Cultural Contexts Readings

I was not surprised by Shakespeare's portrayal of Othello at all. Black men were viewed as "inherently hypersexual and prone to violence" (374-375). This was a typical archaic view. Othello was treated as the Moor who was trained to live amongst white people without causing a big stir. When provoked, his naturally aggressive ways surfaced. There is also an underlying idea of assimilation that can be seen not only in Shakespeare's Othello, but in many works where a black person attempts to gain membership into a mainstream society. This can also be seen in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "The Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison and many more titles.

In the older version of Othello with Laurence Olivier, I found a NYT article which cites a 1964 Life Magazine interview where he talked about appearing black: "The whole thing will be in the lips and the color, I'll use just a little tiny touch of lake and a lot more brown and a little mauve.'' Blackface was always a practice that I have found interesting. I'm not sure if Olivier is using it in the traditional sense in his portrayal of Othello, but either way, it was an exploiting and disheartening and strange practice.