Emotional Tears and Racial Stigma in Orson Welles's Othello and Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara
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Abstract
On the basis of two film adaptations of Shakespeare's Othello, Orson Welles's (1952/1955) Othello and Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara (2006), this article focuses on Othello's emotional tears, and how they mitigate, or not, the effects of racial stigmatization. The “Othello dilemma,” as I call it, refers to how Othello continues to be understood as an example of his race, rather than as an individual. How do the two films deal with this dilemma? This article draws on current research in cognitive neuroscience to underscore the pro-social function of emotional tears. Both films avoid direct views of Othello's tears but evoke lachrymal emotion to produce broader interpretations of the play, which is relevant to contemporary concerns. In black and white, Orson Welles uses Soviet montage to depict Othello's loneliness, which authenticates his grief, while Vishal Bhardwaj's colorful Bollywood film shifts attention to stigmatization on account of gender bias, invoking an array of culture-specific norms and values.
Contributor Notes
Lalita Pandit Hogan is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Affiliate Faculty at the South Asia Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current research focuses on emotion in literature and film in the theoretical context of cognitive neuroscience. Hogan is co-editor and contributing author of five books published by university presses, five special issues of journals, has published articles and book chapters on Shakespeare, Indian film and literature, and comparative aesthetics, and is also the author of A Country without Borders: Stories and Poems of Kashmir (distributed by University of Chicago Press).