Sex,lies,and the handkerchief: Immigration and sexploitation in Catalan Otel·lo (2012)

Sex, lies, and the handkerchief

‘It’s just art’, said John Landgraf, the FX network president in relation to Louis C. K.’s sexual misconduct at the workplace, excusing his behaviour even after the cancellation of C. K.’s show. ¹ According to media scholar Stefania Marghitu, this is an example of ‘auteur apologism’, an argument that separates ‘the art from the artist, underpinned by the claim that a problematic identity is a prerequisite for creative genius’. ² Male artists might be known as enfants terribles but not as sexual abusers. This widespread practice of overlooking patriarchal oppression perpetuates power imbalances and obfuscates sexual abuses committed by white male artists. Only now, after the Harvey Weinstein scandal, these acts have been brought to attention. There is however ‘a much longer history to the systematic abuses of white patriarchy that are now being so vocally discussed as part of the “Weinstein effect”’. ³ It is significant that these men occupying positions of power in the media industry are white. While rampant sexual misconduct by white men has only recently become a predominant media topic, the racialised ‘other’ has been depicted in this same media as posing a threat to white Western women for a long time.

This article examines Otel·lo (dir. Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font, 2012) as an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play that addresses contemporary media discourses on race and gender violence. Produced and released before the Weinstein scandal, Otel·lo presents Iago as an abusive film director that exploits the female actor and manipulates the racialised male one. Specifically, my analysis examines the filmic treatment of race and gender exploitation to show how they relate not only to the patriarchal structures of the film industry and the stereotypical image of the Arab immigrant as rapist but also to the racist and Islamophobic mobilisation of feminism. An increasing number of right-wing politicians, such as Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, have requested nationalist and xenophobic measures in the name of women’s rights, ‘despite their lack of concern with elaborating concrete policies of gender equality’. ⁴ My article thus examines this Catalan Othello adaptation in order to unravel intersecting discourses of racial and gender oppression. ⁵

As Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin argue, cinematic adaptations of Othello tend to ‘dramatise the power that words have to transform our gaze but also to engender mental images’. ⁶ This is especially true in this meta-cinematic Othello, which queries the boundaries that delimit the categories of fiction and reality in order to show the importance of discursive practice in the construction of identity. Onscreen representation both reflects and refracts the world, simultaneously reifying and obfuscating identities, as the very word ‘screen’ implies. Otel·lo engages with this understanding of the cinematic apparatus as a mechanism that simultaneously shows and conceals ‘reality’, thus posing the screen as a surface that both veils and reveals the production and reproduction of stereotypes. In my analysis, I follow Richard Dyer’s 1993 seminal essay on stereotypes, in which he maintains that ‘it is not stereotypes, as an aspect of human thought and representation, that are wrong’ and argues that it is important to look at ‘who controls and defines them, what interests they serve’. ⁷ In this regard, I will examine the power dynamics present in the film through an analysis of the filmic text in relation to its context of production, which is one of rising xenophobia. At a time when the mediated image of the immigrant as rapist has significantly increased, what does Otel·lo’s criticism of representation tell us about the specific sociopolitical realities of its contemporary context? Since Otel·lo has not received much, if any, critical attention in the discipline of Shakespeare studies, this reading puts it in dialogue with the long tradition of Othello’s reception in Spain, where Shakespeare’s most famous play about jealousy has had a rich afterlife, showing how the nineteenth century’s lack of emphasis on its racial dynamic has given way to a deeper concern for the racial aspects of the play. ⁸ Similarly, my reading of the film contributes to ongoing research on contemporary Othello adaptations, in which the play’s cinematic afterlives often fluctuate between ‘racial alterity’, ⁹ which emphasises the racial issues at work in the play, and ‘de-racialisation’, which downplays the racial politics of the play in order to engage with other aspects of identity politics. ¹⁰

With Spain and Catalonia having experienced an upsurge in immigration particularly from Northern Africa in the last decade, Otel·lo shows how the presence of the Moroccan immigrant in Europe reveals crucial anxieties in the construction of nationhood at regional, national and supranational levels. As Daniela Flesler notes, ‘the immigrants’ presence, specifically Moroccan immigrants’ presence becomes particularly relevant due to Spain’s relationship with Morocco, Europe, and the historical regions within Spain. Their presence

both underlines and questions Spain’s belonging to Europe, and Catalonia’s belonging to both Europe and Spain. It affirms that belonging insofar as migrants come because of the opportunities offered by the ‘Europeanness’ of Spain, because Africa doesn’t begin at the Pyrenees anymore .…It also awakens old ghosts of Spanish closeness with North Africa. ¹¹

