To Be Queen, or To Be Ophelia——Female Dilemma under Gaze

是成为皇后，还是成为奥菲利娅？---男性凝视下的女性困境

Review the Version: 奥斯特玛雅, 2008

Under the gaze of male, the two female roles merge into one——a duality of virgin and vamp, a combination of angel and devil. When she is the Queen half, she appears wanton, lustful, and like Medusa, even; when she is the Ophelia half, she is innocent, mild, and perplexed.These two polar figures are the traditional stereotype of women. For males, she is an instrument, inferior to men; for Hamlet, she is both his mother and lover, showing his Oedipus complex.

l To be Queen:

1. Young age:reinforces her female attractivity and reduces her maternalism; adds more possibility that Hamlet should develop a morbid complex towards her.

2. Sunglasses:

A. As disguise:

Possibility1: she still tears a lot forthe old king and eyes are red and swollen. In order to hide them, she always wear the sunglasses.

Possibility2:she is sad and frustrated just as Hamlet does; however, as a frail woman, she has no choice but to accept the remarriage. Thus, sunglasses have metaphorical meaning, that she has to disguise her sorrow while has to panderfor the new king.

B. As an individual splitof public and private identity:

Queen is a symbol of power, anaccessory or trophy of its owner. This is her public identity. As long as she is on the scene of coronation, it doesn’t matter whether her real self is willing to show up or not. Eyes are windows of heart, or of soul, of the true self. And she chooses to hide them with glasses, only leaving the public with a numb shallof the “Queen”—theparadox of exterior and interior.

3. Dance and Sing:make the Queen a figure of vamp. Both dance and sing are coquettish and seductive, welcoming the male. They are the demonstration of the stereotypically bad side of women, a prostitute.

4. Appetite and Lust: Queen is eating and licking her fingers. Female appetite is metaphorized as connection with bodily lust and, in turn, sexual desire.

5.The media, camera and projector: through the vagueprojection, Queen eats, licks, coquets. The vague image makes things visionary: is it reality? Or is it just a vision, and everything would back to normal? Holding the camera, Hamlet disillusioned.

6.Queen’s demonization before metamorphosis to Ophelia:Before she transformed, Queen becomes the evilest female figure, a monster with ferocious groans, or spells of witch.

l To be Ophelia: An innocent and goodgirl, same as other versions.

l About metamorphosis:

1.Stereotype: Duality of women——men conclude that there are only two types of women: if she is not a virgin, she is a prostitute; if not good, then bad. Also, it seems that the only criterion for judging womengood or bad is virginity.

2.Oedipus complex: combining Q and O into one indicates H’s morbid love for Q as well as O. He regards Q as O, and may even regard O as Q as well. But in any sense, deep in H’s bone, he wouldn’t regard female as equal beings as himself.

l Wrap-up:

In Shakespeare’s original script, O an Q are two traditional female stereotypes.This version arranges themas one may show its criticism of the original, from a feminist perspective. Also, this version shows female’s inferior status in patriarchy, female’s dilemma of losing their own choice of life, female’s misfortune under male’s condescending gaze.