CCTV

Since its creation, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has served as a mirror to the anxieties of its time. Though various analyses of the contemporary film adaptations have routinely addressed themes of surveillance, the precise psychological effects of this surveillance on the protagonist are still under-examined. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining how Michael Almereyda’s (2000) and Gregory Doran’s (2009) film adaptations of Hamlet present the protagonist’s tragic flaw as not indecision, but rather a pathological narcissism engendered by a postmodern culture of surveillance. The paper contends that these films utilize the omnipresent camera—both diegetic and non-diegetic—to create a Hamlet whose self is fragmented by the inexorable gaze. This perpetual watching, coupled with a cultural movement toward hyper-subjectivity, engenders a pathological narcissism that becomes integral to his personality. The results and findings in this article demonstrate that these adaptations employ strategies such as mise-en-abyme not merely to condemn surveillance, but to diagnose a specifically postmodern malaise wherein the self is caught in a feedback loop of self-recording and performance, ultimately leading to a questioning of the nature of identity in an era of digital mediation.