Jewell, you idiot…I didn’t have to talk to her. You made a comment about just seeing her and not knowing she was black..You’re wrong.

You’ve got a great point #146..but I’ve gotta admit..I loved Honey. Lonette McGee is a black woman who’s really light, so I didn’t give it much thought about Jessica being cast.
Good point though Brian…why is J-Lo ALWAYS white in her films??? Ummmm No, baby girl! I once had someone argue me down when I told them Jennifer wasn’t white.

Siobhan…you can’t “identify” with being white just because you are part white…you’re a person of color if one of your parents are…Anyone who says different is lying to themselves.

“Why hold your hands out for reparation when we cannot even accomplish elevation?”

What are you saying #134, that we need our former masters to throw us a bone? It didn’t happen to you…
—————————————

In 1920, blacks owned 14% of the nation’s farms; today, there are only 18,000 black farmers, representing less than 1% of all farms. The 1980s my dear saw the largest decline much in part to the USDA that instigated forclosures and eminant domain…there could be a justification for reperations looking at the last generation of which many of parents belong. EASILY.

#134 So what IF she has a black nanny looking after her child at least the child is being washed, clothed and feed and not left for dead somewhere. I don’t know Angelina personally but I have respect for her and what she is trying to achieve in life, she gives 1/3 of her earning to charity (she makes about $15mil –$5mil to a good cause).

Yes she has made mistakes in her life no-one is perfect but at least she has changed and she seems to have a purpose now. You never see her at fashion shows or at any other celebs events trying to give promotion to herself and when she does it is normally for charity.

Like #145 said she is not playing Rose Parks. Mariane Pearl has made no significant impact our community after all Daniel Pearl was a white man and so is Brad Pitt it’s his film he can cast who he wants.

Jezz #134 you’re acting as if they are remaking the Color Purple.

It’s always weird when Hollywood casts people of one descent to play in a role completely opposite what that person actually is, but modern day blackface-Ido not believe this is! They are telling an interesting story here. There are much bigger things going on in the world to get outraged about besides this, like the fact that nuclear weapons are being tested in a country not so far from here! Or that our government is a sesspool of liars, cheats, frauds, thieves, and pedophiles. Just a few things to think about.

Stop pretending like this woman is all black. She isn’t. This is really a dumb thing to argue. Mrs. Pearl has more white blood in her than black blood. I could understand if they cast a white woman to portray Coretta Scott King, but damn! All they did was cast a white woman to play the role of a woman who also happens to be part white in a movie that has jack shit to do with race in the first place. Give it a rest.

Put away those tired arguments. We’re talking about someone portraying another person in a movie. This has nothing to do with racial profiling and what the cops are going to think of your black ass if you get arrested. Stop reaching for reasons to make this a race issue.

Like it or not, Mariane Pearl has white in her. It’s time for black people to upgrade their thinking out of Jim Crow days, because you better believe black people are the only one’s bitching about this petty issue. It’s 2006, People. Everyone has the right to acknowledge every aspect of their ancestry, especially if that ancestry makes up the majority of who they are. Just because Mariane Pearl has African roots does not mean she has to parade around in a dashiki hating her Caucasian roots. Don’t rob this woman of a part of who she is. If she feels Angelina Jolie best represents her on screen (And Jolie seems to be doing a damn good job) then let her be. Angelina Jolie isn’t playing a woman of another race, because both of them have similar roots in common. Why? Because Ms. Pearl is part white! How many times do people have to say that?? Deal with it.

And frankly, all this Thandie Newton, Jennifer Beals, Lisa Bonet and all those other B and C list actresses you guys are listing needs to stop. This is a big budget film and they wanted a BIG name to star in the movie. I think Jolie was a good choice. The only mixed-race A-list actress that could have done this role is Halle Berry. And sorry, but my girl is busy making other movies.

She looks like Marianna Pearl in the transformation. That is what counts.

#157- Thank you! could not of said it better myself.

IT SEEMS LIKE A NEVER ENDING BATTLE WHEN WILL HOLLYWOOD LEARN THAT BLACK PEOPLE CAN DO MORE AND ARE FAR MORE TALENTED THEN PLAYING BALL GAMES MOVING CROWDS BEING SUPPORTING CASE PLAYING VILLIANS GUNS SEX YOU KNOW THE STEREOTYPES ABOUT US NOW IN TRUTH I THINK JOLIE IS A GOOD ACTRESS AND MARIANE PEARL CHOSE HER TO PLAY THE PART BUT I WAS THINKING MORE GLORIA RUEBEN THEY LOOK MORE ALIKE UP CLOSE TO ME AND SHE VERY GOOD AT HER CRAFT JUST MY THOUGHTS

Wrong #157…she does not have more white blood…did you measure her?? Hell to the no..what’s your problem?? Being “all black” doesn’t mean much considering most of us aren’t. You’ve got major issues. I don’t give a damn who they cast in this film, but to sit up here and say Mrs. Pearl isn’t a woman of color and of African descent is just dumb…it doesn’t matter if she’s got Dutch in her or not. Hell, so do I! Big fucking deal.

Ooooh, #160…hadn’t considered Gloria Reuben..that wouldn’ve been dead on..but then again, this is who Mrs. Pearl wanted and at the end of the day, Angie brings in big numbers at the box office.

Amber…why? Why does it have to be that way? Why couldn’t you identify with being white if you’re half white? It’s 2006…why are we all still living in the past bringing up some stupid ass rule that was forced upon us so long ago? I hear a lot about white people enslaving us, forcing their mentality upon us…that was years ago. No one is enslaving me. No one is enslaving you. I’ll be damned if someone is trying to make me think a certain way. I have a mind of my own and can make my own decisions. People talk about spanish people having black in them. Sure they do…but it’s so far removed and they no longer identify with that. They identify with their hispanic heritage and don’t want to be pigeon-holed into ticking white or black on the census form. They have their own identity now…and it’s neither white nor black but hispanic.

Ironically, the woman ANGELINA is portraying does not have her ever so “popular” FULL-LIPS. The woman in fact had thin lips. And Angelina is “WHITE” with a CURLY hair piece on…C’MON…(I dont see CUBAN, or any other ETHNITCITY in ANGELINA)

Out of all the actresses out there, sorry but I dont think she was the BEST. They might have picked her for the “CELEBRITY FAME” aspect she has behind her name. They sure as hell could have done better than her.

People go to far with this type of thing.First, they said Brad was racist for talking about Zahara’s hair and now this. If we are not outraged that Halle is a playing a white woman in her next pic why should we care about Angelina playing this woman..(esp when her husband is behind the film)When we stop thinking in terms of color and just who is best for the part and will bring more awareness to the part then we will have accomplished something. They are the least Racist people in Hollywood.Get a life!!!!!

