"This same strict and most observant watch" (1.1.71)

Gregory Doran's Hamlet as Surveillance Adaptation

Authors

Sébastien Lefait University of Corsica

Keywords:

Hamlet, Film Studies, Surveillance

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on the specificity of Gregory Doran's adaptive system to argue that in his TV film of Hamlet (2009), surveillance provides a focal point. Doran treats surveillance as the main mechanism in an adaptation procedure that renews Hamlet's investigation of the link between the scopic regime of reality and that of drama. To adapt this reflexive quality of the play and provide its mise-en-abyme pattern with new relevance, the film translates issues related to unmediated perception into the language of mediated perception. To this end, including surveillance is a major enhancement, which proves more efficient than the stereotyped use of film cameras within the diegesis. The play exposes the mechanisms of dramatic illusion in terms of direct perception. It relates the magic of the theater to the creation of a discrepancy between what the spectators watch and what they, more or less willingly, believe they see. Doran's adaptation reworks this discrepancy. As a result, the film produces a form of specularity adapted to screen societies. The director preserves the structure of Hamlet's analysis of spectacular processes, but uses the ambiguity of watching in contemporary societies to provide the play with new topicality.

Author Biography

Sébastien Lefait, University of Corsica

Sébastien Lefait is Lecturer in English at the University of Corsica. Besides articles about films and about Shakespeare's plays, he has published articles about the new forms of film adaptation. His work also focuses on the relationship between surveillance and audiovisual productions. He is the author of Surveillance on Screen: Monitoring Contemporary Films and Television Programs (Scarecrow Press, 2012) and has recently coedited a volume entitled In Praise of Cinematic Bastardy (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012). His current research focuses on the use of surveillance in TV series and in the theater and on the assets of surveillance in the context of cinematic adaptation.