SHAKESPEARE's The Merchant of Venice: Anti-Semitism as Racism
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- čas přidán 10. 10. 2020
- This episode will be focused on a Fanonian interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The anti-Semitism of the Venetian characters in the play toward Shylock is quite obvious, but what happens when we interpret the effect of their anti-Semitism through the framework provided for us in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, and specifically through his essay “The Fact of Blackness”? We will see that the effects of anti-Semitism are similar to what Fanon describes regarding the disruption of the Black bodily schema. Thus, we see that The Merchant of Venice is useful for thinking about race relations, even though Shakespeare’s original seems to have no application to Blackness.
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Fantastic analysis, Prof!!! Thanks so much for the enlightenment!
You are most welcome, Akwasi.
Very helpful with teaching the play to my class- much appreciated
Thank you so much for your video on this subject. Sadly I wasn't deeply aware of the other stories and names that you brought up in your analysis so that I could cross reference those ideas in meaningful ways but it did give me some things to look into. The reason this is important to me is that in a community College in California I was told by an English Professor there that Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice was antisemitic and that Shakespeare himself was antisemitic. I had a deep problem with that notion because the written story as well as the film and perhaps mostly the film does for me exactly what you describe in this video essay. Which at the time in 2015 I was unable to clearly articulate to my English professor. My argument to her was Shylocks famous speech "do we prick us do we not bleed" indicates an appeal to humanity. Which she did not find convincing. And her argument to me which I dont fully remember at this time was not convincing to me either. So as you laid out, when we look upon the social setting as clearly laid out in the play we can see the effects of discrimination upon the Jewish community within Venice. Certainly a tragic turn of events for Shylock, one of sound mind and reason cant help but empathize with Shylocks plight. And bear witness to the socio-economic-political causes and effects. I couldn't articulate that all then to her but I'm glad that your interpretation of the play is similar to my own and is in far more informed. I wish you could have been there to back me up or explain this to myself and her. It's really unfortunate the quality of education that students have to endure.
Hi
Si la Quenta por favor
It was never Antisemitic.