Nikki…wrong!

Did you even read my post? Nowhere did I say this had not African roots. What I said was that she has just as much (if not more) caucasian roots. And, considering that the majority of Afro-Cubans consider themselves mulatto, and there are no pictures of Mrs. PEarl’s daddy floating around the net, it isn’t illogical to assume that the majority of her ancestral make-up is white.

Yes, the majority of African-Americans have a mixture of different blood in them, but there’s no comparison, because Mariane Pearl is at the very least half-white AND can trace her caucasian roots whereas most black people can’t. AND she has damn-near white skin and hair that looks like you could barely get away with calling it kinky.

I’m not saying that people should deny her African roots, but too many black people think that anyone with a drop of black blood in them needs to glorify that to the point that they deny everything else about them. And that isn’t right, either.

Who cares about anything anymore anyway…..color doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter, sexual orientation doesn’t matter, history doesn’t matter. Who cares. Nothing matters about anything anywhere anyhow. Nothing matters to a fool. Tom Hanks is a great actor, lets have him play Martin Luther King in a Steven Spielberg directed picture and then all the coons and sambos can get mad when a minority of blacks voice a slight bit of displeasure that won’t make a difference any damn way, lol. Hell, in 10 years Tom Hanks can probably play the part with no wig or makeup and people still wouldn’t give a damn. They didn’t for “Passion of Christ” and many other “historical” movies. It entertains me how black people have been labeled as “sensitive”, lol, when they are by far the least sensitive people on the planet earth. These other races blow each other up and go to war when they get offended while blacks just picket or at worst, destroy their own neighborhoods. Whatever, who cares, it doesn’t matter any damn way.

**Correction to my last post**
I believe it’s Mariane’s mother that’s of Afro-Cuban decent. Not her father. I could still be wrong, though.

Judah, I was wondering when you were going to show up. This topic screams you.

Then again, you’ve said before that you’re not too fond of interracial relationships anyway. lol

Halle Berry is portraying a white teacher who ran for office. And it’s a true story. I think they just want someone who is right for the role, she was prolly the best who auditioned for it.

I don’t have a problem with it. I think Angelina will do a great job. She’s a talented actress.

If white people are not allowed to portray white characters, than black people are never gonna get ahead in Hollywood. They will never be cast for a white woman part.

Halle Barry is portraying a white teacher in an upcomming movie and no one is arguing with that. Beside as said above, the woman she is portraying is okay with it and Angelina is a GREAT actress. She is also the mother of an African baby!!!!

U go Angelina. I just hope Hollywood decides to return the favor!!!

And as far as that nonsense about Angelina having to play the role because it’s a “big budget” movie, please. You’d be better off saying that she’s playing the role because Brad Pitt is producing it. There are many instances in Hollywood where big budget motion pictures casted virtual unknowns in starring roles (i.e. The Godfather, Star Wars, E.T., Titanic, etc). It just that they were caucasian unknowns or lesser actors at the time: Pacino, Mark Hamill, DiCaprio, etc. They could’ve done an accurate talent search if they wanted to, like they did for those movies but they didn’t. It is what it is, “…only 2 or 3 black stars at a time please.” That’s not even getting into the Hispanic blackface that they’ve done for years in movies like Scarface and Carlito’s Way but that’s neither here nor there. The hispanics can be even more docile than blacks because they love BLANCO, lol.

Honestly I don’t give a flying f*** about who plays her. People need to stop focusing so much on race.

Whoopi Goldberg was a virtual unknown who got chosen to star in a big budget film in around the same time as most of those films you listed, Judah.

I don’t think it has very much to do with some huge thing about Hollywood not wanting more than a few black stars at a time, but I will say that Jolie being married to the producer probably did have a bit to do with it. But still, there’s no denying that she’s an oscar winning actress who is very respected in the industry.

HAUTIA 145

You took what I said out of context. I believe we as a people let too much go. And the land you have is nothing compared to the land the top execs of the tobacco, pharmaceutical, milk, and other industries that our forefathers were never owners of. Did you see the commercial with the great grandson of Ford?

Ford, the car company. Well most fortune 500’s are generational and that money is old mnoey and has been passed on. Our people dont have that. We started from scratch so Im sure you do have land, My family does too. Not just US Property either, we dont even have to go there. My point is WE STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO , yet niggas are content , still stuck in the box…with that Willie Lynch syndrome.

AND SWEETY
I DONT NEED A BONE…..I have elevated myself and my community I OWN A BUSINESS WE got a little piece of the pie and were happy. Come on, if I DID HAVE THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND INVESTMENT TO PUT OUT A GREAT STORY I WOULD

WOW SO HALLE GETS A WHITE ROLE, HALF OF YOU ARE SO CONTENT AND COMPARING It like it is the same. Why dont you compare that as a timeline in history. How many black women have played White roles ???? NOT MANY
HOW MANY WHITE WOMEN HAVE PLAYEd BLACKS?? 2 MANY TO COUNT

HALLE GETTING A ROLE is damn near a historic moment , Its so RARE, it should not be compared to Angelina getting a black role. When sisters do get white roles, it IS HARD WORK, and RARE

SOME people even have the nerve to say she is not that famous or even that significant. Why should that matter? WHY DOES SHE HAVE TO BE A Historic figure ?

THOSE WHO TOOK my reparation comparison too far, you may not be getting my point. It may be because we have a difference of opinion. It may be because I have studied Film and Theatre and I live it. So it affects me and it is something that I am very concerned with. Positive images of Black women are RARE. And good roles ARE RARE.

Brad got the big bucks so hes casting his current fu*&
point blank

im tore b/c ill holler racism in a minute, but for me this doesnt feellike racism or black face b/cshe’s doing it to inform people and there’s not a maliscious intent to it.

the movies not gonna be funny its like to inform not entertain,

if u say she’s on some “blk face type shih” then u might as well say every white girl w/ curly hair and a huge ass is also

She looks ridiculous! What with the Spray on tan? Angelina is actually darker than Mariane Pearl! This reminds me of the old Westerns…. paint white actors brown ,slap a black wig on and call them “Indians”

One night i was watching the news, and they talked about Daniel Pearl being executed….it was the first time it was done in the war at that point…they said that online they had the video of the execution. They linked it to the news website..so i clicked on it, the wholetime i was wondering if it was a good idea or not. I just couldnt believe they would hav eit…so the video is loading..the whole time im psyching myself out of watching it, then when i was abot to stop the video they showed the terrorist litterally cut his head off…

WHO CARES IF ANGELINA JOLIE PLAYS HER, IF MRS. PEARL WANTS HER TO , THEN HONOR HER DECISION…THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE.

