There's some evidence (in thread) Shakespeare prompts progressivism on issues of identity. I'd like to test that hypothesis out on your collective wisdom. What historical examples come to mind for Shax as a force of progressive vs. conservative identity ethics and politics?
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Anti-apartheid South Africans saw Shakespeare in their movement. Adaptations from Kurosawa, Al-Bassam, and Bhardwaj have created spaces for cross-cultural conversation.
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Enemies after war have come together to stage Romeo and Juliet, a play about enemies coming together after war. Shakespeare has sparked controversies about the role of women on stage in Afghanistan.
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Teaching queer Shakespeare texts like Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and the Sonnets in the classroom can expose students to the spectrum of gender and sexuality possibilities often stigmatized in mainstream culture.
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Shakespeare’s plays improve mental health literacy and reduce mental illness stigma. Shakespeare is taught in medical schools to foster empathy for the human experience of disease and disability.
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Sports-inflected Shakespeare films like O and She’s the Man pose questions of race and gender to teen audiences that often avoid deep thought on such issues.
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Shakespeare has reformed incarcerated criminals by helping them acknowledge their past and envision a different future. The Donkey Show, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a staple of the LGBTQ+ experience in Cambridge, MA.
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The hip hop artist Akala affirms a place for rap music in the Western canon by pointing out you often can’t tell the difference between Shakespearean lines and rap lyrics.
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Sign Languages have illustrated their vibrancy by translating Shakespeare. Shakespeare has helped elderly actors maintain a sense of value and achievement, as in Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller’s documentary Still Dreaming.
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I don’t want to be Pollyannaishly bardolatrous here. Shakespeare made identity-based attacks against Moors, Jews, Irish, Welsh, French, Indians - many others – basically anyone not English.
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The Shakespearean prompt for progressivism is by no means absolute. The possibility of bi- and homosexuality was edited out of the Sonnets for centuries, an erasure of that identity. NAZIs saw their values in Shakespeare.
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So it’s a both/and situation. Shakespeare was a tool of both empire and its critique. Both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth saw their cause in Shakespeare.
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Basil Dearden’s adaptation of Othello, All Night Long (1962), points forward, while Stuart Burge’s and Jonathan Miller’s blackface Othellos (1965 and 1981) look backwards.
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Shakespeare has been both friend and foe of feminism. Ditto for disability activists. The World Shakespeare Festival was hit and miss. Ditto for the Hogarth Shakespeare series.
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But I reckon the balance of evidence tilts toward Shakespeare as a force of progress on the issues of identity that define society today.
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