Part of ‘New Catalan Cinema’, ¹⁷ Otel·lo focuses on the shooting of an Othello film adaptation and on the fictional director’s manoeuvres to increase realism and emotional involvement among the actors. Al-Rahmoun Font’s film transfers the urban and domestic setting of Shakespeare’s Venice and Cyprus to a claustrophobic film studio. As Preti Taneja notes in her review for the Guardian, the film adapts Shakespeare’s play ‘to expose prejudices and assumptions about gender, race and the male gaze in Spain and on screen’. ¹⁸ Theatrically structured, the film is divided into six parts – a prologue and five acts – entitled ‘Prologue: Othello and Desdemona’,’Act I: Shooting’, ‘Act II: Cassio’, ‘Act III: Jealousy’, ‘Act IV: Iago’ and ‘Final Act: Handkerchief’. The onscreen titles of the acts function as visual markers signalling breaks in the narration and thus also function as distancing devices that halt the immersion and raise awareness of the cinematic construction. The film follows Josep Maria de Segarra’s Catalan translation of Othello during the actors’ rehearsal of the text ¹⁹ and retains the four main characters of the play: Othello (Youcef Allaoui), Desdemona (Ann M. Perelló), Cassio (Kike Fernández) and Iago (Al-Rahmoun Font). Each actor plays two characters, doubling as both a creative practitioner (actor and/or director) and her or his specific Shakespeare role – simultaneously playing ‘themselves’, as they retain their real names as well as play characters in Othello. This layers reality on three levels: the film-within-a-film, the film itself and the reality outside film. Microphones, cameras and film crew remain visible throughout, giving the impression that one is viewing an actual behind-the-scenes track instead of a fictional story. This enhances the realism of the film, since its story is the shooting of a film, while at the same time the aesthetics raise awareness about the constructed nature of on-screen representation. The ‘film director’ (as a ‘character’ in the film) functions as an Iago figure and stirs the actors’ emotional involvement in order to record Othello’s murder in a visceral, realistic manner. ²⁰ The film director’s and Iago’s aims thus converge, and the docufictional aesthetics of the film imply that Otel·lo functions as a ‘fictional snuff film’; that is, the cinematic recording of sexualised and pornographic murder for (allegedly) aesthetic reasons that is portrayed as real, since the form ‘balances fantasy with an aesthetic of authenticity’. ²¹ As a fictional snuff film, Otel·lo accommodates the patterns of mockumentary, also known as ‘fake documentary’ or ‘pseudo-documentary’. ²² Its focus on manipulation goes therefore beyond the level of content, as the filmic style raises awareness about the cinematic apparatus and is deliberately deceitful with the audience. In choosing not to establish clear boundaries between fiction and reality, the film obscures whether the events depicted onscreen actually happened on set. At the end, nevertheless, the film discloses its own fabrication by showing actual behind-the-scenes footage.

This overlapping of person and person, actor and role, situates Al-Rahmoun Font's film within what that Douglas Lanier identifies as ‘an oppressive master-narrative that, once invoked, takes over the life of the person playing the Moor, drawing out jealousy and leading to real murder (or attempted murder) on the stage’. ²³ Building on this Othello on-screen tradition, the film’s engagement with the playtext produces a reading of Othello that emphasises the constructed nature of representation and its impact on the self through the cinematic form of mockumentary. According to Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner, ‘fake documentaries are fiction films that make use of (copy, mock, mimic, gimmick) documentary style…to create a documentary experience defined by their antithesis, self-conscious distance’. ²⁴

Mockumentaries follow the naturalistic style of traditional documentary at a formal level, while the content is purely fictional, disclosing the lie of its own machination at the very end. For example, Otel·lo’s ending discloses how Allaoui and Perelló are not a couple in real life while the fictional film certainly suggests they are. An important implication of this interplay between traditionally opposed cinematic styles (fiction film and documentary film) is that it foregrounds the construction of reality by engaging with the ontology of documentary. The self-referential dimension of the film brings awareness of cinematic construction, which ‘produces uncertainty and also knowingness about documentary’s codes, assumptions, and processes’, facilitating a ‘possibility for the contesting of history, identity, and truth’. ²⁵ Mockumentaries disrupt a traditional understanding of the documentary genre that suggests ‘fullness and completion, knowledge and fact, explanations of the social world and its motivating mechanisms’. ²⁶ Since the validity of facts are put under investigation, these films question what counts as knowledge. Being part of this genre, Otel·lo discloses the power structure and the manipulation involved in the representation of the figure of the immigrant.

Casting the Moroccan immigrant, screening the Moor

In the last decade, Catalonia and Spain have experienced an upsurge in immigration, which peaked across Europe in 2015 with the refugee crisis. As Eurostat shows, Spain was the fourth-highest European country in terms of the numbers of non-European migrants it hosted in 2011. ²⁷ According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spanish Statistical Office), Barcelona received the major influx of non-European migrants in Spain, who came from Morocco (see Tables 1 and 2 in the Online Supplementary Material). ²⁸ Also in 2011, the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió (Opinion Study Centre) released a study on the public perception of immigration in Catalonia. ²⁹ According to this study, immigration ranked as the third main sociopolitical concern among participants, after the economic crisis and unemployment, and the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia published the results noting how ‘[h]alf of the Catalan Population wouldn’t rent their flat to an immigrant’ (‘La mitad de los catalanes no alquilaría su piso a un inmigrante’). ³⁰ These perceptions echo a climate of rising xenophobia. Since 9/11, xenophobic voices have increased across Europe, particularly against the Muslim and Arab population to the extent that conservative voices view Europe as a ‘doomed continent’, ‘a new ‘Islamicised’ European civilisation, in thrall to the Arab world’. ³¹ According to the journalist Oriana Fallaci, ‘Europe is no longer Europe, it is “Eurabia”, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense’. ³² Sociopolitical controversy over the Islamic veil has become symptomatic of how Islamophobic ideas spread through Europe particularly in relation to sexual politics, as Muslims and Arabs (terms often misleadingly used as synonyms) are seen to be a threat to European cultural values. Within this context, Otel·lo tells the story of an Arab immigrant as violent Moor by using a well-known Western text – Shakespeare’s Othello – as an oppressive master-narrative.

