Thursday, August 28, 2008

King Lear as Marketing Device?

“Showpiece: Wanton.” Straighty 180. 27 August 2008.
One of the most devastating speeches in Lear is Gloucester's to Edgar at IV.i.28-39:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.
You wouldn't think that those lines would easily lend themselves to commodification. But the people of Straighty 180 alter these lines slightly and use them to market . . . marketing itself. Or, at least, to market themselves. See the startling, distrubing ad below:


[Like] flies to wanton [girls] are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.
Links: Straighty 180.
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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

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 —The Tempest