When Black Weds White
It's been over ten years since the O. J. Simpson murder case. The liberals then, and now, took no note of the real significance of the case. The case was not an example of how rich celebrities are favored by our court system but of how black juries will never convict black men no matter how hideous their crime. The only difference between O. J. Simpson's murder case and the cases of other black murderers was that Simpson had to wait longer to hear his 'not guilty' verdict than most black murderers have to wait because of his celebrity status. I thought then, and I still think so now, that there were some striking parallels between the Simpson drama and Shakespeare's Othello.
Othello is a warrior. In fact, it is Othello's tales of his exploits in the wars that wins Desdemona's love. "She loved me for the dangers I had past." However, having won Desdemona's love, Othello does not ask Desdemona's father, Brabantio, for Desdemona's hand in marriage. Instead, Othello sneaks off with Desdemona and marries her without Brabantio's consent. Desdemona, by agreeing to marry without her father's approval, helps bring about her subsequent murder at the hands of her black husband. By betraying her father, she plants a seed of doubt in Othello's mind; Brabantio warns Othello: "Look to her, Moor, if thou has eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may thee."
What role does the state play in the tragedy? The state is an accomplice to Desdemona's murder. When Brabantio appeals to the Duke to annul the marriage, the Duke supports Othello because Othello has done good service in the wars, and the Duke needs Othello to do further service in the new wars. The marriage is not annulled, and Othello goes off with Desdemona.
What follows is quite predictable. Iago, who has a grudge against Othello, starts planting suggestions in Othello's mind that Desdemona is not a faithful wife. And the main stratagem Iago uses is to dwell upon Desdemona's betrayal of her father. "She did deceive her father, marrying you... She that, so young, could give out such a seeming, To seal her father's eyes up close as oak." Othello, finally after a series of contrivances by Iago, believes Desdemona is unfaithful. He kills Desdemona and then himself.
Othello is generally regarded as a magnificent play about the devastating effects of jealousy upon the human soul. However, as is always the case with Shakespearean criticism, the general opinion does not do justice to the complexity of the play. Othello is certainly about jealousy, but it is about so much more. There are two major themes always ignored when the play is discussed. The first is Desdemona's betrayal of her father. It is not fashionable to seek one's father's approval before marriage, so modern critics do not look on Desdemona's refusal to get her father's permission to marry as a fault. But we do regard it as a fault, and so did Shakespeare, and so did Othello. While certainly not deserving to be murdered for her fault, Desdemona is an unwitting accomplice to her own murder.
The second theme ignored is that of blackness. Do not misunderstand me. The fact that Desdemona is white and Othello is black is always noted by the critics, but the black vs. white theme is noted only as it relates to the jealousy theme. The difference in race is advanced as one of the reasons Othello is so susceptible to Iago's suggestions. However, there is another aspect of Othello's blackness that is always ignored, and it should not be. Did Shakespeare choose to make Othello black for a reason? I think he did. Othello's complete transformation over a short period of time from a respected soldier citizen into a primitive savage suggests that the primitive element, present in all men, is closer to the surface in the black man. He can ape the white man's ways, but not having absorbed the white man's religion on any deep level, the black man can very easily revert to his jungle ways.
It is significant that the other two black characters in Shakespeare's plays, Aaron in Titus Andronicus and the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, are both men, like Othello, who can ape white customs but who at heart are savages who view courtship and marriage as an extension of tribal warfare. Thus Aaron asserts:
O. J. Simpson, like Othello, had been a warrior. Unlike Othello, however, O. J. Simpson had not fought for his country but for money. Nicole Brown presumably was attracted to O. J. Simpson because of his exploits on the football field and because of the wealth he had acquired while performing there. However, there is another reason now why a white women marries a black man, and that is to assuage white guilt. No one can accuse a white woman of prejudice if she marries a black man. Anyone who went to college in the late sixties and early seventies could observe this phenomenon in its infancy when it became very chic for young white women to have their own black man.
