Dis Bard

He shoots and scores: Mekhi Phifer in O

Related Content

• Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)" as a Romeo and Juliet teaching tool
  April 23, 2013
• Much ado about Joss Whedon
  June 5, 2013
• The Great Gatsby: Beautiful and damned
  May 8, 2013
• What Gatsby Gets Wrong: Ten Ways the New Movie Will Trip Up the Lazy Students of Tomorrow
  May 15, 2013
• Wild Things, Housebroken
  June 19, 2013

More About

• Kip Kinkel
• William Shakespeare
• Tim Blake Nelson
• Josh Hartnett
• Harvey Weinstein

In the end, O's failure is not one of composition or execution, but of conception. After all, Othello is, at its heart, about Iago's frustrated love for Othello (it's maybe worth noting that Iago was the model for Milton's Satan), and Iago's destruction of Othello is also an act of self-negation, comprehensible only because we recognize Iago in the darkest corners of ourselves. By imputing base motives to the villain (turns out he just wanted to be the star basketball player himself), O makes the whole exercise ridiculous. It renders this most intimate tragedy senseless--another sad example of our capacity for monstrousness. Which, come to think of it, might lead us back to Kip Kinkel.