Othello and the Ambivalences of Italian Blackface

Shaul Bassi; Igiaba Scego

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.22.05

Authors

Shaul Bassi Center for the Humanities and Social Change, Ca’Foscari University of Venice
Igiaba Scego Center for the Humanities and Social Change, Ca’Foscari University of Venice

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.22.05

Keywords:

Othello, Shakespeare in Italy, blackface, colonialism, postcolonialism, fascism, film, adaptations, popular culture

Abstract

Blackface is a cultural practice that appears ubiquitously in Italian history cutting across the political spectrum; it also lends itself to suprising anti-racist actions. This essay examines the use of blackface from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century by looking at its appearance in popular culture and, contextually and dialectically, at its adoption in selected performances of Othello, a play that holds special meaning in Italy because of its famous operatic adaptations. Africa and blackness were often represented in Italian visual arts in the early modern period, but the early colonial ventures of the new independent Italy create a new exotic imaginary that is particularly manifest in popular culture. Othello is influenced by new African discourses but it allso exists in a parallel dimension that somehow resists facile political interpretations. The colonial ventures of post-unification and Fascist Italy do not reverberate in any predictable manner in the growing popularity of the play. After World War II new forms of exoticism emerge that will be subverted only by a new postcolonial scenario that also coincides with a re-emergence of racism. Against the respective historical backdrops, we examine the idiosyncratic versions of blackface by Tommaso Salvini, Pietro Sharoff, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carmelo Bene, and Elio De Capitani to suggest continuities and discontinuities in Italian interpretations of Othello.

Author Biographies

Shaul Bassi, Center for the Humanities and Social Change, Ca’Foscari University of Venice

Shaul Bassi is Professor of English Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where he directs the Center for Humanities and Social Change and the Master’s Degree in Environmental Humanities. His publications include Shakespeare in Venice. Exploring the City with Shylock and Othello (with Alberto Toso Fei, 2007), a critical edition of Othello (2009), Visions of Venice in Shakespeare (co-edited with Laura Tosi, 2011), Experiences of Freedom in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures (co-edited with Annalisa Oboe, 2011) and Shakespeare’s Italy and Italy’s Shakespeare. Place, ‘Race’, and Politics (2016). He directed the Creative Europe project “Shakespeare In and Beyond the Ghetto” (2016-2020).
Igiaba Scego, Center for the Humanities and Social Change, Ca’Foscari University of Venice

Igiaba Scego, born in Rome in 1974 to a family of Somali origins, is a writer and independent scholar. She holds a PhD in education (on postcolonial subjects) and has done extensive academic work in Italy and abroad, including a two-year fellowship at the Center for Humanities and Social Change at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Among her books in English are the novels Rhoda and Oltre Babilonia published by Two Lines. Her memoir La mia casa è dove sono (Rizzoli) won Italy’s Mondello Prize in 2011. She is a contributor to the magazine Internazionale and the newspaper Avvenire. Her latest novel, Adua was published in English by New Vessel Press (US), Jacaranda (UK). Her new novel La Linea del Colore (Bompiani) is due for publication in 2021 by Other Press.

References

Abbattista, Guido. “Dagli Ottentotti agli Assabesi. Preambolo a una ricerca sulle esposizioni etniche in Italia nel sec. XIX”, in Studi in onore di Giovanni Miccoli, Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2004, 275-294.

Bartalotta, Gianfranco. Carmelo Bene e Shakespeare. Roma, Bulzoni, 2000.

Bassi, Shaul. “Barefoot to Palestine: the Failed Meetings of Shylock and Othello”, in Visions of Venice in Shakespeare, eds. Laura Tosi and Shaul Bassi, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011.

Bene, Carmelo. Otello o la deficienza della donna. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1981.

Bene, Carmelo. Otello. Film. Rai, 2001. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq5AtC0wsx4 20 march 2020.

Bene, Carmelo, Giancarlo Dotto. Vita di Carmelo Bene. Milano: Bompiani, 1998.

Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.

Caponi, Paolo. Otello in camicia nera: Shakespeare, la censura e la regia nel ventennio fascista. Roma: Bulzoni, 2018.

Croce, Benedetto. Shakespeare. Bari: Laterza, 1925.

Domenici, Viviano. Uomini nelle gabbie. Dagli zoo umani delle expo al razzismo della vacanza etnica. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2015.

Fambri, Paulo. L’amore di tre barbari. Padova: Fratelli Salmin, 1884.

Gilroy, Paul. Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race. New York: Routledge, 2013. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203639580

Giuliani, Gaia and Lombardi Diop, Cristina. Bianco e nero. Storia dell’identità razziale degli italiani. Milano: Mondadori, 2013.

Jarro [Giulio Piccini]. L’Otello di Guglielmo Shakespeare. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1888.

Kaplan, Paul. “Italy, 1490-1700” in The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 3, part 1, eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and David Bindman, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010, 93-190, 347-367.

L.[?]D.[?] ‘Un’interpretazione razzista dell’Otello,’ La difesa della razza 3, no. 24, 20 October 1940.

Massai, Sonia. “Subjection and Redemption in Pasolini’s Othello”, in World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance, ed. Sonia Massai, New York: Routledge, 2005.

Mayer, Catherine and Stephan Faris. “Why Always Mario?”, Time Magazine, Nov. 12, 2012 http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2128258-2,00.html (accessed 25 March 2020).

Neill, Michael. ‘Introduction,’ in William Shakespeare, Othello. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

O’Healy, Áine. “‘[Non] è una somala’: Deconstructing African femininity in Italian film.” the italianist 29.2, 2009: 175-198. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/026143409X12488561926306

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “Che cosa sono le nuvole?”, Per il Cinema, Vol. 1., eds. Walter Siti and Franco Zabagli, Milano: Meridiani Mondadori, 2001, 932-966.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “Il padre selvaggio”, Per il Cinema, Vol. 1, eds. Walter Siti and Franco Zabagli, Milano: Meridiani Mondadori, 2001, 265-325.

Pisanty, Valentina. La difesa della razza. Antologia 1938-1943. Milano: Bompiani, 2006.

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Chatto & Windus, 1993.

Salvini, Tommaso. Aneddoti, ricordi, impressioni, Milano: Fratelli Dumolard, 1895.

Scarpa, Laura (ed.). Le storie Nere del Corriere dei Piccoli. Il colonialismo italiano del primo 900 a fumetti, Roma: Comicout, 2019.

Scego Igiaba et al. Pecore nere: Racconti. Bari: Laterza 2006.

“Signor Salvini”, Illustrated London News, 17 April 1875, 368.

Srivastava, Neelam. Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930-1970. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46584-9

Trento, Giovanna. Pasolini e l’Africa. L’Africa di Pasolini, Roma: Mimesis Edizioni, 2015.

Trento, Giovanna. “Pier Paolo Pasolini and Pan-Meridional Italianness.” The Scandal of Self-Contradiction: Pasolini’s Multistable Subjectivities, Traditions, Geographies, eds. Di Blasi, Luca, Manuele Gragnolati, and Christoph FE Holzhey. New York: Routledge, 2012, 59-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-06_04

Veggetti Kanku, Luigi Christopher. Salvini Nero. https://salvininero.com/salvini-nero-asta-indipendente/ 25 March 2020.

Vittori, Giulia and Francesco Chillemi. “Disseminating Bene in the Anglosphere”, Mimesis Journal 5, 1, 2016, URL : http://mimesis.revues.org/1115 25 March 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/mimesis.1115