciality Toys (HEST) in the US and Europe respectively, are reflective of such lists, they also perform the cultural function of increasing the visibility of disability in society. In addition, the companies distributing these dolls state that they are striving for greater inclusion of people with Down Syndrome (Collins, Parks). However, the effect of the dominance of medicalised discourses of disability can be seen in the public reaction to these dolls. This paper seeks also to bring an interrogation of disability into dialogue with a critical analysis of the discursive function of lists.The paper begins with a consideration of lists as they have been used to define disability and organise knowledge within medicine, and the impact this has had on the position of disability within society. In order to differentiate itself from medical discourses, the emerging social model also relied on lists during the 1980s and 1990s. However, these lists also decontextualised disability by ignoring certain factors for political advantage. The social model, like medicine, tended to ignore the diversity of humanity it was apparently arguing for (Snyder and Mitchell 377). The focus then shifts to the image of Down Syndrome dolls and the ensuing negative interpretation of them focusing, in particular, on reader comments following a Mail Online (Fisher) article. Although the dolls were debated across the blogosphere on a number of disability, special needs parenting, and Down Syndrome specific blogs, people commenting on The Mail Online—a UK based conservative tabloid newspaper—offer useful insights into communication and meaning making around disability. People establish meanings about disability through communication (Hedlund 766). While cultural responses to disability are influenced by a number of paradigms of interpretation such as superstition, religion, and fear, this paper is concerned with the rejection of bodies that do not ascribe to cultural standards of beauty and seeks to explore this paradigm alongside and within the use of lists by the various models of disability. This paper interrogates the use of lists in the way meanings about disability are communicated through the medical diagnostic list, the Down Syndrome dolls, and reactions to them. Each list reduces the disparate qualities and experiences of disability, yet as a cultural artefact, these dolls go some way towards recognising the social and cultural world that medicalised discourses of disability ignore. Drawing on the use of lists within different frameworks of disability, this paper contrasts the individual, or medical, model of disability (that being disabled is a personal problem) with the social model (that exclusion due to disability is social oppression). Secondly, the paper compares the characteristics of Down Syndrome dolls with actual characteristics of Down Syndrome to conclude that these features aim to be a celebrated, not stigmatised, aspect of the doll. By reasserting alternative notions of the body, the dolls point towards a more diverse society where disability can be understood in relation to social oppression. However, these aims of celebration have not automatically translated to a more diverse understanding. This paper aims to complicate perceptions of disability beyond a rudimentary list of characteristics through a consideration of the negative public response to these dolls. These responses are an example of the cultural subjugation of disability.Lists and the Creation of Normative Cultural ValuesFor Robert Belknap, lists are the dominant way of “organizing data relevant to human functioning” (8). While lists are used in a number of ways and for a variety of purposes, Belknap divides lists into two categories—the practical and the literary. Practical lists store meanings, while literary lists create them (89). Belknap’s recognition of the importance of meaning making is particularly relevant to a cultural interrogation of disability. As Mitchell and Snyder comment:Disability’s representational “fate” is not so much dependant upon a tradition of negative portrayals as it is tethered to inciting the act of meaning-making itself. (6)Disability unites disparate groups of people whose only commonality is that they are considered “abnormal” (Garland-Thompson). Ableism—the beliefs, processes, and practices which produce the ideal body—is a cultural project in which normative values are created in an attempt to neutralise the fact that all bodies are out of control (Kumari Campbell). Medical models use diagnostic lists and criteria to remove bodies from their social and cultural context and enforce an unequal power dynamic (Snyder and Mitchell 377).By comparison, the social model of disability shifts the emphasis to situate disability in social and cultural practices (Goggin and Newell 36). Lists have also been integral to the formation of the social model of disability as theorists established binary oppositions between medical and social understandings of disability (Oliver 22). While these lists have no “essential meaning,” through discourse they shape human experience (Liggett). Lists bring disparate items together to structure meaning and organisation. According to Hedlund, insights into the experience of disability—which is neither wholly medical nor wholly social—can be found in the language we use to communicate ideas about disability (766). For example, while the recent production of children’s dolls designed to reflect a list of the physical features of Down Syndrome (Table 2) may have no inherent meaning, negative public reception reveals recognisable modes of understanding disability. Down Syndrome dolls are in stark contrast to dolls popularly available which assume a normative representation. For Blair and Shalmon (15), popular children’s toys communicate cultural standards of beauty. Naomi Wolf describes beauty as a socially