Andrews University Digital Commons @ Andrews University Faculty Publications 1-2016 Shakespeare and the Cultural Olympiad: Contesting Gender and the British Nation in the BBC’s Hollow Crown L Monique Pittman Andrews University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pubs Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, Television Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Pittman, L Monique, "Shakespeare and the Cultural Olympiad: Contesting Gender and the British Nation in the BBC’s Hollow Crown" (2016). Faculty Publications. 265. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pubs/265 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Shakespeare and the Cultural Olympiad: Contesting Gender and the British Nation in the BBC's The Hollow Crown L. Monique Pittman, Andrews University Abstract As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad celebrating both the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, the BBC launched a season of programs, entitled Shakespeare Unlocked, most notably presenting the plays of the second tetralogy in four feature-length adaptations released under the unifying title The Hollow Crown. These plays so obviously engaged with the question of English nationalism suited a year in which the United Kingdom wrestled with British identity in a post-colonial and post-Great Recession world. Through its adaptative and filmic vocabularies, however, The Hollow Crown advances a British nationalism unresponsive to the casualties — often women and ethnic minorities — incurred over the course of Britain's self-formation and acts of self-defining.