Julie Taymor¿s "Titus" (1999): framing violence and activating responsibility

• Published in: Atlantis (Salamanca, Spain) Spain), 2006, Vol.28 (1), p.57-70
• Main Author: Escoda Agustí, Clara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: identity; intertextuality; media; testimony; violence
• ISSN: 0210-6124; 1989-6840

This essay argues that Julie Taymor¿s film Titus (1999) offers a successful deconstruction of the violence in Shakespeare¿s Titus Andronicus (1594), thus continuing the debate on the film¿s explicit violence. The essay begins by analyzing the added scenes that correspond to the visions and flashbacks of the protagonists, arguing that Taymor does not deconstruct violence by subverting its values and then pointing out alternative discourses or new patterns of interaction, but by reproducing it as a symptom of a larger, cultural reality. However, she also wants to actively implicate the audience in imagining alternative paths of conflict-resolution to the violence portrayed, and she does so by introducing the figure of the witness, with which the audience must identify. The witness characterizes itself by being able to empathize with difference, and this quality is visually represented by his androgynous look, as well as by his non-hierarchical mode of relating. Strategically, the witness¿s experiences are shown in a fragmented manner, thus, if the audience wants to provide closure, it must recreate the hidden story from these unconnected elements of repair. Finally, this exercise on the part of the audience acquires the same character of solitary responsibility as that of the witness with which it identifies.