Othello or How I Learned to Hate Love

I should probably start by saying I don’t hate love. Really--I love love. Who doesn’t? But watching Oliver Parker’s film adaptation caused the same rage in me that reading the play did. What a ridiculous tragedy. I say this knowing that many people love it and have written truly brilliant things about it, but for me I find nothing tragic in Othello. I never have been able to find tragedy in people’s inability to handle life. Really, though, if someone is capable of killing you because of supposed infidelity is that tragic? Are blatant flaws of humanity tragic? I feel it accords them too much honor or prestige to label them tragic.

Tragedy is supposed to invoke catharsis; that might be the only thing Aristotle and I agree on. Good tragedy, or what I define as good tragedy, should present some aspect of life that is unavoidable and horrible I feel. There should be a level of inevitability to it. There is nothing inevitable about Othello except maybe that if you marry because of what you think someone is you will inevitably find sorrow in the realization of who they are. What I mean by that is, when we love someone for the object we have created out of them in our mind when their agency and humanity presents itself we will have no recourse for the processing or handling of that. But I don’t find that tragic.

Lawrence Fishburne plays Othello in this movie and he does a marvelous job of it. I found the acting moving and the adaptation truthful. It is a beautiful film. But I was enraged by the end. Desdemona is Othello’s thing, she isn’t a woman to him but a pretty pretty who is his. He would rather she die than be possessed by any other man. Desdemona obviously took issue with that, but I find her trust and acquiescence to his rage also infuriating. In her defense I don’t think she could have swayed him; the passion with which Othello took to the idea of her infidelity wasn’t something she could fight against.

But is jealous rage tragic? Does extreme human failing count as tragedy? Certainly in the most recent century it seems we’ve gone this way; the normal man, the average person who is destroyed by life or rendered inert by circumstance and either wastes away or destroys everything around them. I don’t know that I honestly consider that tragic. Or, rather, I might consider it tragic if the characters existence was so stymied as to be inescapable. But I don’t feel that Othello’s is. Most of Shakespeare’s love tragedies seem to revolve around our inability to get outside ourselves and I can see the argument for why that is tragic; we are our own worst enemy and all of that. But can we even call what Othello feels for Desdemona love? Should we?

On the one hand I’m moved to say yes. Love does not always present itself in healthy, safe ways. Looking under the more destructive versions of love then it could certainly be said that Othello very much loves Desdemona and it is precisely that love which kills her. It could also be taken that the play presents a particularly powerful commentary on the varied nature of love and why people should be wary and self-aware of what they consider love. Feeling powerfully does not, by default, make what you feel a good thing. I can accept that as a reason for why we continue to read this play and should discuss it.

But does that make it tragic? That’s the word that I think I might take issue with. I think something must be more than sad for it to be tragic; I think something ought to be more than awful as well. And on the surface Othello does present something larger than life and more powerful; it also provides catharsis in regards to sketchy love experiences, but all of these experiences weren’t brought about by fate or lack of knowledge. Perhaps the problem is that I don’t find Othello particularly noble either in his goodness or his faults. In order for me to label a character’s suffering tragic I need to feel like they possess some level of nobility, something that raises them above simply having a really bad day.

We know that Othello is a good general and we know that his men love him. But the speed with which he turns on Cassio and then Desdemona--is that the quality of a noble man? Sure you could say his jealousy is his tragic flaw, but jealousy isn’t something self contained like pride. Jealousy encompasses a whole host of other characteristics like trust, pride, ownership, and love. Othello’s jealousy, therefore, seems to me more symptomatic of larger issues rather than one characteristic he is powerless against.

The long and short of this is that I hate tragic love stories. Mostly I just want to say get over yourself already. I know--that kind of shows I’m dead inside. But...if that means I never get strangled to death by my husband I’m kind of okay with that.