From Social Justice to Metaphor: The Whitening of Othello in the Russian Imagination

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.23.05

Keywords:

Othello, blackface, Russian theatre, Russian film, Soviet theatre, Soviet film, adaptation, translation, Sergei Iutkevich, Eldar Riazanov, Aleksei Zernov, Nikolai Koliada, Petr Gladilin, Vahram Papazian

Abstract

Othello was the most often-staged Shakespeare play on early Soviet stages, to a large extent because of its ideological utility. Interpreted with close attention to racial conflict, this play came to symbolize, for Soviet theatres and audiences, the destructive racism of the West in contrast with Soviet egalitarianism. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, however, it is not unusual for Russian theatres to stage Othello as a white character, thus eliminating the theme of race from the productions. To make sense of the change in the Russian tradition of staging Othello, this article traces the interpretations and metatheatrical uses of this character from the early Soviet period to the present day. I argue that the Soviet tradition of staging Othello in blackface effectively prevented the use of the play for exploring the racial tensions within the Soviet Union itself, and gradually transformed the protagonist’s blackness into a generalized metaphor of oppression. As post-collapse Russia embraced whiteness as a category, Othello’s blackness became a prop that was entirely decoupled from race and made available for appropriation by ethnically Slavic actors and characters. The case of Russia demonstrates that staging Othello in blackface, even when the initial stated goals are those of racial equality, can serve a cultural fantasy of blackness as a versatile and disposable mask placed over a white face.

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Author Biography

Natalia Khomenko, York University, Toronto, Canada

Natalia Khomenko is a Lecturer in English Literature at York University (Toronto). Her ongoing research project, which has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and York University, focuses on the reception and interpretation of Shakespearean drama in early Soviet Russia. She has, most recently, guest-edited an issue on Soviet Shakespeare for The Shakespearean International Yearbook (volume 18, 2020). She is currently co-editing a special issue of Shakespeare Bulletin on A Midsummer Night’s Dream in performance, and has an article on early Soviet anti-Stratfordianism forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8874-6285

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Published

2021-06-30

How to Cite

Khomenko, N. (2021). From Social Justice to Metaphor: The Whitening of Othello in the Russian Imagination. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 23(38), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.23.05

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