Mapping violence onto the body of the ‘other’ in Julie Taymor's Titus (1999)

Abstract

In Julie Taymor's film Titus (1999), which adapts Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, the Roman nation is both violated and violent. Taymor exposes the audience to different kinds of violence – intrafamilial, political, sexual, as well as revenge, infanticide, and racism – all of which are mapped onto characters who are othered by race, ethnicity, gender, or posthumous banishment. This article aims at exploring the relationship between othering and violence in the construction of nationhood. The one who others, the author contends, is also othered, because of the cycle of violence at stake in the film.