Deng and Mao: Changing Political Standing

This cover from a 1983 Time magazine demonstrates the challenging relationship between two of modern China's most influential figures.

The middle section of Option B for Change in the Modern World in the new Modern History HSC syllabus deals with the transition stage between the two big key events that form the basis of the study. In the 1960s we have the Cultural Revolution, and in 1989 we have the Tiananmen Square Incident, but between these flashpoints of great social upheaval there is a changeover of guard that helped to shape the course of Chinese history in the latter half of the 20th Century. The early 1970s saw Mao Zedong go into physical decline as he began to outwardly show signs of Parkinson's Disease, leading to his disappearance from the public eye before his death in 1976. By 1979 he would be succeeded as paramount leader by his co-revolutionary and long-time colleague Deng Xiaoping.

The details of China's political development in terms of key political figures can be seen here.

You'll note, however, that 1976 and 1979 are three years apart. It wasn't a smooth rise for Deng to become China's new helmsman, and Mao's own 'fall' from power isn't as clear cut as one might imagine. The involvement of Hua Guofeng as Mao's immediate successor, and the prosecution/scapegoating of the Gang of Four, are the two major factors that would eventually allow Deng to complete his 'rehabilitation' from persecuted enemy of the state in the Cultural Revolution to powerful and respected Party member in the wake of Mao's death.

Here's a resource that details the rises and falls of Mao and Deng in greater detail -Resource: Deng and Mao

In order to get students thinking about the impact of significant events on the way each of these men were perceived by the public and Chinese Communist Party, it will beneficial to encourage some degree of independent evaluation. Students can do this by looking at each dot point in the resource and assigning a score out of 10 indicating how popular and/or powerful they think Mao or Deng would have been in relation to said event. The results can then be plotted on a graph depicting their respective political standing, allowing for visual comparison of data created through direct engagement of the student with the historical detail.

It's numeracy in History!

The graph may look something like this. Be mindful that this is just based on the scores that I gave to each dot point - it isn't factual, it's a graphic representation of my opinion as an amateur historian. Each student should have different results as it will be based on their own evaluation of the events.

It's not an exact science as the data is evaluative rather than quantitative, however, it does help students represent their understand in a concrete and visible fashion.

You could do a couple of things after this, such as:

• Compare and contrast results, encouraging debate around the nature of subjective evaluation when judging the merits of significant historical figures. 
• Create an aggregated version of the graph  by taking averages of the class's combined scores and making one overall graph.
• Have students write a paragraph response assessing the syllabus dot point on the changing political standing of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, using their newly created graph as evidence to draw upon.

Significant Figures: China 1966-1989

Mao's cult in full force

To Western eyes, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (and China itself) is not as clearly defined as the heads of state in our own countries. When teaching Change in the Modern World, Option B: Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square 1966-1989 to Modern History students we need to be mindful that they may make certain assumptions based on their own inherent sociocultural biases. Yes, Mao Zedong was Chairman of China from 1945 to 1976, but his most famous successor, Deng Xiaoping, did not occupy this position at all. It would be easy, as a citizen of a country with a Western-styled government, to assume that Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong occupied the same positions as overall leaders of China. This is not, however, the case.

The informal term for political leader of the Chinese government is 'Paramount Leader'. It is accurate to say that Communist China had 4 clear paramount leaders between 1966 and 1989, the time period of the study.

They are:

Mao Zedong: Chairman of various posts until 1976.

Hua Guofeng: Chairman of the Central Military Committee until 1981, but only considered leader of the nation until 1978 (when he lost his position as Chairman of the Central Committee).

Deng Xiaoping: Although Deng did not take over directly from any of Hua Guofeng's positions, he did start leading the Consultative Conference National Committee from 1978, signalling his movement into a higher point of influence at that time. He took over from Hua as Chairman of the Central Military Committee in 1981.

Jiang Zemin: Jiang ascended to the role of General Secretary of the Central Committee in 1989, which placed him as the new paramount leader after the Tiananmen Square incident on June 4th.

