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How Does Julie Taymor's Use Of Gender In Hamlet

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The movie brings together two issues that is the homo-social alliance between men and the insecurity of a woman in permanent disguise, about her gender and sexuality. Horatio being unaware of Hamlet’s natural gender (woman) upholds fraternal values. Hamlet on the other hand has to follow gender norms and hide her love for Horatio while trying to avenge the death of her father, implying that the character of Hamlet is trapped in a mesh of hetero-normative behaviour. While Hamlet is a woman in love with Horatio, her identity makes her careful as to not be branded as a homosexual. It is interesting to notice the use of the cross-dressing motive in the movie as it is not the actor but the character that cross-dresses. Hamlet in the movie disrupts …show more content…

Unlike Gade’s Hamlet where the protagonist is woman acting like a man, Mirren’s character is re-gendered. Instead of the usurped Duke Prospero, one witnesses Prospera. This re-gendering is not new to the theatrical world as Richard Garner directed the same play for the Georgia Shakespeare Festival in 2003. In Garner’s production, the audience witnessed Prospera along with Gonzala and Antonia but in Taymor’s adaptation Prospera is the only change in the original script. However, Taymor adds much to the reading of gender in the play by replacing the father-daughter relationship to that of the mother-daughter relationship. Cross-dressing as a motive is used in the movie but it performs a much different function than the earlier known. Helen Mirren who plays Prospera is not unknown to the world of Shakespearean performance and cross-dressing. In the 1978 BBC production of As You Like It (directed by Basil Coleman), Mirren plays the role of Rosalind who cross-dresses as Ganymede to protect herself from the violent world of men. However, in The Tempest (2010) a woman who is alone on the island with her daughter needs to cross-dress for establishing her authority. In the film, Prospera’s character as a woman changes the nature of relationship between almost all characters. This can be explained by the fact that Prospera at any given point of time plays several roles that is mother, usurped duchess, colonizer and witch/sorceress. Prospera’s character in the movie is that of an educated and independent woman dedicated to the study of alchemy and natural sciences. Post her exile she uses the same powers to free Ariel and enslaves Caliban. In the play, the gender of Ariel is not clearly defined but one knows that Caliban could have been male as he attempted to rape

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