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How To Modernise Othello

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Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and I hope you're as excited as I am to be here, to discuss with you my new film pitch, a modern adaptation of one of Shakespeare's most-loved classics, Othello.
Despite being written to pander to the lowest common demoniter in Elizabethan times, Shakespeare, in our society, seems to be reserved for scholars and the well-educated, with its use of language lowering it's accessibilty and providing us with a barrier to enjoyment , making it relatively obsolete in our times.
Modernising Othello provides an opportunity to transform the play into an understandable and relevant story, whilst preserving the themes, values and attitudes portrayed in the original, however, manipulating them to resonate with a modern …show more content…

Entitled 'The Treachery of Images', the film makes reference to Magritte's infamous pipe painting, reminding us that we should not necessarily believe in what we see and think, as deception lies in every nook and cranny in our lives, meaning that nothing can truly be trusted. This is a modern and novel nod to Othello, as the play itself is an adept exploration of the faces of good and evil, proving the end point that nothing, and no one, are truly what they seem.
My vision re-casts Othello as Oliver, a 20th century English Duke, who, despite his constant questioning of the church and it's values, is appointed as mayor of a small village, leaving the metropolitan haven of the city, and into a place where he is neither trusted nor accepted. With him come his faithful and sweet wife, Dorothea, who married him against her heavily religious fathers wishes, and his two sons, Ichabod and Charles. Whilst Oliver trusts, and supposedly favours, Ichabod, Charles is far more successful than his brother, meaning he is named sole heir of the families wealth and estate. For fair natured and trustworthy Ichabod, this would be a choice that he would support wholly, however, a changling has taken his place, a curse put upon him by the God that he questions so freely. Under the pretense of being Ichabod, the changeling begins to wreak havoc, coaxing Oliver into pyschosis and convincing him that there is something Oedipal occuring between Charles and Dorothea, and eventually causing Oliver to murder

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