The film opens with the first of various casting scenes, which introduces Allaoui to the viewer. As we learn from his responses, Allaoui is not a professional actor but a multiple job-holding Moroccan immigrant. The ‘Othello’ figure teaches Arabic language and culture at the University of Vic, located in the Barcelona province, and at the Official School of Language (Escuela Oficial de Idiomas), Spain’s publicly funded network for the learning of modern foreign languages. Together with his role in education, Allaoui notes that he works as an immigration legal advisor for a trade union. From the very outset then, themes of belongings, cultural difference and migration are emphasised. The specificity of his teaching – Arabic language and Moroccan culture – and of his work in the trade union in support of migrants’ rights necessarily underscores his position as an outsider. Allaoui/Othello is racially marked and visually recognisable as an Arab due to his brown skin and dark features. However, his assimilation into European society is marked by his proficiency in Catalan – speaking almost as a native, since his foreign accent is barely noticeable. ³³ With no references to religion, the film thus updates Othello as a Moor who has settled in European society not by embracing Christianity but by portraying him as a Westernised Arab migrant in a secular country, with total command of the local language, and employed in higher education (see Figures 1 and 2 in the Online Supplementary Material).

However, the more the narrative unfolds, the more stereotypical the portrayal of Allaoui/Othello becomes. Act 1 focuses on the film crew’s and the film director’s insistence on Allaoui having to enunciate Shakespeare’s text literally, word by word. Allaoui/Othello repeatedly stumbles upon a line. The film focuses on his struggle in saying ‘O my sweet, / I prattle out of fashion, and I dote / In mine own comforts’ (2.1.202–4) and pays attention to how the crew persistently corrects his (minor) mistake. Allaoui/Othello says ‘al meu propi benestar’ (in my own comfort) instead of ‘al propi benestar’ (in my comfort). After repeating the scene three times, the film director decides to continue in spite of Allaoui/Othello’s distancing from the Shakespearean text. Repeating the lines over and over again, Allaoui is forced into what Homi Bhabha calls ‘mimicry’ or the (partial) repetition of the culture and language of the coloniser in a manner that it is ‘almost the same but not white’. ³⁴

The second act, named ‘Cassio’, opens with another casting scene in which both protagonists, Allaoui/Othello and Perelló/Desdemona, give further details about themselves. Here, jealousy starts to become explicit, as Allaoui/Othello eventually says, ‘I don’t like her having men as friends’, after his initial hesitance to respond to the film director’s question regarding his feelings towards his girlfriend. Crucially, the film will later make it explicit how the film director told the actor to say these exact lines, which is when the mockumentary discloses its own fabrication. The construction of Allaoui as a jealous Arab becomes particularly relevant at this point, as the film focuses on Cassio’s friendship with Desdemona and shows Allaoui/Othello in the background gazing at how their rehearsal is growing more and more intimate.

The third act, entitled ‘Jealousy’, moves closer to the depiction of Allaoui/Othello as a stereotypical Moor, not just because of his jealousy but also in how it portrays Othello as a superstitious and sexist character. ³⁵ The act begins with a rehearsal of the passage where Othello asks Desdemona to give him her hand, which he notices to be moist (3.4.34–42). The chosen passage shows how Othello is controlling Desdemona and being prescriptive about her behaviour, as well as how he reads her body superstitiously: ‘Hot, hot and moist – this hand of yours requires / A sequester from liberty; fasting, and prayer, / Much castigation, exercise devout’ (3.4.37–9). It suggests a primitivism and sexism that is particularly noticeable to a contemporary audience. Although this passage corresponds to the rehearsal of the Shakespearean text for the film-within-a-film, and can thus be interpreted within the context of Renaissance mores and knowledge of the human body, Allaoui’s jealousy (‘I saw she was very comfortable shooting the previous scene’) interrupts the shooting and the actors eventually have an argument backstage. It is at this point that the layers of reality start to overlap and, with the person and persona colliding, the film misleads its viewer by blending the emotional registers of both Allaoui and Othello, as his jealousy towards Cassio moves beyond the film-within-a-film. With the boundaries between reality and fiction blurring more and more, the film furthers the construction of Allaoui/Othello as a dangerous immigrant, which will eventually culminate in the final act when he almost kills Perelló/Desdemona in an erotically depicted scene.

