WHY DOES HAIDER HAVE TO HAMLETIAN?: AN EXPLORATION OF POLITICS OF ADAPTATION

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to give a discourse analysis of Vishal Bhardwaj’s film Haider: Indian film adaptations of Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, in the context of postmodern product of late capitalism. It tries to answer how consumerism of the film determines ideological hegemony and the adaptation controversy of Haider hides the fact of 1990’s Kashmir conflict from the audience. The adaptation stands for Fredric Jameson’s postmodern idiosyncrasy of “Death of the Subject”. The critical discourse analysis illustrates Haider as an un/justifiable cultural adaptation on the basis of its identical perspective. Therefore, this paper tries to demonstrate that if this film is ‘concentrating merely’ on the commercial profits. As a consequence, focusing on the in/fidelity of the film, how far it is reasonable to call Haider an adaptation and if not then a pastiche film? Often the cultural adaptations of Hamlet have ideological dominating on the particular audiences of related cultures. Therefore, these issues and arguments are stimulated to ‘develop’ the market values of the film and to address that in conjunction with additional secondary sources this paper aims to employ content analysis as a methodology.