Melissa Croteau | California Baptist University (original) (raw)
Books by Melissa Croteau
This book explores significant representations of Shinto and Buddhist sacred space, spiritual sym... more This book explores significant representations of Shinto and Buddhist sacred space, spiritual symbols, and religious concepts that are embedded in the secular framework of Japanese films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by directors Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Makoto Shinkai operate as expressions of and, potentially, catalysts for transcendence of various kinds, particularly during the Heisei era (1989–2019), when Japan experienced severe economic hardship and devastating natural disasters. The book’s approach to aesthetics and religion employs the multifaceted concepts of ma (structuring intervals, liminal space-time), kū (emptiness, sky), mono no aware (compassionate sensibility, resigned sadness), and musubi (generative interconnection), examining the dynamic, evolving nature of these ancient principles that are at once spiritual, aesthetic, and philosophical. Scholars and enthusiasts of Japanese cinema (live action and anime), religion and film, cinematic aesthetics, and the relationship between East Asian religions and the arts will find fresh perspectives on these in this book, which moves beyond conventional notions of transcendental style and essentialized approaches to the multivalent richness of Japanese aesthetics. (**For a SAMPLE CHAPTER, see "Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away: Pilgrimage as Homecoming and Seeing Anew" in the "Book Chapters" section below.)
What kinds of work does Shakespeare do in our millennial era? This volume takes a cultural studie... more What kinds of work does Shakespeare do in our millennial era? This volume takes a cultural studies approach to the analysis and evaluation of millennial film adaptations and cinematic offshoots of some of Shakespeare's most (in)famous plays—The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Hamlet, and Richard III—while investigating the significance of these films’ key intertexts in various media. The three adaptations examined—10 Things I Hate About You (1999), A Thousand Acres (1997), and Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000)—and the three offshoots—Renaissance Man (1994), A Midwinter’s Tale (1995), and Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard (1996)—appropriate the Bard’s canonical texts in creative and complex ways, adapting and employing Shakespeare’s work to communicate particular agendas. In addition to interrogating the ideological objectives of these works, this book explores their contexts within the realms of film studies, Shakespeare performance, contemporary history, critical theory, and popular culture.
This collection of essays examines the ways in which recent Shakespeare films portray anxieties a... more This collection of essays examines the ways in which recent Shakespeare films portray anxieties about an impending global wasteland, technological alienation, spiritual destruction, and the effects of globalization. Films covered include Titus, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Almereyda's Hamlet, Revengers Tragedy, Twelfth Night, The Passion of the Christ, Radford's The Merchant of Venice, The Lion King, and Godard's King Lear, among others that directly adapt or reference Shakespeare. Essays chart the apocalyptic mises-en-scene, disorienting imagery, and topsy-turvy plots of these films, using apocalypse as a theoretical and thematic lens. (Introduction to volume attached here.)
Reel Histories: Studies in American Film , 2008
Reel Histories: Studies in American Film is an essay collection that extends the academic dialogu... more Reel Histories: Studies in American Film is an essay collection that extends the academic dialogue concerning the holy trinity of race, social class, and gender as they are constructed on the screen while also examining aspects of the film industry that are often ignored: the means and politics of film production and distribution, audience reception, the role and influence of film criticism, film's intersections with other media, and many other modes of approach stemming from particularities of historical, sociological, and cultural situation. Nine scholars, analyzing such films as From Here to Eternity, A Raisin in the Sun, Midnight Cowboy, Magnolia, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, The X Files, and Saving Private Ryan, go far beyond close readings approaching the films as matrices of intersecting voices located in particular socio-cultural moments participating in significant historical trajectories. These essays insightfully examine how specific films have functioned in American history, their provenance and their subsequent effects, both actual and potential.
Book Chapters by Melissa Croteau
The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation, 2022
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Shakespeare—Entry: Ophelia (dir. Claire McCarthy, 2018), 2022
Encyclopedia entry on the film Ophelia (dir. Claire McCarthy 2018), starring Daisy Ridley and Nao... more Encyclopedia entry on the film Ophelia (dir. Claire McCarthy 2018), starring Daisy Ridley and Naomi Watts, adapted from the YA novel by Lisa Klein, an adaptation and extension of Shakespeare's Hamlet told from Ophelia's perspective.
Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge UP), 2019
On many levels, Hamlet is a play about acting. When considering styles of theatrical performance,... more On many levels, Hamlet is a play about acting. When considering styles of theatrical performance, our eponymous prince exhorts the players to perform their parts “gently,” with “temperance” and “smoothness,” “[holding] a mirror up to nature” (3.2). This acting philosophy has been theorized and realized in diverse ways on stage and screen in the Euro-centric West, but it stands in stark contrast to one of the foremost ancient aesthetic theories of India—that of rasa, which refers to the emotion an audience member experiences during a performance, be it drama, dance, poetry, or music. Rasa theory posits that all the acting in a performed narrative must focus on eliciting powerful emotion from the audience; thus, “robustious” acting is frequently found on stage and screen in India, as is often noted by critics of Bollywood. Furthermore, rasa theory dictates that every theatrical work should be governed by one primary rasa, out of a group of eight designated emotions, which may appear in the piece but must serve to support the dominant rasa. In 2014, Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj adapted Hamlet into the Hindi film Haider, transforming the “rotten” state of Denmark into the beleaguered, divided region of Kashmir. Though rasa theory has not been widely used to analyze cinema, scholars have noted that Indian films are most commonly dominated by the rasas of romance (sringara) and sorrow (karuna). Not surprisingly, Haider is governed by karuna, the rasa of sorrow, pity, and grief, from start to finish, an emotional landscape that is undergirded by the rasas of disgust, as represented by the extreme, grisly violence in the film, and romance, which, as in the case of Hamlet and Ophelia, increases the pathos of the narrative. In Haider, karuna is evoked vividly through acting and other aspects of mise-en-scène, particularly the cold, harsh, awe-inspiring terrain of Kashmir, which typically is used very differently in Hindi cinema, as a magnificent backdrop for romantic passion. It is this, along with other striking juxtapositional strategies, that highlight Bhardwaj’s message in Haider. Like Akira Kurosawa in his twentieth century Shakespeare adaptations, Bhardwaj makes a brave statement in Haider condemning the appalling corruption and gruesome violence perpetrated by official authorities in his own nation as well as militants from within and outside the country. Haider, as a great many didactic performative works in India, employs the pathetic rasa to impart its ethical meaning and to stir audiences to think, and perhaps act, differently.
Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare, 2018
This essay examines the intertextual relationships between Teen Beach Movie (dir. Jeffrey Hornada... more This essay examines the intertextual relationships between Teen Beach Movie (dir. Jeffrey Hornaday, 2013) and the 1960s Beach Party movies, West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet, and other films and plays. Shakespeare operates as a consistent intertext in order to elevate Teen Beach Movie’s cultural status; to mark the superior intelligence and enlightened sophistication of its young protagonist, a twenty-first century female surfer who finds herself transported to a 1960s beach movie musical called Wet Side Story; and to mark the ironic cluelessness of male teens who are unaware that they are citing him. Despite pervasive and clever uses of intertextuality and self-reflexivity, TBM reifies conservative cultural gender norms even as it openly questions them.
Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet (Cambridge UP), 2023
This chapter analyses the film Ram-Leela using rasa theory, examining the dramatic ways in which ... more This chapter analyses the film Ram-Leela using rasa theory, examining the dramatic ways in which the film evokes emotion – for example, through the use of colour, cinematography and music – and conveys meaning through direct and indirect references to Hindu mythological figures and narratives. Rasa theory, and its religious referents, are especially efficacious for approaching Ram-Leela as its title, which literally names the two main characters Ram (Romeo) and Leela (Juliet), is also the name of one of the most significant sacred celebrations in India’s Hindu calendar, Ramlila, an annual autumn festival during which plays are performed that present the life of the god Rama from his birth. Many scholars have discussed the key importance of the story of King Rama and his wife Sita in the narratives featured in Bollywood cinema. Ram-Leela plays with these conventions, participating vividly in the impassioned expression of emotion called for in rasa theory, performing far outside the boundaries of realism, whilst also departing in significant, telling ways from both the narrative of the Ramayana and that of Romeo and Juliet.
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema: Framing Sacred Spaces, 2023
Hayao Miyazaki’s blockbuster Spirited Away (2001) features ten-year-old Chihiro sojourning in a w... more Hayao Miyazaki’s blockbuster Spirited Away (2001) features ten-year-old Chihiro sojourning in a world of spirits where she must learn to work hard, exercise courage, and extend compassion to others. The film’s rich mise-en-scène and “cinematography” mark this world as sacred space in multifarious significant ways explored in this chapter, including a particular focus on the aesthetics of ma and kū and their connections to Shinto and Buddhism. The film is structured as a physical journey through a spiritual world made up of “natural” deities, who are, by definition, immanent transcendent beings both very much of this world and yet supernatural. In this way, Miyazaki communicates his key theme of environmental stewardship and the interdependence of humanity and the natural world. In many ways, Chihiro’s odyssey is a pilgrimage, which is explored here via the work of Victor Turner and Richard Pilgrim. Chihiro’s interactions in the spirit world, especially with Yubaba and Zeniba, illustrate that one must transcend binary categories, such as virtuous versus evil, in order to extend grace, forgiveness, gratitude, and respect to others.
Introduction to Buddhist East Asia: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 2023
Co-authored with Zhang Xin.
A Companion to the Biopic, Nov 25, 2020
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.-... more Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.-Proverbs 4.7 (King James Version) Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.-Robert Frost, 'The Road Not Taken' (1916) The irony that often remains unperceived by readers of Robert Frost's iconic poetic parable 'The Road Not Taken' is thrown into stark relief when held up beside Sean Penn's 2007 film Into the Wild. Both texts play on romantic American mythologies of rugged individualism and utilising the 'natural' landscape as a proving ground for masculinity. However, in Penn's film, the adventurer who escapes to the unspoiled wilderness, taking the path less 'trodden' to shake off the perfidy of society, meets his demise, and other voices must tell his story. As Frost purposely and playfully invites misreading of his 'Road Not Taken'-the speaker stating three times that the roads are identical then launching into his hyberbolic, hypothetical tale 1-he reveals that particular American proclivity toward self-aggrandising myths, often, perhaps biblically, patterned after a journey in the wilderness. Into the Wild is itself a sublime tragedy of misreading these very fables. Indeed, young Christopher McCandless's fervent belief in the myths satirised in Frost's poem, among other cultural myths, drove him into the wild and toward his death. The difference, of course, is that Chris
Shakespeare and Emotion, 2020
Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear (Cambridge UP), Sep 26, 2019
The English Renaissance in Popular Culture: An Age for All Time, ed. by Greg Semenza, 2010
While the claim above by scholar Lucius Shepard specifically and accurately applies to the Wachow... more While the claim above by scholar Lucius Shepard specifically and accurately applies to the Wachowski Brothers’ film V for Vendetta, the historical detritus the film heaves onto our screens is provocative for a scholar of the early modern era. This 2005 film, set in the near future of the 2020s, begins and ends with a depiction of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605: opening with Guy Fawkes being arrested in his cellar of explosives, then skipping ahead to his public hanging (a two-minute sequence), and closing with the Parliament building going up in a glorious pyrotechnic spectacle. Famously, the latter event did not take place on November 5, 1605, because the former did. Although the destruction of Parliament in Vfor Vendetta is set in our future rather than a revision of early Stuart history, this denouement inevitably portrays an alternate history and forces the question “What if?” From 1605 to the present, an incalculable number of pages have been written on what the Gunpowder Plot was and what it meant. To tell their story in Vfor Vendetta, the Wachowski Brothers tap the ambiguity, multivalence, and efficacious mutability of the history surrounding the Gunpowder Treason and the subsequent annual celebrations to commemorate England’s deliverance on the fifth of November. So why did the Wachowski Brothers choose this historical framework and what did it mean to them?