FIRST of all this being made into too much of a big deal. SECOND to all saying how white or non ethnic Angelina Jolie is (and this may have already been said) SHE IS PART IROQUOIS INDIAN!

Part = maybe 1/4

Not all afro-cubans are mulatto or light skinned!!!!
The idea of a white appearing woman playing a black appearing woman is what is confusing to most.
Alot of black appearing people are actually biracial or multiracial, so it’s not about M. Pearl being part dutch so therefore a white woman can play her? it’s about her appearing black and the opportunity should be given to a black appearing actor because these roles are hard enough to come by but hey..i don’t make the rules…

Also about people talking about the casting of Cleopatra, they now know Cleopatra was of Greek decent and there is even speculation she couldn’t even speak Egyptian. Just thought I bring that up.

Pittboi: I think it does matter to us blacks [that really care] who was picked for this role. This might be petty and Jim Crowish (as you called it), but all of this is said with validation. Marianne Pearle might have features of a white woman but it is totally unambiguous that she has black roots. For Hollywood to cast a white actress to play the role of a biracial woman is a slap in the face of black actresses. I think it takes away from credible black actresses who are dying for a role like this. No one can deny anything that’s black or diluted with black. Hollywood has been doing this for years. How can there be 2 or 3 major black actors compared to at least 10 major white actors ? How can there be only one major black actress in Hollywood compared to 20 white actresses ? Hollywood is truly racist. They have yet to show an authentic interracial relationship film involving a black man and white woman. Which clearly makes up the majority of interracial marriages and relationships regarding the two races. It’s still considered taboo. I would hate to see the cast choice for an autobiographical film of Corretta Scott King. Who will they cast……Gena Rowlands ? Or what about a remake of ‘Imitation of Life’? Who will they cast as the biracial daughter ? Angelina again ? Jessica Alba ? Jennifer Lopez ? If so, the future of black actresses is will be non-existant.

Isn’t Angelina Jolie’s mom mixed or something? I mean, it is kind of obvious looking at her that she isn’t purely Caucasian. Anyway, I don’t think it is a big deal at all that she is playing this role. If Forest Whitaker can darken his skin up to play an African dictator, and as other people have mentioned, Halle Berry can play a white women, it really isn’t a big deal that a very ethnic looking “white” woman is playing someone of multiple ethnicities.

i actually think that black people play the race card all the time because as a whole, we are a fucked up race….i hate to say it but its true….this is not modern day black face….modern day black face to me is 50 cent, CMurder, and all the rest of the rappers who’s only goal in life is to sell drugs then start rapping about the drugs they sold and the people they’ve killed….putting up false images just to make a million dollar paycheck…losing their identity and not evening knowing who they really are anymore because they have turned into the character they are portraying…black people dont stand together anymore….we are too busy turning up our noses at the next person, talking about the next person or putting down anybody we dont like or know and then turning and playing the race card or saying the white man is holding us down….WE are holding ourselves down….black men go to jail and get killed more than anyone else on the planet….and we arent trying to do anything about it but say its the white mans fault….this may sound off the sub, but its not….its all full circle….people will be more proud to have even the slightest drop of black in them once we come together and be the strong race that we were meant to be….if we were the same black race of the sixties, that stood together, had each others back, gave a damn about the next person of color simply because they were black, instead of being constant haters of each others, then maybe this topic wouldnt be on the blog….i love being black, and i try to make a difference in my life as well as other black peoples lives, so i can say this before you comment on it….but the truth is, sometimes my own people dissapoint me so much and make me feel so ashamed just by the things they do all the time….my point is, maybe she picked someone that fits the other half of her identity because thats what she feels more comfortable with….maybe she’s not happy with our race enough to do all she can to make sure ya’ll give rave reviews and great comments on concreteloop and crunkanddisorderly….maybe she’s just doing her and this is what makes her happy and she could care less what her other half thinks because it aint like we stick together anyway….shit if she did pick a biracial actress, ya’ll would still find something to hate about….she would be too dark or too light….or too overworked…too celebrated….something….just a thought..

#185- No her mother is not mixed. She’s white. You people kill me. Just because she has full lips and a tan doesn’t make her ethnic or ethnic looking. And you act like it’s a big jump for Forest Whitaker to play someone darker than him. It’s call makeup dumb ass.

White folks gotta take every damn thing..

186 MYOWNOPINION: Thank you !

MAYBE NO ONE ELSE WANTED THE PART
MAYBE SHE GOT IT CAUSE ITS HER MANS COMPANY THATS PUTTING IT OUT..WHY DOES TYLER PERRY HAVE TO PLAY ALL THOSE DUMB ASS CHARACTERS ? HE CANT GET A WHITE WOMEN FOR AT LEAST ONE ?

THE WOMAN CAN ACT SO LET IT BE..MOST OF YALL WONT SEE IF IT HAD HALLE IN IT ANYWAY UNLESS THEY PUT SOME RAPPERS AND LOTS OF GUNS A FEW VIDEO HOES….WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Well most if not ALL Black people are mixed if we were not we would not be called Black we would be African.

Anyway did you guys have a problem with Al Pacino portraying a Cuban person in Scarface hmmmmm I GUESS NOT.

Hell if SHE WANTED Angelina to portray her than SHUT THE FUCK UP>

Jarhead:
I don’t think that this is a major issue for black people [that care, as you say], for the simple fact that Mariane Pearl herself is happy with Angelina Jolie playing her in the film, and that’s all that should matter. I think that it’s offensive that BLACK people who don’t know her are saying she’s “whitewashed” because she’s acknowledging the part of her that is, in fact, white. The one drop rule was something that was originally imposed on us by white people; it’s sad to see that’s it’s now black people that are doing the stigmatizing.
Don’t get me wrong, if I felt that there was a mixed female actress of high caliber that was obviously getting the shaft for the role, I would think it was a little odd, but not racist. Honestly, I would think it was more of an issue of Brad Pitt wanting to cast his wife as the lead before I ever thought it was an issue of racism. Black people really need to start thinking critically before they start tossing that word out. While I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist in Hollywood (because it does, on some levels), I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that there are about 2 or 3 black actors for every 10 white actors. People seem to sometimes forget that black people are indeed still a minority in this country. So those numbers are not all together indicative of racism.
Rarely are major leads in big-budget films given to new people. I mean, it happens, but it’s not the rule. This fact has nothing to do with race. It seems to me like they wanted a big, well known name for the lead role, and there really are no major mixed race actresses who fit the profile right now. Besides, as I said in my post, nobody really knows the detailed lineage of Mrs. Pearl, but it’s given that at the very LEAST she’s half white, and she *looks* white. People need to stop applying the one drop rule here: a white person has just as much right to play this part as a black person (a mixed person would be ideal, but a mixed person isn’t black either in this case; they’re mixed, a different group all together), especially considering that this movie will have little-to-nothing to do with race issues. From what I know, this is a movie about how she dealt with the tragic death of her husband.
Now, what if her Afro-Cuban mother is also half white (which could very well be the case, as most Afro-Cubans are of mixed lineage)? That would mean that Mrs. Pearl is less than half black, and mostly white. How would everyone feel then?

