"Is this the Noble Moor?"

Re-viewing Othello on Screen through "Indian" (and Indian) Eyes

Authors

  • Alfredo Michel Modenessi National University of Mexico

Keywords:

Othello, Omkara, Huapango

Abstract

Relatively recent derivatives of Othello filmed in Britain and the USA, Othello (dir. Geoffrey Sax, 2001), and O (dir. Tim Blake Nelson, 2001) have re-fashioned the play into contemporary scenarios stressing economic, racial, and gender — political — issues that characterize the multicultural social fabrics in hegemonic countries. Needless to say, such strategies render Lodovico's question near the end of act 4, scene 1 — "Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate / Call all-in-all sufficient?" (Othello, 4.1.261-62) — more pressing by at once specifying and amplifying the societal and ethnic implications of the terms "noble" and "Moor" in the twenty-first century. This essay examines two other recent films based on Shakespeare's Othello that employ adaptative approaches to foreground similar issues: the nearly unnoticed Mexican production Huapango (dir. Iván Lipkies, 2003), and to a lesser degree, the critically successful Indian film Omkara (dir. Vishal Bhardwaj, 2006). In contrast with the films mentioned above, these pictures were made in developing nations with distinct social and cultural profiles, where the aforementioned economic, racial and gender matters take, or demand to take, forms of their own for significant local appropriation. Among the topics to be explored and illustrated in this essay are the contrasting, yet (socio)logically comparable scenarios wherein the screenwriters re-set Shakespeare's tragedy, which again feature issues that are as much shared as culture-specific — in particular, the issue of violence, both criminal and domestic.

Author Biography

Alfredo Michel Modenessi, National University of Mexico

Alfredo Michel Modenessi is Professor of Comparative Studies in English and translation at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), as well as member of the International Shakespeare Conference, where he chaired the seminar on Shakespeare translation in 2002. He is on the advisory board of the International Shakespearean Yearbook, of MIT's website http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu, and of 1611, a journal on the history of translation published by the Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona. He has published three books in Mexico on American drama and popular culture and one on Shakespeare and the early modern arts, as well papers on Shakespeare translation and Shakespeare on stage or screen in journals and collections such as Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare and the Language of Translation (Arden), Spectacular Shakespeare (FDP), Latin-American Shakespeares (FDP), World-wide Shakespeares (Routledge), and Apocalyptic Shakespeare (McFarland). He has also contributed entries and articles to the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, the Cambridge Shakespeare Encyclopaedia, and Greenwood Shakespeare Encyclopaedia and is currently writing a chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy. He has translated and adapted American, Australian, English, Polish, and South-African drama for page and stage, including Love's Labour's Lost, Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Othello, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and Richard III. His version of Henry IV, Part 1 was staged by the National Theatre of Mexico at the Globe Theatre during the festival "37 plays 37 languages" in 2012. His version of Othello appeared in Mexico in 2010, published by UNAM, and his translations of Love's Labour's Lost and The Comedy of Errors are now published in Spain as part of the new "Complete Drama" issued by Espasa in Madrid to replace the earlier "canon" in Spanish. His version of Marlowe's Edward II should appear in Mexico sometime in 2013-2014. He is currently preparing a book-length study on the presence of Shakespeare in Mexican cinema.

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Published

2020-06-25

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Section

Articles