You'll notice what seem like a few discrepancies in the above information. We all know Mao Zedong as the 'Chairman' of China, however, this is actually a simplification of his full role within the Communist Party of China. At various points, Mao occupied up to 6 positions as Chairman of different branches within the Party and the government. Most of these he rescinded by the end of the 1950s, keeping only the positions of Chairman of the Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Committee, which were almost honorary titles by the time of his death (he kept these titles whilst day-to-day power transferred to other roles within the party, which goes some way towards explaining how the most powerful person in the Party could occupy completely different political positions to their predecessors).

"Follow Hua!"

Hua Guofeng was Premier of the State Council, but it was his succession of Mao as the Chairman of the Military Committee (meaning he had control of the People's Liberation Army) that saw him elevated to paramount leader above his peers. This is where things get tricky though, as Deng Xiaoping was undoubtedly the leader of China from 1978 to 1989, despite not occupying any of the key positions of power in the Party of government during that time. Deng was not General Secretary, Premier, or even President of the Party/government. Nor did he become Chairman of the Central Military Committee or Chairman of the Central Committee at any point. Instead, Deng consolidated power through his command of the Central Military Commission, the Consultative Conference Committee, Central Advisor Committee, and as Vice Premier of the State Council.

Deng's successor, Jiang Zemin, held a more traditional bastion of power as General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Committee, and this is how the following paramount leaders have established their power since this time.

Pretty dry stuff.

The point for our students to take away from this is that, in the context of a single party political system, the lineage of power does not transfer through a voting system or structured hierarchy. Power is accumulated through the prior paramount leader unofficially 'handing the reigns over' to the new leader through increased association and endorsement, and also by brokering the support of large factions within the Party who hope that the new leader will support their agendas.

Something else to consider is the unofficial designation of 'Party Elders', retired members of the Communist Party who retain a significant degree of influence through largely tokenistic positions (an example is Deng Xiaoping, who still exerted a lot of power well into his 90s despite only occupying a position as Honorary Chairman of the China Bridge Association ['Bridge', as in the card game Bridge]). After Deng's exit, the occupation of leadership became more structured with all three subsequent leaders concurrently occupying the three positions of General Secretary, President, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Other Factors in Understanding Significant Figures

The side story to these four leaders is the narrative of those who also attempted to broker power between 1966 and 1989. The ones that are relevant to the syllabus dot points are:

• Liu Shaoqi
• Lin Biao
• Jiang Qing (AKA 'Madame Mao') and her supporters (together known as the 'Gang of Four').

Liu Shaoqi was designated by Mao as his successor as early as 1960, however, ideological tensions arose between the two figures after the Great Leap Forward, leading Mao to denounce his political protege. A large part of the Cultural Revolution consisted of the resulting power struggle between Mao and Liu, with Liu removed from all political positions and placed under house arrest by 1967. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1969, from alleged pneumonia.

Lin Biao rose in the wake of Liu through his loyal support of Mao's ideology during the Cultural Revolution. In 1969 he was acknowledged as Mao's new successor as the next paramount leader but this favouring was short-lived. Lin's control of the People's Liberation Army grew during the Cultural Revolution to a point that threatened Mao's sense of security. Tensions arrived at a point that saw Lin actively avoid coming to Beijing for Party meetings, and Mao removed him from the Party altogether by 1971. Lin attempted to flee China with his family by plane and died when it crashed in Mongolia. The official line is that Lin attempted to orchestrate an assassination attempt on Mao, had failed, and was now fleeing to the Soviet Union for safety. Another perspective is that the alleged assassination attempt was invented by Mao and his cronies to support the disposal of Lin.

Jiang Qing became the scapegoat of the Cultural Revolution as the de facto head of the 'Gang of Four'. As the most radical faction within the Party, and vehement opponents of China's westernisation and/or modernisation, the Gang of Four were blamed by Hua, Deng, and other Party members for all the ills and crimes of Mao's reign after his death, conveniently allowing for Mao's legacy to remain largely untarnished while Jiang (his wife) became the scapegoat. 

