Witty and moving analysis of Shakespeare's fate in media

books:


	• Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares, Revised Edition: Queer Theory and American Kiddie Culture Richard Burt Palgrave Macmillan, 1999 - 338 pages average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A wonderful find!

I happened to be doing research for my thesis on Shakespeare in the university library and, while looking for other books, I was intrigued by the three XXXs in the title of Burt's book on the shelf, so I pulled it off and looked through it. What a daring work of cultural criticism! When I saw the chapters on Shakespeare porn, I marvelled both at the courage of the man to write such a book and how at the publisher who took it on. Of course, I check it out and read it. I especially was drawn to the chapter on action films and Burt's point that while the films cannibalize others, no one in the films ever eats; the characters are anorexic. The book is full of similarly wonderful insights. I am a cinephile, and very much appreciated Burt's quite hip approach to ShaXXXspeare. Now, it's back to those other, rather staid books of Shakespeare criticism, I was orginally looking for.

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Accessible and profound work of cultural criticism

One of the many strengths of Burt's truly excellent book is that it not only discusses Shakespeare adaptations but uses Shakespeare, or of ShaXXXspeares, to discuss post-war American popular culture. Burt's theory of the loser as critic has ramifications for all criticism, not just Shakespeare. This is a profound, original, and engaging book.

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Pioneering book

In his wonderful and fascinating book Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares, Richard Burt, the leading scholar of Shakespeare and film studies, pioneers research into the manifold ways Shakespeare enters into American popular culture. Concentrating mostly on film but attending as well to television sit-coms, Burt offers penetrating insight into everything from mainstream adaptations of Shakespeare to "low" spin-offs in which Shakespeare's language almost entirely disappears. Burt explores both what film and mass media have done to Shakespeare and also what Shakespeare enables our culture to do trhough film and other electronic media. Readers intersted in this book will be happy to know that Burt has since edited a related collection entitled Shakespeare After Mass Media and has co-edited Shakespeare, the Movie II.

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Witty and moving analysis of Shakespeare's fate in media

One doesn't usually expect to find oneself laughing when reading a book of criticism written by an academic, much less a book on Shakespeare. But Burt's book is frequently just that, funny to the point of making me laugh out loud. Burt has a refreshingly off-beat sense of humor, and the materials he has discovered--such as an adult movie version of Hamlet--aer themselves often hilarious as well, though not always intentionally so. But far from being just a laugh riot, the book is also a serious, critically sophisticated analysis of Shakespeare's fate incontemporary mass media, where much of hte lnagugae is cut or confined to well-known quotations. Burt's final chapter on films about teaching Shakespeare is quite moving, and Burt has the courage to raise difficult questions without pretending he is able to answer them. He is right to think that the questions are more important than the answers. Burt is to be congratulated for writing his book in a clear and engaging prose style without sacrificing the complexity of his thought.

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On the Money

Whatever you think about Shakespeare, it is impossible not to agree with the points Burt makes in this book. His analysis is right on the money and you will never be able to look at Shakespearean movies or literature in the same way. A fantastic book and a must read.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares is a savvy look at the wide range of adaptations, spin-offs, and citations of Shakespeare's plays in 1990s popular culture. What does it say about our culture when Shakespearean references turn up in television episodes of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island, films such as In and Out and My Own Private Idaho, and hardcore porn adaptations of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet? Burt reads the reception of these often quite bad replays in relation to contemporary youth culture and the "queering" of Shakespeare.

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