ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the film as a parody and as political appropriation of Shakespeare, as a comic reversal of Shakespeare's tragedy and as a critique of capitalist structures of authority and power. The film presents a naked allegory for a people's revolution over capitalism and a consuming upper stratum, doing so by harnessing a carnivalesque series of reversals and transformations. Hamlet is the original murderer, Polonius is Ophelia's bawd, the Ghost really does not understand the crime at all and their employees execute a perfect revolution. Douglas Lanier provides a useful framework via which to read Shakespeare film parody. Lanier's analysis, to a certain extent, posits, as the chapter explores, Shakespearean parody as inherently political. The Hamlet of Hamlet Liikemaailmassa, is 'stronger' only in the sense of callousness, which, tellingly, is the very feature of those 'average' Hamlets to which E. S. refers in Votes for Women, as discussed in the chapter.
