Images of Race in Film Industry - Personal Statement Example

Running Header: IMAGES OF RACE IN FILM Images of Race in Film: An Analysis of Oliver Parker's Vision of Othello Your School Submission In an era when many popular icons of entertainment and athletics proudly claim mixed ethnic backgrounds, it is at times hard to understand why race remains such a powerful issue. However, the most superficial of all of our differences as people - the color of our exterior - remains one of the most problematic differences. For many, the first judgment as to a person's character, personality, and reliability come from the color of the other person's skin. This is not just a phenomenon of the European-American; members of minority cultures also often mistrust members of other ethnic groups, simply because of the color of their skin. As one might expect, these tensions are often portrayed in the visual media, such as photography, advertising, television, and film. One African-American actor perhaps best known for his role as B.A. Baracus in The A-Team, Mr. T., was always seen almost burdened down by his golden chains, and always submissive to his European-American leader, Hannibal Smith. This image of the African-American male as a caged animal struck a chord among cultural analysts at the time, who saw the stereotype as harmful. Representation of characters of different races in what might be termed stereotypical situations, costumes, or patterns of behavior is not limited to modern American media, however. The 1995 film version of Othello, directed by Oliver Parker, is one attempt to take a story almost 400 years old and make it applicable to modern audiences. The original play was written by William Shakespeare in the early 1600's, and Shakespeare's England was also a culture that had its own peculiar notions of what it meant to be black, or African. As early as 1596, in fact, Queen Elizabeth I was known to complain about the large numbers of black people in England. It was the color itself that gave the English pause: as Winthrop Jordan notes, "in Englandthe concept of blackness was loaded with intense meaning. Long before they found that some men were black, Englishmen found in the idea of blackness a way of expressing some of their most ingrained values"(2). In its editions before the sixteenth century, the Oxford English Dictionary included in its definition of the word black the following definitions: "deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul, having dark of deadly purposesfoul, iniquitous, atrociousliability to punishment"(Jordan 2). When the English discovered that there were people walking the planet with that particular color of skin, their attitudes about the color itself significantly affected their expectations about the way that black people would behave. Additionally, Geographical Historie of Africa, by Leo Africanus, was translated into English in 1600 and portrayed the African as having a much more chaotic idea of proper sexual standards than that held in England at that time (Hall 29). And so Othello becomes a lightning rod for debate, not only in his appearance in blackface in the Globe Theater in Shakespeare's day, but in more modern film portrayals. The earlier film adaptations tended to make Othello look more bronze than black, effectively removing the question of racism from the discussion of the play. Later versions, including the 1995 version that stars Laurence Fishburne as the Moor, take a slightly larger interest in the racial aspects of the story. Elliott Butler-Evans succinctly summarizes the ways that the more modern films have attempted to take on the issue of race in Othello: As a Moor, he is clearly presented as Other, but not necessarily an offensive Other; the qualifier noble Moor does not extricate him from the realm of the exotic, yet it undermines the perception of him as evil. The association of him with blackness and its numerous signifieds, however, clearly locates him in the world of the undesirable. This blackness is articulated in a culture in which black is the color of degeneracy and damnation (146). Adapting a stage production to the movie screen gives the director several creative opportunities that are denied outside the cinema. When a person views a play, s/he has the choice of paying attention to the characters on stage, or of paying attention to something else that is also visible - perhaps a piece of furniture to the side, or to other audience members. A person who is in the movie theater basically has to either view the images before oneself, or close one's eyes. With the power of the camera, a director can force an audience to view such close-up images as explosions, drops of water, or the tension of a person awaiting physical contact. This gives the director of a movie more power than the screenwriter, or any of the individual actors(Stone). This 1995 film version of Othello takes several innovative steps in the presentation of the story. While Shakespeare's line "The old black ram is tupping your white ewe," shouted into the night outside the window of Brabantio, father of the creamy-skinned Desdemona, who has slipped away to secretly wed the African general Othello, is over 400 years old, most of the stagings of this scene have stayed away from the racial tensions. One of the most visceral images of the racial problem - the white fear of the sexually powerful black man - is thrust into the mind of the audience. However, most of the film versions of this play have shied away from this element of the racial tensions in Othello. As Alan Stone points out, Lawrence Olivier played the Moor with boldness; Orson Welles with fury; James Earl Jones with dignity. Laurence Fishburne is the first to portray Othello on the screen with "smoldering sexual vibrations that keep [the tension of interracial sex] pulsating." His visual appearance in the film is rendered "stunning" - a necessary action since Fishburne has difficulty with the vagaries of Shakespearean English. It is the close-ups of Fishburne's face, impossible to achieve in a stage production, that convert this film version into a "sexual thriller" - and the thrills come most viscerally from the tensions of a black man sexually possessing a white woman (Stone). Perhaps the most racist part of the characterization of Othello is his utter lack of reflection in the story. Those who are familiar with some of Shakespeare's other tragedies know how much time those tragic heroes spend agonizing over their own misdeeds. Hamlet's dithering and soliloquizing, perhaps made most famous by his "To be or not to be" speech, is actually one of the factors that gets him killed in the end, because he is ultimately too indecisive to slay Claudius. Some of the most eloquent parts of Richard III involve the villain's justification of his own violence to himself, and the audience's ability to see bitterness and vengefulness spew forth as this warped, deformed man inflates