(Just slapping together some notes and images for a future class here, and thought I’d share. This is all pretty obvious, but I wanted to have it pulled together for reference…)
In his production of Richard II for the BBC’s Hollow Crown series, Rupert Goold constructs an ideal of masculinity and authority by giving Richard and Bolingbroke not just different actions and settings, but markedly different color palettes and relations to other characters. It’s striking, if not subtle; as Ben Whishaw put it, “(Richard) represents something different from Bolingbroke and the other guys. He seems to have other qualities, other characteristics, other ways of being in the world, appreciations of other things like beauty, and poetry, and sensuality, and god and spirituality…” (x).
The contrast between Richard’s “way of being in the world” and the other guys’ comes clear in the opening credits montage, which juxtaposes Bolingbroke and Mowbray training for battle with Richard observing an artist at work.
Compare the two combatants in their training yards:
…to Richard in the artist’s studio:
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Pretty/Butch: Some Images of Masculinity in Goold's Richard II
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