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Shakespeare in the Spotlight: Examining the Binary of Elite and Pop Culture in Shakespeare’s Legacy
Full text linkThe literary oeuvre of William Shakespeare has become ubiquitous within popular culture, pervading a broad range of media, including motion pictures, television series, musical compositions, and promotional campaigns. This paper delves into the intriguing intersection of Shakespearean canon and popular culture, with a particular focus on Hamlet. It aims to examine the various adaptations of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in different forms of popular culture, with a view to understanding the impact these adaptations have had on the public’s perception of Shakespearean canon. The paper is centred on two specific adaptations of Hamlet - Ryan North’s interactive graphic fiction To Be or Not To Be, and the manga edition of Hamlet by Adam Sexton and Tintin Pantoja titled Shakespeare’s Hamlet: The Manga Edition. One of the primary objectives of this research is to investigate the use of graphic novels and interactive fiction as mediums of popular culture in adapting Hamlet. The paper argues that the adaptations of Hamlet in popular culture bring a fresh perspective to the text, and can appeal to new and diverse audiences that might not have been exposed to Shakespearean canon in traditional academic settings. Furthermore, the paper explores the larger implications of these adaptations in the context of the relationship between popular culture and literary canon. It highlights how popular culture has helped to expand the reach of Shakespeare’s works and recontextualize them for new audiences, while retaining the fundamental essence of his works. The paper also considers the challenges and opportunities presented by the intersection of Shakespearean canon and popular culture. Finally, this paper aims to contribute to ongoing conversations about the role of popular culture in shaping our understanding of literary classics and the ways in which these works can be adapted and reinterpreted for modern audiences, through the discursive lens of Hamlet’s adaptations
Absent Father Effect on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds by Susan E. Schwartz
Full text linkAbsent Father Effect on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds by Susan E. Schwartz, Routledge, ISBN 978-03673360856, 176 pages, 2020, 13,341 (Hardcover
Memory, Migration and the Politics of Return: A Postcolonial Reading of Michael Donkor’s Hold
Full text linkThis paper aims to explore the diasporic legacies of African migration and its impact on the construction of identity in Black British literature. With special reference to Michael Donkor’s novel Hold (2018), the paper examines the impact of colonial legacies in the construction of identity. The narrative focuses on Belinda, a Ghanaian housemaid living in Britain, whose life of servitude echoes the exploitative labour systems of colonial exchange. Amma, whose queer preferences are pathologized and labelled un-African, Nana, the traditional mother, whose adherence to tradition belies her own past experiences, and Mary, whose rootedness serves as a foil to diasporic anxieties, are other significant characters in the novel. This study seeks to analyse the characters’ experiences of return, retreat and rootedness in order to historically situate the themes of belonging and cultural assimilation in the lives of the African diaspora. Drawing on postcolonial theory, this paper examines how Hold interrogates themes of race, class and gender and the inherent inequalities that shape diasporic life. By linking the characters’ personal struggles to the weight of history, the study highlights how colonial legacies shape modern diasporic identity. The paper also looks at how diasporic women resist gender norms and patriarchal policing, and reclaim collective memory, thereby exerting agency
Subverting the Hegemonic Order: Caste, Power, and Resistance in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
Full text linkThis paper explores the insidious function of cultural hegemony in sustaining caste-based domination within Indian society, specifically in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. The study examines how consent, coercion and ideological dominance normalize systematic exploitation and uphold long-standing caste and class hierarchies using Antonio Gramsci’s theoretical framework. The paper critiques caste based disparities that underpin elite hegemonic power by analyzing the protagonist Balram Halwai. Adiga’s representation of Balram’s progression from enslavement to entrepreneurship underscores his struggle against oppressive powers to confirm how caste and economic exploitation are interwoven. In addition, to examine the evolving nature of cultural dominance modern theories from Nancy Fraser and Stuart Hall are employed along with Gramsci’s foundational ideas. The emergence and extraction of social class within a capitalist structure is clarified by Hall’s articulation theory and Fraser’s account of neoliberal identity-based injustices. The White Tiger, according to this study, is a striking critique of cultural hegemony principally in its depiction of institutional connivance and infused servitude. The paper underlines that the transformative power of literature has ability to challenge dominant power structures by situating Adiga’s work within greater debates of resistance and hegemony. To achieve social equality in the society, the paper fosters for counter-hegemonic initiatives that dismantle deeply entrenched hierarchical structures
Time Whispers in My Ear by Aju Mukhopadhyay
Full text linkTime Whispers in My Ear by Aju Mukhopadhyay, OnlineGatha, ISBN: 978-9385818011, 2015
Exploring Mindscape and Landscape in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing
Full text linkMargaret Atwood being the most significant Canadian novelist, poet and critic is chiefly popular for her writing about several social problems. Her novel Surfacing, published in 1972, portrays the domination of western civilization as a patriarchal ideology over nature and woman in parallel. The novel is about the degeneration of the core ideas of rationalism and progress into brute domination, colonization and the rift between nature and culture. Atwood scathingly criticizes the rampant consumerism and capitalism of the modern age embodied in the threat posed by American culture, or American mentality, to Canada and its landscape which runs parallel to the masculine rationality that wills to ‘submerge’ as the central metaphor of ‘surfacing’ as its feminine mindset. This paper discusses the conflict between the landscape and mindscape in several related dualisms represented in the novel and thus glorifies the theme of ecofeminism throughout its notion
Forging a Family: Subverting the Heteronormative Family Structure and Navigating Identities in the Anime Spy X Family