Mariane is of Afro-Cuban and DUTCH ancestry, and was raised in Paris, France.

Would you guys be happy if a Dutch woman portrayed her? Or How about a Black French woman?

Since she was raised in Paris and NOT in America.

187

Angelina Jolie is 1/4 Iroquois on her mother’s side.

All I know is that Bianca Lawson tried out for a role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Cordelia and she got the part, but she turned it down to do a movie and they gave the part to Charisma Carpenter ( who is Mexican and Native American).

So it is not always racism. And I do not think that she should hide her DUTCH side and deny her the right to choose WHO she wants to play her.

This is why black actors and actresses can’t find work. If its not a singer/rapper…then its a damn white person taking the roles!

Now you guys know how we feel when we see an American portraying a British character.

I always wondered about the Al Pacino who is Italian playing a Cuban in Scarface. Were people upset about that?

umm Natalia do you read? Mariane wanted Angelina to play her.

All I know is that Bianca Lawson tried out for a role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Cordelia and she got the part, but she turned it down to do a movie and they gave the part to Charisma Carpenter ( who is Mexican and Native American).

______________________________________________________

Really that was kind of bad luck for Bianca cuz Cordelia was like a main character.

I don’t get this, why is everybody saying that they could have given the role to one black actress or another? It’s called auditioning. I don’t think any of the actress named so far are as versatile as A.J to be honest. Black Americans think that they’re being slighted at every turn. In Hollywood they really don’t give a damn about who looks right it’s about dollars and Angelina is a box-office heavyweight. She never disappoints. I can bet you dollars to donuts that if a black actress were playing this role most of you wouldn’t even see it. Blacks have put out a few hard hitting meaningful films and we don’t support them and then we end up with dumb shit like “White Chicks”, “Little Man”, “Get Rich or Die Trying” and a host of other things that we turn out in droves to see. It all comes down to the dollars. See how fast Sumner Redstone got rid of Tom Cruises dumb ass, nobody said it was because he was white. If it had been Denzel acting a damn fool all over t.v everybody would bring out the race card not that he was simply acting a fool. Everything is not about race people and honestly I have to look long and hard at someone who is always bringing out the race card. That’s so easy to do it’s harder to really go deep and see yourself for what you really are. Yes, we are black but we are so much more, much, much more. Please, pleeeease find out what your “more” is.

197

“I always wondered about the Al Pacino who is Italian playing a Cuban in Scarface. Were people upset about that?”

Yeah, there were loads of Cubans upset about that movie. The entire Cuban population of the city of Miami didn’t want the movie to be made, much less one of their own star in it.

Well, if this is an Oscar worthy film they are not expected it to do really well at the box-office . I mean most Oscar worthy films don’t. So that doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with it.

it doesnt bother me. she can be versatile and play any role no matter the ethnicity or religion or whatever. i think she’s approaching the role with the utmost respect and understanding for mariane and daniel pearl. though, the point of the movie is not focused on mariane’s afro-cubanoness, it is still a major part of who she is and how her character is shaped. angelina was chosen for the quality of her abilities not her ethnicity.

pittbboi said:
——————————————————————————–

Stop pretending like this woman is all black. She isn’t. This is really a dumb thing to argue. Mrs. Pearl has more white blood in her than black blood. I could understand if they cast a white woman to portray Coretta Scott King, but damn! All they did was cast a white woman to play the role of a woman who also happens to be part white in a movie that has jack shit to do with race in the first place. Give it a rest.

Agree 100%. Well said, this is so not about race. I could see if they cast a man, then we’d have something to talk about.

I don’t really have a problem but my question is they couldn’t find an afro-cuban actress or upcoming actress to play the part?

But that movie was based off the original Scarface movie in the 50s? wasn’t it? The main character was White I wonder why they changed the main charater to Cuban.

Since she is mixed couldn’t the same argument be made if they had cast a black woman to play her?
Wouldn’t dutch people be able to say why did they cast a black woman to play this dutch woman who also happens to be black too?

Too much focus on color, Lets start focusing on the person instead.

Well, if this is an Oscar worthy film they are not expected it to do really well at the box-office . I mean most Oscar worthy films don’t. So that doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with it.

____________________________________________________

I agree with this Angelina is not really a box-office heavyweight unless she is in an Action movie, Mr. Mrs Smith, Tombraider.Those are called blockbusters anyway and are expected to make a lot of money. A lot of Oscar worthy films do not make a lot of money. But they are not expected to.

The French could say the same thing and ask why the hell is an American playing the part of a French woman.

Ehtnicity is Afro-Cuban and Dutch, but they used a White woman.

Nationality is French, but hey used and American.

So could they find an Afro-Cuban and Dutch, French Actress?

#182 ur right i was watchin espn tonite and they were running a thing about hispanics in besibol and soem of those cubans/dom reps were darker than me lol!!

yes angelina isn’t of afrocuban decent, but they did a good job of making her look just like her.

name a black actress that looks similar to marianne as much as angelina does.

be happy they didn’t go with the original choice of jennifer aniston. that would have been WAAAAAAAAY off

Okay…..She Angelina looks nothing like this woman. Oh well Power to the people Angie!

If Marlon and Shawn Wayans played as white women, whats wrong with Angelina playing an Afro-Cuban woman?

go head angelina but i mean idk…..the next person in mind that u know they would let play is halle n halle is too busy running after her man and is played out…

but its not like the woman was a legend or a famous black person

They have an American playing a French woman lol.

if mariane has no problem with it then we should be fine with it…

Black people want to adopt/claim anyone whose brown with curly hair. I’m not sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if this woman did not think of herself as black/african american, so why are we arguing over this. Like someone said before; I could see if it was Coretta………then we would have a problem.