Propaganda depicting children "smashing" the Gang of Four

Two other Chinese political figures of importance to the Option B syllabus are:

• Zhou Enlai (mentioned in the dot points)
• Zhao Ziyang (not mentioned in the dot points but instrumental to our understanding of the protests that led into the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989).

Zhou is best understood as the loyal Party member responsible for launching the 'Four Modernisations' that characterised Deng's reign, and for building peaceful ties between China and the rest of the world during a very turbulent time for the nation. He was very popular with the Chinese people, and his struggles against the Gang of Four helped turn public opinion against Jiang Qing, especially after his death at the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Zhao was also a later Party member who was also popular with the Chinese people. In the 1980s, he supported the increased privatisation and westernisation of the Chinese economy, which culminated in his public support of the Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989. Zhao opposed the Party's decision to declare martial law in order to quell the protests in Beijing, on the grounds that making such a decision without an internal vote was constitutionally illegal. Zhao found himself expelled from the Party by Deng and placed under house arrest for the next 15 years.

Students will need to also have tertiary / passing understanding of Soviet leadership as the historical narratives of the USSR and China intersect at several points in relation to the syllabus dot points for Option B. These leaders are:

• Joseph Stalin
• Nikita Krushchev
• Mikhail Gorbachev

Without getting too much into irrelevant information, these three figures relate to China's story in the following ways:

Joseph Stalin: Stalin's Cult of Personality has some clear and relevant parallels to Mao's own cultivation of a godlike status in China, and helps establish some context for the tensions that arose in the 1950s and '60s both between China and Russia, and within the Chinese Communist Party itself. The CCP's amendments to the Chinese constitution took out all references to Mao, mirroring Russia's own process of de-Stalinisation during the mid-1950s, which only served to antagonise This political decision (in both countries) was designed to deconstruct the phenomenon of the 'cult of personality' that had arisen in China and the USSR respectively.

The split in Sino-Soviet relations also has some origins in Stalin's lack of support for China following Mao's establishment of CCP leadership in 1950.

Nikita Krushchev: Krushchev's relaxation of Russia's more Stalinist elements of communism in the 1950s was interpreted by Mao as a threat to the Marxist concept of permanent revolution. This led, in some part, to the increased adherence of the CCP to Maoism as a clear alternative to what Mao interpreted as dangerous revisionism on the Soviet Union's part.

Krushchev's actions during the Cold War were also interpreted as 'soft' and revisionist by the Chinese. 

Mikhail Gorbachev: Gorbachev's part in our story comes much later when he visited China in 1989, prompting, in some part, the Tiananmen Square incident. It will be necessary for students to understand what Gorbachev came to symbolise for those in the Chinese pro-democracy movement. As the Russian leader of the Communist world, Gorbachev was making moves towards the dismantling of socialism (and the Soviet Union) through his introduction of glasnost and perestroika, policies of 'openness' that would lead to the increasing westernisation of the USSR. His visit to China in 1989 was to involve a tour of Tiananmen Square, hence the choice of this location as ground zero for the Chinese protestors.

Resource - Key Figures Timeline

Mountains of Stories: The Role of Creative Writing in the West

High Street, Penrith. The horizon that sits above the buildings is the Blue Mountains. This elevated horizon allowed me to always know which direction was 'west' when I was a kid.

It's perhaps undeniable that the Blue Mountains exist as a kind of nexus point for artists and teachers. I've heard it said that there are more school teachers living in the Blue Mountains per capita than anywhere else in Australia, and my wife and I have crossed paths with more famous artists in this area than anywhere else we visit. Living in Penrith, I've come to appreciate being equidistant from both the mountains and the city. The opportunities my geography has afforded me hasn't gone unappreciated and, no matter how often I may feel despondent at some of the attitudes I've grown up around, I know that I will forever remain tied to this town with some degree of belonging. But being a writer here isn't a way of life that I have come to easily.

Yesterday my friend Kira and I travelled up to the Springwood Learning Hub for the Mountains of Stories creative writing workshop run by Cymbeline Buhler.

