The villain in Othello presented as Iago who drives Othello to madness. While othello murders his wife after Iago has driven him mad, the only reason it happens is because a White guy who’s angry he didn’t get selected for promotion is driving him crazy. Iago murders three people including a guy he’s scamming and his own wife too. Shakespeare clearly intends for the White guy to be the villain and the nigger to be a tragic antihero.

Shylock the Jew is presented as being scammed when the Whites don’t want to pay the exorbitant interest he charges them. The Whites then need a woman dressed as a man to save them. The Whites spit on Shylock, taunt him, abuse him and then finally use a cross dresser to use loopholes to get them out of it when he wants the money back. The Whites, and not Shylock, are presented as the villains. Shylock is allowed a three minute monologue to decry antisemitism.

This isn’t pro White. This, especially Shylock, is the use of ‘victim villains’, that is people who have been seriously wronged (or presented as seriously wronged) getting revenge through extreme measures. Modern day examples would be the rape victim in the dirty harry movies murdering the men who gang raped her, the crew on the orient express mirdering the guy that raped and murdered a child, or the woman in the last 300 movie who waged war on Athens killing innocent athenians because other athenians had killed her family and had her on a slave ship. If Shylock was intended to be a pure villain we wouldn’t have had a three minute monologue decrying antisemitism. The only reason Shylock doesn’t get the money is not because he’s a corrupt moneylender charging money, or because he’s demanding the flesh of the White guys. It’s because a cross dressing woman reminds the court that he is a Jew and as a Jew he isn’t entitled to anything. This is before the three minute monologue about ‘has a Jew not eyes has a jew not ears, if you cut us do we not bleed like you’ etc. This is intended to make you question antisemitism.

The villain in Othello presented as Iago who drives Othello to madness. While othello murders his wife after Iago has driven him mad, the only reason it happens is because a White guy who’s angry he didn’t get selected for promotion is driving him crazy. Iago murders three people including a guy he’s scamming and his own wife too. Shakespeare clearly intends for the White guy to be the villain and the nigger to be a tragic antihero.

Shylock the Jew is presented as being scammed when the Whites don’t want to pay the exorbitant interest he charges them. The Whites then need a woman dressed as a man to save them. The Whites spit on Shylock, taunt him, abuse him and then finally use a cross dresser to use loopholes to get them out of it when he wants the money back. The Whites, and not Shylock, are presented as the villains. Shylock is allowed a three minute monologue to decry antisemitism.

This isn’t pro White. This, especially Shylock, is the use of ‘victim villains’, that is people who have been seriously wronged (or presented as seriously wronged) getting revenge through extreme measures. Modern day examples would be the rape victim in the dirty harry movies murdering the men who gang raped her, the crew on the orient express mirdering the guy that raped and murdered a child, or the woman in the last 300 movie who waged war on Athens killing innocent athenians because other athenians had killed her family and had her on a slave ship. If Shylock was intended to be a pure villain we wouldn’t have had a three minute monologue decrying antisemitism.