Oi! Othello! Micawber! Stick To The Bleeding Script!

hm, i think you've underestimated Othello though (the play, not the adaptation which i avoided like the plague). there are a lot of intensely anti-racist points in the play (you'll have to bear with me, i've not read it for a while), most notably in the form of Iago who is just a complete racist bastard, inciting people to hatred and destroying people's lives because of prejudice. Othello is made to feel like, in his words i believe, a "beast" - sub-human, servile, all the negative things that go along with that, and the tragedy as i see it is that he eventually cracks under the strain of the racist stereotypes that are thrust upon him. all Shakespeare's tragic heroes are, as the theory goes, fatally flawed and it's Othello's flaw that he is overcome by other people's racist perceptions of himself and eventually sucucmbs to them.

or something.

anyway as far as lit adaptations go, i *loved* Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, rilly rilly want to see the Ethan Hawke Hamlet as it looks interesting, and kind of hated Ken Branagh's Hamlet (i know it's a long winded play but puh-lese!). i also liked Lord of the Rings but i may have mentioned that elsewhere :)

I've always been very suspicious of lots of latter day readings of Othello (and for that matter The Shrew) seeing them as plays necessarily about racism or sexism, rather than actually being racist or sexist within themselves. The whole point of Iago is that he is evil incarnate as written within the play, and yet the audience does sympathise partially with him (this is what stops him from being a panto villain after all) because the audience it was written for was also racist. Therefore the fact that Othello has the girl, the job and everything Iago wants isn't fair because if it the same conditions occured to a member of the audience it also wouldn't be fair, because Othello is black.

The audience has changed, and it is certainly possible to look at these plays in a modern context, but if you take that leap you also have to accept that the motivation will seem less understandable. What certainly would have been more interesting would have been a version of Othello without any racial context at all. The story would still work, but instead be a much more interesting psychological examination of Iago's need to find a scapegoat, as him as a manipulative psychopath rather than just the knee jerk evil racist he is usually portrayed as.

10 Things works well because it is a comedy and the writers were not being overly reverent towards their decidedly ropey source material. Odd that The Taming Of The Shrew has been the source of two of the best of the modern adaptions (Kiss Me Kate is tremendous and knocks the spots off of West Side Story).

also (and i've been thinking about this too much - i should be working arrrugh) Othello is a pretty violent guy anyway, what with being a warrior in the army and all that. to say that it's specifically portraying blacks as particularly unhinged is like saying Shakespeare presents all Danes as hesitant and all Italians as holding long familial grudges (though MarkC may be able to put me straight on that last one)!

hmm what you say Pete has a fair measure of truth in it, but i think that Shakespeare was a much more humane writer than perhaps you're giving him credit for. and i think that Iago is pretty psychopathic whoever his victim is - the amount of detail that goes into his plan for Othello's downfall is pretty astounding. he's got it all paranoiacally (sp.) planned out, oh yes.

the thing is that i tend to view the tragedies as structures more than anything else (trained to, y'see) and Othello is a marvellous example of that "one man versus the expectations of society" structure that i love so much. or in this case, one man versus another man who is the embodiment of all that is evil in society - see the way that Shakespeare presents society as not all bad, as redeemable? the tragedy is that people will die unfairly before that redemption happens.

Have you not seen The Godfather?

I think too much is called down on the head of Othello for being Shakespeares only major black character (if you don't could Denzel Washington). Unfortunately it is symptomatic of people who put on plays, and hence commission such adaptations to believe that a four hundred year old play has got the race issue pegged better than something which could be commissioned fresh and new.

The worst thing about such modern adaptions is the terrible updated names they give everyone. Dezzie, Pshaw!. Has anyone here seen Joe Macbeth by the way?

I've seen Hamish Macbeth.

(I don't understand any of this. Maybe one day I should read one of these 'books' people talk about).

Have you not seen The Godfather?

heh, heh - no i haven't! you are totally OTM Pete though about too much being called down on Othello's head for being the only black character in Shakespeare. seeing it as a microcosm of Elizabethan attitudes towards race is just wrong.

By the way, since you seem to know this more than me, is Othello a Shakespeare original (because I know their aren't many). I certainly see what you are saying about structure, and the genius of Iago as a character is his apparent knowledge of human nature, and the fact that he stands outside it. His plan works directly on being able to predict and manipulate emotional reactions, whilst acknowledging that his own emotional reactions to Othello's success are abnormal (he is saddled with to many "hee hee hee aren't I evil soliloquies" though).

The idea of redemption in Shakespeare is solidly tied up in a religious idea of an afterlife which is now in the minority. Also there is the idea of the plays as parables - why minor characters always get the final scene to reflect on the lesson they have learnt. Its Shakespeares version of a He-Man/Orco explicit moral. Again, this is now very unfashionable in drama.

Oh and don't hold your breath with the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, much of its cuts make very little sense and despite a couple of okay parallels (Denmark Corp...) ot seems a bit too shoehorned. Bill Murray's Polonius is very good, Julia Stiles equally makes a good Desdemona (what is it with this girl, she loves her Shakespeare adaptions, she's also in the high school Othello - O anyone seen). But the decision to make Hamlet an indie film-maker - except for explaining away a lot of soliloqiues is just intensely annoying.

but part of the point of othello is surely his cultural isolation? so this specific dimension of racism is part of the original package? (tho trickier in a modern adaptation, where black chief of police hardly = only one of his background in all London...)

the prob with dickens is that we always de-sensationalise him: he had a tabloid shock-probe heart (whence the sentimentality), and this is where the energy and wit mainly come from

happy new year marcello!

