Representations Of Otherness In Othello: In Shakespeare's Text And In Parker's Film Version

Among the four great tragedies, Othello, the Moor of Venice is generally considered as one of the minor significance; still it has experienced much debate over the last four centuries. However, the debate mainly focuses on structure and characterization of the play, just as what Vaughan concludes, "Until the mid-1980s Othello criticism remained, for the most part, a bastion of formalism and psychological analysis" (13). Love, hatred, jealousy, and the evil of human beings are what mostly stirred the critics and the audiences as well. With the occurrence of New Historicism, Cultural Studies and Post-colonial Studies in the latter half of the twentieth century, Shakespeare's Othello tends to be studied in the milieu of culture and ideology in both the Elizabethan time and the modern time. The present study is carried out from the perspective of exploring representations of otherness in Othello in Shakespeare's original play and in Oliver Parker's film Othello in the milieu of culture and ideology.Shakespeare created Othello, the black Moor, as an "other" in the white Venetian society. The otherness in Othello is first demonstrated in his eagerness and worries about his own ethnic and cultural identity in the white Venice: his inward aspiration for whiteness, his depreciation of blackness of himself and his desperate hold of Desdemona's love for him. Othello's otherness is also demonstrated in the social bias against him from the Venetian society, which is strikingly shown in other characters' animalistic and derogative addressing of him and the addressing of him by his name under specific circumstances in the play. Analysis of Oliver Parker's film Othello has shown what aspects of Othello's otherness are portrayed in a contemporary social and cultural milieu. The visual representation of Othello's otherness in Parker's film is characterized by filming Othello as being exotic, sexual, ethnically proud, violent and menacing.As I choose representation in the sense of "speaking for", which is ideologically loaded, there is a need to explore the ideological elements in the representations of otherness of Othello in both Shakespeare's original play and Oliver Parker's film. The late Elizabethan mainstream ideology might have greatly influenced Shakespeare's composition of Othello and confined his conception of otherness in Othello. The influence of contemporary ideology of racism and anti-racism and influence of ideology of popular culture in the latter half of the 20th century exert impacts upon the representations of Othello's otherness in Parker's film. In trying to expound the ideological contents in the representations of otherness in Othello in the written text and the filmic text of Othello, I hope I have offered a re-reading of the play and the filmic version.