Crucially, the presentation of Allaoui/Othello (and Perelló/Desdemona) is always mediated by the film director – onstage, as he decides how to shoot the film, and elsewhere too, as he is the one asking questions backstage during the casting. Always in control, he is the one who decides at every moment which questions to put forth and to whom. For example, he opts to ask Allaoui/Othello about how he feels with his female partner having male friends, while he chooses to ask Perelló/Desdemona about stirring desire in men other than her boyfriend, and not the reverse. The film director/Iago is revealed as an extremely manipulative character who has no qualms in exploiting the actors’ emotions in order to meet his own artistic (or sadistic) goals.

A reader familiar with Shakespeare’s text would notice the film director’s role as the Iago figure (with no need to wait to the end of the film when this is implied as he changes into Elizabethan costume before joining the stage). He is the major protagonist, and yet, the film features no lines from Iago whatsoever. Iago’s words transpose on screen as the manipulative behaviour of the film director and through the very act of filmmaking – of creating a film, of creating both fiction and reality. Iago is the director, a maker of images, narratives and also of Allaoui/Othello, who functions as Iago’s own projection. ³⁶ Determined by the directions received, Allaoui becomes Othello in following the film director’s instructions. His performance reaches authenticity because of the film director/Iago’s mastery of deception, with the blurring of fiction and reality determining the impact of the role on the actor, and the subsequent confusion of the audience. Otel·lo foregrounds how Iago functions ‘like a stage manager, or like a magician calling forth spirits to perform his will’, ³⁷ as he is ‘the great manipulator of the prevailing stories of his society’. ³⁸ The mise-en-scène also furthers this connection. The film director’s costume symbolises the roles he endorses as Iago at different points during his scheming plot. Initially, we find him in a white shirt; later he changes to a red polo shirt; and, eventually, he dresses in Renaissance attire. While the final costume corresponds to the culmination of his identification with Iago – the moment that announces his success – the second costume conveys his sexually sadistic behaviour during the shooting of the imaginary sexual encounter between Cassio and Desdemona. But what (if anything) does the colour of the initial white shirt suggest? Allaoui/Othello also dresses in a white shirt. With two white shirts foregrounded on the black stage, the film suggests a doubling between the film director/Iago and Allaoui/Othello, in yet another instance of colonial mimicry (see Figures 3 and 4 in the Online Supplementary Material). The film director wears the shirt until Allaoui/Othello disappears from the stage, as the film director is absent during the shooting of what corresponds to act four.

This visual detail of the white shirt furthers the idea of Othello as Iago’s projection. It arguably functions as one of Franz Fanon’s white masks, which conveys how ‘a Negro is forever in combat with his own image’, ³⁹ since racial ideology splits the colonised subject’s mind and turns the subject into ‘a victim of white civilisation’. ⁴⁰ The costume suggests how – far from being intrinsic to the self – the imposition of ‘race’ stems from outside, thus serving as both a performative and an ideological construct. With ‘white’ sociocultural constructs becoming part of himself, Othello ‘self-destructively internalises the prevailing racism’ of European society and thus takes on the role of ‘the erring barbarian’ (1.3.346–7). ⁴¹ Othello functions according to the surrounding ‘white’ narratives that are disseminated by, for example, Iago, whose stories ‘work because they are plausible’, because they are believable in a European racist culture that ‘sets the conditions of plausibility’. ⁴²

Textual ellipsis and the subsequent fictional fabrications that they produce, in the forms of ‘noses, ears, and lips’ (4.1.40), become particularly evident in the film. Othello vividly imagines Desdemona’s adultery after Iago’s insinuations, and this – Othello’s mind, when ‘He falls down in a trance’ (4.1.42) – corresponds to what is literally screened by the film director/Iago in act four, the focus of the next section. Eventually, this fictional account – Iago’s ‘lie’ (4.1.33) – that the film shows as a recording of Cassio and Desdemona’s sexual encounter is what produces a violent and murderous Moor.

Screening Othello’s mind: Sexual coercion behind the scenes

Othello uses the repository of female stereotypes (e.g. ‘fallen women’ as lustful and unreliable) to create the adultery narrative that Iago has sketched as well as to fill in the gaps left by Iago’s racist and sexist suggestions. Othello reacts violently against his wife because female bodies were – and still are – considered male property. The stereotypical depiction of women as unreliable and the notion of the female body as male property are the major triggers for Othello’s jealousy, alongside a self-insecurity provoked by his split consciousness as explained above. Media discourses disseminate racial ideologies together with patriarchal ones, which locate the female body as an object to possess and look at. However, the film tellingly reveals how such an abuse on the female body comes not only from the Othello figure but also – and especially – from white men: in this case, the film director/Iago and Fernández/Cassio, with whom the film director collaborates in the perpetration of sexual assault. Otel·lo examines the intersection of sexist and racist systems of oppression in what the film labels ‘Act IV: Iago’, which focuses on the physical and mental abuse exerted on Desdemona.