This was the advertisement for the workshop. It was $25, which is incredibly inexpensive considering it went for 4 and a half hours.

It was a fantastic day in that it focused on letting us write. Cymbeline used prompting activities to encourage creativity (new activities that I hadn't really had any exposure to before) and we experimented with synaesthesia, unreliable narration, and grounding our writing intentions in figurative analogies. 

It got me thinking about this writing game and why it's important.

I have to admit that, having grown up in Western Sydney around the practicality of 'working class' concerns, I often struggle with a certain inherent tension that arises from wanting to write. I hear this nagging voice that tells me that delving too far into creative pursuits is a waste of time... art has its place in enriching society but there's just so much of it. There are so many people who want to devote their entire life to writing - how could they all be worth listening to? How do I know that I'm worth listening to?

It's insecurity but I can also recognise that it comes from being enculturated by those around me. So many of my peers, my friends, my neighbours, my extended family live their lives in the pursuit of creating a foundation of security and comfort for the generations to come. Writing about feelings and the senses just doesn't come into it; how does one earn a living from that? How can people in this community connect to each other over discussions of the abstract?

I've spent a lot of my life thinking about the role of the intellectual in a world of sport, cars, trades, and family. I worked in retail for ten years because I wasn't convinced of the value of an ideology grounded in thinking and writing. I played music in a handful of bands and wrote countless film reviews, but it never felt like a real thing to do. Becoming an English teacher at the age of 29 was my first step in accepting that education and academia had an important role to play in the West.

Cymbeline Buhler brainstorming word associations during the 'Mountains of Stories' workshop.

So why write?

I've come to realise in recent years that the extension and development of a beautiful and extensive vocabulary allows us to put increasingly complex thoughts into words. Words are the backbone of symbolism; each letter represents a sound, each combination of letters becomes a word that means something. The denotative and connotative possibilities of each word means that these small collections of symbols have great potential for meaning. 

The more combinations of letters we know, the more shades of meaning. The more we can express in language, the closer we get to articulating the endless complexity of thought. 

Regardless of whether every aspirant writer becomes professional or well-known in this field, the pursuit of increased lexical expression can only serve to improve the depth and breadth of our communication with one another. When teaching my classes, whether it's a low ability Year 7 group in need of extra support or a Year 12 Advanced English class, I spend a lot of time teaching vocabulary through explicit instruction. The exponential development of individual vocabularies allows for more nuance in language.

Even if some students walk away from school unable to write an essay, or completely unmoved by the works of Shakespeare, I would hope that they have at least achieved two things:

1. Improved the lexicon from which they draw upon when communicating.
2. Acquired the skill to continue building their vocabulary by using the materials around them (conversations, TV shows, news stories, etc.) to expand on their ability to think.

This is creating active, intelligent citizenship. By achieving a mindset of growth in relation to language we can instill the foundation for life-long learning that will enable future generations to advocate for themselves.

I've always written. When I was a student I wrote extensively - I loved 'Journal period' where, once a week in English, we could write our own stories in our journal book. After school I studied journalism and went on to write a range of published and unpublished materials but nothing extensive. As an English/History teacher I've rediscovered my love for writing through the creation of texts for student engagement and it's been an empowering experience. I now find myself working unprecedentedly close with language after a long and winding journey to this point and I'm voracious to know and learn more. Creative writing workshops like Mountains of Stories have been instrumental in reinforcing my role as a 'writing English teacher': IE. Someone who engages directly with creative language in order to model sample texts for students.    

Word associations. Cymbeline had us brainstorm words in relation to a central term and then we had to describe the central term on the other sheet using the words from the first one.

 

 

Here is the piece I wrote in response to the brainstorms above. The brief was to describe 'Hope' with words relating to 'Sweet' in just a few minutes. I found it tricky to get my head around at first but I found a bit of a groove after thinking about it a bit:

Hope is sugary. Its saccharine, ebbing through the bloodstream to cause intense emotion. It flows across my gums, soft and watery, and leaves a sticky residue that is hard to shift. The high leaves me exhausted. My jaw aches as if it has been closing around the fibrous stem of sugar cane, my teeth working against something essentially inedible yet fraught with potential for sweetness. Hope is like love. Hope defies us with our experience of it and it never, truly leaves us.