himself with power until he figuratively bursts at the story's end. Othello does none of these things. As Alan Stone points out, Othello does everything but think. While Hamlet observes his own inner ambiguities, Othello does not ever wonder how about his own status as a black man in a white culture. He is basically given two choices in this role: either assimilation and adaptation to what his white leaders expect for him, or exile (Reitz-Wilson). He accepts assimilation and earns accolades as a successful military leader in the Venetian forces. In the film, he has seizures, he acts and reacts, but he never stops to think. He takes the bait from Iago, in the form of accusations against Desdemona's honor, and instantly reacts violently, ultimately murdering his wife. From this, one might conclude that Shakespeare went along with many of the prejudices in his day about people of African descent - namely, that they tended to follow instinct and emotion in their decision-making processes rather than using logical, rational thought, or engaging in reflection about their actions. In addition to the sexual tension that his physical tension provides, there are other reasons why Laurence Fishburne made such an obvious casting choice to Oliver Parker. When the movie was made in 1995, the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his wife was in its last phases. Across the world, the idea of a black man violently murdering his white wife caused tension. The fact that, even though the police had no other suspects in the case, O.J. Simpson was acquitted by a mostly African-American jury, highlighted racial elements of the case. This seemed like an ideal time for the story of Othello to be revisited, and adapted for a more modern audience. Before he appeared as the Moor, Fishburne starred as Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It This movie featured the relationship of Ike and Tina Turner, and Fishburne turned out a visually nasty performance as a wife-beater. Also, his obvious American tongue stumbled on the Jacobean English, making him seem different than those around him, carrying the difference of skin into another sense: not only does Othello look different, in this film version he also sounds different. By doubling the sensory perception of Othello's status as other, Parker creates a being that haunts the nightmares of every true racist: the hybrid genes and cultural beliefs of children of miscegenation (Stone). Oliver Parker was looking for an actor to fill the role of the Moor who would bring visible tension of the sexual and physical kind to bear. According to Alan Stone, Parker felt that modern stage and earlier film productions of the story had preserved the deep hatred that Iago felt for Othello, but the relationship between Othello and Desdemona, virtually platonic in the Shakespearean text, was fading from relevancy for modern audiences. Bringing in an Othello who bristled with physical force, who could bully his way through situations, who would savor his sensual pleasures - in contrast with the noble soldier and almost childlike waif/wife seen in Shakespeare's time - would, in Parker's opinion, make this story more congenial to the mores of modern audiences (Stone). Laurence Fishburne, however, is only half of this erotically charged coupling that gives racial tension to the film. Irene Jacob is no slender, youthful girl worshipping her elder general/husband, as appears to be the case in the original play, and as often appears in productions of this story. She has dark hair and speaks English with a heavy accent. Like Fishburne, she struggles with the old English - a similarity that marks them as "Other" as a couple, not just as individuals. Just as Fishburne was chosen because of his physicality, she is also chosen for the ways in which her screen presence promises erotic delights. Her visage in the film conveys sensual possibilities - as evidenced by the sparkle in her eyes when she dances with Cassio, under the jealous eye of her husband (Stone). Costuming could have added to the racial tension present in the film. In this production, however, while Fishburne appears in a robe once or twice and has earrings in both ears, as Moors would have, but Venetians would not, mostly he dresses in the same fashion as his white counterparts: black pants and a white shirt, with black boots. Music, camera focus, and the sound of jungle drums at key moments in the plot contribute to the sense of racial tension - most noticeably during the celebration on Cyprus, and when Othello and Desdemona make love. There are also several images of black and white juxtaposed closely that highlight this tension. While Iago is giving one soliloquy, he drops a black and a white chess piece down a well, and this image is repeated at the movie's end, when the bodies of Othello and Desdemona are dropped into the sea. Also, while Othello and Desdemona are in bed together, there are several close-ups of their hands holding each other, a black-on-white image that could have even been made more contrasting with different lighting. Finally, when Othello has his seizure, he looks as though he has been confined with chains - a possible metaphor to Othello's role as a virtual slave to those above him (Reitz-Wilson). And so while Parker's idea of the Moor is racial in nature, is it in fact racist Parker does spend a fair amount of time dealing with the tensions of a successful black general eloping with a white girl of noble descent, and Othello is most often seen as an instinctual rather than an intellectual character. However, one could argue that this latter characteristic is typical of the man of action. After all, was Hamlet a true warrior Did Julius Caesar not move in accordance with his own desires, rather than stopping to wonder whether or not he was right The power of Othello's personality, and the depth of his feelings for Desdemona, make him a complex, rich character worthy of consideration - a far less racist character, one could argue, than Shylock in Shakespeare's A Merchant of Venice. While Parker does represent the elements of racial tension, he does so in an evenhanded way, giving Othello respect even while portraying the difficult position in which he lived. Works Cited Butler-Evans, Elliott. "'Haply, for I am Black': Othello and the Semiotics of Race and Otherness." Othello: New Essays by Black Writers. Ed. Mythili Kaul. Washington: Howard UP, 1997, pp. 139-150. Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995. Jordan, Winthrop. "The Simultaneous Invention of Slavery and Racism." White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1968, pp. 1-8. Reitz-Wilson, Laura. Race and Othello on Film. Accessed 27 November 2006 online at http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb04-1/reitz-wilson04.html Stone, Alan A. "Othello." Boston Review. April/May 1996. Accessed 27 November 2006 online at http://bostonreview.net/BR21.2/Stone.html. Read More