Fissured legacies in Roysten Abel's In Othello

Abstract

In Othello (2003) offers both a critique and inadvertent affirmation of racial and colonial hierarchies and a reflection on the postcolonial nation. The film fosters Orientalist sensibilities via a fetishisation of ‘otherness’, in order to subvert it. It is a hybrid and ambivalent production in which the characters possess intersectional identities that are always multiple, in line with Hindu philosophy. This hybridity can also be observed in the mixture of traditions on which the film is based, and as such, it serves as a ‘rhizomatic interrelation’. The film shows how Shakespeare's play may provide a meditation on the Indian nation, where issue ssuch as transgressive romance, ostracisation, and gender roles remain unsettled.