constructed normative value used to disempower women in particular. The idealisation of the human form is an aspect of children’s toys that has been criticised for perpetuating a narrow conception of beauty (Levy 189). Disability is likewise subject to social construction and is part of a collective social reality beyond diagnostic lists (Hedlund 766).Organising Knowledge: The Social vs. Medical Model of DisabilityDisability has long been moored in medical cultures and institutions which emphasise a sterile ideal of the body based on a diagnosis of biological difference as deviance. For example, in 1866, John Langdon Down sought to provide a diagnostic classification system for people with, what would later come to be called (after him), Down Syndrome. He focused on physical features:The hair is […] of a brownish colour, straight and scanty. The face is flat and broad, and destitute of prominence. The cheeks are roundish, and extended laterally. The eyes are obliquely placed, and the internal canthi more than normally distant from one another. The palpebral fissure is very narrow. The forehead is wrinkled transversely from the constant assistance which the levatores palpebrarum derive from the occipito-frontalis muscle in the opening of the eyes. The lips are large and thick with transverse fissures. The tongue is long, thick, and is much roughened. The nose is small. The skin has a slight dirty yellowish tinge, and is deficient in elasticity, giving the appearance of being too large for the body. (Down)These features form what Belknap would describe as a “pragmatic” list (12). For Belknap, scientific classification, such as the description Langdon Down offers above, introduces precision and validation to the use of lists (167). The overt principle linking these disparate characteristics together is the normative body from which these features deviate. Medicalised discourses, such as Down’s list, have been linked with the institutionalisation of people with this condition and their exclusion from the broader community (Hickey-Moody 23). Such emphasis on criteria to proffer diagnosis removes and decontextualises bodies from the world in which they live (Snyder and Mitchell 370). This world may in fact be the disabling factor, rather than the person’s body. The social model emerged in direct opposition to medicalised definitions of disability as a number of activists with disabilities in the United Kingdom formed The Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and concluded that people with disability are disabled not by their bodies but by a world structured to exclude their bodies (Finkelstein 13). By separating disability (socially created) from impairment (the body), disability is understood as society’s unwillingness to accommodate the needs of people with impairments. The British academic and disability activist Michael Oliver was central to the establishment of the social model of disability. Following the activities of the UPIAS, Oliver (re)defined disability as a “form of social oppression,” and created two lists (reproduced below) to distinguish between the social and individual (or medical) models of disability. By utilising the list form in this way, Oliver both provided a repository of information regarding the social model of disability and contextualised it in direct opposition to what he describes as the individual model. These lists present the social model as a coherent discipline, in an easy to understand format. As Belknap argues, the suggestion of order is a major tool of the list (98). Oliver’s list suggests a clear order to the emerging social model of disability—disability is a problem with society, not an individual. However, this list was problematic because it appeared to disregard impairment within the experience of disability. As the “impersonal became political” (Snyder and Mitchell 377), impairment became the unacknowledged ambiguity in the binary opposition the social model was attempting to create (Shakespeare 35). Nevertheless, Oliver’s lists successfully enforced a desired order to the social model of disability. The individual modelThe social modelPersonal tragedy theorySocial oppression theoryPersonal problemSocial problemIndividual treatmentSocial actionMedicalisationSelf helpProfessional dominanceIndividual and collective responsibilityExpertiseExperienceAdjustmentAffirmationIndividual identityCollective identityPrejudiceDiscriminationAttitudesBehaviourCareRightsControlChoicePolicyPoliticsIndividual adaptation Social changeTable 1 The Individual v Social Model of Disability (Oliver)The social model then went through a period of “lists,” especially when discussing media and culture. Positive versus negative portrayals of disability were identified and scholars listed strategies for the appropriate representation of disability (Barnes, Barnes Mercer and Shakespeare). The representations of impairment or the physical markers of disability were discouraged as the discipline concerned itself with establishing disability as a political struggle against a disabling social world. Oliver’s lists arrange certain “facts” about disability. Disability is framed as a social phenomenon where certain aspects are emphasised and others left out. While Oliver explains that these lists were intended to represent extreme ends of a continuum to illustrate the distinction between disability and impairment (33), these are not mutually exclusive categories (Shakespeare 35). Disability is not simply a list of physical features, nor is it a clear distinction between individual/medical and social models. By utilising lists, the social model reacts to and attempts to move beyond the particular ordering provided by the medical model, but remains tied to a system of classification that imposes order on human functioning. Critical analysis of the representation of disability must re-engage