In "Encounters with Othello" (a 'cultural context' section in the Bedford edition of the play), Kim Hall reminds us that "other artists and writers over the centuries have tapped into the potential of Shakespeare's Othello...each one approaching the play with concerns provoked by his or her personal history and cultural moment" (342). If we read Tim Blake Nelson's film, O, in that light, it raises the following questions:- How does O "tap into" the potential of Othello?
- In what ways does O speak to its own cultural moment?
Take contemporary racial tensions as an example. In Othello, the title character represents an appropriated "other" (Othello rises to success as a Moor in Venetian society), yet nonetheless reminds audiences of Europe's anxieties over racial, religious, and geographic difference--although he is a Christian and a Venetian, Othello reminds Europeans of their North African Muslim neighbors to the South. Does something similar go on in the film? Is Odin both an appropriation and an anxiety? Are the worries about Odin as multidimensional in this American southern prep school as they are in 16th-century Venice? Or, is something else going on?