Nicole Brown, unlike Desdemona, did not marry without her father's consent, but she did start her marriage off with an act of betrayal. She betrayed her race and her heritage, about which, presumably, her parents had never bothered to teach her. By doing this she was an accomplice to her own murder. One thing that the liberals never seem to grasp about race relations is that no black really respects a white person who betrays his own people. A Gordon Scott Tarzan movie comes to mind (previously discussed here). The white survivors of a plane crash in the jungle are faced with the difficult task of making their way through an area peopled (much like our American cities) with hostile natives. A great white hunter comes and offers to lead them safely through the jungle. Tarzan also has come along and has offered to help them, too, but the white hunter and Tarzan differ as to the safest route to take. Now, if I had to make a choice between Tarzan and a dubious white hunter, I would choose Tarzan, but the white survivors go with the white hunter. The white hunter, as we could have predicted, already has made a deal with the natives. In exchange for ivory, he will lead the whites to the natives' kitchen pots. When the white hunter delivers up the white people, he gets a surprise. The black chief tells him that he will be the first one killed. "Why?" asks the white hunter. "Because," says the chief, "You betrayed your own people; you will betray us." With her initial betrayal of her race, Nicole Brown put the thought in O. J. Simpson's mind: "You betrayed your own people; you will betray me."
Nicole Brown would not have seen her marriage to O. J. Simpson as a betrayal of her race because of her liberal upbringing, but O. J. Simpson would have seen it that way. If one lists the true hierarchy of cultures present in America, it would run like this:
1. Christian
2. Pagan (Greco-Roman)
3. Savage or barbarian
4. Post-Christian
O. J. Simpson came from the Barbarian class and Nicole Brown came from the post-Christian class. A post-Christian is extremely interested in the savage class but has no interest in the Christian or pagan classes, because the post-Christian has descended too far to be touched by a higher culture. It is the savage's religion of sex and blood that offers post-Christians some hope to escape the vapidity of their passionless lives. Most young whites are post-Christian; they have no interest in Christianity or paganism. Their only aspiration is to someday rise to the class of savages. Their idols are the black athletes or celebrities of the moment.
But a savage will never understand a post-Christian. To a post-Christian, there is no such thing as religion or race; hence, the idea of loyalty to anything is alien to the post-Christian. The savage, lacking knowledge of the highest loyalty – pieta – does have a rudimentary knowledge of racial loyalty. So, when a black marries a white woman, he delights in his ability to lord it over the white man by sleeping with a white woman, but in the deep recesses of his soul, he has contempt for a white woman who betrays her race by marrying a black man.
I mentioned that the state, represented by the Duke in Othello, was an accomplice to Desdemona's murder. So too was the state an accomplice in the murder of Nicole Brown. In America, as we know, we have no concrete state; we are governed by "The People." And the spokesman for "The People" is the liberal, elitist assortment of professors, media persons, psychoanalytical witch-doctors, lawyers, and other aliens from the human race. This strange liberal elite, which runs our country, has decreed that it is a very good thing for blacks and whites to marry. Forget all the historical wisdom against such marriages, forget the tragedy of broken homes and violent deaths that result from such liaisons; all these things must be swept aside to satisfy the liberals' need for a multi-racial, universalist Christianity without Christ and without humanity. Nicole Brown was fed on such ideas. Should it be a surprise then that she thought she was performing a noble act when she married O. J. Simpson?
Though parallel in many aspects, there is one very great contrast between Othello and Desdemona's marriage and that of O. J. Simpson and Nicole Brown. Othello and Desdemona's story is the stuff of tragedy. Desdemona descends from the Christian plane to marry a seemingly noble pagan who reverts to the level of a savage under the evil influence of Iago, the post-Christian. Iago is the post-Christian equivalent to the modern, satanic, technocratic Christians. Both Othello and Desdemona have some depth of soul.
In stark contrast stand O. J. Simpson and Nichole Brown. Their story is a sad one – nobody should have to die as she did – but it lacks the dimension of tragedy, because O. J. and Nicole Brown lacked Othello and Desdemona's depth of soul. Their story only assumes tragic dimensions when we view the two cultures they represent. Simpson represented a savage culture cut adrift by a white culture that should have remained a stern parent to the savage child-culture. Nicole Brown represented a once-Christian race that has descended, except for a small remnant, to a level below that of the savage. From this level, the white, post-Christian looks up at the black savage and alternately views him as his ally against the white Christians and also worships him as the harbinger of death.
