In this version of Othello, Odin James (Othello) is an all-star high school basketball player. Instead of a war against the Turks, Odin's basketball team has made it to the state playoffs. The nuances of Shakespeare's lines, such as Othello’s gradual disuse of blank verse as he grows jealous (lecture), are lost as iambic pentameter has been replaced with contemporary slang. The differences between O and Othello, however, are more than superficial.
Where Othello is a story where Othello’s race plays a minor role (Kerwin), the story of O hinges heavily on the racial tension between a black basketball player in an all-white prep school. O’s discussion with "Desi" about the political correctness of the derogatory term "nigger" highlights this tension. Further, O’s producer has made a half-hearted attempt to show the source of Hugo's (Iag
In retrospect, however, some scenes were direct translations of certain scenes in Othello that did not seem to fit well in this contemporary version. Iago/Hugo's unexpected "from this point on I speak no more" is random and arbitrary in the context of the movie's plot. The idea of giving a scarf (that looks like a handkerchief) as a present is incongruous with the film's modern setting.
o) jealousy by showing scenes where Hugo really is the hard-working, seldom-recognized grunt of the team. This is twisted around, however, when scenes of Hugo taking drugs serve to villainize him (an effect similar to Iago's satanic Credo in Verdi's Otello). The producer also throws a shroud over O’s background, suggesting some degree of a criminal record and a short temper in a scene where he beats up the Rodolfo-analog. The fact that O starts out as a c
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