Motiveless Malignancy

[Jackson Richardson]

Obviously "black" didn't have the connotations it does for us. But for just that reason to tone down the blackness of the characters would now come over as racist. (When I was at school we were taken to the movie of Othello with Laurence Olivier blacked up as the Moor. That would be considered quite unacceptable now and the RSC only puts on Othello when it has a sufficiently distinguished black actor.)

Aaron has barely more motivation than Iago, given he is a world where violence is so endemic. But he's in a horror movie, whereas Iago starts out as in a domestic romance with exotic touches, which is why mona finds him so shocking. And she probably has finer sensitivity than me in this case.

[Pompey Bum]

Obviously "black" didn't have the connotations it does for us. But for just that reason to tone down the blackness of the characters would now come over as racist.

Well personally speaking I ignore social prescriptions on how I'm supposed to treat such issues, but those are just my personal values. As far as this text goes (and granted it continues to be performed), I think it distorts Shakespeare to take his ideas too far from their actual social context. Perhaps it's akin to my reticence about modern dress. There is so much of the universal in Shakespeare that, in my opinion, there is no reason to "keep them relevant" by introducing things that aren't really there.

Aaron has barely more motivation than Iago, given he is a world where violence is so endemic. But he's in a horror movie, whereas Iago starts out as in a domestic romance with exotic touches, which is why mona finds him so shocking. And she probably has finer sensitivity than me in this case.

"In a horror movie" is a good way to put it. But he does have motivation: he's Tamora's lover and advances her interests, in this case by getting revenge for the slaughter of her son (and the brother of the actual rapists) by Lavinia's father, Titus. It is an especially cruel sort of revenge--against Titus' child so that he suffers as much as she has. Iago, on the other hand is perverse in a more detached way, and perhaps that is what Mona is getting at. There's a line from an old Johnny Cash song that goes: "I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die." That reminds me more of Iago's particular psychopathology. He's just destroying people to do it. I'm not even sure it makes him feel good or bad (at least in the song Johnny Cash felt remorse). It's just who Iago is. It's what he does. And he's a more disturbing character than Aaron because he's not in a horror movie or a nightmare. There are plenty of Iago's in this life. That's why he's so chilling. He's real.