The "Shakesteen" genre

Claire Danes's Star-Body, Teen Female Fans, and the Pluralization of Authorship

Authors

Angela Keam University of Melbourne

Abstract

Deploying a broadly cultural studies (and multidisciplinary) approach, this paper focuses on the emergence of what I term the "Shakesteen" genre. It considers this genre as performing a powerful and under-researched role in shaping adolescent gender and sexual identities. I focus specifically on the star-body of Claire Danes and the role that first catapulted her to stardom — that of Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. I argue that Danes's body offers her teen female following an alternative, private, unregulated site through which to access Shakespeare, his text and the character of Juliet. Through star/fan relations, which ultimately exceed the constraints of the filmic narrative, the teen female fan is able to experiment with different models of femininity and appropriate some of Shakespeare's cultural power for her own political means.

Author Biography

Angela Keam, University of Melbourne

Angela Keam recently completed her Ph.D. in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne (Australia). Her thesis, "Corporeal Shakespeare: The Politics of Embodied Adaptation in Fin de Siècle Shakespeare Films," is centered on the under-researched figure of the "star-body" in 1990s-2000s Shakespearean film adaptations. She is currently working on turning her dissertation into a book.