Browsing by Author "Blackwell, Anna"
Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Embargo Adapting Coriolanus: Tom Hiddleston’s Body and Action Cinema(Oxford University Press, 2014-08-15) Blackwell, AnnaDespite a critical movement seen across the humanities described as the ‘corporeal turn’ (Elam 143) in Shakespeare studies alone, adaptation studies has been slow to situate the body as a site of major interpretive possibility. A constituent part of textual readings the body has, nonetheless, rarely been regarded as an adaptive site in and of itself; instead, it is viewed as a participant in the process of adaptation. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to demonstrate the validity of an actor-based approach to adaptation and secondly to further the call made by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan amongst others to ascend the ‘aporias of fidelity’ by working to an intertextual or dialogical model (Cartmell and Whelehan 73). I thereby wish to explore Josie Rourke’s theatrical production of Coriolanus and the importance of her lead Tom Hiddleston’s body as a source of meaning, doing this through examining inter-related but frequently disparate fields such as star-theory and popular culture studies, as well as considering the qualities independently brought by the actor to character through physicality and intertextuality within the adaptive process. Through the presentation of Hiddleston’s body and its function as an adaptive site, we are thus able to view Rourke’s interaction with the visual culture of contemporary action cinema and the resonances this creates physically and thematically for Coriolanus’s depiction of the soldier-hero.Item Open Access The Contemporary Shakespearean Actor as the Site of Adaptive Encounter(De Montfort University, 2014-10) Blackwell, AnnaThis thesis investigates the cultural uses and implied signifying practices of the work of actors who are popularly and frequently described as 'Shakespearean.' Though ubiquitous figures within culture, there is a dearth of criticism which questions what qualities are invoked in the use of the term ‘Shakespearean’ and what implicit judgements of value or taste, class or cultural function are at work in its attribution. Although works such as Carol Chillington Rutter’s Clamorous Voices have analysed the figure of the female Shakespearean, moreover, the male Shakespearean remains largely an unexplored site of meaning and definition. It is this focus on the body of the actor which represents my original contribution to knowledge. Indeed, despite the preponderance of actor-based studies in Film Studies or, indeed, Theatre Studies, Adaptation Studies has been slow to locate the body as an adaptive site; concentrating instead upon themes, authors, the work of directors or, more recently, the influence of production factors. My thesis argues for the Shakespearean actor as a site of adaptation, positing it as a conduit for the transferable commdity value which is ‘Shakespeare’ and thereby considering the differences which may occur in the production of meaning as the Shakespearean actor moves between cultural hierarchies: from ‘high’ to ‘low’, or mainstream culture. An essential part of this thesis and an aspect which further argues for its contribution to this field is, therefore, analysis of popular cultural texts which have largely been ignored by adaptation critics. Although figures such as Richard Burt have recognised the value of popular or counter-cultural texts for an understanding of Shakespeare’s far-reaching and often surprising influence, the more tangential work in the Shakespearean actor’s filmography provide equally valuable ground to mine. An understanding of a Shakespearean actor’s cultural function is thus served by critiquing their mainstream films as well as their more documented Shakespearean oeuvre. By focusing on the implicitly multidirectional possibilities of adaptation as a process, I explore what values the ‘Shakespearean’ holds in contemporary culture and whether these maintain a popular perception of the Shakespearean actor as a representative of conservatism, elitism and ‘high’ culture. Or, whether the Shakespearean actor contains the potential for subverting some of the associations which Shakespeare’s legacy has accrued over time.Item Open Access A conversation with Andrew Davies(Intellect, 2017-03-01) Blackwell, Anna; Hayton, NatalieA conversation with Andrew DaviesItem Open Access '#DifferenceMakesUs': Selling Shakespeare Online (and the Commerce Platform Etsy)(Edizioni Ca'Foscari, 2018-12) Blackwell, AnnaThe mission statement of the online creative commerce platform Etsy declares its commitment to “using the power of business to strengthen communities and empower people”. Among the many handmade and vintage items sold on Etsy are 3,811 items quoting Helena’s description of Hermia from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (“and though she be but little, she is fierce”). This journal paper will examine the relationship between Shakespeare and the predominantly female crafts people who operate through platforms such as these as well as Shakespeare’s own depiction of female craft and handcrafted items. It seeks to explore the processes at work in Shakespeare-inspired merchandise and the relationship they claim to the play texts they adapt. The paper will continue by situating ‘female’ oriented creative work within the current political climate and exploring both the possibilities and limitations of craft as a vehicle for political resistance.Item Open Access Editorial(Intellect Limited, 2017-03-01) Blackwell, Anna; Hayton, NatalieEditorial: Introduction to special issue of the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance on the British screenwriter, Andrew Davies, and a brief survey of his career.Item Open Access "How do I act so well?" The British "Shakespearean" Actor