Media 'Tempests': Preliminary Notes to a Comparative Reading of Some Film Adaptations of the Eighties in Great Britain and the United States

Abstract

In this paper two British movies — Derek Jarman’s The Tempest (1980) and Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books (1991) — will be compared to the American Mazursky’s (1982). Their different settings of the island, in particular, will reveal different cultural attitudes towards a number of issues: if the Greek island of Mazursky underlines the Atlanticism of the play associated to a realistic European recolonization, Jarman’s and Greenaway’s postmodern choices – although often in conflict — emphasize the dreamy, fantasmatic quality The Tempest shares with the movies.