Im sorry was everyone else busy? Every other mixed heritage actress was busy of course!!! Yeh becuase they get soooo much mainstream work innit….*kmt* Look, yes she has done alot for Africa, but so has Bill Gates and his various charites, you dont see him playin Nelson Mandela in any documentries!…Im only playing but you kno what i mean…it starts here…We just need to keep our eyes open das all, any how it becomes a regular thing, we gona have to make our selvs heard..ya dig?

this is my opinion, send me hate mail if you want… (the “return to sender” option is a favorite of mine) anyway…

what’s the big deal? come on now, when you look at the both of them, angelina did kinda pull her look off. and isn’t this what mz. pearl wanted?

food for thought… how can we expect racial equality when we keep playing the race card our damn selves? we expect to be accepted and embraced yet we continue to separate ourselves. we dont want our races to matter, arguing that race shouldn’t determine what we are able or not able to do. then we turn around and bitch bout someone else’s race not being good enough. double standards, no way around that. and lisa bonet? are you serious? come on now… they trynna make money, if you saw lisa bonet in this role, you’d be less apt to see it. angelina’s in demand right now. you cant hate them for lookin out for their own stacks. sit there and tell me you wouldnt do the same? when it comes down to it, the only color we really care about is green.

oh and on a second note… for all that “can i tell the police officer im only half black when he arrests me?” nonsense… omg are you serious??? i guess you could tell him that if you wanted, but the real question here should be WHAT WAS YOUR DUMB ASS DOING TO BE GETTIN CUFFED IN THE FIRST PLACE???

get it together, i mean damn! did you think about that before you opened up to say it, big dummies. like chris rock said… “YOU AINT SUPPOSED TO BE IN JAIL, DUMMY!”

and i guess all the white people they be arresting on the daily must only be gettin cuffed after they tell the 5-0 that they’re half black? yeah, that MUST be IT!

damn yall be making my blood pressure sumpthin else!

nothing wrong with angelina playing the part….I agree though Thandie Newton would have done it well also.

I don’t see the big deal, she’s an actress and thats her job…to act. Since when did being an actress require one to play a character of only that actor’s race?

While I would have rather seen Thandie Newton tackle the role, I have reservations about stating that Angelina Jolie shouldn’t play the role because she’s white. Think about it, the case could be made that Halle or another actress of color should only get “black” roles. If the scenario were reversed, and a black actress were receiving a role some would perceive to be for a white woman, would we have a problem with it. Mariane Pearl reportedly signed off on Angelina playing the role, so if she has no issue with it, who are we to judge. Also, it is possible that Mariane doesn’t see herself as “black or bi-racial”. Individuals from other parts of the world have different views of what it means to have african blood

Are you guys familiar with Shakepeare’s OTHELLO ??

Shakepeare was a favorite of My English Lit Professor, and I soon would loose mysealf reading Othello….

Othello was a black character created by Shakepeare !
My FAVORITE adaptation is the One by James Earl Jones.
I also enjoyed the resent movie, staring Lawrence Fishburn (Directed by Oliver Stone)

My favorite quote from Shakepeare’s Othello -
“Then must you speak of one that loved not wisely
but too well; Of one not easily jealous,but being wrought perplex’d in the extreme

Othello or The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare written around 1603. The first known performance of this play was on November 1, 1604, at Whitehall Palace in London.

Synopsis
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Othello, a Moor who has just eloped with the fair Desdemona when the play opens, leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies against the Turks on the island of Cyprus, accompanied by his new wife and his lieutenant, Cassio. When they arrive, they find that the weather has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Iago, a standard bearer, repeatedly tries to undo Othello, finally succeeding when he plants Desdemona’s handkerchief on Cassio, managing to convince Othello that his wife has been unfaithful with the lieutenant. Othello kills Desdemona out of jealousy, before Iago’s wife, Emilia, eventually reveals that Desdemona’s affair was but an invention of Iago’s. Iago immediately kills his wife also, and Othello then commits suicide in grief. At the end, it can be assumed, Iago is taken off to be tortured and possibly executed.

Othello’s race
“Othello and Desdemona in Venice” by Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856)Although the play is very much concerned with racial difference, the protagonist’s specific race is not clearly indicated by Shakespeare. Othello is referred to as a “Moor”, but for Elizabethan English people, this term could refer either to the Berbers (or Arabs) of North Africa, or to the people we would now call “black” (that is, people of sub-Saharan African descent). In his other plays, Shakespeare had previously depicted both a Berber Moor (in The Merchant of Venice) and a black Moor (in Titus Andronicus). In Othello, however, the references to the character’s physical features do not settle the question of which race Shakespeare envisaged.

In his Arden edition of the play, E.A.J. Honigmann summarises the contradictory evidence. The various uses of the word ‘black’ (for example, “Haply for I am black”) do not help, since ‘black’ could simply mean ’swarthy’ for Elizabethans[1]. Iago twice uses the word ‘Barbary’ or ‘Barbarian’ to refer to Othello, apparently referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by the “white” Moors. Yet Iago also calls him ‘the thicklips’, which seems to refer to black physiognomy. Honigmann says that since these comments by Iago are all insults, they need not be taken literally.[2]

Honigmann also notes one piece of external evidence: an ambassador of the Arab King of Barbary with his retinue stayed in London in 1600 for several months and occasioned much discussion. Honigmann wonders whether Shakespeare’s play, written only a year or two afterwards, might have been inspired by the ambassador. [3] Also, it should be noted that a real Othello would more likely be a Berber or Arab than of entirely sub-Saharan African ancestry. On the other hand, sub-Saharans have visited the Mediterranean long before the time in which the events of the play are set, and a portrayal of Othello as sub-Saharan adds much to the feelings of alienation and suspicion that the audience must sense from him — here is truly a stranger in a strange land, which makes his psychological plight all the more striking and his final inability to trust his wife the more “explainable” if he is constantly reminded of the fact that the two of them are from what would then be considered almost literally two different worlds. A Barbary Arab would not experience the same emotions; he might not be trusted but he would not be considered totally alien by the Venetians. Therefore when a Barbary Othello cannot trust Desdemona, the audience would be more likely to blame him and not pity him.

Popular prejudice among average readers and theatre directors today leans towards the “black” interpretation, and more “realistic” Othellos have been rare.[4]

[
Othello thus constantly challenges the link between a physical signifier and what is signified by it. For example, Iago – whose job as standard-bearer is to hold a sign of loyalty to Othello – says, of pretending to like the Moor: “Though I do hate him as I do hell pains/ Yet for necessity of present life/ I must show out a flag and sign of love/ Which is indeed but sign” (Act I, scene i, ll. 151-154a). Desdemona, too, sees a distinction between signifier and signified, saying she “saw Othello’s visage in his mind” – not in his actual face (Act I, scene iii, l. 247). The play thus argues that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary; the plot itself hinging on the significance of an utterly “made-up” sign – a handkerchief made to signify infidelity.

When Iago tells him Desdemona is an adulteress, Othello cries “Her name, that was as fresh/ As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black/ As mine own face” – leading to a suicidal conclusion: “If there be cords or knives/ Poison or fire, or suffocating streams/ I’ll not endure it” (Act III, scene iii, ll. 383b-387a).

