Enrolled in Harvard Summer School, on July 9th, I was assigned a comparative essay looking at Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice from the perspective of Frank TannenBaum's "The Dramatization of Evil." Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is a play documenting the religious conflicts between Jews and Christians, as represented in the interactions between two characters: Shylock, a Jew, and Antonio, a Christian. Conversely, Frank Tannenbaum's "The Dramatization of Evil" is a 20th century social scientific theory that examines the steps in the making of a criminal and criminality in itself as an emergent property. Simultaneous to this assignment, On July 10th, news broke of the Dallas incident wherein, Micah Johnson, an African-American male, shot and killed 5 police officer, wounding another 7.
Interestingly, if we look at a 16th century text, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, from the perspective of this 20th century social scientific theory, "The Dramatization of Evil," we gain valuable insight into the source of Shylock's criminality, in turn lending us the ability to fully understand this 21st century issue of race relations.
Frank Tannenbaum's "The Dramatization of Evil" begins this process in its discussion of the idea that when interacting with a group that has been labeled with a certain identifier, it is imperative to understand that we are dealing with an individual who's simply responding to the demands, approval, and expectancies of the group in which they've been grouped into. Essentially, this is the reason for opposing groups oft-violent responses in their dealings with each other. Typically however, it seems as if both groups are unable to recognize that their responses and actions aren't necessarily because of an inherent vendetta against the other, but rather born of an expectancy that has been ingrained in their subconscious. They're only criminals, broadly conceived, within the capacity that their society dictates.
In relevance to Shylock, his situation must first be contextualized to understand the pertinence of these ideas. In The Merchant of Venice, Jews like Shylock are seen as shady, greedy individuals because of their dealings in money lending. This makes the Christians treat them with a certain scorn and disdain, as this practice is barred from their religion. This cultured prejudice manifests itself in a dynamic in which the Jews, the oppressed, and the Christians, the oppressors, approach interactions with each other with preconceived notions of hatred. Therefore, Shylock, being subject to this discrimination at the hands of Antonio, seeks to take Antonio's life in reprieve for the wrongs he's been dealt.
In this way, Shylock's actions mirror the sentiments expressed in the dramatization of evil, as being cast as the proverbial "other" results in his perceived villainy. However, Shylock is not inherently evil, but simply becomes the hideously evil stereotype of a Jew that he has been described as being by the Christians. Nonetheless, Shylock's embodiment of the characteristics thought to be unique to his group results in the Christians dramatizing the evil within him. Ironically, Shylock, in the plays beginnings, remarks that he hates Antonio for the simple fact that he's a Christian --Shylock himself goes into his interactions with Christians with irrational hate, thus leading him to enact his own discrimination by dramatizing the evil of the Christians. He is both victim and proprietor of the very things he's victimized for, an ironic twist, but imperative in dismantling notions that a given side is entirely to blame for hateful interactions.
Similar to how religious conflict creates violent crime in Merchant of Venice, modern racial tensions have brought about a similar outcome. In American society, the criminal justice system has acted as an oppressive force, leading the criminal justice system to be represented in the black imagination as synonymous with terror. In this manner, the unfortunate past between the two functions as the slim barrier that impedes Black Americans from embracing Police, as has been ingrained through centuries of mistreatment that survives and underlies all present day interactions between the two groups.
Mirroring this oppressiveness and discrimination, current attitudes -- greatly influenced by recent acts of police brutality-- wish to enact justice, like Shylock, in the form of revenge. A prominent example is the Dallas shooting that took place on the 10th of July. Representative of this trend in that the underlying motivation for this attack, as presented by Johnson himself was the simple fact that, upset by recent police killings, he sought revenge by taking the life of white police officers. However, this only serves to breed a cyclic chain of never-ending violence. While an isolated incident, this shooting captures the sentiment of what has become a national trend: the group that was being victimized -- Black Americans -- now seeks to become the perpetrator of the irrational violence that they have been subject to.
Although, the real injustice rests in the fact that the violence and hatred on both sides has blinded members of both groups to the effects of their interactions: the death of innocent people. In a Baton Rouge shooting of law enforcement agents -- also carried by a black male, Gavin Long, for similar reasons as Johnson -- 3 police officers were killed, one of which, Montrell Jackson delivered a particularly poignant social media post in the days prior to his death:
"I swear to God I love this city, but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty, hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat. ... These are trying times. Please don't let hate infect your heart." -- Montrell Jackson, a fallen officer
In a sense, Black Americans are becoming the violent criminals they have been identified as being, in a similar mode as Shylock does. However, embodying these prejudices only acts to reinforce the validity of these stereotypes, only serving to further ingrain them in the minds of police, which in turn, conceivably, increases Police's propensity towards violence in interactions with Black Americans. Of course this is broadly generalizing the conflict and the persons involved, but notwithstanding, this captures the nature of the myopic attitudes that breeds the cyclic violence of this conflict.
Modern race relations, as demonstrated, is in many ways fluidly analogous to the Merchant of Venice. The Merchant of Venice comes close to functioning as a revenge tragedy -- a reality that this situation is speeding towards, if not addressed. In this way, it helps puts brutal honesty at the service of simple clarity, as we see the conclusions brought about by analyzing this text through the lens of the Dramatization of evil, superimposed onto a modern, social context, spell out disaster. The present fervor, and hateful rhetoric needs to be substituted with understanding; but to understand, both sides must cease this dramatization of the evil within the other, and with this, start to dismantle the hatred that has come to dominate their interactions with each other.
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