Word: moor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...VIOLENCE? WE GOT 'EM FOR you, and in the King's English. As every teacher knows, kids won't touch Shakespeare unless he is made all hot and gaudy and R-rated. So let's get with it, moviemakers! If the Bard writes about a Moor who loves a Venetian lady, show them naked in bed together, and have Iago woo Emilia from the rear. If the subject is villainy on a royal scale, as in Richard III, cram the screen with ingenious murders. Everyone says that if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd have been a screenwriter. But would...
Oliver Parker's Othello is the more standard of the two, a solid reading that pulls out the stops on an easily played organ. This is, after all, a soap opera of the had-I-but-known variety. All the Moor has to do is ask his wife's servant, "Pray, did thee swipe fair Desdemona's hankie?" and the misunderstanding is resolved as smoothly as any episode of Home Improvement. But then there would be little allurement in the role for some of this century's most dominant actors...
When Othello (Bashir Salahuddin) enters wearing a T-shirt, things only get a little better. Salahuddin plays the Moor consistently as a casual, soft-spoken general, but his voice is often too soft and always unemotional. As he presents his case before the Duke, Othello explains a little too calmly why Desdemona loves him. Later, when he loses his temper with the drunken Cassio (Jed Silverstein), Salahuddin gets angry too quickly and for too short a time...
Salman Rushdie made a rare pre-announced public appearance when he spoke at a Writers Against the State forum in London. "This is a very important moment for me, and I hope it will be the first of more such moments," the writer said. Then again, maybe not. The Moor's Last Sigh, Rushdie's new novel, has infuriated Hindu militants in India...
Soon enough, through some incoherent bit of comic book magic, Constance is sucked through her trashcan into the world of Othello, just as Iago is about to play his fatal trick and convince the Moor to murder his wife, Desdemona. Constance exposes the deception and goes on to become Othello's favorite and Desdemona's best friend. She learns, as she had long suspected, that the "real" Desdemona is no fainting flower; rather, she yearns for a life of combat, such as she assumes Constance must enjoy in the Kingdom of Academe...