Americana: Readings in Popular Culture
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema: Framing Sacred Spaces, 2023
Japan has an extraordinary history of aesthetics connected to its religious traditions, and its i... more Japan has an extraordinary history of aesthetics connected to its religious traditions, and its influential cinema has used religio-aesthetics related to Shinto and Buddhism in diverse ways. This book explores sacred space, symbols, and concepts embedded in the secular framework of films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Hirokaza Kore-eda, and Makoto Shinkai operate as expressions of and, potentially, catalysts for transcendence of various kinds. This introductory chapter explains the ways transcendence will be defined and establishes key connections between Japanese aesthetics, religion, and history, particularly focusing on the rise and fall of the Economic Bubble and its aftermath. The circulation of reductive discourses of Japaneseness, as these pertain to aesthetics and film, is examined. Paul Schrader’s prominent theory of transcendental style, especially as it relates to Yasujirō Ozu, will be explored along with the connections drawn between Ozu and Kore-eda. Finally, the chapter explicates the book’s approach to aesthetics and religion using the multifaceted and protean concepts of ma (structuring intervals), kū (emptiness; sky), and mono no aware (compassionate sensibility; resigned sadness). All of the films covered in the book feature ma as an aesthetic and philosophical signifier, but the films themselves also are ma—framed spaces of flickering, ephemeral light—in which senses of connection can be awakened and interdependence can be apprehended.
Routledge eBooks, Oct 10, 2023
Makoto Shinkai’s your name. (2016) is a striking cultural response to the devastation and overwhe... more Makoto Shinkai’s your name. (2016) is a striking cultural response to the devastation and overwhelming loss of the 3.11 triple disaster. Shinkai fictionalizes and revises history, offering a reversal of fortune through a spiritual mode of transcending time and space that is connected directly to kami and the Miyamizu Shrine at the center of this narrative. Using his signature aesthetic of the celestial—which provides, figuratively and literally, a cosmic and breathtaking view of large-scale catastrophe that falls from the heavens—your name. uses the aesthetics of kū to express diverse aspects of mono no aware, Sehnsucht, and emptiness. The film also centers on the multivalent complexity of musubi, which it communicates through its imagery, cinematography, and editing, as well as its story and themes. In this film, Shinkai comments on generational conflict, politics, and natural and manmade disasters in Japan, offering visions of magnificent destruction, struggle, and survival.
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema, 2023
Filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa, who lived through the cataclysms of twentieth-century Japan, ma... more Filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa, who lived through the cataclysms of twentieth-century Japan, made several dark films that attempt to look at life in an unflinching, uncompromising way. However, none of his films forces us to stare into the human potential for creating hell on earth quite as formidably as one of his final masterpieces, Ran (1985). This chapter examines Kurosawa’s troubled humanism, alongside his didacticism, in two of his darkest films, Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran, exploring how he uses formalist cinematic style and Buddhist and Shinto religious symbolism. In both films, Kurosawa vividly employs elements of Nō theater to mark the irruption of the spiritual into the phenomenal world, constructing hierophanic moments that lead to downward transcendence. However, while the earlier film contains humanity’s evil in layers of sacred space, Ran portrays a world wherein wickedness has broken out of its bounds and hell is everywhere. In this film, Kurosawa expresses his belief in the compelling need for individuals to transcend the unending cycles of violence that plague this world, rather than embrace the dubious otherworldly salvation provided by supernatural powers, such as Amida Buddha, who appears in Ran as an impotent symbol. These two films are cautionary tales for a vicious world.
This book explores significant representations of Shinto and Buddhist sacred space, spiritual sym... more This book explores significant representations of Shinto and Buddhist sacred space, spiritual symbols, and religious concepts that are embedded in the secular framework of Japanese films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by directors Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Makoto Shinkai operate as expressions of and, potentially, catalysts for transcendence of various kinds, particularly during the Heisei era (1989–2019), when Japan experienced severe economic hardship and devastating natural disasters. The book’s approach to aesthetics and religion employs the multifaceted concepts of ma (structuring intervals, liminal space-time), kū (emptiness, sky), mono no aware (compassionate sensibility, resigned sadness), and musubi (generative interconnection), examining the dynamic, evolving nature of these ancient principles that are at once spiritual, aesthetic, and philosophical. Scholars and enthusiasts of Japanese cinema (live action and anime), religion and film, cinematic aesthetics, and the relationship between East Asian religions and the arts will find fresh perspectives on these in this book, which moves beyond conventional notions of transcendental style and essentialized approaches to the multivalent richness of Japanese aesthetics. (**For a SAMPLE CHAPTER, see "Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away: Pilgrimage as Homecoming and Seeing Anew" in the "Book Chapters" section below.)