This scene is of central importance. It lasts for 20 minutes in a 60-minute film, and it encapsulates the major motifs of the film: the blurring of fiction and reality and the exploitation of disempowered individuals. While Shakespeare’s play depicts Othello and Desdemona ‘as mutual victims of the constricting discourses of racism and sexism’, ⁴³ in the film, however, patriarchal oppression forms the core of a scene that focuses on Othello’s mind, as he imagines Cassio and Desdemona having sex after Iago’s machinations. Combining racist and sexist discourses, the film emphasises Iago’s role as the evil puppetmaster of the plot. At a narrative level, the film locates the film director’s manipulative techniques side-by-side with Iago’s, not only because the act is named after him but also because it depicts the character as a sexual harasser, a characterisation that encapsulates Iago’s abusive and sexist behaviour. The fourth act follows the overall structure of the film and thus opens with a casting scene of Allaoui/Othello and Perelló/Desdemona. This introduces the actress’ lack of commitment to perform a sex scene, when she states that being naked in front of a camera would embarrass her, and she avoids responding positively to the film director/Iago’s question on whether she would perform such a scene. The abuse becomes even more explicit with her first and second rejection onstage during the rehearsal, and her tears and downcast eyes point towards her angst and indicate a lack of consent (see Figure 5 in the Online Supplementary Material); even Fernández/Cassio voices how ‘she doesn’t want to’, as he complains about her reluctance to undress. Since the film director uses neither physical violence nor any verbally aggressive remark, his insidious insistence and his persuasive methods of abuse through dialogue put him side by side with Iago’s unscrupulous behaviour through a mastery of language. His lies become blatant as he tells Fernández/Cassio: ‘you have her permission’, while the film never shows that she has expressed consent, tracking only her reluctance and distress.

The film director/Iago goes even further and encourages Fernández/Cassio to perform actual intercourse: ‘Do you like her? Fuck her…Eat her neck, she loves it. She needs you to lead. Leading means penetrating’. The film director/Iago’s desire to make the actors/characters engage in sexual intercourse becomes obvious to Perelló/Desdemona, who comments on his insistence and ultimate goal: ‘It’s just that you say something and I do it. But it’s never enough…More, more, more, and what? We’ll end up fucking?’ It is during this particular exchange that his manipulation becomes successful: he accuses her of not being professional. The power imbalance becomes glaringly obvious. Although he does not directly threaten her with being fired, he suggests so by mentioning how she had previously committed herself to appear naked on-screen and to perform a sex scene, which Perelló/Desdemona denies – a denial confirmed by the casting scenes. Dismissing yet again her reluctance, he insists: ‘I need it’. After a long silence in which her performance shows her distress, she responds ‘well, I’ll try but…’, to which the film director/Iago interrupts to say ‘C’mon, let’s try’, pressing her to go to the set. Her reluctance to shoot the sexual encounter emphasises how Desdemona is another one of Iago’s victims.

Following the act-opening casting scene, the action continues with Perelló/Desdemona onscreen, shot from behind and having her hair done as she stands between the frames of a door. At the same time, Fernández/Cassio’s reflection appears on a mirror, centred in the same shot. This mise en scène intimates the objectification and entrapment of the female character, with her body manipulated and her identity undisclosed, while the only face a viewer can see is that of Fernández/Cassio’s. This shot then cuts to a long shot of the film director/Iago dressed in red, standing in the shadows created by a stark chiaroscuro, right next to the kitchen table where a sex scene will be performed. The mise en scène suggests his empowerment through lighting (light falling directly on his hands) and shot composition (he stands in the middle of the shot and the position of his body shows him confidently looking up and dominating the space). His framing contrasts with Desdemona’s, as she first appears enclosed by the door; then is decentred after the film director/Iago’s initial pressing remarks; and then later out of focus after being repeatedly pressured into performing the scene (see Figure 6 in the Online Supplementary Material). In addition, she is framed in close-ups and extreme close-ups throughout most of the persuasion sequence, which, together with the mobile framing of the handheld camera, convey dislocation, confusion and invasion of intimacy. The lighting scheme also furthers the element of threat, as low-key lighting creates a chiaroscuro that leaves almost everything shrouded in shadows. Although low-key lighting is constant throughout the film, it increases as the narrative unfolds and it is particularly noticeable in this act. At crucial moments, the chiaroscuro underscores the film director/Iago’s face to mark his success and the naked bodies of the actors during their sexual encounter. Fernández/Cassio’s body also stands out when the shot composition locates him as the film director/Iago’s puppet. As the film director/Iago stands in the background giving instructions, the film director/Iago serves to function as an extension of Cassio’s body, visually conveyed in a series of shots where they appear almost merging their figures into one (see Figures 7 and 8 in the Online Supplementary Material).

