Shakespeare in Contemporary Romanian Advertising

• Main Author: Gabriela Iuliana COLIPCĂ-CIOBANU
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Casa Cărții de Știință 2016-12-01
• Series: Cultural Intertexts
• Subjects: shakespearean drama; adaptation; intertextuality; television commercials; consumerism
• Online Access: http://files.cultural-intertexts.webnode.com/200000297-972b0972b2/25-46%20Colipca-Ciobanu%20-%20Shakespeare%20in%20Contemporary%20Romanian%20Advertising.pdf

Shakespeare‘s presence in the Romanian culture has been mainly ensured, for a long time, by translations and theatrical performances. Yet, nowadays, in a context in which reading the classics (or, in general, reading literature) in print seems to be losing ground to digital media and the theatre, as an institution, is subject to a major crisis, relying only on these ‗highbrow‘ forms of cultural appropriation of Shakespeare‘s works is no longer enough to preserve the interest in Shakespeare as a literary icon and a cultural phenomenon; other forms of intertextual encounter with Shakespeare that belong to popular culture may, hopefully, contribute to propagating the ‗Shakespeare myth‘ among mass Romanian audiences. Focusing on one particular product of contemporary popular culture, namely TV advertising, the paper explores the few Shakespeare-related TV commercials aired on various Romanian TV channels during the first decades of the new millennium, to see to what extent the re-contextualisation of Shakespearean words, images, characters or themes in these cultural products may function as an effective means to reinforce Shakespeare‘s cultural authority in the Romanian collective consciousness.