Parody and the gas station in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Avital G. Cykman

doi:10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n1p177

Authors

Avital G. Cykman Federal University of Santa Catarina https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3214-8213

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n1p177

Abstract

Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film, William Shakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet, is a pop-culture adaptation of the late sixteenth-century play. The cross-references and transgression of allusions and their postmodern subversive statement along with the extreme intensity with which these elements appear in act one, scene one, and especially in the scene placed at a gas station produce a self-directed irony, a cutting-edge, if playful combination of references that define it as parody in the postmodern sense. Hence, this article examines act one, scene one with a special attention to the gas station sequence, and analyzes it in the light of scholarly definitions of postmodern parody by Linda Hutcheon, John W. Duvall and Douglas Lanier, and of pastiche by Fredric Jameson. Once the hypothesis of parody is established, the article analyzes what the film parodies and in what ways, and what the objective and the impact of the applied humor are.

Author Biography

Avital G. Cykman, Federal University of Santa Catarina

Avital G.Cykman is a PhD candidate at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Her work about feminist postmodernism in Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye won first place in the graduate essay contest category in Margaret Atwood Society Awards and was published in the Margaret Atwood Society Magazine, Canada. Her article about anger in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handsmaid’s Tale has been published in Arthemis, an interdisciplinary magazine for research in gender, feminism, and sexuality. Her fiction book Life In, Life Out was published in the USA in 2014 to a favorable critical review. Her research interests include corporeality, gender, minorities, trauma and creative writing. Email: avital.gc@gmail.com.

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