What kinds of work does Shakespeare do in our millennial era? This volume takes a cultural studie... more What kinds of work does Shakespeare do in our millennial era? This volume takes a cultural studies approach to the analysis and evaluation of millennial film adaptations and cinematic offshoots of some of Shakespeare's most (in)famous plays—The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Hamlet, and Richard III—while investigating the significance of these films’ key intertexts in various media. The three adaptations examined—10 Things I Hate About You (1999), A Thousand Acres (1997), and Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000)—and the three offshoots—Renaissance Man (1994), A Midwinter’s Tale (1995), and Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard (1996)—appropriate the Bard’s canonical texts in creative and complex ways, adapting and employing Shakespeare’s work to communicate particular agendas. In addition to interrogating the ideological objectives of these works, this book explores their contexts within the realms of film studies, Shakespeare performance, contemporary history, critical theory, and popular culture.
This collection of essays examines the ways in which recent Shakespeare films portray anxieties a... more This collection of essays examines the ways in which recent Shakespeare films portray anxieties about an impending global wasteland, technological alienation, spiritual destruction, and the effects of globalization. Films covered include Titus, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Almereyda's Hamlet, Revengers Tragedy, Twelfth Night, The Passion of the Christ, Radford's The Merchant of Venice, The Lion King, and Godard's King Lear, among others that directly adapt or reference Shakespeare. Essays chart the apocalyptic mises-en-scene, disorienting imagery, and topsy-turvy plots of these films, using apocalypse as a theoretical and thematic lens. (Introduction to volume attached here.)
Reel Histories: Studies in American Film , 2008
Reel Histories: Studies in American Film is an essay collection that extends the academic dialogu... more Reel Histories: Studies in American Film is an essay collection that extends the academic dialogue concerning the holy trinity of race, social class, and gender as they are constructed on the screen while also examining aspects of the film industry that are often ignored: the means and politics of film production and distribution, audience reception, the role and influence of film criticism, film's intersections with other media, and many other modes of approach stemming from particularities of historical, sociological, and cultural situation. Nine scholars, analyzing such films as From Here to Eternity, A Raisin in the Sun, Midnight Cowboy, Magnolia, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, The X Files, and Saving Private Ryan, go far beyond close readings approaching the films as matrices of intersecting voices located in particular socio-cultural moments participating in significant historical trajectories. These essays insightfully examine how specific films have functioned in American history, their provenance and their subsequent effects, both actual and potential.
The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation, 2022
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Shakespeare—Entry: Ophelia (dir. Claire McCarthy, 2018), 2022
Encyclopedia entry on the film Ophelia (dir. Claire McCarthy 2018), starring Daisy Ridley and Nao... more Encyclopedia entry on the film Ophelia (dir. Claire McCarthy 2018), starring Daisy Ridley and Naomi Watts, adapted from the YA novel by Lisa Klein, an adaptation and extension of Shakespeare's Hamlet told from Ophelia's perspective.
Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge UP), 2019
On many levels, Hamlet is a play about acting. When considering styles of theatrical performance,... more On many levels, Hamlet is a play about acting. When considering styles of theatrical performance, our eponymous prince exhorts the players to perform their parts “gently,” with “temperance” and “smoothness,” “[holding] a mirror up to nature” (3.2). This acting philosophy has been theorized and realized in diverse ways on stage and screen in the Euro-centric West, but it stands in stark contrast to one of the foremost ancient aesthetic theories of India—that of rasa, which refers to the emotion an audience member experiences during a performance, be it drama, dance, poetry, or music. Rasa theory posits that all the acting in a performed narrative must focus on eliciting powerful emotion from the audience; thus, “robustious” acting is frequently found on stage and screen in India, as is often noted by critics of Bollywood. Furthermore, rasa theory dictates that every theatrical work should be governed by one primary rasa, out of a group of eight designated emotions, which may appear in the piece but must serve to support the dominant rasa. In 2014, Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj adapted Hamlet into the Hindi film Haider, transforming the “rotten” state of Denmark into the beleaguered, divided region of Kashmir. Though rasa theory has not been widely used to analyze cinema, scholars have noted that Indian films are most commonly dominated by the rasas of romance (sringara) and sorrow (karuna). Not surprisingly, Haider is governed by karuna, the rasa of sorrow, pity, and grief, from start to finish, an emotional landscape that is undergirded by the rasas of disgust, as represented by the extreme, grisly violence in the film, and romance, which, as in the case of Hamlet and Ophelia, increases the pathos of the narrative. In Haider, karuna is evoked vividly through acting and other aspects of mise-en-scène, particularly the cold, harsh, awe-inspiring terrain of Kashmir, which typically is used very differently in Hindi cinema, as a magnificent backdrop for romantic passion. It is this, along with other striking juxtapositional strategies, that highlight Bhardwaj’s message in Haider. Like Akira Kurosawa in his twentieth century Shakespeare adaptations, Bhardwaj makes a brave statement in Haider condemning the appalling corruption and gruesome violence perpetrated by official authorities in his own nation as well as militants from within and outside the country. Haider, as a great many didactic performative works in India, employs the pathetic rasa to impart its ethical meaning and to stir audiences to think, and perhaps act, differently.
Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare, 2018
This essay examines the intertextual relationships between Teen Beach Movie (dir. Jeffrey Hornada... more This essay examines the intertextual relationships between Teen Beach Movie (dir. Jeffrey Hornaday, 2013) and the 1960s Beach Party movies, West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet, and other films and plays. Shakespeare operates as a consistent intertext in order to elevate Teen Beach Movie’s cultural status; to mark the superior intelligence and enlightened sophistication of its young protagonist, a twenty-first century female surfer who finds herself transported to a 1960s beach movie musical called Wet Side Story; and to mark the ironic cluelessness of male teens who are unaware that they are citing him. Despite pervasive and clever uses of intertextuality and self-reflexivity, TBM reifies conservative cultural gender norms even as it openly questions them.
Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet (Cambridge UP), 2023
This chapter analyses the film Ram-Leela using rasa theory, examining the dramatic ways in which ... more This chapter analyses the film Ram-Leela using rasa theory, examining the dramatic ways in which the film evokes emotion – for example, through the use of colour, cinematography and music – and conveys meaning through direct and indirect references to Hindu mythological figures and narratives. Rasa theory, and its religious referents, are especially efficacious for approaching Ram-Leela as its title, which literally names the two main characters Ram (Romeo) and Leela (Juliet), is also the name of one of the most significant sacred celebrations in India’s Hindu calendar, Ramlila, an annual autumn festival during which plays are performed that present the life of the god Rama from his birth. Many scholars have discussed the key importance of the story of King Rama and his wife Sita in the narratives featured in Bollywood cinema. Ram-Leela plays with these conventions, participating vividly in the impassioned expression of emotion called for in rasa theory, performing far outside the boundaries of realism, whilst also departing in significant, telling ways from both the narrative of the Ramayana and that of Romeo and Juliet.
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema: Framing Sacred Spaces, 2023
Hayao Miyazaki’s blockbuster Spirited Away (2001) features ten-year-old Chihiro sojourning in a w... more Hayao Miyazaki’s blockbuster Spirited Away (2001) features ten-year-old Chihiro sojourning in a world of spirits where she must learn to work hard, exercise courage, and extend compassion to others. The film’s rich mise-en-scène and “cinematography” mark this world as sacred space in multifarious significant ways explored in this chapter, including a particular focus on the aesthetics of ma and kū and their connections to Shinto and Buddhism. The film is structured as a physical journey through a spiritual world made up of “natural” deities, who are, by definition, immanent transcendent beings both very much of this world and yet supernatural. In this way, Miyazaki communicates his key theme of environmental stewardship and the interdependence of humanity and the natural world. In many ways, Chihiro’s odyssey is a pilgrimage, which is explored here via the work of Victor Turner and Richard Pilgrim. Chihiro’s interactions in the spirit world, especially with Yubaba and Zeniba, illustrate that one must transcend binary categories, such as virtuous versus evil, in order to extend grace, forgiveness, gratitude, and respect to others.
Introduction to Buddhist East Asia: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 2023
Co-authored with Zhang Xin.
A Companion to the Biopic, Nov 25, 2020
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.-... more Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.-Proverbs 4.7 (King James Version) Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.-Robert Frost, 'The Road Not Taken' (1916) The irony that often remains unperceived by readers of Robert Frost's iconic poetic parable 'The Road Not Taken' is thrown into stark relief when held up beside Sean Penn's 2007 film Into the Wild. Both texts play on romantic American mythologies of rugged individualism and utilising the 'natural' landscape as a proving ground for masculinity. However, in Penn's film, the adventurer who escapes to the unspoiled wilderness, taking the path less 'trodden' to shake off the perfidy of society, meets his demise, and other voices must tell his story. As Frost purposely and playfully invites misreading of his 'Road Not Taken'-the speaker stating three times that the roads are identical then launching into his hyberbolic, hypothetical tale 1-he reveals that particular American proclivity toward self-aggrandising myths, often, perhaps biblically, patterned after a journey in the wilderness. Into the Wild is itself a sublime tragedy of misreading these very fables. Indeed, young Christopher McCandless's fervent belief in the myths satirised in Frost's poem, among other cultural myths, drove him into the wild and toward his death. The difference, of course, is that Chris
Shakespeare and Emotion, 2020
Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear (Cambridge UP), Sep 26, 2019
The English Renaissance in Popular Culture: An Age for All Time, ed. by Greg Semenza, 2010
While the claim above by scholar Lucius Shepard specifically and accurately applies to the Wachow... more While the claim above by scholar Lucius Shepard specifically and accurately applies to the Wachowski Brothers’ film V for Vendetta, the historical detritus the film heaves onto our screens is provocative for a scholar of the early modern era. This 2005 film, set in the near future of the 2020s, begins and ends with a depiction of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605: opening with Guy Fawkes being arrested in his cellar of explosives, then skipping ahead to his public hanging (a two-minute sequence), and closing with the Parliament building going up in a glorious pyrotechnic spectacle. Famously, the latter event did not take place on November 5, 1605, because the former did. Although the destruction of Parliament in Vfor Vendetta is set in our future rather than a revision of early Stuart history, this denouement inevitably portrays an alternate history and forces the question “What if?” From 1605 to the present, an incalculable number of pages have been written on what the Gunpowder Plot was and what it meant. To tell their story in Vfor Vendetta, the Wachowski Brothers tap the ambiguity, multivalence, and efficacious mutability of the history surrounding the Gunpowder Treason and the subsequent annual celebrations to commemorate England’s deliverance on the fifth of November. So why did the Wachowski Brothers choose this historical framework and what did it mean to them?