White / Black
The most basic aspects of traditional Western symbology – that white signifies purity and black signifies evil – are repeatedly challenged in Othello. One example is in the character of Bianca. Her name in Italian means “white”, yet, as Iago tells the audience, her name is again “but sign” of purity, as she is in fact “a housewife that by selling her desires buys herself bread and clothes” (Act IV, scene i, ll. 95-96). Ironically, just before Desdemona pleads with Othello that she is not a whore, Bianca too protests to an accuser that she is “no strumpet, but of life as honest/ As you that thus abuse me” (Act V, scene i, ll. 122-123)– leading the audience to realize that, just as with Desdemona, the only evidence anyone has that Bianca is a whore is Iago’s word, and Cassio’s (he calls her a “customer,” whore {Act IV, scene i, l. 120}).

Heaven / Hell
Heaven nevertheless remains a signifier of truth, and hell a signifier of misrepresentation in the play. The words thus recur frequently throughout Othello, as Othello struggles to join other signifiers to them: for example he says to an innocent Desdemona that “Heaven doth truly know that thou art false as hell”. This shows strong contrasts between the two.

Other critics, most notably in the later twentieth century (after F. R. Leavis), have focused on Othello. Apart from the common question of jealousy, some argue that his honour is his undoing, while others address the hints of instability in his person (in Act IV Scene i, for example, he falls “into an epilepsy”).

Here’s a review of Oliver Parker’s “Othello” staring
Lawrence Fishburn !!!

Othello
Oliver Parker’s sexual thriller suffers from the presence of Shakespeare’s racial sensibilities and the absence of his poetry.

Alan A. Stone
Iago launches the first act of Shakespeare’s Othello by shouting into the stillness of the Venetian night, “The old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” With that Negrophobic alarm, Shakespeare’s most cunning and mysterious villain rouses Brabantio, the father of Desdemona, and exposes the raw nerve of White racism — the archetypal fear of the sexually triumphant Black man. Laurence Fishburne is the first actor I have ever seen bring to the role of Othello the smouldering sexual vibrations that keep this nerve pulsating.

Fishburne is certainly far from the best actor to have played the part: Laurence Olivier filmed his own stage version; Orson Welles constructed a flawed but brilliant film; James Earl Jones toured on stage in the part. And all these actors gave heroic dimension to Othello: Olivier gave him effrontery, Welles fury, Jones dignity. Fishburne now gives him sexuality. Though he may not read the lines as well as his predecessors, his visual presence on the screen is stunning. Exactly as director and screenwriter Oliver Parker intended, Fishburne’s Othello is heightened so that he is at least cinematically equal to the Iago of Kenneth Branagh — arguably the English-speaking world’s greatest living actor. On stage, without the artifices of the “magic lantern,” without closeups of Fishburne’s face, and with all of Othello’s poetry to be spoken, this production would have been a disaster. But Parker reconceived Shakespeare’s as a sexual thriller, and knew — in his first feature film — how the camera could help.

Filmmakers have a bag of tricks unique to their medium, which audiences now take for granted, but which were once astonishing. Biographers report that Wittgenstein insisted on sitting in the front row at movies because he wanted to be overwhelmed by their images. Sartre shared his childhood movie-going passion with his young widowed mother. As he explained in his autobiographical Words, it was their fantasy-land escape from an austere reality. Later he would analyze the medium to demonstrate how much more mind control over the audience the movie has compared to the stage play. In the theater the stage set is fixed in time and place; members of the audience are free to look wherever they choose. They need not attend to the actor who is speaking, but can focus on a piece of furniture, a minor actor, or the spotlighting of the stage. In the darkened movie house, a member of the audience can only close his eyes or submit and follow the moving images on the screen. The actors are larger than life, and a director can force the entire audience to watch a single face on the screen waiting to be kissed. The separate members of the audience are constituted as an anonymous collectivity of voyeurs peeping through the camera’s keyhole. The director who commands the camera thus has more power over the audience than any actor, and the camera’s compelling visual images have more impact than the actor’s words.

But Shakespeare is primarily about words; an actor’s challenge is to speak the poetry, capture the deeper meaning, and sustain the dramatic intensity. One might therefore expect the film versions of his plays to be disastrous. Not so. There have been many marvelous films of Shakespeare plays. Olivier and Branagh both did Henry V in versions that rival each other but surpass any stage production. The same can be said of Zeffereli’s Romeo and Juliet, Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar, and Peter Brook’s magnificent King Lear. Director Oliver Parker’s film falls far below this standard, but then Shakespeare’s Othello is a peculiarly challenging text.

Fifty years ago, Paul Robeson played Othello on Broadway to wildly enthusiastic audiences. But Othello has become a notoriously difficult stage play to perform and it can be painful, even distasteful, to watch. It is the only Shakespeare play about which many thoughtful people have said that they prefer Verdi’s operatic version. The problem in every modern performance is that Othello is so unreflective, Desdemona so helpless, and Iago so mysteriously evil that the painfulness of the storyline is unmitigated: There is no one with whom the audience can identify and empathize. Unthinking jealousy compounded by racism is a better formula for the stylistics of an opera than an engrossing theatrical performance.

Comparison with the Merchant of Venice is instructive. Both plays are set in Venice, the great maritime city-state of Marco Polo and Andrea Doria, an empire of its time, which imported ethnic and racial diversity along with commercial goods; this made the Rialto a natural setting for tales of racism and anti-semitism. But as in Shakespeare’s other plays that invoke racial and ethnic stereotypes, these Venetian plays reveal the cultural biases that confine even Shakespeare’s genius. Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, is saved by stealing some of her father’s fortune and running off with a Christian spendthrift. And, although audiences remember Portia for her line about mercy, she strips Shylock of every single penny and his religious identity as well, forcing him to convert to Christianity on pain of death, much as the Inquisitors of the Church did to his brethren. Although Shylock has his great speech (”. . . does a Jew not have feelings . . .”), Shakespeare wastes little sympathy on him. The audience was meant to be amused by the judgment meted out to this vengeful Jew.

Although Othello has been assigned nobility and great poetry, he is one of Shakespeare’s most unreflective characters. Unlike Shylock, who reflects on his status as a Jew and is bitterly aware of his degraded position as such, Othello never questions his Blackness or reflects on his precarious position in a world of White men. Othello acts, overreacts, has epileptic seizures, suffers terribly, but does not reflect. Taking Iago’s bait of jealousy without caution or consideration, he flashes into violence against his innocent bride. Bradley, the famous Shakespeare scholar, says that “Othello’s mind, for all its poetry, is very simple. He is not observant. His nature tends outward. He is quite free from introspection, and is not given to reflection. Emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect.” (It is no answer to say that Othello is a warrior; after all, Macbeth is a much bloodier warrior, and he reflects on his situation.)