the body by moving beyond binaries and pragmatic lists. While lists organise data central to human functioning, systems of meaning shape the organisation of human experience. Down Syndrome dolls, explored in the next section, complicate the distinction between the medical and social models.Down Syndrome DollsThese dolls are based on composites of a number of children with Down Syndrome (Hareyan). Helga Parks, CEO of HEST, describes the dolls as a realistic representation of nine physical features of Down Syndrome. Likewise, Donna Moore of Downi Creations employed a designer to oversee the production of the dolls which boast 13 features of Down Syndrome (Velasquez). These features are listed in the table below. HEST Down Syndrome Dolls Downi CreationsSmall ears set low on head with a fold at the topSmall ears with a fold at the topEars set low on the headSmall mouthSmall mouthProtruding tongueSlightly protruding tongueShortened fingers Shortened fingersPinkie finger curves inwardAlmond shaped eyesAlmond-shaped eyesHorizontal crease in palm of handHorizontal crease in palm of handGap between first and second toeA gap between the first and second toesShortened toesFlattened back of headFlattened back of headFlattened bridge across nose Flattened bridge across noseOptional: An incision in the chest to indicate open-heart surgery Table 2: Down Syndrome Dolls (Parks, Velasquez) Achieving the physical features of Down Syndrome is significant because Parks and Moore wanted children with the condition to recognise themselves:When a child with Down’s syndrome [sic.] picks up a regular doll, he doesn’t see himself, he sees the world’s perception of “perfect.” Our society is so focused on bodily perfection. (Cresswell)Despite these motivations, studies show that children with Down Syndrome prefer to play with “typical dolls” that do not reflect the physical characteristics of Down Syndrome (Cafferty 49). According to Cafferty, it is possible that children prefer typical dolls because they are “more attractive” (49). Similar studies of diverse groups of children have shown that children prefer to play with dolls they perceive as fitting into social concepts of beauty (Abbasi). Deeply embedded cultural notions of beauty—which exclude disability (see Morris)—are communicated from childhood (Blair & Shalmon 15). Notions of bodily perfection dominate children’s toys and Western culture in general as Cresswell comments above. Many bodies, not just those deemed “disabled,” do not conform to these cultural standards. Cultural ideals of beauty and an idealisation of the human body according to increasingly narrow parameters are becoming conflated with conceptions of normality (Wendell 86). Recognition of disability as subject to cultural rejection allows us to see “beauty and normalcy [as] a series of practices and positions [taken] in order to avoid the stigmatization of ugliness and abnormality” (Garland-Thompson). The exaggerated features of the doll problematise the idea that people with disability should strive to appear as nondisabled as possible and in turn highlights that some people, such as those with Down Syndrome, cannot “pass” as nondisabled and must therefore navigate a life and community that is not welcoming. While lists of the features of Down Syndrome store associated medicalised meanings, the discussion of the dolls online (the medium through which they are sold) provides insight into the cultural interpretation of disability and the way meaning is made. The next section of the paper considers a selection of negative responses to the Down Syndrome dolls that followed an article published in Mail Online (Fisher). What Causes Offence? Prior to Down Syndrome dolls, the majority of “disability dolls” were constructed through their accessories rather than through the dolls’ physical form and features. Wheelchairs, white canes, guide dogs and harnesses, plastic walkers, leg braces, and hearing aids could be purchased for use with dolls. Down Syndrome dolls look different as the features of impairment are embedded in the dolls’ construction. While accessories have a more temporary feel about them, the permanence of the impairments attributed to the doll was problematic for some who felt it projected a negative image of disability. Listed below are several negative comments following an article published in Mail Online (Fisher):What a grim world we are living in. No longer are dollies for play, for make believe, or for fun. Now it all about self image and psychological “help.” We “disabled” know we are “disabled”—we don’t need a doll to remind us of that! Stop making everything PC; let children be children and play and laugh once again!I think it’s sick and patronising.Who on earth are those education “experts?” Has nobody told them that you don’t educate children by mirroring their defects/weaknesses/negative traits but by doing exactly the opposite, mirroring back the BEST in them?The Downs Syndrome doll looks like they took the physical traits and presented them in an exaggerated way to make them more noticeable. That doll does not look attractive to me at all. If someone has a child that WANTS such a doll, fine. I can’t really see how it would help many of them, it would be like a huge sign saying “You are different.”The terminology used (grim, sick, patronising, defect, weak, negative, unattractive, different) to describe disability in these posts is significant. These descriptions are ideological categories which disadvantage and devalue “bodies that do not conform to certain cultural standards” (Garland-Thompson). Implicit and explicit in all of these comments is the sense that disability and Downs Syndrome in particular is undesirable, unattractive even. When listed together, like Belknap’s literary lists, they are not random or isolated interpretations; they form part of a larger system of meaning making around