"... a reference to the way in which the play’s treacherous villain, Iago, cooks up a variety of shallow rationalizations for a hatred that’s too deep and insidious to stem from any neatly explicable circumstance. But what of the motive-hunting of a motiveless production?... It may be that [Denzel] Washington’s lackluster performance stems from a misfiring if understandable desire to avoid stereotypes of outsize passion—of big, blustery emotional fireworks in a thorny role of color—yet the result is that we go on no journey with his Othello. We listen to him say words; we don’t, even as he enters the bedroom of his innocent wife, Desdemona (Molly Osborne), to strangle her, experience his awful interior transformation. Instead, as he approaches her in these fateful moments, a truly unsettling percentage of the audience is still laughing.... 'I’ll not shed her blood, / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, / And smooth as monumental alabaster,' he says.... Then he pauses before continuing, almost nonchalantly: 'Yet she must die.' The audience giggles. Is that what the production—what any production of Othello—really wants?"
What does the production really want? Enough Coleridge-style wondering about Iago's motivation. What did this particular production want? And what if the laughter is what it wants?! Put on a whole production of "Othello" with the ambitious goal that the audience will be transported to dizzying heights of inappropriate laughter. Desdemona is the new Chuckles the Clown and the audience is transfigured into Mary Tyler Moore.
Or what if parts of our culture have squeezed and narrowed the spectrum of each virtue such that their hearts and minds are all mired in a lifeless, confined prison cell of banality?
They can't imagine a person who decided to be evil, because they don't really believe in evil. And because they don't believe in choice.
Live theater and film require two different types of acting styles. There are many cases of film actors who have trouble making the transition to live theater.
Coleridge wrote notes in the margins of everything. I have several volumes of marginalia and there are several more I don't have after the price went up.
Consider that Iago’s plan was just to get Cassio fired. In forming that plan, Iago decided to get Desdemona and Othello. And Iago wanted to get caught in the end and knew his wife would turn on him. Othello, Desdemona, and Cassio are beside the point. Iago was testing his wife knowing she would turn him in.
So many years ago! I had forgotten why I was glued to the TV when MTM was on. She had excellent writers and the cast members were all funny. Thanks for the memory, Ann.
Loved the MTM clip. Such a great show. Seems so long ago that people laughed together.
Also love the composer with the weirdly similar, yet different name, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who wrote (among other things) the beautiful Ballade for Orchestra in A minor.
"...the movie doesn't capture what she meant to convey. Noting that the director and actresses are “all straight, unless proven otherwise,” she said that with few exceptions, the film struck her as “a brutal and surgical display, exuberant and cold, of so-called lesbian sex, which turned into porn.”
Even worse, she said, “everyone was giggling.”
Heterosexual viewers “laugh-ed because they don’t understand it and find the scene ridiculous.
“The gay and queer people laughed because it’s not convincing, and find it ridiculous,” she continued. “And among the only people we didn’t hear giggling were” the “guys too busy feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies on screen.”
Meh. I saw Denzel Washington in one of those Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare films done back in the 1990's. He was awful. He had no idea of how Shakespearian dialogue should be done.
Denzel shows up regularly on lists of "Actors Who Are Always Playing Themselves" and "Actors Who Play the Same Role in Every Film." Apparently, theatre audiences don't appreciate that as much as moviegoers do.
'the motive-hunting of Motiveless malignity'..." "... a reference to the way in which the play’s treacherous villain, Iago, cooks up a variety of shallow rationalizations for a hatred that’s too deep and insidious to stem from any neatly explicable circumstance.
My take. At 70 Denzel Washington is too old to play Othello. In the play, Othello is impetuous, and he does things without thinking deeply about it. The characters Denzel has played lately, especially "The Equalizer," think before they do things. Othello jumps to conclusions and once he commits to a course of action he is difficult to dissuade. This is how a young man acts, not a person in his later years, because either that man learns better or he simply doesn't make it to old age.
Iago takes advantage of all of this, of course. As to why Iago hates Othello, who knows or cares? I'm in my 70s myself, and many times I've seen one person take an inexplicable dislike to another. No apparent reason, just bad chemistry.
Maybe it's best not to think about a playwright's offstage ideas of an evil character's motivations, like maybe I wish I hadn't read Tarantino's backstory for "The Gimp" in Pulp Fiction. These things can get pretty dark.
