We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This chapter looks at emotion in Shakespearean cinema by considering two Bollywood adaptations through the lens of Indian aesthetic theory and narrative traditions. Filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj adapted Macbeth and Othello as Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006). Both include a masala mix of genres characteristic of Indian popular cinema (melodrama, romance, tragedy, comedy, gangster film), and both break down the boundaries of genre established in the western narrative tradition by Aristotle. Bhardwaj adapts Shakespearean tragedy into tragic tales of contemporary India that traverse quickly between different Hollywood-defined genres and affective tones, pulling the audience through intense emotional terrain evoked by vivid audio-visual stimuli. Bhardwaj’s work can usefully be approached through the co-ordinates of ancient rasa theory which has dominated aesthetic approaches to the arts in India for over two thousand years. The rasas, or emotions, offer an important lens through which to understand how Indian popular cinema communicates powerfully to its enormous global audience, both resident and diasporic, many of whom are drawn to Bollywood’s emotional intensity and generic hybridity. Rasa theory sheds light on Bhardwaj’s achievement, then, but also provides a valuable and fertile apparatus through which to explore Shakespeare’s works more generally on page, stage, and screen.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.