disability.These responses are informed by the notion that in order to gain equality in society, people with disability must suppress their difference and focus instead on how they are really just like everybody else. However, this focus ignores barriers to inclusion, such as in the rejection of bodies that do not ascribe to cultural standards of beauty. An increasing visibility of impairment in popular culture such as children’s toys advances an understanding of disability as diversity through difference and not something inherently bad. ConclusionPeter Laudin of Pattycake Doll, a company which sells Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Disabled dolls, has found that children “love all dolls unconditionally whether it’s special needs or not” (Lee Adam). He suggests that the majority of the negative responses to the Down Syndrome dolls stem from prejudice (Lee Adam). Dolls popularly available idealise the human form and assume a normative representation. While this has been criticised for communicating damaging standards of beauty from childhood (Levy, Blair and Shalmon), critiques about disability are not as widely understood. The social and medical models of disability focus attention on certain aspects of disability through lists; however, the reduction of diagnostic criteria in the form of a list (whether medical or social) decontextualises disability from the social and cultural world. Thus, the list form, while useful, has elided the disparate qualities of disability. As Belknap argues, lists “ask us to make them meaningful” (xv). Although the dolls discussed in this paper have been criticised for stereotyping and emphasising the difference between children with disability and those without, an inclusion of the physical features of Down Syndrome is consistent with recent moves within critical disability studies to re-engage the body (Shakespeare 35). As Faulkner notes in the epigraph to this paper, an examination of negative reactions to these dolls reveals much about the cultural position of people with disability. References Abbasi, Jennifer. “Why 6-Year Old Girls Want to be Sexy.” Live Science 16 July (2012). 30 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.livescience.com/21609-self-sexualization-young-girls.html›. Barnes, Colin. Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. 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This thesis analyzes the representation of disability in adaptations of Shakespeare’s Richard III in order to propose a theory of Prosthetic Adaptation. Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine’s film adaptation, and Patrick Warren’s manga adaptation, are closely read through the lenses of Adaptation Theory and Critical Disability Studies. Prosthetic Adaptation is the use and incorporation of disability in adapted texts in such a way that both the text and the portrayal/reading of the disability are mutually transformed. Close reading analysis is conducted with both Critical Disability Studies and Adaptation Studies lenses. The transformation of the texts and disability work together to push the boundaries of their genre/medium that they have been transformed into, using those broken boundaries to comment on disability itself. McKellen and Loncraine’s film uses archetypes of war films and shifts in tone to comment on the dangers of the disability stereotype and spectacle in film; Warren uses color and form to create a strong visual metaphor of the invisibility of disability to the able-bodied eye, commenting how disability is erased and removed from sociocultural context. It is through these commentaries that both the concept of disability and the texts themselves experience a broadening of potential meanings and a reshaping of boundaries.

The status of ‘Shakespeare’ is an incredibly intricate cultural construct, which is influenced by circumstantially contingent hierarchies of value, academic discourses, institutional processes, educational curricula, and media techniques. Having explored the context in which Shakespeare currently stands as an icon through the review of existing scholarship, this thesis employs a combined methodology to facilitate an investigation of some of the ways in which the playwright and his works are significant in contemporary culture, by specifically examining three late-1990s Shakespearean films and some particular types of audience responses. The case studies – Romeo + Juliet, Shakespeare in Love and 10 Things I Hate About You – are each analysed, according to their individual content and context, as cinematic products, which are understood in relation to Shakespeare and also many other cultural frameworks. It is acknowledged that Shakespeare has a particularly potent and established iconicity within academia and the education system, and it is argued that this position informs, but is also modified and challenged by, the filmic conceptualisations. These observations are enriched and developed by the findings of empirical audience research. Questionnaires were used to elicit a mixture of quantitative and qualitative information from secondary school teachers of Shakespeare, and from first year English and/or media undergraduates, about their experiences and opinions of Shakespeare in contemporary culture, especially Shakespearean films. Patterns identifiable in the data generated confirm that cinematic interpretations can transform the cultural currency of Shakespeare, reducing the distance between young people and the text by using familiar modes of address, but also point to tensions stemming from a disjunction of conventional evaluative criteria and the diverse ways in which Shakespeare now functions in mass culture. This work therefore contributes to debates about Shakespeare’s cultural status by examining the complex processes of negotiation of meaning that are discernable in these instances.

