A documentary directed by the married team of Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, it chronicles the quixotic attempt by Crane and his fellow actor Mark Oosterveen to stage a production of William Shakespeare’s tragedy within the video game Grand Theft Auto Online during the pandemic.
It soon becomes apparent that this seemingly extreme circumstance is distressingly similar to what passes for normal these days.
Finding people who have the time, interest, and ability to make any play a success is hard. Decades of neoliberal hegemony have convinced most people that their only option is to go it alone.
The classics, even Shakespeare, are increasingly marginalised within an education system heavily slanted towards producing students who study “practical” subjects – business, medicine, applied sciences – but have neither the training nor the inclination to think critically about their lives.
If Hamlet is a cautionary tale about the dangers that befall an excess of introspection, Grand Theft Hamlet testifies to the opposite problem, in which people are burdened with an excess of agency, synecdochally represented by the weapons they carry around at all times.
Just as participants in the theatrical production must contend with the prospect of being randomly assaulted, so too must actors in the real world. The difference is that you almost always see your assailant in the video game, whereas the antagonists we face outside of it are more likely to be faceless government bureaucrats.
Above all else, what Grand Theft Hamlet communicates is the sheer perversity of trying to preserve traditional culture within an environment that disincentivises spending meaningful time on it.
Because every shot in the film comes from within the video game itself, Machinima-style, we regularly see announcements intended to motivate players.
In one shot, Sam is inexplicably standing inside a planter box, wearing nothing but tropical print underwear, practising a soliloquy as Mark looks on. A semi-transparent purple banner stretches across the screen reading, in a large font, “CHALLENGE STARTED: Steal the most vehicles”.
As befits a game that lionises criminal activity, success is measured in the amount of money one steals and the amount of people one kills. But it doesn’t take a Bertolt Brecht poem to perceive that the black-market activities available in Grand Theft Auto Online are structurally equivalent to the above-board ones in which ruthless capitalists partake.
At the same time, as many people besides the filmmakers have demonstrated, the video game cannot be reduced to how it is intended to be played. The stunning variety of settings and NPCs (non-playing characters), rendered in ways that are aesthetically captivating, makes it an appealing environment even if you have no particular place to go, people to see, or money you wish to steal.
That surplus of content is what makes Grand Theft Auto Online a meaningful cultural experience, one which both promotes an everyone-for-themselves mindset and provides sufficient space and freedom to challenge it.
Grand Theft Hamlet represents a culmination of this playing “against the grain”, calling to mind the work of French social theorist Michel de Certeau, who took pains to underscore consumers’ freedom to innovate.
After musing on the identity of one of the people who start showing up regularly to the rehearsals of the play, someone who wears a superhero outfit and consistently supports their work, one of the filmmakers declares, “That’s the amazing and surprising thing about this world. We keep coming across these people who want to help us”.
Although it sounds like a platitude, this is actually an important discovery with profound political consequences
Even when there is no good reason for people to work together, when they are, in fact, strongly encouraged to treat each other as target practise, the impulse to collaborate and to create instead of destroy persists.
Grand Theft Auto Online only reflects part of human nature. And so does the rapacious capitalism it both celebrates and satirizes.
Ironically, the same could be said of Hamlet.
While the university-educated protagonist has learned to think and speak with exquisite refinement, his practical knowledge of human beings is sorely lacking.
Shakespeare’s tale unfolds as a gruesome revenge tragedy because Hamlet fails to perceive what the filmmakers of Grand Theft Hamlet see clearly.
Hamlet famously features a play within a play. Hamlet wants to figure out whether his uncle Claudius murdered his father. He stages the story of a regicide and asks his friend Horatio to pay close attention to how Claudius reacts. When the king storms out in the middle, it appears to confirm his guilt.
Grand Theft Hamlet also features a play within a play: Hamlet.
In some of the film’s most entertaining scenes, Sam practices the famous “To be or not to be” monologue in a variety of settings. The NPCs offer a captive audience. But other players who happen by are less predictable.
Some leave immediately. Some stay to listen, then shoot him. Others stick around, intrigued by the perversity of the undertaking, even if they don’t know anything about Shakespeare.
That last response is the most interesting one. One of the most memorable people who stop by to check out the proceedings is ParTeb, whose avatar is an anthropomorphic green lizard. Although his English is poor and he has a hard time comprehending what is taking place, he still hangs around for a while, then returns later to offer a helping hand as security.
“We are now Killer Shakespeare”, he exults, after dispatching another intruder.
It’s funny and apt, given the violence that fills Hamlet and many other plays of his.
But what Grand Theft Hamlet ultimately communicates is the power of culture to bring people together in spite of their baser instincts.
After the play has been successfully performed, the cast and audience, including ParTeb, head out to a nightclub for a virtual party.
The tragedy of Hamlet, along with the relentless bloodshed of the Grand Theft Auto Online world, has been transformed into a comedy, both because the film makes us laugh and because it documents a triumph over selfishness and greed.
During an era in which more and more of the world is coming to resemble the dystopian landscapes of the video game, discerning ways to combat the anomie and self-absorption they inspire will be crucial.
Grand Theft Hamlet offers an excellent role model.
Please support The Battleground. Subscribe to our free newsletter and make a donation to ensure our continued growth and independence.
Screenshot courtesy of Tull Stories/Rockstar Games. All rights reserved.