Act four tracks the film director/Iago’s repeated pressure on Perelló/Desdemona to expose herself naked and to perform a sex scene in front of the cameras. Otel·lo underscores the film director/Iago’s behaviour as an act of oppression both at a narrative and at a formal level. It encapsulates fully how Otel·lo updates the patriarchal culture of the Renaissance by locating it in a film studio, transposing the subordination of women to a specific case of the exploitation of female labour and sexuality. The film functions thus as a depiction and a criticism of gender roles and sexual harassment in the film industry. ⁴⁴ With the shooting of the sex scene taking place on a set that represents a kitchen, the setting of the film suggests how sexual harassment crosses borders between different spheres: the public and the private, and the domestic and the political. By and large, it shows sexual harassment as something that is endemic in Western societies, not brought by outsiders or by so-called ‘rapefugees’. 2011, the year prior to the making of Otel·lo, witnessed the emergence of what came to be known as ‘Rape Jihad’ and ‘Europe’s rape epidemic’, a discourse that blamed rape and sexual violence on immigrants, particularly Muslim and Arab men. With xenophobic and racist attitudes increasing in the new millennium, a significant part of the population in both Spain and Catalonia also perceives immigration as a threat, not only due to the fear of losing European values but also due to ‘the fear of increased crime’. ⁴⁵ Although ‘no xenophobic party has a seat so far in the Spanish Parliament, unlike other European countries’, ‘the Plataforma per Catalunya (PXC, or Platform for Catalonia) won a total of 65,905 votes in the local and regional election’ in Catalonia just 1 year before the production of Otel·lo, ‘with the watchword “those at home first”’. ⁴⁶ Headlines such as ‘Immigrants behind Most Rapes in Stavanger’ or ‘Europe’s Rape Epidemic: Western Women Will Be Sacrificed at The Altar of Mass Migration’ spread across European media. ⁴⁷ In Catalonia and Spain, conservative media headlines pointed specifically towards Moroccan immigrants as sexual offenders: ‘An 18 Year Old Moroccan Rapes an Acquaintance on a Hill’ (‘un marroquí de 18 años viola a una conocida en el cerro’); ‘Stalking Our Daughters: Two Moors Try to Rape Two Girls in the Surroundings of a High School in Cádiz’ (‘Al acecho de nuestras hijas: Dos moros intentan violar a dos niñas en los alrededores de un instituto de Cádiz’); ‘Two Moroccan Immigrants Rape a Woman in a Park in Valencia’ (‘Dos inmigrantes marroquíes violan a una mujer en un parque de Valencia’). ⁴⁸ These media discourses that construct the image of the immigrant as rapist, particularly when of Arab or Muslim origin, are symptomatic to how ‘the instrumentalisation of sexual politics against immigrants has now become a European reality’. ⁴⁹ As Angela Davis argues, ‘the myth of the black rapist’ reveals a connection between the Eurocentric construction of black masculinity and nationalist ideologies. ⁵⁰ In the case of Spain and Catalonia, these discourses engage with long-established stereotypes of the Moroccan immigrant that ‘articulate a particular sexual violence’, which have become symptomatic of rising anxieties concerning ‘belonging’ and national/regional identity – as much in Catalonia as in Spain. ⁵¹

Handkerchief as screen: The pornographic aesthetics of the male gaze

Set against this context, Otel·lo brings the discourses of racism and sexism together. The situation of female labour in the film industry relates to the wider issues of gender violence, the objectification of female bodies and the politics of representation, as the film simultaneously portrays the film director’s abuse behind the scenes and the play’s obsession with visuality and the male gaze. ⁵² The female body is blatantly exploited not as much by the Moroccan character as by the white characters and the film industry – a film industry that profits from female sexuality and nurtures the male gaze, which in turn fosters violence upon women. With Iago’s insinuations about Desdemona’s adultery materialised on-screen, the film makes literal the ‘ocular proof’ (3.3.365). In the final act, called ‘The Handkerchief’, the film director/Iago brings a laptop onto the stage in order to play a recording of the coerced sex scene for Allaoui/Othello to see it. This stirs Allaoui/Othello’s jealousy and abusive behaviour towards Perelló/Desdemona, since he does know that she was coerced, and it also situates the laptop’s screen as a modernised version of Othello’s iconic prop. ⁵³ Playing the recording of the enforced sex scene, the film director/Iago uses the screen-as-handkerchief to trigger an emotional response in Allaoui/Othello because he is not satisfied with the actor’s initial performance, where he does not try to kill the actress.

With the film studio as workplace, Otel·lo’s handkerchief emphasises the interconnection of the discourses of female labour and sexuality. Capitalism has been entwined with gender oppression since its inception, as Dympna Callaghan explains in relation to the play and its early modern context by exploring the interrelation between the textile industry and gender exploitation. With needlework gendered as female labour, Callaghan argues that ‘because textile industries did not pay women even subsistence wages, women combined spinning and needletrades with prostitution’; ⁵⁴ and she reads Othello in relation to the economic exploitation of female sexuality in a system that compels women to make a living out of their body. In modern times, the glass ceiling and the subsequent lack of women in power positions, such as creative and decision-making roles in the film industry, further the exploitation of female sexuality, as much in the media profession as beyond. ⁵⁵ Salma Hayek’s recent accusation against Harvey Weinstein of coercion into the performance of a sex scene during the shooting of Frida echoes the narrative of Otel·lo – to name but one out of countless stories of sexual harassment and assault that would reverberate in this context. ⁵⁶ The film director/Iago’s persuasive words become effective when he reasserts his own power position within the media industry. He says that he needs the scene, after the actress’ repeated resistance to shoot it and insinuates her lack of professionalism to pressure her into it. Their exchange suggests that if she refuses to perform a sex scene onstage – to record a scene that does not appear in the actual play – then she will be fired. The sexualisation of the handkerchief, therefore, is visible in both play and film. The play casts the handkerchief as a ‘visually recognisable reduction of Othello and Desdemona’s wedding-bed sheets’, which includes the symbolism of the strawberries, ‘emblematic of virginal blood’. ⁵⁷ The film updates the handkerchief as a laptop and locates it side-by-side with the pornographic gaze that commodifies the female body.