Anyway.

The vast majority of our students won't become professional writers. In fact, you might not ever have a student who becomes a (successful) professional writer. So what does this mean for us as English teachers? How do we teach creative writing authentically if it's not going to be an authentic experience in the sense of a post-school career for many of our students? 

The answer is that creative writing provides a forum for the extension of our vocabulary. We can use creative freedom to experiment in word choice without the restrictions necessitated by other text types, and through this students can exercise their imagination with increasing complexity. With a wider variety of terminology a person will be able to better express what's going on in their heads or respond to the language used by others.

For more on Cymbeline Buhler's creative writing workshops: Big Stone Creations

Sino-Soviet Split and Anti-Revisionism in the 1950s and 1960s

Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev, 1958

In order to gain a full understanding of how Mao Zedong developed his own distinct brand of communism, otherwise known as 'Maoism' or 'Mao Zedong Thought', it will be useful for students to see what led to the split between the world's two largest communist nations. This historical narrative of cause and effect can be traced back to the 1920s, when Lenin consolidated the Bolshevik governance of Russia and established the world's first socialist state. 

A good place to start with orientating students in regards to this is to have them look over the following text and create a mindmap of reasons for the Sino-Soviet split.

Sino-Soviet Split and Anti-Revisionism

From its formation in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party had relied on Soviet political and financial support. Both countries aimed for 'permanent revolution' - an ongoing class struggle that would eventually transform the world into a single, unified communist society without national borders.

The first cracks in the Sino-Soviet alliance began to show in the Chinese Civil War of 1945-1949 when the CCP were battling the Nationalists (the Kuomintang) for control of China. Stalin advised the CCP to stop after taking the north of China as he did not have faith in the their ability to transform all of China into a communist state, and he held back any real support from the CCP during this time because he preferred China to be divided and weakened; a less-threatening neighbour for the USSR to deal with. He even condescendingly referred to the Chinese as 'cabbage communists', viewing them as incapable of true Marxism in comparison to the Soviet Union.

China and the Soviet Union also disputed access and ownership of the Xinjiang region that sat between them, with both wanting its rich mineral resources. Mongolia was similarly disputed, with China only able to claim 'Inner Mongolia'. The rest of Mongolia became a satellite republic under the influence of the Soviet Union. During WWII, when Japan invaded China, the Soviet Union only offered China assistance very late in the war, and even plundered northern Chinese factories for their own gain. 

Towards the end of the 1950s, the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech in which he outlined his wish for a peaceful coexistence between the East and the West. Mao was unimpressed as he saw this as contradicting the theory of permanent revolution, and China had been treated badly by the West in the recent past. Khrushchev's criticism of the previous Soviet leader, Stalin, also threatened Mao's own image (as he had styled himself as a similar kind of leader - worshipped by the masses). In 1957, Mao visited Moscow and encouraged the Soviet Union to assist other countries in their own revolutions, which the Russians ignored. He outlined his own plan to 'liberate' Taiwan, which frightened Khrushchev, who thought such warmongering would lead to worldwide nuclear warfare. The Chinese saw this fear as weakness and a betrayal of the permanent revolution.

In 1958, China began to attack Taiwanese forces. Khrushchev travelled to Beijing to try to intervene, and offered to place Soviet missiles on Chinese soil as a compromise (but would not share atomic technology). Mao refused, offended by the Soviet Union's attempts to dictate what China should do. When Khrushchev visited Russia's Cold War enemy (the United States of America) in 1959, Mao saw it as a further weakening of Soviet supremacy, and began to question Khrushchev's understanding of Marxism. Mao was angered further when Russia sided against Mao over China border disputes with India. 