Recognizing Othello as different in this way is not the same as understanding why Shakespeare conceived the Moor as so simple and unreflective. Reading the Venetian plays, however, one might well conclude that though Shakespeare understood almost as much about anti-semitism and racism as we do today, his knowledge about Jews and Blacks was narrowly circumscribed by stereotype.

Thus the difficulties for 20th century audiences. Thus, too, the standard tactic of the directors seeking to reach them: give the roles of Shylock and Othello to actors of enormous talent and star power in the hope that the actor will transform the character and give it grandeur. Lawrence Olivier did this with both roles brilliantly but it was a theatrical trick, not a solution to the fundamental problem of the stereotyped protagonists.

Oliver Parker had a different idea. Cognizant of Othello’s empty unreflectiveness, he filled the void with sex and violence, all of it realized through Fishburne’s visual presence — made all the more stunning because someone had the ingenious idea of tattooing the side of his shaved head, making him unforgettably iconic.

Fishburne will be remembered as the wife-battering Ike Turner of Tina Turner’s autobiographical What’s Love Got To Do With It?. The film had a great impact in England and Fishburne’s performance earned him the role of Othello. Parker was looking for a Black actor who would give Othello an Ike-Turner-edge of sexual intimidation and violence. The idea was to make the erotic relationship between Othello and Desdemona the emotional fulcrum of the play. Parker’s experience playing Iago in repertory had convinced him that for modern audiences the play had become unbalanced and the relationship between Othello and Desdemona had lost its dramatic energy. Othello was supposed to be Shakespeare’s most psychological play, a drama of private passions, but the diabolical evil of Iago and his hatred for the noble Othello was more intriguing to modern audiences than the almost platonic love relationship between the noble Moor and his childlike Desdemona.

Fishburne’s physicality and his stilted American speaking of the lines make him the embodiment of the alien “other” summoned from the racist’s nightmare of miscegenation. The casting for all of the other parts is bold, creative, and in line with this premise. Desdemona, in particular, is not the blond-haired ingenue we have come to expect in traditional productions. The sensual, dark-haired Swiss actress, Irene Jacob, has been given the role. And although Shakespeare’s Othello says “she loved me for the pains I have suffered,” this Desdemona, speaking in heavily accented English, conveys the full measure of erotic chemistry that can precipitate a sudden elopement.

This is not Shakespeare’s Desdemona, who asks Emilia, her maid and Iago’s wife, whether women are ever sexually unfaithful to their husbands. Desdemona cannot believe the truthful answer; that is the measure of her virginal naivete. Parker has sacrificed all these innocent lines. Irene Jacob’s heavily accented reading labors over her few lines; like Fishburne, she earned her part because of her erotic screen presence. Critics who object to this heavy-handed vulgarization of Shakespeare’s play must concede that in the 20th century, when ten-year-old children are sexually sophisticated, Shakespeare’s Desdemona would be something of a joke.

An ambitious director might have bitten the bullet and cast a very young girl as Desdemona. But adding discrepancies in age to racial difference would have provoked even greater outrage than Irene Jacob’s fleshy and sensuous Desdemona. She is an erotic match for Fishburne on the screen and Othello does not have to be crazed to imagine her making love to another man — especially after Parker inserts a scene in which Othello watches Desdemona dance with Cassio, with a spark of sensual pleasure in her eye. All of this makes Othello’s jealousy more believable.

Though Parker sacrifices the complexity of the play and most of its greatness to make it coherent for modern sensibilities, Branagh’s Iago somehow survives, and with new dimensions. Othello and Iago in Shakespeare’s play are in a certain sense more intimate than the Moor and his bride. An orthodox Freudian reading of the play uses this intimacy to resolve the mystery of Iago’s evil nature into his repressed homosexual attraction to the vibrantly sexual and brutal Moor. And in the film the body language between Fishburne and Branagh implies dominance-submission, sadism-masochism.

Fishburne may not accept the Freudian reading, but an improvised scene demonstrates his psychological understanding of the relationship. In a show of brute strength he holds the scheming Iago’s head underwater until the man almost drowns. According to Freudian formulas, the subordinate Iago first feels sexual jealousy because he has projected his own repressed passive and masochistic desires onto his wife Emilia; his first soliloquy of revenge tells the audience that Othello “has done my service in Emilia’s bed.” In his own paranoid mind a victim of sexual betrayal, Iago has the blueprint of the idea to make Othello believe he has suffered the same fate.

The Freudian interpretation, as usual, overstates the case, but the play certainly suggests this motive for revenge. Iago reiterates the charge in his second soliloquy. Furthermore, when Emilia realizes what Iago has done, she immediately attributes it to his unjustified belief that she had betrayed him with Othello. The attribution comes so quickly that Iago must have accused her of betrayal. And Fishburne’s Othello would seem to justify such beliefs. He is the kind of man Iago would take pleasure in hating.

Several stage actors have played this Freudian Iago, most notably Christopher Plummer. His Othello (James Earl Jones) stabs him in the groin at the end of the play to punctuate this reading. Branagh’s Freudian gesture is less obvious. In his conniving interchanges with Roderigo, Cassio, and Othello, his Iago sometimes assumes a seductive feminine demeanor, wooing them with yielding words and promises. There is a particularly striking scene after Othello’s arrival in Cyprus where the celebration of the Turkish fleet’s destruction has become a drunken orgy. In a cart rocking above them the camera reveals, without being overly graphic, that a couple is having intercourse while below a gleeful Iago embraces Roderigo and deviously sets him on to further machinations.

But if Branagh’s performance suggests repressed homosexuality, he is too great an actor to let Freud dominate Shakespeare. His mercurial Iago has not one great motive but rather several, all suggested in Shakespeare’s text. He has served Othello faithfully for many years in campaigns of war only to have Othello appoint Cassio, an untested soldier, over him — at least so he claims. Thus Iago has been doubly wronged by the Moor; resentment and envy abet sexual jealousy. So Cassio is a perfect target against whom Iago will foment Othello’s jealous rage. Furthermore, the play gives us reason to believe or suspect that Cassio is from the ranks of Italian gentlemen while Iago is a self-made man. Such parvenus fare poorly in Shakespeare’s plays; they are overreaching and flawed in character, and even when they are wronged they end badly. Iago, one of these, is not just a vengeful malefactor, but a con man and a thief as he manipulates Roderigo, Desdemona’s embittered suitor, to sell all he has and “put money in your pocket,” most of which ends up in Iago’s purse.

