Social Justice

     Many screen adaptations of the classics are informed by social justice concerns. Films construct a social space—a space for socialization and discussion of social justice issues—where the characters’ and audiences’ universes intersect. Some films imagine the classics to have a remedial effect on our society. Others illustrate the questions of inequities raised by the familiar, canonical story. These works use their literary sources to host social reparation.

     While, in the U.S., “reparation” often refers to remediation of historical injustices, such as efforts to restore land rights to indigenous people, I use the notion of social reparation here to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency.

     Inspirational narratives, in particular, have instrumentalized the canon to serve socially reparative purposes.

Films That Address Social Justice Issues

     Socially progressive film adaptations remedy injustices in our times and power asymmetries that inform Shakespeare’s play. In this sense of reparation, we might say artists have “rescued” Shakespeare from a patriarchal tradition of interpretation. The ills these works seek to mend include misogyny and attitudinal biases against homosexuality.

     The recent social justice turn in the arts has given relevance and purpose to art. Emotional investment in a story spurs people into action, and it is validating and encouraging for audiences to see themselves represented on screen.

     Since 2009, the Social Justice Film Institute in Seattle has supported activist filmmakers through its Social Justice Film Festivals, and the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in New York has sponsored the Justice Film Festivals since 2015 to inspire justice seekers by presenting films of unexpected courage and redemption.”

Analyzing Films through a Social Justice Lens

    While analyzing films, we can also bring social justice concerns to bear on “imperfect” specimen. Here are some examples and themes to consider:

• Point-of-View (POV) shots may turn a female character into a sexualized object through the leery eyes of an observer or the camera-eye.
• Framing that fragments female body parts singles them out for consumption disconnect the characters from their environment.
• Such camera movements as slow motion and tilt disassociate characters from real time in the narrative. These techniques make the characters more sensual and take away their control of the space they inhabit. Slow pan or slow tilt also prolongs the amount of the time. 
• Lighting can flatten female characters’ features, making them attractive but less three-dimensional. 
• Intentioned and inclusive casting practices can contribute to films’ social justice causes. Since diverse casts disrupt the status quo, detractors of Rob Marshall’s 2023 The Little Mermaid, Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra, and of Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings series claim that casting Black and Asian actors undermines these stories. Casting choices involve real-life individuals in a fictional world, and (self) representation can be socially reparative. Of course, there are pitfalls. Diverse casts alone is not enough. We need inclusive filmmaking techniques (such as lighting and framing, see above). As Aja Romano writes, “diverse casting can be a shortcut to appearing progressive without actually being progressive.” Alexa Alice Joubin has researched this phenomenon, writing that “advertising trends sometimes give false impressions of the works’ inclusiveness.”
• A combination of these and other techniques, such as a fuzzy focus and an extreme close-up with no discernible background position the characters outside the narrative time and space. Due to the ways in which audiences are invited to view them, these sexualized characters become “inconsequential” to the story. When characters are disconnected from their environments, they are disempowered. They are not able to influence their surroundings and appear more abstract and less of a real person.