Radicalising Shakespeare: Staging the Sri Lankan Juliet in Julietge Bhumikawa

K. C. P. Warnapala

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.29.04

Authors

K. C. P. Warnapala University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2699-4918

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.29.04

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Keywords:

Sri Lankan film, gender, Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, “other woman”

Abstract

Through an analysis of the Sri Lankan film, Julietge Bhumikawa (1998) (Illusions of Juliet), I argue that the film radicalizes Shakespeare-inspired film through providing a bold site of enunciation to the character of Juliet. While the Sri Lankan Juliet is cast as mistress, interrogating discourses of purity surrounding not only the original source text—Romeo and Juliet—but the contemporary Sri Lankan society as well, Julietge Bhumikawa reconfigures female gender ideologies by unraveling the nexus between female madness and patriarchal culture.

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Author Biography

K. C. P. Warnapala, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka

Kanchanakesi Warnapala graduated with honours from the Department of English, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and subsequently obtained her Master’s Degree in English and Doctorate in English from Michigan State University, USA. She is at present a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka and has published her academic research in journals such as Interventions, Early Popular Visual Culture, the European Journal of Life Writing, and South Asian Popular Culture.

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