and Cultural Cachet(Palgrave MacMillan, 2017-10) Blackwell, AnnaThis chapter on the cultural cachet of contemporary British performers commonly referred to as ‘Shakespearean’ actors, explores how such attribution relates to more traditional markers of esteem. It examines how the implied prestige of possessing a ‘Shakespearean’ identity has been framed in a variety of cultural texts, with particular focus on the potential adaptability of this unique form of cultural capital. The chapter charts the ways in which stars such as Sir Ian McKellen engage with their own ‘Shakespeareanism’ by analysing television and film texts which utilise the popular association between British performers and high cultural sophistication, alongside texts which subvert or challenge the apparent prestige of being a ‘Shakespearean’.Item Embargo 'Play on', or the memeing of Shakespeare: adaptation and internet culture(Bloomsbury, 2022-04-21) Blackwell, AnnaEntering the name ‘William Shakespeare’ into the world’s most popular internet search engine, Google, throws up what are – at first glance – unsurprising results. After a Wikipedia entry, websites for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust point to the continued appetite for ‘real life’ Shakespeare-based cultural activities and tourism. Other results might demonstrate his dominance over not only the British school curriculum but education internationally, with many websites aimed specifically at students. But sites such as these are likely to be visited as the result of a deliberate search to find out something about Shakespeare. There are infinite other internet Shakespeares who exist outside of such searches and yet who may well haunt our everyday (and less purposeful) browsing, depending on the complex algorithmic workings of the social media platforms we use, the friends we connect with or the interests we pursue.Item Open Access Royal Bodies in Shakespearean Adaptations on Screen(John Hopkins University Press, 2021) Blackwell, Anna; Gerzic, MarinaIntroduction to special issue ed. by Blackwell and GerzicItem Open Access Shakespearean Actors, Memes, Social Media and the Circulation of Shakespearean ‘Value’(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016-03-24) Blackwell, AnnaAnna Blackwell reflects on the impact of contemporary Shakespearean actors on popular conceptions of Shakespeare and his value, focusing as examples on actors Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch. She pays particular attention to their movements between Shakespeare and more popular cultural forms (such as blockbusters) and how this duality has been utilised by both modes thematically, performatively and in promotional campaigns. Blackwell’s analysis also considers these actors’ engagement with popular social media platforms and culture in order to further examine the nature of their Shakespearean performer identities. The chapter thus explores digital terrains and their significance for our understanding of Shakespearean ‘value’ in contemporary culture and for his continued economic impact.Item Metadata only Shakespearean Celebrity in the Digital Age: Fan Cultures and Remediation(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018-09) Blackwell, AnnaThis book offers a timely examination of the relationship between Shakespeare and contemporary digital media. By focusing upon a variety of ‘Shakespearean’ individuals, groups and communities and their ‘online’ presence, the book explores the role of popular internet culture in the ongoing adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays and his general cultural standing. The description of certain performers as ‘Shakespearean’ is a ubiquitous but often throwaway assessment. However, a study of ‘Shakespearean’ actors within a broader cultural context reveals much, not only about the mutable face of British culture (popular and ‘highbrow’) but also about national identity and commerce. These performers share an online space with the other major focus of the book: the fans and digital content creators whose engagement with the Shakespearean marks them out as more than just audiences and consumers; they become producers and critics. Ultimately, Digital Shakespeareans moves beyond the theatrical history focus of related works to consider the role of digital culture and technology in shaping Shakespeare’s contemporary adaptive legacy and the means by which we engage with it.Item Embargo ‘Somewhere in the world … Someone misquoted Shakespeare. i can sense it’: tom Hiddleston Performing the Shakespearean online(Bloomsbury, 2017-12-14) Blackwell, AnnaA commonly used adjective to describe a certain type of actor or mode of performance, the concept of a ‘Shakespearean’ actor contains within it implicit value judgements of that actor/acting and often conjures popular associations relating to class, race and gender. A recent example of this phenomenon and its significance in demonstrating the body of the actor as a participant in Shakespeare’s continuing adaptive legacy, is the English star Tom Hiddleston. A former Etonian and student of Classics at the University of Cambridge, Hiddleston’s rapid ascent to stardom demonstrates the enduring international appeal of male, upper middle-class British actors. His case study confirms the renewed popularity of this model of performer with Hiddleston reflecting the same successful combination of mainstream recognition and critically-validated dramatic ‘weight’ that has distinguished the careers of Ian McKellen or peers such as Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch. As an actor who is persistently associated with the ‘Shakespearean’, Hiddleston’s movements between Hollywood blockbusters, adaptations, period drama or British theatre are therefore indicative of the intersections between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture that characterise Shakespeare’s