Brush up your Shakespeare

Jim Russell, Republican Congressional candidate in New York State (NY-18) feels that a modernized version of Othello is "deliberately designed to exploit the critical period of sexual imprinting in their target audiences of white pre-adolescent girls and adolescent young women" as part of a media plot to "deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents."  ("The Western Contribution to World History," Occidental Quarterly*, 2001/2002.)

Um...what? 

I haven't seen the movie in question, but apparently it is sufficiently true to the source material that the Othello character kills the Desdemona character by the end.   So let me get this straight: a movie in which a girl's black boyfriend murders her out of irrational jealousy is supposed to make white girls in general eager to date black guys?  Because being murdered is, what, oh-so-romantic?

Othello is a wonderful play that I haven't seen enough productions of, but somehow I never thought of it as a tract promoting interracial relationships.  I'm not certain it's condemning them, either; some of the characters certainly are against Othello and Desdemona's marriage on explicitly racial grounds ("an old black ram is tupping your white ewe") but Othello and Desdemona are the victims of evil and are never portrayed as anything other than tragically credulous and somewhat dim.  Given when it was written, that's actually pretty good.  But a nefarious plot to promote "miscegenation" via modernized settings of Shakespeare (since, you know, no one ever remakes Shakespeare in modern settings)? 

I. Don't. Think. So.

(Courtesy of The Albany Project -- see their post for more excerpts featuring racism and anti-Semitism.)

 

Edited 9/22/10 to add:

Salon has more on this.  School integraton might make kids gay!

*The Occidental Quarterly concerns itself with white oppression by "the Negroes, Hispanics, Asians, Indians, feminists, labor unions, corporate plunderers, Jews, Muslims, illegal aliens, socialists, pornographers, “free-traders,” environmentalist fanatics, animal-loving lunatics, the education cabal, the “disabled,” the professional “poor,” atheists, “humanist” clerics, crooked law enforcers, government bureaucrats, venal politicians, activist judges, and the myriad other enemies, traitors and bleeding-heart weaklings that today run what used to be “our” country."

Comments

[Serge]

Forbidden Planet
Jubal
King of Texas
Castle of Blood
The Bellero Shield

The last especially could make kids want to shoot luminous aliens next time the latter hitch a ride down a laser beam.

Idiots

[Serge]

There's also "West Side Story". True, that one and the ones I've mentionned before aren't exact transpositions of the originals into a more modern setting, but inspired by them. Still, this is all very silly. Or extremely stupid, depending on your mood.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Click through on my links. :)

[Serge]

Susan... That'll teach me to assume too quickly that I have missed someone's point. :-)

[AJ]

If people are going to be concerned about any modern Shakespeare adaptations, they should be worried about Gnomeo and Juliet.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Somehow I missed that one...

[Susan de Guardiola]

More links added to the original post above!

[Neil W]

Well, this balances out the Merchant of Venice in modern dress I saw when they were all yuppies and making money by screwing every penny and torturing contracts and the law to breaking point was good!

Sadly for Jim Russell the anti-semitism of the play was played down in that version.

[Serge]

I recommend staying away from "ShakespeaRe-told", in which "Much Ado About Nothing" was set in a TV station, which would have been OK if, after throwing ou the original language, they had at least kept any of the wit of the original.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Merchant of Venice you can make a legit case for being anti-Semitic, though I'd balance that somewhat by pointing out that for its time, Shylock is a relatively well-rounded character and far from the worst caricature he could be. Taming of the Shrew is likewise a big problem play nowadays. But I never took any moral message one way or the other from Othello about interracial marriage. A message that people will freak out and hassle you, yes, but not that that made it wrong.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Much to their credit, the local Republican party is displaying some standards and is going to court to remove this guy from their ballot line. They plan to endorse another candidate.

Since I'm in a good mood this morning, I'm going to assume that this was because they had no idea of his history of racism rather than because they cynically thought it would not be revealed before the election.

[Serge]

Susan... I vote for cynicism.