"To access makeout.club or not to access makeout.club…"

not sure about whether Othello's an original - i'd guess not but i can FIND OUT if need be. i think that Shakespeare can definitely DEFINITELY be read without the "tied up in the notion of a religious afterlife" aspect - OK so religion was a pretty burning issue in those times, sometimes quite literally (sorry, that was BAD) but i think that the one thing that stands out about Shakespeare is that it deals with HERES and NOWS rather than afterlives. he is a poet very much tied to the nitty gritties of life and all the messy things that go with it - Hamlet "my words go up, my thoughts remain below" and all that. of course religion is touched on but it's resolutely *human* beings and *human* situations that Shakespeare deals with. this can be seen best and most complexly i think in Measure for Measure, also a bit in the Comedy of Errors (though with humans vs. THE LAW rather than versus RELIGION).

mark s - yes Othello's cultural separateness is of course partially what defines him, but what i was trying to say that it a mistake to think it wholly defines him. ok so he is a Moor, he is also a warrior, a husband, a lover, a soldier in the ranks, a human being with many facets. "what a piece of work is a man" and all that eh?

Hey, what abt Jack ('Ready Steady Go') Good's 'Catch My Soul', a 1966 'rock'n'roll' musical version of 'Othello' w/ Jerry Lee Lewis as Iago!

It was really just a parry to your suggestion that Shakespearian tragedies are all about redemption. There is no redemption for Othello or Iago without the notion of an afterlife. The only redemption is there for the audience who has seen this crime played out and hopefully it will have moved them to work the situation out for themselves.

Othello's isolation is of course partially by choice. He assimilates into his role in the army and suceeds on the level of people who he believes are his peers. That the isolation occurs nevertheless and always existed is something that Iago plays with. That said, to act in the heat of passion was (and possibly still is) seen as better and more heroic crime than to cold bloodedly plot the downfall of someone.

Almereyda's Hamlet sucks - I laughed like a drain. and Almereyda himself is a bit of a pillock going by his press notes.

Hello all! Happy New Year!

It was really just a parry to your suggestion that Shakespearian tragedies are all about redemption. There is no redemption for Othello or Iago without the notion of an afterlife

yes indeed, it's redemption for society (ie. the human level) but at the tragic cost of innocent lives. if you wanted to get reeeeally sticky about it - hey actually hang on is Othello a Christian? did he convert (or ahem "get" converted by those Crusades?) like i said i haven't read it for ages so i'm a bit vague on er, incredibly important details like that. i was going to say, in a Christian world does Othello even get a chance at the afterlife in the first place?

Othello is a Christian else the marriage to Desdemona would be a no go from the get go. Though for killing his wife we have to assume that heaven isn't the place he's got the non-stop ticket to.

arrrr, but of course. i think though that the tragic hero's damnedness is all part of the tragic hero aspect though really. it's just yet another reason why life can be really, really shitty.

'A no no from the get go'

Pete, why are you trying to sound like Alan Freeman ;-)

a have-a-go dingo in a dayglo baby-gro!!

Mark, that you ever watched Russ Tamblyn with a straight face is a testament to your charitable nature.

I utterly disagree with Mr Carlin re. West Side Story. I could hardly disagree more. He says it's written by people who had no feel for pop: I think it may well be the highest peak pop music has ever scaled. Absolutely phenomenal, wonderful work that I can't see anyone bettering in terms of melody, structure and complexity of arrangement; and I think they incorporate the narrative via lyrics charmingly. (All this though Sondheim himself is casually disparaging about his input.)

pinefox are you saying the movie was highest pop peak etc. or the musical on which it was based?

No, Foxy, can't go for that. WSS is pop music written by people who sneer at pop, who really want to be tone-bending at Berklee/Darmstadt/wherever with Darius Milhaud, Luigi Nono and the gang. Song structures clumsy and completely devoid of flow. Musically an unappealing mongrel of Bartok, Graettinger, Weill and "Ebony Concerto"-period Stravinsky. I refer you to the Burt Bacharach box-set on Rhino as evidence of the only Viennese Second School graduate to get the pop music thing right.

Now, "Oklahoma" - MUCH more radical and aesthetically successful, no?

Wait so Mark you don't like West Side Story?

We actually put on productions of both WSS and Oklahoma in my third and fourth years at grammar school. I played Chino in one and Jud in the other. I always preferred Oklahoma - much more fun; Jud as a bad guy is much better written as a character than dull fling-yer-arms- out homoerotic-subtext George Chakiris-type wotsit.

I wuz Tony (chiz) and as much as I'd like to pretend that I despise "Make of Our Hands One Hand" for its Frankensteinian overtones and absurdly pious melody, it's actually because I dropped a line from it. Maria's face became one large frightened "O".

But I'd take any of the other songs over OK any day. "Tonight" especially, the heart of the thing, is just fierce. I dunno - maybe it's cuz all my relatives are from Texas and Oklahoma and I wanted to escape to New York! But I barely remember the songs from OK, save "Surrey" and "Pore Jud". And of course the most annoying title track known to man or beast.

Has anyone seen Charles Marowitz's adaptation of Shrew called "The Shrew"? Just a little trimming and reshuffling turns it into not just tragedy but horror - the utter domination and subjugation of a woman's free and independent spirit conducted via torture and rape.