As a passing glance at the popular texts of any given period reveals, the subject of vengeance is nearly inescapable; on billboards, websites, and year end lists, revenge represents a curious constant even amid disparate media. This study explores the cultural commonalities that align revenge texts of the English Renaissance and exploitation films of late 20th century America. As in-depth inquiry reveals, numerous ideas and narrative tropes popularized during the Early Modern period are pushed to their logical extremes in these films. The central factor that aligns London during the Renaissance and New York at the cusp of the 1990s relates to traumatic, far-reaching changes in the urban landscape and its uses. There is an observable preoccupation, on the part of playwrights and filmmakers, with the subject of vengeance as tied to notions of locality, space, and rightful ownership.

This chapter applies the approaches defended in the book to some cases of moral criticism of art. The first part considers some cases of criticisms of entire kinds of art: criticisms of horror films, bell hooks’s criticisms of the representations of black women in popular media, and Paul Taylor’s critique of “narratives of moral representation.” Second, it considers criticisms of two specific works: Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Spike Lee’s film BlacKkKlansman. It concludes by revisiting the arguments of Chapter 1. The conclusion is that judging art morally is no easy matter, and it might not always be clear whether or not a work is good, but that there is value in thinking through these matters.

This chapter looks at The Winter’s Tale and Titus Andronicus to show how Shakespeare’s aesthetics integrates performing objects and performing bodies in its depiction of powerful women. In staging the process of survival for Lavinia and Hermione, Shakespeare travesties the concept of the king’s two bodies central to early modern sovereignty, redistributing agency between subjects to objects. Central to the argument about the female body in these two plays is Elizabeth Grosz’s concept of corporeal femininity, which emphasizes the tactility of the performing body, its agitating power that poses problems for the way these plays and their critics attempt to make sense of the women’s physical condition as an embodiment of fractured or incomplete subjectivity. Julie Taymor’s film Titus (2000), with its cinematic expression of the power of the prosthetic, becomes a touchstone for a reading of the play’s exploration of the politics of vibrant matter. Both Lavinia and Hermione offer a form of corporeal feminism, exemplified in Taymor’s film. In their parody of sovereignty’s charismatic survival beyond death, these two plays to different degrees transform political theology into a feminist politics in which performing objects—Lavinia’s body and Hermione’s statue—evoke the phenomenon of non-sovereign agency that limits sovereign absolutism and enables fugitive politics in Shakespeare.

This chapter considers the screen history of the play, examining the major film versions (directed by Paul Czinner, 1936, Christine Edzard, 1992, and Kenneth Branagh, 2006) and the BBC-Time Life Television Shakespeare production of 1978. None of these has been particularly well-received by critics and audiences, and the chapter discusses their uneasy use of film and television realism to render the pastoral fantasy world of the play. The discussion of the BBC production draws upon the corporation’s audience research data to investigate what actual spectators made of it in the context of the late 1970s television viewing experience.

This chapter investigates the relationship between turn-taking and punctuation. On the one hand, punctuation seems to offer a way of resolving precisely those ambiguities over timing with which the second half of this book is concerned. On the other hand, the punctuation of Shakespeare’s texts is notoriously unreliable. No firm set of typographical conventions had yet evolved for the presentation of plays in print, and the punctuation they contain is more likely to be compositorial than authorial. In spite of these problems, the chapter argues for greater attention to punctuation at the ends of speeches and, in particular, to what it calls the ‘terminal comma’ in the early quartos of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. Although largely ignored by editors and critics, these commas are often employed with a purpose and subtlety that is hard—but not impossible—to attribute to a compositor.