Thursday, February 14, 2008

watkinstakakimediapost

Takaki the famed author is well known for his writings about ethnicity. In chapter twoof “a different mirror” Takaki discusses how in the early 1500’s in Europe many different races were seen as outcasts. They were often discriminated against and even seen as savages. This was shown more so in William Shakespeare’s play of the “Tempest”. The media piece for me that best describes this information is William Shakespeare’s “the Tempest”. This piece is what Takaki based his writing on so for me this best fits what I am trying to portray.
In this time period of the early 1500’s many races, Africans, Irish, and German people were seen as slaves. Originally they began as servants trying to pay off their debt to wealthy land owners by working and living with them. This turned into a form of slavery. In “the Tempest” the character Caliban, the African man is depicted in many different ways, mainly as being a chaotic and brutal character. This play shows the many different roles that he was incorporated as. His barbaric ways gave a negative view of Africans in this play. Also it has drawn many different stereotypes, from him walking on all four limbs as to symbolize a monkey, or creature, to people observing his features of a large nose and exaggerated lips. This play is one of the most famous by Shakespeare and is well known around the world. This fits into our discussions due to the fact that because of his negative role in this play it cause a sort of scare of the African race that was caused by this play and Caliban’s role in this particular play.
My personal feedback is during the time that this play was originally performed in England, it was highly unusual to see a dark skinned performer in plays, not to mention the role of a barbaric and violent character. This caused fear of the unknown since many Africans were around being used as slaves, nobody wanted them to become anything more than that because of what was depicted of them.

Link: http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/The_Tempest/1.html

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