Between Political Drama and Soap Opera: Appropriations of King Lear in US Television Series Boss and Empire

doi:10.1017/9781108589727.013

Chapter 13 - Between Political Drama and Soap Opera: Appropriations of King Lear in US Television Series Boss and Empire

from Part IV - Lear on the Loose: Migrations and Appropriations of Lear

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2019

Sylvaine Bataille and

Anaïs Pauchet

Edited by

Victoria Bladen ,

Sarah Hatchuel and

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

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Victoria Bladen: Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Sarah Hatchuel: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier

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Summary

Both Boss (Starz, 2011–2012) and Empire (FOX, 2015–) were conceived as modern retellings of King Lear. Tom Kane, the corrupt mayor of Chicago in Boss, and Lucious Lyon, the African-American CEO of Empire Entertainment in Empire, both diagnosed with an incurable neurological disease at the beginning of the shows, are Lear figures who now have no option but to ‘crawl toward death’. From this premise, both Empire and Boss significantly rework the Lear character arc as well as the family pattern derived from Shakespeare’s play, not only by regendering Lear’s children in Empire or subtracting two daughters in Boss, but also by adding a wife and mother. Both shows, then, use material from King Lear in the loose way characteristic of ‘Shakespearean’ drama series such as House of Cards (Netflix, 2013–) or Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011–). This chapterexamines to what extent each show’s specific production context aesthetically and ideologically informed its appropriation of King Lear, looking at the way each series’s recycling and reconfiguring of material from King Lear contributes to its exploration of family relationships, physical and mental degradation, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and power, and interacts with issues of gender and race.

Keywords

Boss Empire King Lear TV series appropriation family power race gender

Type: Chapter
Information: Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear , pp. 202 - 218

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108589727.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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