Shakespeare's Humanizing Language in Films and TV Series

Authors

Sarah Hatchuel University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3

Abstract

If Harold Bloom presented Shakespeare, in a rather essentialist way, as the author who invented the Human, US television series project Shakespeare as a playwright who conveys a humanity in constant redefinition, reconstruction and reassertion. Shakespeare is not mobilized to define the Human in a fixed way, but rather contributes to an extension of what we consider human. In such science fiction series as Star Trek, Person of Interest or Westworld, Shakespeare's words become the signs through which machines and robots reveal that they are becoming human or rather that they had always already been human. This dialogue between Shakespeare and "post-human" series echoes that established in The Elephant Man filmed in 1980 by David Lynch, a director who has invested the fields of both cinema and television.

Author Biography

Sarah Hatchuel, University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3

Sarah Hatchuel is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (France) and President of the Société Française Shakespeare. She has written extensively on adaptations of Shakespeare's plays (Shakespeare and the Cleopatra/Caesar Intertext: Sequel, Conflation, Remake, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011; Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen, Cambridge University Press, 2004; A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh, Blizzard Publishing, 2000) and on TV series (Lost: Fiction vitale, PUF, 2013; Rêves et series américaines: la fabrique d'autres mondes, Rouge Profond, 2015). She is general coeditor of the CUP Shakespeare on Screen collection and of the online journal TV/Series.