Americana: Readings in Popular Culture
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema: Framing Sacred Spaces, 2023
Japan has an extraordinary history of aesthetics connected to its religious traditions, and its i... more Japan has an extraordinary history of aesthetics connected to its religious traditions, and its influential cinema has used religio-aesthetics related to Shinto and Buddhism in diverse ways. This book explores sacred space, symbols, and concepts embedded in the secular framework of films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Hirokaza Kore-eda, and Makoto Shinkai operate as expressions of and, potentially, catalysts for transcendence of various kinds. This introductory chapter explains the ways transcendence will be defined and establishes key connections between Japanese aesthetics, religion, and history, particularly focusing on the rise and fall of the Economic Bubble and its aftermath. The circulation of reductive discourses of Japaneseness, as these pertain to aesthetics and film, is examined. Paul Schrader’s prominent theory of transcendental style, especially as it relates to Yasujirō Ozu, will be explored along with the connections drawn between Ozu and Kore-eda. Finally, the chapter explicates the book’s approach to aesthetics and religion using the multifaceted and protean concepts of ma (structuring intervals), kū (emptiness; sky), and mono no aware (compassionate sensibility; resigned sadness). All of the films covered in the book feature ma as an aesthetic and philosophical signifier, but the films themselves also are ma—framed spaces of flickering, ephemeral light—in which senses of connection can be awakened and interdependence can be apprehended.
Routledge eBooks, Oct 10, 2023
Makoto Shinkai’s your name. (2016) is a striking cultural response to the devastation and overwhe... more Makoto Shinkai’s your name. (2016) is a striking cultural response to the devastation and overwhelming loss of the 3.11 triple disaster. Shinkai fictionalizes and revises history, offering a reversal of fortune through a spiritual mode of transcending time and space that is connected directly to kami and the Miyamizu Shrine at the center of this narrative. Using his signature aesthetic of the celestial—which provides, figuratively and literally, a cosmic and breathtaking view of large-scale catastrophe that falls from the heavens—your name. uses the aesthetics of kū to express diverse aspects of mono no aware, Sehnsucht, and emptiness. The film also centers on the multivalent complexity of musubi, which it communicates through its imagery, cinematography, and editing, as well as its story and themes. In this film, Shinkai comments on generational conflict, politics, and natural and manmade disasters in Japan, offering visions of magnificent destruction, struggle, and survival.
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema, 2023
Filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa, who lived through the cataclysms of twentieth-century Japan, ma... more Filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa, who lived through the cataclysms of twentieth-century Japan, made several dark films that attempt to look at life in an unflinching, uncompromising way. However, none of his films forces us to stare into the human potential for creating hell on earth quite as formidably as one of his final masterpieces, Ran (1985). This chapter examines Kurosawa’s troubled humanism, alongside his didacticism, in two of his darkest films, Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran, exploring how he uses formalist cinematic style and Buddhist and Shinto religious symbolism. In both films, Kurosawa vividly employs elements of Nō theater to mark the irruption of the spiritual into the phenomenal world, constructing hierophanic moments that lead to downward transcendence. However, while the earlier film contains humanity’s evil in layers of sacred space, Ran portrays a world wherein wickedness has broken out of its bounds and hell is everywhere. In this film, Kurosawa expresses his belief in the compelling need for individuals to transcend the unending cycles of violence that plague this world, rather than embrace the dubious otherworldly salvation provided by supernatural powers, such as Amida Buddha, who appears in Ran as an impotent symbol. These two films are cautionary tales for a vicious world.
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema: Framing Sacred Spaces, 2023
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (1998) and I Wish (2011) supersede simple definitions of documenta... more Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (1998) and I Wish (2011) supersede simple definitions of documentary and fiction film and depict a transcendence of the soul (literally in the first, figuratively in the second), which involves rituals of passage whereby characters spiritually rise above their existential anxiety. This allows them to see wonder in the world, to recognize their connection to others, and to move forward. This chapter utilizes concepts from the growing philosophical arena of everyday aesthetics, especially those of Yuriko Saito, to analyze transcendence via imagery of the quotidian in ways that depart from Paul Schrader’s well known theory of transcendental style. Kore-eda’s filmmaking process and his work are about movement and responsiveness to people and moments. In that sense, they are about mono no aware, a profound emotional resonance, as Motoori Norinaga defines it, rather than the concept’s later association primarily with sadness, which several writers identify with Ozu’s work. Kore-eda is a filmmaker of structuring absences, using diverse types of ma to communicate the importance of defamiliarizing the mundane so one can appreciate the ordinary. After Life and I Wish use evocative mises-en-scène, cinematography, and editing to communicate the creative energy that connects all beings and things, a revelation which eclipses the grief of loss and familial disintegration.
Routledge eBooks, Oct 10, 2023
This concluding chapter briefly looks at Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2017 film Before We Vanish as an alle... more This concluding chapter briefly looks at Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2017 film Before We Vanish as an allegory of humanity starting over with a resilience born of compassionate love. Like this film, Makoto Shinkai’s your name., Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life and I Wish respond to the disasters and struggles of the Heisei period. Moreover, these films use diverse evocations of sacred space, ritual, and religious symbolism to depict human and spiritual transcendence through empathy and interdependence. Akira Kurosawa portrays the negative side of this in his revisionist samurai films Throne of Blood and Ran, cautionary tales wherein there are no heroes, only perpetrators and victims, and they all go down together. These films respond to difficult times and trauma with artful, restorative creativity, turning memories of the past, concerns about the present, and hopes for the future into cinematic visions of the process of transcendence.
