Colorblindness on the Post-Racial Stage: Hip hop, Comedy, and Cultural Appropriation in Othello: The Remix

Chapter 2 examines the colorblind narrative approach to Othello taken in the Q Brothers’ “ad-rap-tation” Othello: The Remix (2012). This production serves as a complex site displaying the friction caused when employing hip hop for reimagining Shakespeare by situating Othello: The Remix’s use of hip hop through Imani Perry’s, Tricia Rose’s, and Michael Asante Jr.’s respective discussions of the genre’s history as a Black, polemical art form. This history clashes with the Q Brothers’ decision to highlight comedy within Othello so as to appeal to conservative white theatregoers. The merging of these genres results in two forms of racial distortion: a colorblind approach to race paired with supposedly comedic racial stereotyping. The Q Brothers thus create a toothsome version of hip hop, which mirrors white society’s cultural appropriation of the genre. Paying homage to but methodologically extending conversations about colorblind casting and Shakespeare, the chapter concludes that countering appropriative, colorblind Shakespearean reanimations entails an emphasis on the idea of the color-conscious, not only as applied to casting, but just as importantly, at the narrative level.