The Road to Peace

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DGO3ANaYHQ

Finally got thinking, only took me 5 days, about the cartoons and images we looked at in class reguarding America's portrayal of the Middle East. I'm not sure why I didn't think of it earlier but this is a link to an amatureish video made to go with Tom Waits song "Road to Peace" off the album Orphans. All around a rather tragic song, and perhaps one of the more fair accounts (though fictional) of one aspect of conflict in the modern Middle East. So, if you have time, check it out, but the video (and the song for that matter) can be a bit graphic and overly real.

Wake up it's time to be away
Now's not the time to go astray
greet the morning one more time
and keep your tiredness at bay

This place is great, wide and mild
A place, it's shocking, once defiled
This is the way that it should stay
for things are best when left wild

Here we sit and there they stand
it must be nature's own demand
Climbing them's a young man's game
Those giant castles made of sand

I Dream of Jinni

After now having read a few stories from 1001 Nights I find the idea of the race of Jinn and of the role of magic both to be fascinating. First, the idea that the jinn are not always, and sometimes it seems hardly ever, friendly is totally against my previous idea of what a “genie” was supposed to be like. Granted there may have been a few popular horror movies that portrayed this race to be evil, which still doesn’t compare to a hugely successful Disney movie along with a very famous TV series when it comes to shaping my concept of what a “genie” is. I think, had I been asked a few months ago whether or not I’d fear meeting a jinni I’d have laughed as I imagined the genie from Aladdin. But to meet the jinn from The Trader and the Jinni or from The Story of King Shahryar would certainly be terrifying; I’m shocked that the modern portrayal could have gotten these beings so wrong.

Treating Men Like Animals

In The Story of King Shahryar we got to see some of the most obvious and outspoken racism of anything we’ve read up to this point. What makes this even more unusual is it is not Europeans being racist but instead Middle Easterners hating Africans.
Furthermore, though there were examples and hints of it in Othello this book comes right out and makes direct comparison between a moor and an animal. The depiction of the “blackamoor” in this work removes all humanity from it leaving behind only a creature driven solely by base instincts. It surprised me that throughout the story the kings never hated them as much as any of the other parties involved, this just really reinforced the idea that they were little more than animals in the eyes of the kings.

Turning

Apparently there was in interesting part to reading the play Othello that I missed simply because I was overconfident that I knew what the verb to turn meant. The essay “Turning Turk in Othello” spent a bit of time examining this verb and its many uses throughout the play, and I have to admit that I’m completely fascinated by it.
While there is undeniably a sense of warring religions in the play, knowing that the verb turn could mean both to convert in a religious sense and to pervert adds quite a bit, even to some of the exchanges that I thought I really enjoyed and understood. Suddenly, when Othello yells at his subordinates wondering if they’d all turned Turk, I no longer think that it is only on insult but possibly a sort of self-reflection.
The language of this play is really beginning to interest me, and while I’m not sure that I’ve really started to get any of it quite yet, or maybe I should say that I’ve just been thrown into continual doubt about what anything means, I do recognize that each new word use I learn seems to open up a new level of depth to the play that I had not first experienced.

Hating, One of My Favorite Writers

In all honesty I’m quite a fan of most of Shakespeare’s plays and especially of tragic plays in general. However, the play Othello is not one that I could be easily duped into reading again. While there’s certainly something to be said for a play that in its offensive nature “grabs up” the reader the racism in this play is so commonplace as to be nothing better than boring. I admit that it definitely shows how people thought at that time, but I could read a history book (or even a more interesting play, for that matter) and get that information.
Now I’m sure that there are more than a few people wishing I wouldn’t write off a play by SUCH a playwright simply because of the racism, but again, even the racism is boring. The main character is nothing more than a collection of the more simplistic and base parts of human nature; one minute madly in lust, the next ready to fight and obey, all the while showing none of his own intelligence but only doing as he’s told. Had this character been portrayed this way independent of his race, I may have liked the play better, but then again I wouldn’t have been reading Othello.
I guess all I can say is that the next time I hear someone refer to Othello as a “great Shakespearian tragedy” I’ll have to agree, though almost assuredly for different reasons.


Revisit - I had a lot of trouble deciding whether or not I should post a short revisit I wrote after writing the initial post. I still don't know if I'd like to change or alter my opinion that much so with that in mind here's a bit of what I thought might make my opinion seem slightly more fair:
The characters of Desdemona and Emilia are fascinating especially in the fact that they both seem to pretty much control their husbands. These are incredibly strong women for this period, but not only that, with a few slight updates they might even manage to continue to be strong even in today's society. Looking back at the complexity of these two, maybe all hope is not lost for me liking Othello.

Missing Out

It is truly amazing that Saladin is a king who, in my past, I can only remember meeting in film, and only one film at that. Shortly after reading his brief history, followed by the selection from the Decameron I found myself wondering which king, in the past, I could look up to that would have been like him, except of European heritage.
After hours of thinking I found myself more apt to quibble among my thoughts as to what exactly a European was, rather than to be able to start naming names. In fact, the best I could come up with in terms of finding a king as noble as Saladin was the mythical King Arthur. It really makes me sad, but with a sense of wonderment, that in order to find a king to rival Saladin’s greatness, except from my background, I had to resort to myth.
Why is a man so great neglected so often in the teaching of history?

I Wish I Could Know What I Knew

This is my fist attempt at blogging and, while years ago this may have been a means for me to be really creative with html and such, I'm finding out quickly just how much I've forgotten.