Talking about the various screen adaptations of William Shakespeare’s work in India, one can at length go on speaking about the Bollywood or the Hindi adaptations of Shakespeare in various movies without even thinking that India does not particularly mean a single culture or linguistic dominance. What is important here in my paper is to break the icy ceiling beween the thinking of the people and society and transcend the set standards of thinking ,whereby I will talk about the various cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s work,particularly tragedies, into Malayalam or Mollywood . Having said that ,there is no speck of doubt that Bollywood has always been ready to accept new challenges but India being a pluri-cultural , multiethnic community cannot boast itself of just …show more content…
Despite the value of film adaptations, their very nature, being based on often very well-known, popular and impressive works of literature makes them horizontal to criticism. Traditionally, it concerns with the film‘s degree of fidelity‘ to the work it is based on, but more and more the notion of the genre‘s ‘specificity‘ is coming to the front, often along with a call for the use of genuinely cinematic strategies to ‘translate‘ the literary work into the new medium ..
The film Kaliyattam shows many instances of Intertextuality. Kaliyattam retells the play ‘’Othello’’ set in an early 20th century village in North Malabar. The war between Venice and Cyprus in Shakespeare‘s play has been substituted by Theyyam; The ruler and the village look upon Perumalayan as their God and hero, just like Othello is treated by Venetians. The complexity of ritual and tradition depicts how they can shape and even destroy people‘s lives Othello is a Moor in the original text, in the adaptation Perumalayan is presented as an untouchable , his face blemished by small-pox, use of the caste concerns of the Indian society and the associated prejudices to develop the suspicious nature of the
In the Heat of the Night It is quite common for award winning books to be transformed into a movie. Readers are sparked with excitement, only to be disappointed by the results. They do not find themselves being able to have the same experience the felt whilst reading the text. They are let down and not satisfied by what the movie produced for them. There are also times when people assume that these films will always be identical to its book version so they refrain from actually reading the book.
This sense of hostility springs forth from the misconstrued view of literature being the superior art form among the two, extending to the apparent artistic inferiority of cinematic adaptations, which seemingly “betrays” its source material. But the idea of cinema as a potent and dynamic art
The movie "O" is the perfect representation of a modern-day Othello, each element in the movie from the characters to the plot all correspond to the original play. Though they had many similarities in the plots, characters and even theme, they had minor differences that made it obvious which was the more modern version. For every character in the play Othello there 's a character in the movie that goes through the exact same thing. For example in the play Iago and Roderigo team up and plot against Othello, and Iago pretends that Desdemona and Iago are going to break up so Roderigo can come into the picture but the end of it all Iago ends up killing Roderigo. The same thing happens in the movie.
Since Othello utters that since he is with Desdemona, her reputation “is now begrimed and black,” it presents how a black man can tarnish the “fresh” identity of a white women. Since Othello is accepted and praised as a war hero, but not accepted as lover, love becomes a barrier that leads to a tragedy. Societal expectations push people to the point where they try to surpass society’s norms. Though, when they reach this tipping point, tragedy will
Othello: A Close Reading This is an analysis of the lines 260-279 of the third scene of the third act of Shakespeare’s Othello. In an attempt to fulfill the incessant need for comfortable dichotomies, societies tend to be divided into two groups: the ‘in-crowd’ and the ‘others’. These strict dualities, constructed upon the inherent need for adversaries, are often as arbitrary as they are false and based on nothing but fear.
Othello with focusing on trying to please other characters but his cultural beliefs and understanding prevented him from being successful and lead him down a destructive path. Othello tried his best to make everyone like him but with him trying to marry the Senator 's daughter which nobody liked. With him being new and already having a bad first impression people aren 't going to want him here for long. This being Cultural criticism he 's just trying to please everyone as much as he can. People start to call him racist names and making fun of his
Both Othello and Frankenstein are good men looking to be accepted by society, but are transformed into monstrous beings due to their desire for acceptance, isolation, and relationships with others. Othello starts off as a strong leader who loves his wife. Iago begins to plant lies in his head, and shortly after, his mind is corrupted by jealousy and revenge, which turns him into a monster. Othello wants revenge on Desdemona for being unfaithful as Iago has been telling him. At night Othello goes into her chamber to murder her saying “Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men/ put out the light and then put out the light “.
