Abstract
shakespeare Wallah (1965) signifies the uneasy relationship between opposing cultures: Indian and English, whose differences are marked by race, class, religion, and power. Set in the aftermath of India’s inde-pendence, the film foregrounds the cultural anxieties between a colonial power and its onetime colonial possession, documenting the decline of the British Raj and the emergence of an independent India through the discrete aesthetics of Shakespeare theater productions and popular Hindi cinema. Shakespeare Wallah balances Shakespeare’s texts with the cinematic and cultural traditions of the Bollywood industry to comment on, and obliquely critique, the unique historical moment that bridges the colonial period and the emerging postcolonial nation.
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© 2014 Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia
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Kapadia, P. (2014). Bollywood Battles the Bard: The Evolving Relationship between Film and Theater in Shakespeare Wallah. In: Dionne, C., Kapadia, P. (eds) Bollywood Shakespeares. Reproducing Shakespeare: New Studies in Adaptation and Appropriation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375568_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375568_3
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