I'm not an Othello fan. I'd probably watch 12 other Shakespeare plays before it. I must say, the Larry Olivier movie was pretty good, but that's because he was one of the greatest Shakespeare actors of all time.
Let face it, Othello is pretty much a hot-headed dunce. No doubt a good lesson for husbands. But I'm just meh about it.
Desdemona is stereotypically played by white women. I think Rachel Zegler, fresh off her triumph in Snow White, should play the fair Desdemona. She'd bring her trademark spin to the role, and many would cheer for her strangulation. It would be easier for the audience to see how Othello was so easily manipulated into hating her. It would also go far in explaining the motivation of Iago. He doesn't want to goad Othello, he wants to murder Desdemona........Some Shakespeare roles can no longer be played. In Titus Andronicus, the daughter of Titus gets not only raped, but has her arms and tongue cut off. When a friend of Titus encounters her fresh moments after the atrocity, he laments to her on the tragedy. He says that Titus will no longer be able to hear her play the lute and sing sweet songs. .
What Big Mike said. You simply cannot be a 70 year old rich Hollywood actor and play Othello, no more than you can be a 60 year old rich Hollywood actress and play Juliet (in the Shakespeare universe, Juliet was in her teens and Othello in his 20s, which accounts for my ten year difference - I think Washington could have played Othello in his 50s, and I think there are 40 something actresses who could play Juliet. After that, no, the suspension of disbelief is too hard for a stage performance ---- it is audio book time by then). ..... Also, there is a lot of racism in saying that the role of Othello must be played by someone descended from sub-Saharan Africans when the Moors were very much closer, in appearance, to the average Frenchman in Marseilles than they were to someone whose ancestry was sub-Saharan African. It is that kind of pathetic condescension which is the sign of a proud racist.
Take a moment to remember Georgia Engle, who played Georgette, Ted Knight's haplessly human amd sweet wife on Mary Tyler Moore. One of my aunts could be her, and that's an enormous blessing.
Not enough women, or men, are like this anymore. Spotless. So, Othello. I don't know much about this production, but I bet it sucks compared with Orson Welles' performance. Does blackface onstage trump the soul of the message about race and humanity? Did Georgette Knight personify all white wives of blowhards and thus diminish femininity?
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Encourage Althouse by making a donation:
Make a 1-time donation or set up a monthly donation of any amount you choose:
Posts
32 comments:
Or what if parts of our culture have squeezed and narrowed the spectrum of each virtue such that their hearts and minds are all mired in a lifeless, confined prison cell of banality?
They can't imagine a person who decided to be evil, because they don't really believe in evil. And because they don't believe in choice.
Live theater and film require two different types of acting styles. There are many cases of film actors who have trouble making the transition to live theater.
...cooks up a variety of shallow rationalizations for a hatred that’s too deep and insidious to stem from any neatly explicable circumstance.
The OJ Simpson trial had its share of courtroom giggles.
Coleridge wrote notes in the margins of everything. I have several volumes of marginalia and there are several more I don't have after the price went up.
Consider that Iago’s plan was just to get Cassio fired. In forming that plan, Iago decided to get Desdemona and Othello. And Iago wanted to get caught in the end and knew his wife would turn on him. Othello, Desdemona, and Cassio are beside the point. Iago was testing his wife knowing she would turn him in.
She was delightful, wasn't she.
You girls should try to be more like Mary.
Mary Tyler Moore clip- 👍
A little song
A little dance
A little seltzer in the pants.
More trustworthy than words.
So many years ago! I had forgotten why I was glued to the TV when MTM was on. She had excellent writers and the cast members were all funny. Thanks for the memory, Ann.
Loved the MTM clip. Such a great show. Seems so long ago that people laughed together.
Also love the composer with the weirdly similar, yet different name, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who wrote (among other things) the beautiful Ballade for Orchestra in A minor.
I've seen this play before: "Blue Is the Warmest Color" — that movie about lesbians that won the grand prize at Cannes"
"...the movie doesn't capture what she meant to convey.
Noting that the director and actresses are “all straight, unless proven otherwise,” she said that with few exceptions, the film struck her as “a brutal and surgical display, exuberant and cold, of so-called lesbian sex, which turned into porn.”
Even worse, she said, “everyone was giggling.”
Heterosexual viewers “laugh-ed because they don’t understand it and find the scene ridiculous.
“The gay and queer people laughed because it’s not convincing, and find it ridiculous,” she continued. “And among the only people we didn’t hear giggling were” the “guys too busy feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies on screen.”
