Blog 11

Othello and Antony and Cleopatra both deal with their fair share of ethnocentricity. Shakespeare uses certain characteristics of people to support these views. Whether he was trying to support ethnocentricity is unsure to me, my goal is to compare and contrast a few instances in which some of the character traits within the play show this.
In Othello, the main character, Othello is not full blooded Venetian. He is treated as an outsider because of his half blooded nature. And he sees himself as an outsider. Because of his ethnicity racial epithets are used against him. Some of the slurs used against him are “the thick lips” which can be found Act 1.1 and “old black ram” which can be found in Act 1.1 also. Since Othello is not a full blooded Roman, his lack of self control towards the end of the play can show what he lacks according to the Roman ethnocentric view. Romans are seen as strong, rational, and very masculine men. As the play progresses and Othello starts to lose control over his emotions. And being that he is losing control because of what he thinks is a woman’s doing, this shows great weakness. To the Romans, lack of emotional control is very much a woman’s trait, that stereotype still lives on today. With certain signs showing Othello there is a reasonable doubt that Desdemona is innocent, Othello chooses to pull a George W. Bush and trust his gut feeling. Romans would look down upon this, as it is a sign that Othello has lost some sense of reason.
The way Anotony and Cleopatra deals with the ideas of the east and the west is interesting. As stated before, Roman culture was very masculine. And it is fitting that the person to truly control a Roman would be a woman in Egypt. Cleopatra is a woman of Egypt, she eventually gets the very brave man of war Antony to follow her off of the battlefield in a retreat. Ironically during the end of the play after Antony killed himself, Cleopatra later kills herself in a more masculine way. Using the Asps to bite her is a very Roman idea, which in itself represents masculinity. She seems to die in a way that suggests she is in control, while Antony killed himself attempted but failed to kill himself in Act 4.15. In that scene he says he doesn’t know who he is, having an identity crisis as a Roman is not very honorable and shows weakness on his part, while Cleopatra always seems to be in control of her life.