Racism, Misogyny, and the Othello Myth: Inter-racial Couples from Shakespeare to Spike Lee

by Celia R. Daileader

Through research spanning four centuries, in genres as diverse as English Renaissance drama, abolitionist literature, gothic horror and contemporary romance, Celia Daileader questions why Anglo-American culture's most widely-read canonical narratives of inter-racial sex feature a black male and a white female. This study considers the cultural obsession with Shakespeare's Othello, alongside the more pertinent issue of white male sexual predation upon black females. Daileader argues that myths about black male sexual rapacity and the danger of racial "pollution" were exploited to "protect" white female sexuality and exorcise collective guilt.

Genres: Shakespeare

266 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

godsend

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This literary-cultural analysis focuses less on the racial aspects of Othello itself than the obsession with the black male-white female narrative dynamic that both preceded and followed it. Daileader aims to demonstrate this obsession is primarily one of controlling white female sexuality, as well as prurient fascination with inter-racial sex of this flavor (even though the reverse - white men and black women - was more common, particularly in slaveholding societies).

Her Shakespearean textural analysis is awesome, but I am definitely missing something by not being familiar with other early modern English dramas or cultural monoliths like Gone with the Wind. Often, it feels like her analysis over-reaches (e.g. that Bela Lugosi's name 'sounds female' is an argument that movie monsters are feminizied? Oookay.), which can be fun as speculation but weak as coherent theory.