Othello is a warrior. In fact, it is Othello's tales of his exploits in the wars that wins Desdemona's love. "She loved me for the dangers I had past." However, having won Desdemona's love, Othello does not ask Desdemona's father, Brabantio, for Desdemona's hand in marriage. Instead, Othello sneaks off with Desdemona and marries her without Brabantio's consent. Desdemona, by agreeing to marry without her father's approval, helps bring about her subsequent murder at the hands of her black husband. By betraying her father, she plants a seed of doubt in Othello's mind; Brabantio warns Othello: "Look to her, Moor, if thou has eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may thee."
What role does the state play in the tragedy? The state is an accomplice to Desdemona's murder. When Brabantio appeals to the Duke to annul the marriage, the Duke supports Othello because Othello has done good service in the wars, and the Duke needs Othello to do further service in the new wars. The marriage is not annulled, and Othello goes off with Desdemona.
What follows is quite predictable. Iago, who has a grudge against Othello, starts planting suggestions in Othello's mind that Desdemona is not a faithful wife. And the main stratagem Iago uses is to dwell upon Desdemona's betrayal of her father. "She did deceive her father, marrying you... She that, so young, could give out such a seeming, To seal her father's eyes up close as oak." Othello, finally after a series of contrivances by Iago, believes Desdemona is unfaithful. He kills Desdemona and then himself.
Othello is generally regarded as a magnificent play about the devastating effects of jealousy upon the human soul. However, as is always the case with Shakespearean criticism, the general opinion does not do justice to the complexity of the play. Othello is certainly about jealousy, but it is about so much more. There are two major themes always ignored when the play is discussed. The first is Desdemona's betrayal of her father. It is not fashionable to seek one's father's approval before marriage, so modern critics do not look on Desdemona's refusal to get her father's permission to marry as a fault. But we do regard it as a fault, and so did Shakespeare, and so did Othello. While certainly not deserving to be murdered for her fault, Desdemona is an unwitting accomplice to her own murder.
The second theme ignored is that of blackness. Do not misunderstand me. The fact that Desdemona is white and Othello is black is always noted by the critics, but the black vs. white theme is noted only as it relates to the jealousy theme. The difference in race is advanced as one of the reasons Othello is so susceptible to Iago's suggestions. However, there is another aspect of Othello's blackness that is always ignored, and it should not be. Did Shakespeare choose to make Othello black for a reason? I think he did. Othello's complete transformation over a short period of time from a respected soldier citizen into a primitive savage suggests that the primitive element, present in all men, is closer to the surface in the black man. He can ape the white man's ways, but not having absorbed the white man's religion on any deep level, the black man can very easily revert to his jungle ways.
It is significant that the other two black characters in Shakespeare's plays, Aaron in Titus Andronicus and the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, are both men, like Othello, who can ape white customs but who at heart are savages who view courtship and marriage as an extension of tribal warfare. Thus Aaron asserts:
Madam, though Venus govern your desires,And the Prince of Morocco argues:
Saturn is dominator over mine.
What signifies my deadly-standing eye,
My silence and my cloudy melancholy,
My fleece of wooly hair that now uncurls
Even as the adder when she doth unroll
To do some fatal execution?
No, madam, these are no venereal signs.
Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.
Where Phoebus fire scarce thaws the iciclesIn all three plays, Shakespeare warns us about the dangers of race-mixing. Tamora in Titus Andronicus and Desdemona in Othello link their destinies with savage blacks. Portia in The Merchant of Venice rejects her black suitor, which is why the two former plays are tragedies and the latter is a comedy.
And let us make incision for
your love,
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.
O. J. Simpson, like Othello, had been a warrior. Unlike Othello, however, O. J. Simpson had not fought for his country but for money. Nicole Brown presumably was attracted to O. J. Simpson because of his exploits on the football field and because of the wealth he had acquired while performing there. However, there is another reason now why a white women marries a black man, and that is to assuage white guilt. No one can accuse a white woman of prejudice if she marries a black man. Anyone who went to college in the late sixties and early seventies could observe this phenomenon in its infancy when it became very chic for young white women to have their own black man.