In 1960, Russia withdrew all diplomats from China and cancelled 300 industrial and economic contracts. The Soviets offered economic aid to India, and China began to characterise the USSR and USA (enemies of each other in the Cold War) as one and the same: hypocrite revisionists and capitalist enemies. Things dropped to an all-time low in 1968, when China and Russia clashed over control of an island in the Ussari River near their border, with up to 200 soldiers killed. Around this time, Mao began to label enemies of the Chinese state as 'revisionists' and 'Chinese Khrushchevs'.

Chinese soldier photographed during the Ussuri River conflict, 1969. This incident lasted for 7 months and is most commonly known as the 'Sino-Soviet border conflict' or, in China, as the Zenbao Island Incident.

Reasons/Evidence
Students should be able to pull the following causes out of the above text:

1. Stalin discouraged Mao from taking all of China during the Chinese Civil War.
2. Stalin did not lend any real financial or military support to the Chinese communists during the Civil War.
3. Both the USSR and China were in dispute over control of the Xinjiang region for its minerals/resources.
4. The USSR kept hold of Mongolia as a 'buffer zone' between themselves and China.
5. The USSR lent very little assistance to China when Japan invaded in 1937.
6. The USSR used WWII as an excuse to plunder Chinese factories in the north.
7. Nikita Khrushchev criticised Stalin and his 'cult of personality', which did not sit well with Mao, who had his own cult of personality.
8. Khrushchev also began to build a relationship with the West, which Mao saw as a contradiction of Marxist ideals.
9. The Soviet Union was disinterested in assisting other smaller nations with their own Marxist revolutions.
10. The USSR discouraged China from pursuing war with Taiwan, and would not lend atomic technology to Mao.
11. Khrushchev feared that Mao would provoke nuclear war and tried to directly intervene by visiting Beijing.
12. Mao saw Khrushchev's visit to the USA as a sign of weakness.
13. The Soviet Union sent assistance to India when China and India entered into a border dispute.
14. The USSR withdrew all diplomats and contractors from China in 1960.
15. The USSR and China battled each other for control of an island in the Ussari River.

Extension/Consolidation:

Tie the above understanding to the ideology dot points in the syllabus by asking students to consider the following essay-style question. Students are encouraged to use the above to establish some apparent key differences in Soviet Marxism and Maoist Marxism.

To what extent is the Sino-Soviet split a result of competing versions of Marxism?

Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet: 9 Things That Stand Out

To date, Kenneth Branagh has appeared in 6 Shakespeare films (5 of which he also directed)

In what way could a director bring the themes of Hamlet into focus? As, quite possibly, the most revered and famous piece of fiction of all time, Shakespeare's play has gathered an unrivalled abundance of literary criticism. A Shakespeare enthusiast like Kenneth Branagh therefore has a vast depository of readings, identified themes, and critical appraisals to draw upon when crafting the definitive film version of the text. 

Filmed in 1996, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet was the first (and so far only) unabridged film version of the play. As a 4+ hour piece of cinema about a play where the protagonist essentially spends the majority of the time wrestling with the idea of doing something or not doing something, Branagh's film was always going to be a hard sell in terms of finding financing. When the American production company Castle Rock Entertainment came to Branagh's rescue, it was on the proviso that he utilise as many 'big name' actors as possible.

So we get a range of surprising cameos throughout:

• Two-time Academy Award winner and Hollywood legend Jack Lemmon as the watchman Marcellus. Lemmon manages to turn a relatively small role into a figure of depth and weight; a wise and half-broken old man of the night's watch.
• France's biggest actor, Gerard Depardieu, as the one-scene wonder Reynaldo.
• Billy Crystal as the more talkative of the two Gravediggers (and he does a great job with the role too).
• Academy Award-winning screen legend Charlton Heston as the Player King.
• Oscar-winning British acting royalty John Gielgud, John Mills, and Judi Dench as characters who are only mentioned in passing in the actual play (Gielgud and Dench appear as historical figures from the story of Troy, who are referenced in the Player King's speech, whereas Mills appears a couple of times as 'Old Norway', the ailing leader of Denmark's neighbouring kingdom).
• The roaring and relentlessly beardy character-actor Brian Blessed as the Ghost / King Hamlet.
• Richard Attenborough (students may recognise him from the Jurassic Park films) as the English ambassador who appears at the end of the play.
• Renowned British comedian and 'music hall entertainer' Ken Dodd as Hamlet's childhood friend, Yorick. Dodd's lively and wordless cameo takes place in flashback as Hamlet stares into the jester's skull, and it's (in my opinion) one of the most surprisingly moving moments in the film. 
• Robin Williams as the pompous courtier Osric. Williams takes a role that could be interpreted as smarmy, or arrogant, and manages to make the character amusingly hapless and somewhat sympathetic. 