Anglistica AION, 2024
Traditional film theorists, from the 1910s through the 1950s, often focused on the "essential" di... more Traditional film theorists, from the 1910s through the 1950s, often focused on the "essential" differences between the arts of theater and film. Shakespeare was frequently a part of those specificity theory discussions, particularly as his work was so often adapted to silent film (generally in shreds and patches) and then in longer form for talkies in the first decade of sound. The cinematic and written work of prominent Russian filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) engages dialogically with Shakespeare and/in film in significant ways that stretch far beyond the passing of this early giant of film theory. This article examines how Eisenstein's formalist and specificity-oriented theory features Shakespeare at its very core while his later films, Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (Part I, 1944; Part II, 1958; Part III, 1946), were purposely structured in emulation of Shakespeare's contrapuntally designed history plays and the battle scenes in the major tragedies, particularly Macbeth. Conversely, the impact of Eisenstein's films and theoretical work can be seen clearly in the major film adaptations of Henry V (close or free, in part or whole), from Laurence Olivier's 1944 wartime adaptation, through Orson Welles's masterpiece Chimes at Midnight (1965), to Thea Sharrock's Hollow Crown adaptation (2013). Thus, as a filmmaker and theorist, Eisenstein finds profound inspiration in Shakespeare, and, in turn, several directors of Shakespeare films are in dialogue with Eisenstein's work regarding the ideological power and purpose of juxtapositionally structured "chronicle" films, which promulgate cogent ideological messages by demanding active spectatorship. In his later writing, Eisenstein declares that Shakespeare's plays figuratively and literally "mediate" the very Urphänomen of cinema, which stretches back into the prehistoric mists of mythological time and forward into theoretical futures.
The Shakespeare Newsletter (journal), 2020
Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj’s Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello, and Ha... more Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj’s Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet—Maqbool (2003), Omkara (2006), and Haider (2014) respectively—use Shakespeare’s tragedies as lenses through which to view the religious and political conflicts of post-1947 India. Rather than embrace a secularized national identity, as do many Bollywood films, these three films explicitly depict the religious practices and experiences of the two most prominent religions in India, Hinduism and Islam. Maqbool focuses on a predominantly Muslim community of gangsters in Mumbai; Omkara examines caste system prejudices amongst a group of criminals and politicians whose social roles are interchangeable; and Haider deals with the suffering of the mainly Muslim population of the Kashmir Valley at the hands of the occupying Indian military as well as Pakistani and home-grown militants. Clearly, there are provocative intersections between the religious followers and their praxis throughout all three films; however, as I have written of Haider and Omkara elsewhere (see Croteau “Ancient” and “Bollywood”), this piece explores his first compelling Shakespeare adaptation: Maqbool. Key religious elements are used to provide crucial impetus and emphasis in the narrative of Maqbool, which, while focusing ostensibly on human interrelationships, explores potent overarching issues surrounding religious devotion and conflict—and their complex relationship to all sorts of politics—in contemporary India.
Cahiers Élisabéthains, Jul 1, 2019
This article argues that Ambroise Thomas's opera Le Songe d'une nuit d'été functions as a Romanti... more This article argues that Ambroise Thomas's opera Le Songe d'une nuit d'été functions as a Romantic allegory of the coarse artistic genius elevated and sanctified by royal and spiritual powers in an attempt to glorify and justify Shakespeare. Simultaneously, and more importantly, the opera is an appeal to French artists to move away from their adherence to neoclassical symmetry, restraint, and stasis, which persisted even in the work and opinions of the French Romantics.
Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia, 2016
Prévert's cinematic masterpiece Les Enfants du paradis [Children of Paradise] (1945) is a film ab... more Prévert's cinematic masterpiece Les Enfants du paradis [Children of Paradise] (1945) is a film about theatre. It also is a film that may not have been made if it were not for the unusual and precarious situation of Occupied France during World War II. As it happened, Carné, the master of poetic realism, was forbidden by the occupying German forces to make films focusing on the present state of affairs in his besieged nation. As Ben McCann avers, during the Occupation, "Realism — poetic, social, magical or otherwise — was out". Therefore, Les Enfants du paradis, which explores the ineluctable convergence of art and life, is set in Paris in the 1820s on the Boulevard du Temple, which, by 1827, the year the film opens, had come to be known as the Boulevard du Crime [Crime Street], where all walks of life thronged to find diverse entertainments, from carnival acts to "respectable " theatre. Perhaps more brilliantly than any other film in the history of French cinema, Les enfants du paradis explores the ever permeable and mercurial boundaries between theatrical art and life. Rémi Fournier Lanzoni writes, “The multilayered contemplations of the different natures of theatrical performances — mime, comedy, vaudeville, romance, melodrama, and tragedy, extending from a glowing image of conflicting dramatic modes and a reflection of the interchangeability of theatre and life — was at the heart of the project”. This intense focus on the relationship between the stage and life clearly allies this film with Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Furthermore, Jacques Prévert, writer of the screenplay of Les enfants du paradis, particularly makes Shakespeare’s Othello a major focal point throughout the film. As noted by Russell Ganim and John C. Tibbetts, Les enfants makes significant use of direct and indirect references to Othello. Film scholar Brian Stonehill argues that the film presents itself “as a set of variations on the theme[s] of Othello”. Indeed, the film shares many of its central themes with the play: obsessive love, corrosive envy, deceit and illusion, betrayal and fidelity, the drive for power, the importance of social roles and role-playing. Moreover, one of the actor protagonists, Frédérick, is obsessed with playing Othello and is shown rehearsing and performing key scenes from the play. Othello is a crucial touchstone in the film. Prévert’s relentless mise-en-abyme of performances within performances also reminds the film’s audience that during the time of the German Occupation the French people often had to adopt roles that required masking, roles their very lives depended upon.