Damn the laugh track!
Meh. I saw Denzel Washington in one of those Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare films done back in the 1990's. He was awful. He had no idea of how Shakespearian dialogue should be done.
Denzel shows up regularly on lists of "Actors Who Are Always Playing Themselves" and "Actors Who Play the Same Role in Every Film." Apparently, theatre audiences don't appreciate that as much as moviegoers do.
'the motive-hunting of Motiveless malignity'..."
"... a reference to the way in which the play’s treacherous villain, Iago, cooks up a variety of shallow rationalizations for a hatred that’s too deep and insidious to stem from any neatly explicable circumstance.
YouTube: How about another joke, Murray?
I detest Othello. So depressing.
I like your idea, Ann.
My take. At 70 Denzel Washington is too old to play Othello. In the play, Othello is impetuous, and he does things without thinking deeply about it. The characters Denzel has played lately, especially "The Equalizer," think before they do things. Othello jumps to conclusions and once he commits to a course of action he is difficult to dissuade. This is how a young man acts, not a person in his later years, because either that man learns better or he simply doesn't make it to old age.
Iago takes advantage of all of this, of course. As to why Iago hates Othello, who knows or cares? I'm in my 70s myself, and many times I've seen one person take an inexplicable dislike to another. No apparent reason, just bad chemistry.
Maybe it's best not to think about a playwright's offstage ideas of an evil character's motivations, like maybe I wish I hadn't read Tarantino's backstory for "The Gimp" in Pulp Fiction. These things can get pretty dark.
I'm not an Othello fan. I'd probably watch 12 other Shakespeare plays before it. I must say, the Larry Olivier movie was pretty good, but that's because he was one of the greatest Shakespeare actors of all time.
Let face it, Othello is pretty much a hot-headed dunce. No doubt a good lesson for husbands. But I'm just meh about it.
Yeah, Othello as comedy. A goofy big lug of a husbands cant help but be parnoid, jealous and protective, no matter what. Give it a laugh track.
A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.
Starring Jackie Gleason, with Art Carney and Jane Meadows
Desdemona is stereotypically played by white women. I think Rachel Zegler, fresh off her triumph in Snow White, should play the fair Desdemona. She'd bring her trademark spin to the role, and many would cheer for her strangulation. It would be easier for the audience to see how Othello was so easily manipulated into hating her. It would also go far in explaining the motivation of Iago. He doesn't want to goad Othello, he wants to murder Desdemona........Some Shakespeare roles can no longer be played. In Titus Andronicus, the daughter of Titus gets not only raped, but has her arms and tongue cut off. When a friend of Titus encounters her fresh moments after the atrocity, he laments to her on the tragedy. He says that Titus will no longer be able to hear her play the lute and sing sweet songs. .
What's 'thater'? (Last tag.)
Interviews after the show: 'I laugh and laugh and laugh again.'
iago could be played by this guy.
or maybe this guy
or .. this guy would be better.
What Big Mike said. You simply cannot be a 70 year old rich Hollywood actor and play Othello, no more than you can be a 60 year old rich Hollywood actress and play Juliet (in the Shakespeare universe, Juliet was in her teens and Othello in his 20s, which accounts for my ten year difference - I think Washington could have played Othello in his 50s, and I think there are 40 something actresses who could play Juliet. After that, no, the suspension of disbelief is too hard for a stage performance ---- it is audio book time by then). ..... Also, there is a lot of racism in saying that the role of Othello must be played by someone descended from sub-Saharan Africans when the Moors were very much closer, in appearance, to the average Frenchman in Marseilles than they were to someone whose ancestry was sub-Saharan African. It is that kind of pathetic condescension which is the sign of a proud racist.
This is an MTM episode where you see the kernel of the Mom in Ordinary People that Moore played so well.
Some productions actually seek out inappropriate laughter intentionally. Robocop, for example. I think this production of Othello was just motiveless.
Take a moment to remember Georgia Engle, who played Georgette, Ted Knight's haplessly human amd sweet wife on Mary Tyler Moore. One of my aunts could be her, and that's an enormous blessing.
Not enough women, or men, are like this anymore. Spotless. So, Othello. I don't know much about this production, but I bet it sucks compared with Orson Welles' performance. Does blackface onstage trump the soul of the message about race and humanity? Did Georgette Knight personify all white wives of blowhards and thus diminish femininity?
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.