Nicole Brown, unlike Desdemona, did not marry without her father's consent, but she did start her marriage off with an act of betrayal. She betrayed her race and her heritage, about which, presumably, her parents had never bothered to teach her. By doing this she was an accomplice to her own murder. One thing that the liberals never seem to grasp about race relations is that no black really respects a white person who betrays his own people. A Gordon Scott Tarzan movie comes to mind (previously discussed here). The white survivors of a plane crash in the jungle are faced with the difficult task of making their way through an area peopled (much like our American cities) with hostile natives. A great white hunter comes and offers to lead them safely through the jungle. Tarzan also has come along and has offered to help them, too, but the white hunter and Tarzan differ as to the safest route to take. Now, if I had to make a choice between Tarzan and a dubious white hunter, I would choose Tarzan, but the white survivors go with the white hunter. The white hunter, as we could have predicted, already has made a deal with the natives. In exchange for ivory, he will lead the whites to the natives' kitchen pots. When the white hunter delivers up the white people, he gets a surprise. The black chief tells him that he will be the first one killed. "Why?" asks the white hunter. "Because," says the chief, "You betrayed your own people; you will betray us." With her initial betrayal of her race, Nicole Brown put the thought in O. J. Simpson's mind: "You betrayed your own people; you will betray me."
Nicole Brown would not have seen her marriage to O. J. Simpson as a betrayal of her race because of her liberal upbringing, but O. J. Simpson would have seen it that way. If one lists the true hierarchy of cultures present in America, it would run like this:
1. Christian
2. Pagan (Greco-Roman)
3. Savage or barbarian
4. Post-Christian
O. J. Simpson came from the Barbarian class and Nicole Brown came from the post-Christian class. A post-Christian is extremely interested in the savage class but has no interest in the Christian or pagan classes, because the post-Christian has descended too far to be touched by a higher culture. It is the savage's religion of sex and blood that offers post-Christians some hope to escape the vapidity of their passionless lives. Most young whites are post-Christian; they have no interest in Christianity or paganism. Their only aspiration is to someday rise to the class of savages. Their idols are the black athletes or celebrities of the moment.
But a savage will never understand a post-Christian. To a post-Christian, there is no such thing as religion or race; hence, the idea of loyalty to anything is alien to the post-Christian. The savage, lacking knowledge of the highest loyalty – pieta – does have a rudimentary knowledge of racial loyalty. So, when a black marries a white woman, he delights in his ability to lord it over the white man by sleeping with a white woman, but in the deep recesses of his soul, he has contempt for a white woman who betrays her race by marrying a black man.
I mentioned that the state, represented by the Duke in Othello, was an accomplice to Desdemona's murder. So too was the state an accomplice in the murder of Nicole Brown. In America, as we know, we have no concrete state; we are governed by "The People." And the spokesman for "The People" is the liberal, elitist assortment of professors, media persons, psychoanalytical witch-doctors, lawyers, and other aliens from the human race. This strange liberal elite, which runs our country, has decreed that it is a very good thing for blacks and whites to marry. Forget all the historical wisdom against such marriages, forget the tragedy of broken homes and violent deaths that result from such liaisons; all these things must be swept aside to satisfy the liberals' need for a multi-racial, universalist Christianity without Christ and without humanity. Nicole Brown was fed on such ideas. Should it be a surprise then that she thought she was performing a noble act when she married O. J. Simpson?
Though parallel in many aspects, there is one very great contrast between Othello and Desdemona's marriage and that of O. J. Simpson and Nicole Brown. Othello and Desdemona's story is the stuff of tragedy. Desdemona descends from the Christian plane to marry a seemingly noble pagan who reverts to the level of a savage under the evil influence of Iago, the post-Christian. Iago is the post-Christian equivalent to the modern, satanic, technocratic Christians. Both Othello and Desdemona have some depth of soul.
In stark contrast stand O. J. Simpson and Nichole Brown. Their story is a sad one – nobody should have to die as she did – but it lacks the dimension of tragedy, because O. J. and Nicole Brown lacked Othello and Desdemona's depth of soul. Their story only assumes tragic dimensions when we view the two cultures they represent. Simpson represented a savage culture cut adrift by a white culture that should have remained a stern parent to the savage child-culture. Nicole Brown represented a once-Christian race that has descended, except for a small remnant, to a level below that of the savage. From this level, the white, post-Christian looks up at the black savage and alternately views him as his ally against the white Christians and also worships him as the harbinger of death.
Labels: Othello, white betrayal
posted by CWNY | 1:52 PM
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