Access online at http://shakscreen.org/analyses/
Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies, 2023
The title of this superlative recent volume of essays, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin and Victoria ... more The title of this superlative recent volume of essays, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin and Victoria Bladen, boldly announces its focus on a topic that could be seen as trivial: mere allusions to Shakespeare and his works in screen texts. The films and shows covered therein are not screen adaptations of Shakespeare, which are the subject of a great many books. Instead, the essays in this volume examine brief Shakespeare references in film or television texts. This study continues the ongoing work of postmodern and cultural studies strategic goals to read all cultural products and practices as texts that reveal the multiple potential meanings of any given text, which is always already embedded in multifarious contexts. The essays in this volume demonstrate that the Bard has been and is a ubiquitous presence in international media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, evidenced by the fact that each essay looks at film and/or televisual texts from a different country. Refreshingly, Joubin and Bladen contend that this volume examining Shakespearean allusions extends beyond the question of whether a screen text is or is not “Shakespeare(an)”, instead focusing “further along the intertextuality continuum” to look at the often powerful ideological and artistic work performed by brief references to Shakespeare. Indeed, the Bard’s brief appearances in screen texts like these, as adeptly argued in this volume, help keep Shakespeare alive in significant ways, rather than damning him to a purgatorial half-life.
Shakespeare Quarterly, 2022
Adaptation (Oxford UP), Jun 25, 2021
Renaissance Quarterly, 2012
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2011
his description of the poisonous cup. When she later drank the poison after declaring her intenti... more his description of the poisonous cup. When she later drank the poison after declaring her intention with loud defiance, it seemed likely that she did so on purpose. Hamlet offered a final tribute to his father when, in his death-speech, he signed the word “silence.” The deaths at the end were not bloody, but simply presented and quickly mourned by those left behind. When Fortinbras discovered the bodies, he expressed not sorrow, but a kind of greedy pleasure at having won by default. This depiction of Fortinbras, more like Claudius than Hamlet, suggested that Denmark was not headed for unproblematic restoration, and it underscored the production’s representation of the modern city as dizzying, suffocating, and cold. Although Hamlet, his parents, and Ophelia obviously felt very deeply for one another, the ending implied that they were exceptions in this new Denmark and that greedy leaders and constant surveillance signaled the way of the future.
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2014
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Presented by The Old Globe at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, June ... more A Midsummer Night’s Dream Presented by The Old Globe at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, June 2–September 29, 2013. Directed by Ian Talbot. Set by Ralph Funicello. Costumes by Deirdre Clancy. Lighting by Alan Burrett. Sound by Dan Moses Schreier. With Miles Anderson (Bottom), Winslow Corbett (Hermia), Nic Few (Demetrius), Adam Gerber (Lysander), Lucas Hall (Puck), Sherman Howard (Egeus), Charles Janasz (Peter Quince), John Lavelle (Snug), Krystel Lucas (Titania/Hippolyta), Danielle O’Farrell (First Fairy), Triney Sandoval (Snout), Ryman Sneed (Helena), Whitney Wakimoto (Peaseblossom), Jay Whittaker (Oberon/Theseus), and Sean-Michael Wilkinson (Flute).
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2010
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2014
... With Greg Derelian (Coriolanus), Celeste Ciulla (Volumnia), Brendan Griffin (Aufidius), Charl... more ... With Greg Derelian (Coriolanus), Celeste Ciulla (Volumnia), Brendan Griffin (Aufidius), Charles Janasz (Menenius Agrippa), Brooke Novak (Virgilia), Catherine Gowl (Valeria), Grant Goodman (Sicinius Velutus), James New-comb (Junius Brutus), Gerritt Vandermeer (Cominius ...
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2012
... Access provided by your local institution. [Access article in PDF]. Reviewed by. J. Caitlin F... more ... Access provided by your local institution. [Access article in PDF]. Reviewed by. J. Caitlin Finlayson ... With Raphael Parry (Leonato), Scott Milligan (Balthasar, Street Musician, Verges, Friar Francis), Elise Reynard (Beatrice), Allison McCorkle (Hero), Gloria V. Benavides (Margaret ...
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2010
Coriolanus Presented by The Old Globe Theatre’s 2009 Summer Shakespeare Festival at the Lowell Da... more Coriolanus Presented by The Old Globe Theatre’s 2009 Summer Shakespeare Festival at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, San Diego, California. June 13–September 27. Directed by Darko Tresnjak. Set by Ralph Funicello. Costumes by Anna R. Oliver. Lighting by York Kennedy. Sound by Chris Walker. With Greg Derelian (Coriolanus), Celeste Ciulla (Volumnia), Brendan Griffin (Aufidius), Charles Janasz (Menenius Agrippa), Brooke Novak (Virgilia), Catherine Gowl (Valeria), Grant Goodman (Sicinius Velutus), James Newcomb ( Junius Brutus), Gerritt Vandermeer (Cominius), and others.
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2018
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2019
Review of Much Ado About Nothing, 2019 production at the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, CA.
Shakespeare Bulletin, 2020