William Shakespeare’s “Othello” was a great example to showcase sacrifices made by characters to accomplish revenge or obtain power. Shakespeare told the story of Othello, a tragic hero, who was manipulated by Iago, which motivated him to kill his own wife. From this story, Shakespeare’s main goal was to portray characters making sacrifices for their ambitions. From this play, Shakespeare puts forth the idea of sacrifice through pointing out the importance of reputation and how sacrifices must be made to silence the truth.
With the laws of Venice miles behind them, the characters of Othello seem to have entered a Hobbesian state of nature where anything is permissible so long as it furthers the individual interest. Indeed, upon arriving in Cyprus, the majority of the characters have lives that are “poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes 76). Othello is the perfect illustration of the dangers of rhetoric. Iago exemplified the type of rhetoric that made the Greek demagogues threatening.
This extent of hostility and aggression coming from several other sources in the play was enough to ruin Othello. Thus, Othello’s downfall was more of a result of his race being that the main underlying motive behind the characters’ efforts to destroy him was racism. It is inadequate to bypass the sociology behind racism, the concept of race, prior to defining what racism actually is. The common understanding of race suggests the division of groups based upon the color of one’s skin, hair, eyes, etc. “Although biologically meaningless when applied to humans – physical differences such as skin color have no natural association with group differences in ability or behavior – race nevertheless has tremendous significance in structuring social reality” (Clair).
The adaption from book to film is a hard fraught translation, in which many themes and fundamental ideas can be lost. This is apparent in the adaption of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein into the 1931 film directed by James Whale of the same title. While the two stories are of the same premise, they are fundamentally different in later story elements, ideas, and themes. Even though the film inspires horror and intrigue like its novel counterpart, it lacks the complex moral arguments and depth of the book it is based upon. Whale’s Frankenstein ultimately fails as an adaptation of Mary Shelly’s work, because the removal of the narration and moral conflict present in the novel, which causes the film to lack overall emotional depth.
Since the debut of Shakespeare’s world-renowned masterpiece The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice in 1604, the play has brought on an infinite array of ever-changing interpretations across time, nations and literary schools. The abundance of previous scholarship on this play provides a sound foundation for the proposal that contemporary review of it should no longer be grounded on the question of “aboutness” from singular perspectives; rather, it is the collective historical backgrounds of collective “about”s—the examination of how the world has perceived the play and how these interpretations came to be—that will fully shine light on the significance of Othello, and Shakespeare at large, both throughout history and in contemporary
Othello is for instance not really Othello 's play. Othello is not Othello 's story” (Buntin). Othello is focused more on the schemes of Iago and the tragic life of Desdemona. By retelling this story Sears is putting Othello in the centre of the narrative and giving focus to the nuances of his life as a black man. Dickson
Throughout history, societies have succumbed to the toxic concepts of racism, causing an unthinkable amount of chaos and devastation. While racism on its own can lead to many societal evils, racism coupled with jealousy can create a truly catastrophic force that can only lead to pure destruction. When someone of a different race and culture is placed in this kind of society, this destruction will only naturally follow. In the play Othello, William Shakespeare focuses on the tragic outcomes of Othello, a Venetian general and black Turkish Moor, and Desdemona, his white Venetian wife. Throughout the play, both covert and overt racism, assimilation, and jealous dispositions all foreshadow the untimely death of Desdemona and Othello.
“A Tempest” is as a derivative of Shakespeare ’s play “The Tempest” by Aime Cesaire. Cesaire makes a number of alterations in his adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. These alterations have been made in order to outline the change in time eras between the two playwrights’ time of existence and to illustrate the great social change that occurred in these periods, mainly colonialism by the West, the subsequent theme of the quest for freedom as well as the theme of power that resonates throughout the play. This essay aims at exploring the similarities and to draw attention to the alterations made by Cesaire in “A Tempest” and the subsequent effects of these alterations on the audience.