<span class='italic'>Romeo and Juliet</span> and Queer Temporality in Three Twenty-first-century Streaming Web-Series

doi:10.1017/9781009200905.015

Chapter 14 - Romeo and Juliet and Queer Temporality in Three Twenty-first-century Streaming Web-Series

from Part III - Serial and Queer Romeo and Juliets

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 October 2023

Sujata Iyengar

Edited by

Victoria Bladen ,

Sarah Hatchuel and

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

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Victoria Bladen: Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Sarah Hatchuel: Affiliation:
University Paul-Valéry Montpellier
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin: Affiliation:
University Paul-Valéry Montpellier

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Summary

This chapter uses a transmedia approach to compare three international web-series adaptations of Romeo and Juliet: Romeu and Romeu (Brazil, 2016), Rome and Juliet (USA, 2017), and Romil and Jugal (India, 2018/2019), arguing that these shows use transmedia conventions to foreground how they re-write the Shakespearean text. All three shows included at least one protagonist with aspirations to succeed in the performing arts, and included lines from that play as set pieces. All three altered Shakespeare’s tragic ending to conclude with young people who feel supported within their sexuality and with previously hostile families reconciled. But the shows also added additional identity markers – whether of caste, language, social class, able-bodiedness, region or career aspirations – to the conflicts faced by their youthful protagonists, and some of these identity markers overshadowed the romantic plot to such an extent that none of these endings is 'happy' in a traditional or fairy-tale sense. I conclude that the transmedia characteristics of these shows make these adaptations ‘queer’.

Keywords

Romeo and Juliet Youtube appropriation series Romeu and Romeu Rome and Juliet Romil and Jugal transmedia queer ending

Type: Chapter
Information: Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet , pp. 214 - 230

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009200905.015 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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