The Bard and the Bunny: Challenge of Authority

Beyond the affairs of the heart, both Bad Bunny and Shakespeare delve deeply into the social issues and power dynamics of their times, often giving a voice to the voiceless and calling out injustices. Shakespeare was born a middle class man in a time of monarchies and very strict social hierarchies; he had to be very subtle with his social commentary, yet it is undeniably present. In plays such as King Lear and Julius Caesar, he takes a magnifying glass to the abuse of power and the impact its fallout can have on ordinary people. King Lear demonstrates how the mad king, roaming among commoners in a storm, learns to gain empathy for the “poor naked wretches” of his kingdom, a subtle but pointed critique of social neglect. Measure for Measure tackles corruption and hypocrisy in political leaders, and then there is the character of the court fool in many plays, who often drops powerful truths about the world Shakespeare was living in under the protective cover of jester’s privilege, the ability to disguise criticism as a joke. Shakespeare understood that humor and drama could be important vehicles to question the status-quo indirectly. Perhaps most famously, Hamlet stages a play within a play, to “catch the conscience of the king,” which is quite literally a way of using art to expose truth to power. This idea of using one's platform and art to speak truth is a thread that connects Shakespeare and Bad Bunny in remarkable ways.

Bad Bunny has become one of the most outspoken mainstream musicians of his generation on social and political issues. Even though he thrives in a genre of party anthems, he frequently uses his platform and art form to highlight the struggles of his native Puerto Rico and to challenge societal norms in Latin America as a whole. For example, in 2019, Bad Bunny put his booming music career on pause to join the protests that demanded the resignation of Puerto Rico’s governor, who had been involved in scandal and corruption. He even co-released a fiery anthem of protest called “Afilando los Cuchillos” (“Sharpening the Knives”) in which he directly calls out the government. It’s not unlike Shakespeare penning a scathing verse where a character muses on the power structure of their society. In the music video for “El Apagon” (“The Blackout”) Bad Bunny transforms a party track about an island-wide power outage into a mini-documentary on colonialism and its effects on the island. The video abruptly shifts its focus from scenes of Puerto Ricans dancing to a report explaining how colonial-era policies and exploitative investors are actually the ones causing blackouts and displacement on the island. This bold blending of art and activism is something that Shakespeare would likely not like, as he himself often uses his commentary on Elizabethan-era politics in the forms of historical dramas, delivering messages under the cover of entertainment. Bad Bunny does it in the open, as he uses modern media to show the plight of Puerto Rico in front of the world, but both produced disruptive art hoping to facilitate political change.  

Gender norms and identity is another area that both have explored, albeit in very different forms. In Shakespeare’s time, female roles were always played by men on stage, and he took a liking to playing with gender disguise in plots. Examples of this are when Viola in Twelfth Night and Portia in The Merchant of Venice dress as men. These plot devices can be used to create comedy or dramatic irony within his plays, but they also subtly suggest that identity, including gender, could be fluid or that societal roles could be performative. Today, Bad Bunny has become famous for defying the traditional culture of machismo in reggaeton and in Latin music. He sometimes paints his nails, has worn skirts or dresses in photoshoots, and openly supports the LGBTQIA+ community. On “Yo Perreo Sola” (“I Dance Alone”), he not only created an anthem about a woman's right to dance without being harassed, but he even appeared in the video in full drag, literally embodying the female perspective that he was writing from. He even wore a shirt on national television that read “They killed Alexa, not a man in a skirt,” calling out the murder of a transgender woman in Puerto Rico. These actions echo a Shakespearean spirit of using the stage (or screen) to challenge the perceptions of the audience. Just as Shakespeare’s cross-dressing heroines and overly wise fools gently poked at the norms of his society, Bad Bunny boldly confronts the today’s norms to show that a straight Latino man can embrace his femininity and stand against gender-based violence. 

Both artists also demonstrate that a powerful tool for giving a voice to the marginalized is telling their story. Shakespeare often gave some of the most insightful lines to lower-class characters or outsiders:he gravedigger in Hamlet joking about the equality of all in death, or Shylock in The Merchant of Venice demanding recognition of his humanity (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”). In a similar fashion, Bad Bunny centers voices and stories that aren’t often heard from in pop music. A striking example is his song “Andrea,” in which he tells the story of a young Puerto Rican girl with big dreams who is constrained by the sexist society around her. The song confronts real issues, such as femicide, and champions the desire for women’s bodily autonomy and independence. Bad Bunny is a male superstar using his pen to inhabit the perspective of a different gender and protest the unfair reality women live in, much like Shakespeare writing monologues and soliloquies for people of all walks of life to convey their inner truths and tell their stories. In fact, Bad Bunny even said in an interview with the New York Times that he sometimes writes songs where even Spanish speakers from outside Puerto Rico won’t understand the references, because he laces his lyrics with very specific local slang and cultural references. In his song, “Bokete,” for example,  he uses “boquete” (slang for “pothole”) as a recurring image, which is a nod to the pothole-filled streets of Puerto Rico. On the surface, “Bokete” is a breakup song, but beneath that it's a commentary on the neglected infrastructure in his homeland and how our environment can shape and end relationships. Shakespeare wrote his plays for his peers,  too, using word-play and in-jokes from Elizabethan England for which modern readers often require annotations in order to fully grasp. Despite the specificity of their work, this authenticity is exactly what makes Shakespeare’s plays and Bad Bunny’s music so recognizable and  powerful to people outside their immediate intended audience.