All these well-known actors mean that the film actually holds the record for the most Oscar-winning performers on the screen in a single film. A nice bit of trivia for you!

Hamlet peers into his past.

Branagh's extensive use of flashbacks to characters like 'Old Norway', Yorick, and the historical figures in the Player King's speech, helps to open the play up into something more cinematic and non-linear. Despite the film's daunting length, Hamlet (1996) presents the text in the most accessible way possible, with Branagh consistently finding inventive ways to add movement and simplicity to the narrative.

Take, for instance, the climactic showdown in Elsinore's court. Everything is turned up to 11 - Claudius is impaled by a flying sword, Laertes falls from a balcony in his death scene, and even Osric is killed! Branagh also liberally interprets Fortinbras's arrival as a violent political coup, with the Norwegian troops storming the castle during Hamlet's fatal duel. There's also the hilarious and bizarre arrival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern earlier on in the film, with the interchangeable pair riding in with much self-made fanfare on a little tooting steam train!

Hamlet the Film - and - Themes / Concepts

Where should I begin? Watching Branagh's film translation of the text helped to nail a lot of ideas down for both myself and my students. Here are some things that became apparent for me while I watched the movie - some are particular to the film, and some are just general observations about the way the play represents Shakespeare's ideas and context:

• Antithesis Visualised: Shakespeare was a big fan of placing antonyms up against each other in his dialogue. Part of the reason for this is that it helps give the actors direction in how they perform a line. For example, when said as a single line without thought, "To be or not to be" is simply six words, however, when said with emphasis on the opposing ideas, the line becomes much more significant. Branagh takes the Shakespearean motif of antithesis and renders it with clarity on the big screen through his introduction of Hamlet in Act 1, Scene 2, as a dour black-clad brooder juxtaposed against the bright and dazzling cheer of the Danish court; a resplendent hall of polished surfaces where white rose petals rain down in celebration of the coronation and marriage of King Claudius.  

An incredibly visual translation of the text's themes.

• The Private vs. Public: In Act 1, Scene 3, Ophelia tells her father about Hamlet's attempts to woo her. Branagh's Hamlet has Polonius cautiously close some impressive wrought-iron gates behind his son's exit so that he can establish privacy before broaching Ophelia's relationship with Hamlet. This simple piece of direction, completely unmentioned in the play's dialogue, highlights the political delicacy of Hamlet's affections for Ophelia. In other words, Polonius knows that Hamlet's status as Prince means that he will be unable to ever establish a formal and public relationship with Ophelia, and hence he does not want anyone to bear witness to the dimensions of any conversation along these lines. It's telling that Polonius is so paranoid and distrustful right from the get-go, especially in light of his own tendency towards spying throughout the remainder of the film/play. 

• Madness and Appearances: The introduction of 'mad' Hamlet in Act 2 sees Kenneth Branagh appear wearing a skull mask - an obvious but nonetheless neat piece of foreshadowing that emphasises the play's theme of mortality. The removal of the mask to reveal Hamlet's unhinged eyes also calls into question the layers of appearance that the play asks the viewer to buy into. Is Hamlet play-acting? Or is he genuinely distressed? The wearing of the mask suggests the former, but the eyes hint at the latter. Later, when Hamlet says, "Now I am alone", Branagh plays it as a cathartic release - suggesting that the pretense of madness is physically and emotionally exhausting; perhaps leading to madness in itself.

