British Universities Film & Video Council

moving image and sound, knowledge and access

Othello Blacking Up

Synopsis
Video posted to YouTube in 2011. A white male actor sits before a mirror and is blacked up by a male make-up artist; the process is repeated on a white female actor. The two actors are then seated together and the man rejects her embrace. When they leave the make-up artists smiles in a sinister way and shows his hand and arms (which are covered in the black pancake) to the camera. There is a close-up shot of the Arden edition of Othello, Verdi’s Otello is used as a score throughout.
Medium
Video
Recording date
2011
Duration
5 mins

Additional Details

Production type
Other
Plays
Coriolanus; Othello
Keywords
race relations; Othello (character)

Notes

Notes
Accessed 9/2016.
Reviews
Discussed in Stephen O’Neill’s Shakespeare and YouTube: New Media Forms of the Bard (London: Bloomsbury, 2015) p. 140-1, 143 p. O’Neill suggests the make-up artist is the Iago figure.

Related

Name

Theatre on Film and Tape (TOFT)

Email
toft@nypl.org
Web
http://www.nypl.org/locations/lpa/theatre-film-and-tape-archive External site opens in new window
Phone
+ 1 (212) 870-1642
Fax
(212) 8701868
Address
Billy Rose Theatre Collection
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York,New York
10023-7498
USA

Record Stats

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