Shakesploitation and Shlockspeare in Film Adaptations

Abstract

The paper brings forth the issue of the relevance and/ or contemporaneousness of Shakespeare‘s plays for the twenty-first century audiences. It scrutinises the impact that the globalized contemporary means of mass communication have had on the Bard‘s work by considering phenomena that Richard Burt calls Shakesploitation or Shlockspeare, which have been introduced on the film market by the Hollywood film industry. In addition, it looks into the problems related to the authorship of all these adaptations, given the numerous (ab)uses that the Shakespearean texts have been subject to lately.