“Dude, Where’s My Bard?”

Abstract

This work takes as its starting point the strange intertextual space Shakespeare has come to occupy in contemporary America: His works are read in schools, used as raw material for film, television, and stage adaptations, re-created as graphic novels, referenced in commercials and advertisements, and used as a framework to understand adolescent girls, contemporary cultural and social conflicts, and business practices. We no longer have “Shakespeare,” but rather “Shakespeares.” As Frederic Jameson argues in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, the border has broken down between high art and mass culture: commercial culture is incorporated directly into postmodern art and high culture has become a commodity. What might at first glance be dismissed as immature, trendy, silly, or insignificant is actually indicative of both Shakespeare’s place in contemporary culture as well as indicative of the dominance of youth culture, even in the face of the “universality” and classical status of Shakespeare.