Branagh’s Iago is also caught up in the momentum of his own improvisations, as in his evil deeds he mirrors the inexplicable creative genius of his creator. Iago, like Hamlet, is one of Shakespeare’s many imaginary selves — this one can imagine unimaginable evils. When Othello finally grasps the full extent of Iago’s malevolence, the Moor demands an explanation but Iago, in a fitting show of intransigence, takes a vow of silence. And Othello understands that this is as it should be. Iago is a perfect villain who will not give us the satisfaction of fully knowing his reasons — he offers neither confession nor contrition. Evil can have no complete explanation. Branagh, who did one of this century’s greatest Hamlets on stage, has now given us a superb Iago on film.

But Branagh’s triumph may have defeated Parker’s film. His Iago is everything but what this film needed — a blood and guts racist. Parker describes Branagh’s performance as down-to-earth rather than “diabolical” — but he did not come down to the prosaic level required by the screenplay. One cannot escape the feeling that the guileful Kenneth Branagh knows where all the great actors before him have gone and now charts his own course. Parker’s frequent closeups of Fishburne’s glowering dark eyes keep Branagh’s Iago from stealing the whole show. But Iago can be found in Shakespeare’s play; Parker created Jacob’s Desdemona and Fishburne’s Othello.

Parker thought out very carefully every detail of his screenplay and if Shakespeare purists disapprove, as surely they must, it is not because Parker fails to understand the beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry or the tragedy of Othello. Fully realizing Shakespeare’s genius, Parker and Branagh aim to bring more people into his temple. Branagh certainly knows how to do traditional Shakespeare but he also realizes that a production that will pack the largest theater in London does not translate into the medium of film and will not pack the movie houses. And he realizes, too, that British actors with the training and skill to read Shakespeare’s lines may have neither strong screen presence nor box office drawing power. Moreover, his theory is that the problem cannot just be laid on the shoulders of the film-going audience. An outsider from Belfast, he believes that some of the blame belongs to narcissistic English Shakespeare traditionalists.

He tried to break the English mold in his film version of Much Ado About Nothing by including American movie stars. But try as they might, Denzel Washington and the other Hollywood actors simply could not master Shakespeare’s language. Shakespeare’s comic scenes in the play are based on a lunatic but ingenious sequence of malapropisms which carry the opposite meaning of the speaker’s intention. The humor was entirely lost in Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves’ American translation, even if one knew the arcane lines being spoken. Nonetheless, the high-spirited musical-comedy feeling of the film did succeed in attracting a new audience to one of Shakespeare’s less well-known comedies, and grossed almost $50 million at the box office. Branagh is now doing a four-hour film Hamlet with a most unlikely array of Hollywood actors. It will either be a disaster, or a miracle.

Parker’s Othello succeeds better than Much Ado About Nothing in integrating its diverse and non-Shakespearean actors, but at great cost. The film opened in the aftermath of the O.J. Simpson trial, and some of the film’s backers must have been thanking their lucky stars expecting to cash in on the American craze. But if the television drama fascinated the public, Oliver Parker’s did not. Othello is not a bad film, and it is cinematically beautiful, but it has failed to find a new audience for Shakespeare and is very far from an enlightening interpretation of one of his most difficult plays.

If Shakespeare’s own Othello was the Elizabethan stereotype of an African savage, Parker’s version is the modern stereotype of the inner-city Black. Parker’s Othello has no fall from innocence, no defining tragic moment, and Fishburne offers no more than his physical presence. Parker hoped that sexual passion would bring emotional coherence to a play that has puzzled Shakespeare critics for two centuries. But he addresses the racial problem by eliminating Othello’s grandeur and Desdemona’s innocence — a solution that required him to sacrifice most of their poetry and the miracle of their love.

Othello by most accounts was the tragedy written after Hamlet, when Shakespeare was at the height of his powers. But unlike Hamlet with its Ghost, Macbeth with its witches, or Richard III with its bloody scheme of royal succession, Othello is an un-Shakespeare-like tragedy without supernatural forces or great political-historical significance. And is there any other noble hero in the Shakespeare canon who hits his wife in public, treats her like a whore, and kills her with his own hands? Shakespeare’s script prepares us to be shocked by that public blow — the tragedy’s defining moment. The old warrior Othello loves Desdemona because she pities him, not because she excites him. And the Moor gives assurances in every respect that he will be gentle with his innocent bride. Othello is the very antithesis of Iago’s Negrophobic black ram. Far from Fishburne’s incendiary Othello, Shakespeare’s Moor assures us that the days of his hot-blooded youthful excesses are finished. He can conduct the war against the Turks without being distracted by his new bride. Frank Kermode compares Othello and Desdemona in the first act of the play to Adam and Eve before the fall. Be that as it may, when Othello strikes Desdemona the audience sees the beast in man revealed, and that savage beast is a Black man. Shakespeare’s Othello speaks sublime poetry but he confirms Elizabethan stereotypes of race.

But the failure of Parker’s film is less severe when measured against the Olivier and Welles films. Pauline Kael might now prefer to expunge her rhapsodic review of the Olivier production from her collected works. She opined that no Black actor, not even Paul Robeson, could bring to the role of Othello what Olivier had. But an Othello in black (or brown) face is an affront to contemporary sensibilities. And the brilliant Olivier production, as Kael herself admits, “isn’t even much of a movie.” Branagh described it as a narcissistic English interpretation of Shakespeare. Orson Welles is not English, but in black face he is today as out of place as Olivier, and his Othello is more notable for its exotic cinematic style than its substance. The failure of all three films suggests that Shakespeare’s play may have no contemporary cinematic solution. And this is because it was written for an audience that could accept racist stereotypes as truisms without acknowledging their own racism.

I mentioned earlier that many people prefer Verdi’s opera to Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare’s poetry, surely, is at least the equivalent of Verdi’s music. The most useful insight into Shakespeare’s Othello emphasizing the poetry comes from Bradley’s lectures. Though he acknowledges all of the play’s difficulties — the pain and dismay produced in the audience by the sudden explosion of savagery that comes from the noble Moor — he makes brilliant excuses for Shakespeare’s racist stereotype. He quotes with approval Swinburne’s line that “we pity Othello even more than we pity Desdemona.” He acknowledges that no rationalization satisfactorily explains this unsettling tragedy and that the many troubling issues it raises “cannot be decided by argument.” More simply, I would say, no solution will make the racism of Shakespeare and his audiences disappear.

But Bradley’s consoling insight is that Othello may be Shakespeare’s greatest poet and if we read the play and its poetry “with all our force” we will feel these objec- tions less. Parker’s Othello does not and cannot provide us that consolation. Unfortunately, with all its technical powers over mind, the medium of film has found no way to heighten, or even to convey, poetry’s magical powers.