Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares is a savvy look at the wide range of adaptations, spin-offs, and citations of Shakespeare’s plays in 1990s popular culture. The Bard has permeated contemporary film, television, video, and electronic media such as Internet Websites and CD-ROMs in direct translation, interpretation, and as a cultural icon. While we may be familiar with Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptations of the plays, what does it say about our culture when Shakespearean references turn up in television episodes of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, films like In and Out and My Own Private Idaho, and hardcore porn adaptations of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet? Instead of lamenting this unusual dissemination of Shakespeare from a position of literary authority, Burt reads the reception of these often quite bad replays in relation to contemporary youth culture and the "queering" of Shakespeare. Documenting a fascinating array of Shakespearean citations that are so far from their originals that they no longer count as interpretations of the plays, Burt considers what Shakespeare enables American popular culture to do that it couldn’t otherwise do without him and scrutinizes academic fantasies about fandom and stardom. This book puts Shakespeare studies on the front burner of popular culture.