The problem with Othello (in the white mind at least — hey, let’s not beat about the bush here) is that the play can be taken as a metaphor for any black man in power. The key image is of that power slowly slipping out of his hands, causing him to descend into his primal state vis-à-vis the (white) civilised world — Othello retreats into voodoo, murder and madness.
In our times the image is played out repeatedly in the media for maximum effect. OJ Simpson is the obvious example. Mike Tyson is another. But then so are Robert Mugabe, Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the short-lived Central African Empire, Kwame Nkrumah and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Idi Amin (sergeant turned-general-turned-president-for-life), Malcolm X, Michael X (often mistaken for the same person, although they could not have been more different), Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey and Steve Biko — to name but a few.
Do you see a trend here? There is no reason to connect any of the above, apart from their skin colour, and the fact that, precisely because of that externally perceived skin colour, they broadly shared the same aspirations — strictly in relation to the white world that had enslaved and colonised them.
But put all of them around the same table and you would hear hardly a word of common understanding. Why should there be? They existed in worlds as far apart as chalk and cheese, Jupiter and the moon. They were just people.
Now we have Jean-Bertrand Aristide flying into exile from the Caribbean island of Haiti (at the behest, some say, of that other black general in a white world, Colin Powell, Secretary of State of the most powerful nation in the universe) and seeking sanctuary in the unlikely environment of the Central African Republic (formerly Empire). And clearly headed for the comfortable life of Hyde Park and Sandton and Camps Bay in South Africa, where he might reasonably be expected to fill his days writing his memoirs, which will later be turned into a multimillion-dollar Hollywood movie, starring Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Oh, and Charlize Theron.
Mongane Serote once wrote: ”To be black has been a disaster.” That was in the old days. Things have moved on, and this kind of language has become politically unacceptable. Nevertheless, the echo of those words lives on in the ongoing portrayal of black people in a white world, particularly in the modern interpretation of a play like Othello.
But did William Shakespeare really have this in mind when he wrote the play? Is the play really about a black person leading a doomed, disastrous life in the greater society of the Venetian Empire — a metaphor for the Elizabethan England in which Shakespeare lived, worked and supposedly drank out his life in an effort to arrive at a greater truth about the human condition?
Othello is littered with references to ”the thick-lips”, Othello’s ”sooty breast”, ”the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor”, and allusions to ”an old black ram … tupping your white ewe”. And it makes specific reference, in the early scenes, to ”black” being synonymous with ”the devil”.
Later in the play constant reference is given to the fact of Othello being a ”Moor”. In other words, he is a black man, of African descent, striding through a self-consciously ”white”, European world.
But that is not all there is to the play. Many other human issues are in play. Which is why I believe that most modern interpretations of the play (including Greg Doran’s current production at Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Sello Maake kaNcube and Sir Antony Sher) go for the obvious (that is, racism as an end in itself) and miss the deeper truth.
It all depends on how you hit the first note — just as in the opening of a Beethoven symphony, or the reinterpretation of a Duke Ellington big-band extravaganza, which contains so many tones and colours.
Who is the central character — Othello, or his nemesis, the loved and trusted Iago? What is their relationship? How do they relate to other people? Above all, what are their relationships to their respective spouses? And why do these personal relationships open themselves so readily to abuse and disaster?
As ever, it depends on how you play it. In the current Stratford production, the role of Emilia, Iago’s spurned and despised wife, as played by Amanda Harris, shines out into her own space at the centre of a complex, multi-centred play.
She makes you ask questions about herself (and yourself) when she utters the lines (that can so easily disappear into the welter of emotional words that fill this beautifully constructed drama): ”’Tis not a year or two shows us a man: / They are all but stomachs, and we all but food; / They eat us hungerly, and when they are full, / They belch us.”
You have to be listening carefully to catch all of this, and to grasp what it is actually trying to tell you. And to grasp the fact that, in the inexorable progress to doom that the play is really about, you yourself are not far from the central action.
Yes, we are all Othello — noble in thought, flawed in action.
But we are all also Iago, and Emilia, and the pathetic, deluded Roderigo, and the enraged Brabantio, seeing his perfect, virginal daughter taken by another man — whether he is of a different race or not. And the betrayed Bianca, thinking that she is loved, and finding that she has merely been used as a means to an end.
Othello, in a word, is about much more than race and racism. Unfortunately, in the world in which we live, it is difficult to admit it for what it is, or what we could possibly be.