contemporary cultural legacy. Hiddleston’s performer identity presents further grounds for critical work, however. An active user of social media and participant in online culture, Hiddleston appears strikingly aware of the expectations of both his Shakespeareanism and the class-bound image of Englishness he presents to many. This is an image which has largely been confirmed in casting and by the press and his online performances simultaneously affirm these qualities – including cultural sophistication, gentility, profundity, savoir-faire and a romantic allure – and, at times, work to challenge them. This chapter will thus explore some of the ways in which the actor’s ‘Shakespearean’ quality is expressed online through the performance of his social media avatar and by fans through memes. In doing so it will invoke and question what implicit class and racial ideologies are bound up in and broadcast through the loose but persistent cultural attribution of particular texts, modes or individuals as ‘Shakespearean’. Finally, the chapter will take the example of Hiddleston’s online persona as an opportunity to address the potential (in)compatibility between the conservative values often associated with Shakespeare within popular culture and the playwright’s continuing mainstream prominence.Item Embargo Sympathise with the Losers: Performing Intellectual Loserdom in Shakespearean Biopic(Edinburgh University Press, 2021-03-31) Blackwell, AnnaAnne Hathaway chides her playwright husband in the television sitcom Upstart Crow (2016-) with the typically blunt comment, ‘Will, I told ya. Don’t do comedy. It’s not your strong point.’ Shakespeare, played by David Mitchell, responds in indignation, ‘It is my strong point, wife. It just requires lengthy explanations and copious footnotes. If you do your research my stuff is actually really funny.’ Mitchell’s Shakespeare exists within what Christy Desmet describes as a ‘system or network of tiny units’, governed by ‘changing relations that are, at bottom, accidental’ (2017, 11). Indeed, Shakespeare’s claim may sound familiar to anyone who has endeavoured to teach Shakespeare to resistant students, but it echoes depictions of the playwright on screen such as Shakespeare in Love, Bill, Will or even Doctor Who. Shakespeare’s fussiness in Upstart Crow is Mitchell’s, too. It intersects with not only similarly fastidious roles in series such as Peep Show (2003-2015) but Mitchell’s deployment of a curmudgeonly celebrity persona on panel shows like Would I Like To You? (2007-) or QI (2003-). This chapter proposes to look at the Shakespeare object in television comedies in order to discuss the dissonance of presenting failure as a pre-requisite to Shakespeare’s inevitable cultural capital. It will do this chiefly by reading Mitchell-Shakespeare in Upstart Crow as the negotiation of two semiotically-rich objects within an erratic network of meaning and through association with values either typically synonymous with Shakespearean celebrity (success, skill, sophistication, virtuosity) or their opposite (failure, awkwardness, embarrassment).Item Metadata only Transforming Middlemarch: A Genetic Edition of Andrew Davies' 1994 BBC Adaptation of George Eliot's Novel(De Montfort University, 2023-04-03) Smith, Justin; Hobbs, Lucy; Egan, Gabriel; Hayton, Natalie; Blackwell, AnnaWelcome to this 'genetic edition' of Andrew Davies' 1994 BBC adaptation of George Eliot's Middlemarch. This multimedia resource, believed to be the first of its kind, uses XML textual encoding - following the principles of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) - to enable comparative analyses charting the journey of a literary adaptation from source novel to script and screen. Users can navigate from the Shooting Script backwards (to the novel) and forwards (to the Post-production Script), following diamond icons leading to Notes, intertextual references, a range of assets and additional extended Commentaries on key scenes and adaptive moments. In this way, the genetic edition demonstrates both the creative skills of the screen adaptor and script editor, and (via additional production history research) the collaborative nature of classic serial television adaptation. The 'genetic edition' has been created by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at De Montfort University, UK, in partnership with the British Library and in consultation with the George Eliot Archive. The project (2022-3) was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.Item Open Access Tweeting from the Grave: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Social Media(Routledge, 2018-04-11) Blackwell, AnnaIn Spreadable Media Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green provide a revolutionary model of contemporary cultural practices, suggesting that older, top-down models of distribution are no longer viable. They argue that in contemporary culture ‘a mix of top-down and bottom-up forces determine how material is shared across and among cultures in far more participatory (and messier) ways’ (2013: 1). Founded on the simultaneity of circulation and reception, the explosion of participatory media forms marks a shift in which the public are not ‘simply consumers of preconstructed messages’ but are ‘shaping, sharing, reframing and remixing media content’ (2). This quality (examined by Jenkins, Ford, and Green in a variety of ‘spreadable’ media forms including film, television, advertising, and gaming) is, the authors argue, a key characteristic of contemporary culture, with the unique mode of public engagement that invites ‘reshaping the media landscape itself’ (2). It is this potential, ‘both technical and cultural,’ for audiences to share content according to their own purposes, which is the focus of this paper and its discussion of Shakespeare’s continuing adaptive legacy on social media and, in particular, on Twitter (3) .