Full text linkAnime, with its global popularity and mass engagement, is a cultural form that is positioned at a strategically significant juncture where the demarcation between high culture and popular culture gets blurred. The medium and form of anime that include stunning visual storytelling styles not only attract the audience towards it but also allow the medium to explore serious and mature themes like death, grief, etc., in a nuanced manner. The anime series Spy X Family, which was released in April 2022 and is based on an eponymous manga by Tatsuya Endo, leverages the intricacies of the anime form to portray serious issues like war, poverty and corruption in a way that is simultaneously sensitive and light-hearted. The premise of the anime series centres on an international spy code-named Twilight who is assigned a mission to gather intelligence about a hostile country that might initiate a nuclear war in the future. The secret mission requires Twilight to forge a faux family so that he can easily blend into society. He manages to assemble an eccentric faux family that involves an assassin and an orphaned telepath as his wife and daughter, respectively. The family that Twilight forges for the mission is ironically called the Forger family, however, the family name is not merely a silly word play, it is more than just a pun. It subverts the heteronormative family structure that is based on blood kinship and creates space for alternative family dynamics. This paper analyses Spy X Family by focussing on the series’ portrayal of counter-normative family structures, interpersonal dynamics, the negotiation of multiple identities and how it dismantles the socio-cultural constructedness of heteronormative family configurations
Mentor / Mentee Relationship and the Development of Technical Theatre in Nigeria: Dexter Lyndersay and Molinta Enendu in Focus
Full text linkContinuity and efficiency are both products of mentorship; being the relationship between a more experienced person generally referred to as mentor and the less experienced individual referred to as the mentee. The sole responsibility of a mentor is to provide support / guidance as well as valuable professional insight towards the development and success of the mentee. Therefore, this research aims at investigating how this relationship has so far contributed to the success or otherwise in the development of Technical Theatre practice in Nigeria and what should be done to strengthen the relationship for enhanced theatre practice in Nigeria. Adopting a qualitative approach, this study leans on the notions of Transformative Learning and Social Learning Theories. The paper argues that, for the sake of development, proficient and intentional mentor/mentee relationships are inevitable in the Nigeria theatre industry in particular and the creative industry in general. It emphasizes that positive and cordial mentorship remains a panacea for sustainable development in technical theatre practice. It suggests that introducing mentorship programmes into theatre curriculum could contribute to professional progression and individual development
Spiritual & Literary Perspectives in the Poetry of Kabir Das and Swami Vivekanand: A Critical Exploration
Full text linkKabir Das and Swami Vivekananda were two mammoth Indian mystic saints and poets. Their fundamental works cannot be quantified. The paper involves critical and comparative analysis of spiritual and literary aspects of poems by Kabir Das and Swami Vivekananda-two champions whose poems cut across tradition and time, across orthodoxy. The 15th-century mystic poet Kabir expressed a radical spiritual intuition nourished by Nirguna Bhakti, denouncing ritualism and caste stratification in vernacular poetry full of metaphor, paradox and experience-based observation. The philosopher-poet of the 19th century and Vedantic leader of the resurgence, Swami Vivekananda, saturated his poetry with self-realization, with national rebirth, with universalism, and with the blending of ancient Sanskritic rhythm with modern realization. The paper will include a comparison of how these two poets employ the literary elements of symbolism, meter, aphorism and rhetorical passion in their presentation of ultimate religious realities. The form, also, in the paper, in the invocation of the interior repose, of the experience of the transcendent, of renunciation of dogma, of how they are presented in the situation, in the language of a lyric, is opposed. The surface meaning of the lines of both the model, as the poets, Kabir and Vivekananda, see poetry not as the revelation of the lyric, not as the statement of the spiritual revolution, but as the commentary on the society. Finally, this parallel serves also to make their poetic traditions applicable in the more current thinking on belief, self-consciousness and freedom of the latter-day-modernism-connecting mysticism of the Middle Ages to the humanism of the modern era
Contextualizing the Trado-Afro Cultural Contents in Gloria Ernest-Samuel’s The Beautiful Masquerade
Full text linkThis article seeks to explore the contextual depth of traditional and cultural elements that reflect the lived realities of African people and society, as creatively represented in Gloria Ernest-Samuel’s The Beautiful Masquerade. The text is examined as a cultural mirror that encapsulates the complexities of African traditional life, revealing not only enduring customs but also the ideological structures that govern communal existence. The Beautiful Masquerade thus functions beyond mere storytelling; it operates as a socio-cultural commentary that interrogates the conditions shaping traditional African communities and their modes of existence. The study focuses primarily on a close textual analysis of the narrative, paying particular attention to the depiction of the traditional and cultural universe embedded within the text. Through its portrayal of rituals, festivals, belief systems, and social hierarchies, the work foregrounds the continuity of African cultural practices across generations. Central to this cultural framework is the figure of the traditional ruler, whose authority and governance reflect the entrenched mentality of despotism often associated with patriarchal and autocratic leadership structures in traditional societies. The ruler’s actions and symbolic presence illuminate the power dynamics that shape social order and communal identity. Furthermore, the article critically examines how cultural practices such as ancestral worship, religious ideology, and customary laws function as instruments for maintaining social cohesion as well as reinforcing authority. In summation, the paper offers a nuanced critique of the uniqueness of African society by foregrounding its traditional and cultural practices, which encapsulate deeply rooted customs, belief systems, religious consciousness, norms, and values. Through this analysis, the study underscores the literary text’s role in preserving cultural memory while simultaneously questioning the sustainability of certain traditional power structures in contemporary African society