Magneto and Shylock, or Why I'm Not Very Good at Social Justice

[quietprofanity]

So, lately I've been reading Ron Rosenbaum's The Shakespeare Wars, and it's a perfectly interesting idea for a book (academic debates about Shakespeare for the layperson) coupled unfortunately with a writer who is, quite frankly, annoying. Rosenbaum doesn't so much bring light to interesting debates so much as firmly take one side, slobber over the

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[quietprofanity]

But Shakespeare makes us feel eventual sympathy and even pity for, say, Richard III (or at least I do -- the whole "There is no creature loves me; And if I die, no soul shall pity me" bit)

Yeah. Shakespeare has sympathetic villains, as well as villains that I think are way more one-dimensional than Shylock. (Like Don John in Much Ado) I think that's part of the reason I'm frustrated by the "He's just an anti-Semitic cartoon!" because I think Shylock is closer to the more complex villains than the one-dimensional ones.

But of course, Shylock's evil is wrapped up in his Judaism, so it makes it more complicated. (Although I guess you could say the same about Richard the III and his disability, couldn't you?) I really do think this stuff is complex.

[angevin2]

I am not sure what I think about Shylock -- I don't think he's heroic or exactly a cartoon (which is the same thing Harold Bloom says, actually, that he's a red-wigged cartoon with a giant fake nose and he thinks the play should be staged this way even though it's the most anti-Semitic thing ever written since the Gospel of John) -- except that the point of much of the play is that basically everyone in it is an asshole, and they are assholes because of money.

I also don't think Antonio is heroic or really meant to be; he's willing to give up his life for Bassanio, but it's in the service of a one-sided codependent relationship, so. Shakespeare is complicated even when he comes out on the wrong side of things, and I don't think he's exactly leaping to deconstruct contemporary stereotypes about Jews, but I also don't think he's trying to incite pogroms or whatever (I mean, there wasn't an openly Jewish population in England at the time, though there were plenty of converts from Spain and Portugal). I don't know. I mean, the central

[quietprofanity]

(which is the same thing Harold Bloom says, actually, that he's a red-wigged cartoon with a giant fake nose and he thinks the play should be staged this way even though it's the most anti-Semitic thing ever written since the Gospel of John)Yeah, that's one of the few points where Rosenbaum and Bloom are on exactly the same page. He gives a lot of accolades to Steven Berkoff for playing Shylock like that and beats up on Al Pacino a lot (Granted, I did think that movie was trying too hard to scrub the play of anti-Semitism but that's not an argument for going the other way completely, I think). It's one of the things about the book that infuriates me. Later he takes it a step further and suggests that white people playing Othello in blackface is more accurate because Othello isn't really a black guy, but a character that reflects how white people perceive blackness. I hate to do that "But if you said this about THIS minority group it wouldn't fly" thing, but I really do think that if you said women couldn't play Shakespeare in the 21st

[sandoz_iscariot]

Rosenbaum talks about portrayals/films/rewrites of The Merchant of Venice (often by Jews) which either soften the anti-Semitism or make Shylock sympathetic and essentially calls them all a load of crap.

It's interesting to compare these re-interpretations/re-writings to the ongoing characterization of comic!Magneto, and how the open canon and myriad of writers (all with different ideas of what Magneto "should" be) have changed him over time. Like, Magneto's creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, were Jewish, but the first mention of him being a Jewish Holocaust survivor came nearly 20 years later at the pen of Chris Claremont. (The re-write where Shylock and Antonio are friends also reminds me of the fact that Magneto and Xavier being best friends before they were enemies, which of course was the entire plot of X-Men: First Class, was a big retcon too

[quietprofanity]

I don't have much to add to what you said beyond that it's all really interesting. It's not too surprising that Claremont added the stuff about Magneto being a Holocaust survivor to make him more sympathetic, though.

(The re-write where Shylock and Antonio are friends also reminds me of the fact that Magneto and Xavier being best friends before they were enemies, which of course was the entire plot of X-Men: First Class, was a big retcon too.)

I thought about that, and I thought about further exploring it in this essay but tbh I can't see Antonio as in love with anyone but Bassanio. Wait, is this not about love but friendship? Never mind. :3

Anyway, it's not an interpretation that I'd agree with but I've just added The Merchant to one of my Amazon.com wishlists.

you already know my objections to the "Magneto and Mystique and the Brotherhood are the real heroes of the movie" interpretation. XD

Hee, true. Although they're always fun to hear.

Aaaaand someone just posted another "Charles uses mind control to rape Erik" fic so kindly

[khilari]

I actually wrote an essay titled Was Shakespeare sexist and racist in Merchant of Venice? while I was in school. Sadly I can't remember my arguments, but I think my conclusion was that he was, but far less so than some other things written at the time. I guess "fair for its time" isn't much of an argument in some ways, but I do think he gave his characters a lot of humanity in a way that makes them more than stereotypes. I think we're shown, in a lot of ways, that it's his treatment by Christians that has made Shylock a villain rather than intrinsically Judaism itself. But then him being forced to convert is treated as a good thing despite only making things worse, really. But at the time that would certainly have been expected at the end

[quietprofanity]

I think we're shown, in a lot of ways, that it's his treatment by Christians that has made Shylock a villain rather than intrinsically Judaism itself. But then him being forced to convert is treated as a good thing despite only making things worse, really. But at the time that would certainly have been expected at the end.

I've heard interpretations that the forced conversion was progressive for the time particularly compared to something like Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, where the bad Jew just dies at the end. And it's also supposed to be a metaphor for Christian forgiveness vs. Jewish vengeance and how Christianity always wins. It makes me totally uncomfortable, regardless but it is interesting.

I think the fact that it's a play makes arguments about authentic staging a bit silly. Okay, that sounds odd, but a play is by its nature a collaboration with actors and director so authorial intent doesn't just have to come from Shakespeare, and it can be staged in a lot of ways to mean different things, or to bring out

[khilari]

Yeah, the forced conversion is really uncomfortable. On a tangent it just occurred to me that a play written in Elizabethan times would have come after three generations of "convert or die", although aimed at Protestants and Catholics in turn rather than Jews. But, still, it's kind of surprising the audience wasn't more uncomfortable with it.