The film also functions as an instance of the male gaze. The screening of the sexual encounter objectifies the female body. With the point of view never being that of the female actor, but rather that of the camera-as-voyeur, the scene locates the female character in the position of an object, underscoring her ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ as she is ‘coded for strong visual and erotic impact’. ⁵⁸ The camera adopts the codes of pornography, which primarily aim at ‘sexual arousal’ but may also provoke other affects such as disgust, with which sexual arousal ‘might be experienced simultaneously’. ⁵⁹ Arguably, this is the case with Otel·lo’s depiction of the coerced sexual scene. The scene first tracks the event through a medium shot, in a full display of nudity. With the bodies totally lit, their whiteness contrasts with the black background and emphasises the action itself. This shot cuts to a close-up that focuses on the actress’ face and her nude breasts and then cuts again to a medium shot and a large one, both of which provide a clear display of the sex act. Together with the position of the voyeuristic camera, which omits her perspective, the position of the actors also participates in her objectification and eloquently conveys the power dynamics of the scene Perelló/Desdemona bends over on top of a table, half-standing, while Fernández/Cassio (pretends to?) penetrate her from behind. Her submission is also underscored in the fact that Perelló/Desdemona does not even take an active position in undressing herself, as a member of the film crew enters onstage to remove her skirt, while Fernández/Cassio pulls her underwear down, following the film director/Iago’s instructions (see Figures 9 and 10 in the Online Supplementary Material). In addition to the male gaze, the audio track records their heavy breathing, and the rhythmic beating of the table provoked by Fernández/Cassio’s movements builds on the pornographic aesthetics of the scene. Once the shooting of the sex scene finishes, Perelló/Desdemona puts on a white shirt. Visible on top of the table throughout the entire scene, the white shirt functions again as a signifier of the film director/Iago’s abusive and manipulative behaviour. Obviously belonging to a man, the shirt is too large for her. The camera focuses on this size discrepancy between her body and the shirt that covers her nudity (and vulnerability) with a sustained medium shot. Here she appears as a doll or puppet because her position – with her arms up and her hands covered by fabric – suggests submission and restraint of mobility and agency. After this, the camera cuts to a scene that shows a double-frame of the coerced character while she looks at herself in the mirror, wiping her tears. Starkly in contrast, the camera moves to show Fernández/Cassio, happily smoking a post-coital cigarette. The white shirt thus marks not only the film director/Iago’s manipulation of Allaoui/Othello but that of Perelló/Desdemona too (see Figures 11 and 12 in the Online Supplementary Material).

This scene cuts to the final act that is named after the handkerchief and corresponds to the shooting of Othello’s murder scene, which again sexualises the female character. Our first encounter with Perelló/Desdemona in the murder scene is actually on the bed, where the action will take place: a panning shot tracks her body and fragments it with a series of close-ups. There is no conversation with Emilia, and the bed turns into the stage, with the camera being literally inside it. When Allaoui/Othello smothers her, the camera-voyeur continues objectifying her figure as the viewpoint is never hers, her passivity underscored and her death thus eroticised. An extreme close-up on her face shows the character on the verge of suffocation, which together with the diegetic sounds – her moaning and heavy breathing – are suggestive of sexual climax. The screening of the sex scene triggers the murder: the male gaze reproduces not just the male gaze but also direct abuse on women. ⁶⁰

The Moor as rapist? Wedding beds, kitchen tables and the snuff filmmaker

The different layers of reality that the film produces especially intersect in the two scenes of sexual exploitation. At those moments, the film furthers the uncertainty regarding the boundaries between the diegetic and the non-diegetic events. The interplay of fiction and reality and the film’s documentary aesthetics raise the question of whether what we were seeing was real – whether the attempted murder actually happened at a non-diegetic level. However, while it is not entirely clear whether sexual intercourse actually happened on set during the recording of the imaginary adultery, the film leaves no doubts regarding the attempted murder, which happens in the diegetic reality of the film itself. The film director/Iago’s intentions become very clear as, being in close proximity to the scene, he does not stop Allaoui/Othello when he is on the verge of ending Desdemona’s – and by implication, the actress’ – life. Instead, the film director/Iago films the murder and tries to stop the crew when they intervene to seize Allaoui/Othello. The film director/Iago repeatedly tells the film crew to leave Allaoui/Othello alone (‘Leave him!’) and quarrels with them, until they eventually manage to stop the murder. As a snuff film-maker, Iago embodies ‘not only sadistic drives latent within the cinematic gaze, but also function[s] as a conduit for questions of the economic and artistic exploitation of particular social groupings…[mobilising] a world view in which social outcasts are manipulated’. ⁶¹

