Polanski’s Macbeth As Social Commentary – ‘None can call our power to account’

This chapter mentions Roman Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby , in which he managed to take the conventions of the Gothic world of demons and place them in a modern world of coffee machines and Christmas shopping. It analyses how Polanski overlaid William Shakespeare's Macbeth with the old Gothic bright red blood-and-guts instead of just presenting it in a modern world. It also discusses how Polanski chose the landscape of a feudal nation and the inner world of Macbeth to create a film that was a commentary on modernity. The chapter highlights how Polanski used Macbeth to show that a violent tendency is not done by one man alone, but it is symptomatic of the society being inhabited. It outlines the aspect of some horror films that functioned as a commentary on contemporary social anxieties of the late 1960s and 1970s.