• The Great Chain of Being: This quote, paraphrased, "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty... in action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! ...the paragon of animals", perfectly demonstrates the play's concern for the Elizabethan idea of the Great Chain of Being. In context, this was a way of seeing the universe - a hierarchy that established man's place in relation to the natural and metaphysical worlds. In the aforementioned quote, Hamlet is pondering the contradictions of a man; set on the Earth amongst the animals yet also capable of godlike and angelic behaviour. All of a person's actions fall on a scale between the beastly and the divine, and it's this way of understanding humanity that drives much of Hamlet's plot. Think of Claudius's confession scene - he veers from one end of the spectrum to the other in his acknowledgement of guilt, sin, and criminal reward. Hamlet also wrestles with his place in the Great Chain, albeit implicitly, in the way he considers how revenge and thoughts of suicide fit with one's ascent to Heaven.

• Historical Allusion: Branagh manages to keep all of the Player King's speech (heck, the film is unabridged - meaning that everything is kept!) whilst simultaneously making this difficult section of the play more relevant. The Player King makes reference to the story of the Greek General Pyrrhus and the Trojan Horse, which Branagh boldly puts up on the screen as a means of highlighting one of Hamlet's key themes - the role of subterfuge in the Danish court and the hiding of intentions; elements in Shakespeare's play that were no doubt designed to hit home with Elizabethan audiences who were becoming increasingly acclimatised to the Machiavellian intrigues of the Queen's court.  The Elizabethans were also quite taken with Ancient Greek and Roman culture, which meant that this textual allusion would be a familiar allegory for audiences to identify with.

Osric is basically Polonius Mk II - another focal point for Hamlet's scorn.

• Hamlet and Polonius: Prior to the performance of 'The Mouse Trap', the Prince of Denmark publicly mocks Polonius on the stage in front of all his peers. Branagh uses this moment to illustrate the depth of antagonism that Hamlet holds for Polonius; note the way he delivers the line, "He's for a jig, or a bawdry - or so he sleeps". This disparagingly suggests that Polonius can only appreciate texts of low culture and that he is too stupid to appreciate great works of literature and theatre. This exchange also demonstrates that, even when acting 'mad', Hamlet still cannot resist displaying his sharp wit.

• Set Design: There's a lot of scope for discussing the relevance of Branagh's choice of sets for this film. The interior shots for the main court of Elsinore take place on a huge and extravagant set, complete with ornate throne and mirrored walls. The use of reflective surfaces almost becomes an extra character in the film, forcing the protagonist to literally face himself as he delivers his most famous self-examining soliloquy. Behind these mirrored walls are also hidden rooms from which Claudius and Polonius can spy; symbolically reinforcing the theme of intentions concealed by a glossy facade.

• Ophelia, Misogyny, and Appearance vs. Reality: To quote Hamlet as he berates Ophelia, "God gives you one face and you paint yourself another". On a surface level this line of dialogue fits into Shakespeare's discourse on appearances and reality - the idea that each of these characters are publicly portraying themselves in a way that dramatically contrasts with their private, inner selves. But if we look at this line a little deeper we can see that Hamlet is speaking syllogistically. Syllogism is a rhetorical technique in which the speaker draws a specific conclusion by using a general example; in this case Hamlet is speaking both about all women and Ophelia. The result is something quite misogynistic, with the implication being that Ophelia (and women in general) are inherently deceptive - with Hamlet interpreting their use of make-up as being symbolically dishonest.   

• Claudius: Derek Jacobi is fantastic as Claudius; note that moment of realisation when he is confronted by Hamlet's re-enactment of the old King's murder - Jacobi speaks the line, "Give me some light. Away" in a cold and slow manner, rather than in the expected state of panic. The effect is apt, indicating the new king's propensity for careful and cautious calculation. This is a fury that Claudius holds deep inside, and a feeling that he must nurse to the surface so that he can remain, as ever, in control. I also appreciated the fact that Branagh seems to always have Claudius sipping alcohol, which comes across as the Victorian equivalent of a fat cigar between the teeth - a corrupt figure enjoying the spoils of his power.  

What a great play.

What a great film!