The film director/Iago’s attempt to shoot a real murder while exploiting the female and the black characters shows how Otel·lo positions itself within the cinematic trend of fictional snuff. With Iago as a snuff filmmaker and the white male actor collaborating in the sexist abuse, this Catalan adaptation emphasises how Othello ‘forcefully combats racism (which posits blacks and whites as essentially different) precisely by its presentation of Othello as not at all different from any white husband’. ⁶² Certainly, however, Allaoui/Othello’s violent reaction against the actress is not the only sexist abuse that the film presents. With the film crew preventing Allaoui/Othello from murdering his (fictional) partner at the workplace, the film underscores how the personal is political and how the play ‘challenges’ the assumption that ‘outsiders should not interfere between husband and wife’. ⁶³ Nevertheless, the film crew’s delayed and hesitant intervention is suggestive of a general passivity and ambivalence that remains in contemporary society towards gender violence, which the film screens through repeated long shots that frame the film crew gazing at the scene of violence, holding still, until they eventually interfere.

Far from adopting a reductive position in relation to the myth of the immigrant as rapist, the film problematises it, both narratively and visually, through the central element of the bed. Otel·lo presents a Moroccan immigrant to tell the story of a recently wed interracial couple. In a film that presents sex in a rather explicit manner, it is telling that there is no sex scene between the Moor and the white woman. However, the film foregrounds the importance of the wedding bed, and bed-like structures become the only props visible onstage. The shooting of the film starts with a white-curtained bed, which turns into the major focus in the prologue, entitled ‘Othello and Desdemona’. In the prologue, the director delays the rehearsal and ignores the actors, as the bed is his central concern. The entire shooting sequence focuses on how the film director struggles to arrange the composition and lighting of the shot in his attempt to make the bed central (see Figure 13 in the Online Supplementary Material). As Michael Neill argues in relation to the playtext, Othello’s bed evokes the hidden and the hideous, ‘exposing to cruel light the obscure erotic fantasies that the play both explores and disturbingly excites in its audience’. ⁶⁴ The wedding bed functions thus as a visual marker of miscegenation: that being of the marriage between a white, blonde woman and a Moroccan immigrant. And yet, there is no sexual act on this bed, which contrasts however with the kitchen table where the coerced sex scene takes place – the footage of which will trigger the Moors’ attempted murder after he finally succumbs to the xenophobic and sexist discourse that the film director/Iago has crafted. The contrast between these two scenes set on the same bed shows how initially Allaoui distances himself from the stereotype of the Moor as sexual predator, only to eventually fall into it once the fiction/ideology has taken over his personhood. It shows how sexual politics are mobilised to scapegoat the outsider. The replacement of the bed by the kitchen table in the actual rape scene (of a white woman by a white man) is significant. It suggests how Western obsession with miscegenation and black masculinity as violent is misplaced, since the problem does not rely on the marriage between a black man and a white woman but rather on the misogynistic structures of Western society, which relegates women to the status of consumables and/or domestic properties.

Conclusion

Playing with the expectations of the audience, Otel·lo engages with the discursive construction of the immigrant in Catalonia, Spain and Europe. It shows how reality can be fictional, as well as how fiction can become real. The media plays a vital role in the creation of the social imagery of the immigrant, and there is a ‘discrepancy between actual rates and public perceptions of criminal behaviour by immigrants’. ⁶⁵

Otel·lo focuses on the lies and the coercion involved in the construction of the stereotype of the Moor as sexual predator. Casting Iago as a snuff filmmaker who sexually harasses and assaults the female actor with the collaboration of the white male actor, the adaptation brings into focus how gender violence is the product of an oppressive patriarchal structure and not of immigration or race. The workplace and the cinematic gaze appear thus as sites of race and gender privilege. Through its self-reflexive dimension, the film engages not only with the shooting of an Othello adaptation and the construction of a set of characters but also with the limits of representation and the ontology of knowledge, problematising them as the film discloses the power dynamics involved in the process. By employing the aesthetics of a mockumentary, the film blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality and invites the audience to re-think its constructed categories and to look ‘behind the scenes’ to question received ‘truths’ that the media and other discourses perpetuate. If mockumentaries make ‘central the lively reverberations between fact and fiction, image and reality’, ⁶⁶ Al-Rahmoun Font’s mockumentary film foregrounds Othello’s themes of language and manipulation, emphasising how the play reveals that ‘all stereotypes are misleading’ ⁶⁷ and pointing towards knowledge and identity as being socially constructed. In so doing, Otel·lo questions the received truths on race and gender that populate the mediated discourses across Catalonia, Spain, and Europe.

Supplemental material