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My question, though, is how much of this representation is necessary? Certainly this is a scene in the play with the potential to deal in spectacle, letting the audience see Gloucester blinded in a way they never saw Oedipus do to himself, for instance. How much do we need this particular spectacle to evince the feelings we have when Gloucester says in act IV, "I have no way, and therefore want no eyes"? More importantly, what do we think of choices in adaptation of this scene considering how unflinchingly visual our culture has become? Does our current cultural emphasis on vision make this scene all the more painful for us to the watch?
Basically, this particular strain of thought has taken me from adaptation theory to reader response, to disability studies in one very tiring night. This topic kind of gives me the willies, but I'm still drawn to it. I don't know if it'll be my final paper, but it's something I've been exploring tonight.
I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Minority Report, but it's somewhat of a retelling of the Oedipus story. We watched it in class my sophmore year of high school and I remember having to leave the class when the protagonist's eyes were surgically removed because I got sick. I don't cope with violence well so I'm biased, but the graphic depiction of Gloucester's eyes is definitely a reflection of our current society. Is the current common portrayal of violence quelling or perpetuating an issue we have in our society? I know after the December shootings in my home town the town came together to box up all the m rated video games in town and put them in the basement of an abandoned insane asylum...
ReplyDeletewait, they literally boxed up games and threw them in the basement of an insane asylum? that seems a little... extreme. :)
DeleteMikaela, I would love to hear more about this--it might help with my paper somehow. Did any news cover it? Do you know if there's a story about it somewhere?
DeleteI sympathize with seeing the eyeless face. A few years ago I watched Sixth Sense late at night; when I laid down in bed, "I saw dead people." Bleh.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I really like your idea about Disability Studies. Frankly, I didn't know that was a field, so it would be very interesting to see King Lear through that lens.
Perhaps you could draw in Richard II, in which the king is physically deformed? that would be REALLY interesting.
Man, if you want to have basically your entire concept of literature and blindness as a symbol challenged, read this article: https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/convent/banque74.htm
DeleteIt was given at a convention for the blind in 1974, and I'm struggling through it.
Actually, I thought the removal of Glouchester's eyes in the 2008 could have been a lot worse. They showed people crowding around him and they showed his bloody eye sockets afterward, but not the actual REMOVAL of the eyes.
ReplyDelete