About this episode

The episode discusses the impact of recent film adaptations of literary classics like Frankenstein and Hamnet during Oscars week.

It’s Oscars week! The golden statues will get dished out on Sunday evening in Los Angeles and the world will be watching. Literary classics are big, yet again. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet have received multiple nominations, and Jesse Buckley has already won BAFTA and Golden Globe for her performance as Anges, aka Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife.   Where do new adaptations and retellings leave the literary originals? Is the rage for reinterpretations revealing that books matter the most, or replacing books with easier, more exciting consumables? For lovers of Hamnet , does Hamlet still matter and if so, why? Does yet another adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , this time starring Jacob Elordi, the glowed-up Darcified Heathcliff of Emereld Fennell’s recent “Wuthering Heights,” give us new insights? Or does Shelley’s masterpiece sink beneath the icy polar seas of the Hollywood publicity machine, even as Elordi’s new version of the monster is unsinkable? Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See…

People in this episode

Hosts: Sophie Gee, Jonty Claypole

Topics covered

• Oscars
• literary adaptations
• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• Shakespeare
• film vs literature

Keywords

• Oscars
• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• literary adaptations
• Jesse Buckley
• Mary Shelley
• Shakespeare

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Frankenstein, Hamnet, Wuthering Heights

Places: Los Angeles

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