A few days ago I watched one of the most interesting documentaries recently released in Brazil, directed by Lucas H. Rossi dos Santos, Othello the Great which deals with the life and work of the Brazilian actor Grande Othelo.
Throughout the film, the only statement about the actor was that of the poet Carlos Drumond de Andrade because, for Othello the Great What mattered were the various filmed testimonies of the artist himself, interspersed with photos from different periods and iconic excerpts from his participation in theater, cinema and television. I believe that the fabric formed by Grande Othelo's voice and his images from so many eras constituted the strength of the film. More than adherence to chronology, the purpose of the documentary was the coherence between the actor's speeches and the images suggested from them.
I left the film with my feelings about Grande Othelo renewed and satisfied by the respectful, caring and aesthetically convincing with which he and his legacy were treated.
Great Othello, in addition to the peculiar talent he always displayed (or precisely because of that), he seems to have managed to leave a strong enough impression on those he met to overcome any difficulty. And this becomes clear in the documentary, for example, when we are led to reflect on how he somehow managed to gain the interest of two of the most important names in international cinema of the last century: directors Orson Welles and Werner Herzog.
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Lucas H. Rossi dos Santos' film reminded me of a text entitled Othello [sic], published on October 26, 1926 by the São Paulo writer Menotti Del Picchia, at Paulista Post Office, when, in 2018, I began the survey and analysis of the journalistic production of the intellectual. I was very impressed by reading that article because in it, Menotti – then 34 years old – recounted his encounter with the then 11-year-old boy – Grande Othelo – in time working as an actor for the Companhia Negra de Revista, from Rio de Janeiro, on tour in São Paulo.
As I will try to demonstrate here, Del Picchia seems to be impacted by the figure of the child singer/actor, realizing that he is faced with a genuine talent, a vision that is immediately clouded by a prejudiced view of the boy's blackness, which, for the author, seemed to make it impossible for him to maintain his potential as an artist. This contradictory attitude of Menotti's – believing in the boy's talent and, at the same time, disbelieving in the possibility of developing his professional capabilities – brought me two questions to reflect on: first, it allows us to infer how Grande Othelo's vocation and spontaneity, together, managed to captivate the interest of those who could observe his talent; second, it gives us an idea of how racism blurred (and still blurs) the possibilities of real integration between whites and blacks.
When Del Picchia wrote about the young Grande Othelo, he made explicit how racism structured the common sense of the majority of the white population in Brazil, even among well-thinking intellectuals who were supposedly aware of the local and international social and political debate. As will be seen, it seems that for Del Picchia there was no other way to reflect on the talent of a young black man like Grande Othelo outside the parameters that supported his worldview.
Before delving into Del Picchia's comments on Othello, I consider it important to raise your concerns regarding the racial issue in Brazil.
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In the mid-1920s, Del Picchia was one of the most prolific intellectuals working in São Paulo: in addition to the column he wrote in the newspaper Paulista Post Office, entitled “Crônica social”, collaborated with other periodicals in the city and in Rio de Janeiro, also publishing collections of texts, short stories, poems, etc. In “Crônica Social”, Menotti published articles on the cultural environment of São Paulo (on literature, visual arts, music, cinema and a series of other subjects).
Another topic that interested him was the racial issue and how much it had influenced and could still influence the future of Brazil. Son of Italian immigrants, who arrived in São Paulo at the end of the 19th century, Menotti, like several other intellectuals who emerged before, during and after his most effective performance, believed that Brazilians descended from the so-called Latin race, of European origin – classical and pagan – and that, on that continent, it was opposed to the Latin race said Germanic – romantic and Christian. For him, the Iberian branch of the Latins would have immigrated to the Americas, with a broad Portuguese presence in Brazil, later expanded by other European Latin peoples.
In turn, the Portuguese had to deal with the indigenous people who were present here when they arrived, and with the enslaved blacks who had come from Africa. For Menotti, the first group practically no longer existed in Brazilian territory, since it had been decimated or mixed with the whites and blacks, and its remnants had been expelled to the most distant places.
In 1921, when Menotti took a stand against “Peri” – the character of José de Alencar, the main Indianist myth in Brazilian literature – he confused, intentionally or not, the character with the real indigenous person, denying the relevance of both for Brazilian culture and society:
(…) Peri is a false enemy: he never existed. I never believed in the real existence of the Indians, of whom the Europeans believe they are full [sic] squares and avenues. The news I have about them, in ethnographic treatises and in museum documentation, makes me think of them as in the vague legend of primates, of anthropothecs [sic], of the megatheriums and other crepuscular things. Sometimes I even imagine that Peri – borrowed from Chateaubriand, therefore legitimately French – was never more than a literary fiction by Alencar.
However, what did this cost us? joke (…). Peri was a naked and tanned stain that soiled the national dignity. This lyrical lie, transformed into a social function by the inactive [sic] fetishistic admiration of the zoilos, came to disturb our ethnologists. This romantic hypothesis was admitted as a formative element of the race, attributing to the vagrant, stupid and useless Indian a high function in the formation of our national type (…).
Nothing could be further from the truth! I have never seen any Indians, but what I have read is serious – … – about the nature of these people with their dark complexions [sic], flat nose, questionable hygiene, was just a psychological statement that turned into a serious accusation against his ethnic inferiority and absolute social inadaptability (…)
Transformed into literary abstraction and, at the same time, configured as emanations of the devil (“cape-like complexion”), the indigenous people were not a problem for Menotti. For him, the issue was how to deal with the population of African origin in Brazil, an obstacle to be taken into account in debates about projects for the nation.
Since at least 1917 – when he released his first great editorial success, the poem Juca mulatto – Del Picchia oscillated between perceive the Afro-descendant as a being who knew he was inferior to the white man (the character Juca mulatto would be the best example here), while at the same time sharing the standard sentiment that a large part of minimally literate Catholics seemed to adopt in relation to the Afro-descendant population: a sentiment that mixed gratitude and guilt, tinged with the arrogance of believing oneself superior. In other words: Menotti recognized the humanity of black people and their importance for the transformation of Brazil. But, on the other hand, as a “legitimate” Latino (not to forget his Italian ancestry), he did not give up understanding the Brazilian population as fundamentally white, of European descent.
It is, therefore, with this positioning in relation to black Brazilians that Menotti meets the young Grande Othelo, when the actor visits the newspaper's editorial office. Paulista Post Office, to publicize the presentations in São Paulo of the Company of which he was a part.
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At the outset, Menotti makes a point of stating that the Othello he refers to was not the character in Shakespeare's play, Othello, the Moor of Venice, from the beginning of the 17th century, transformed into an opera two centuries later by Verdi. He stated:
This [Othello] does not gnash his teeth, does not leap like an ebony ape, does not gag with his uxorcid hands [sic] the white Desdemona (…). She does not wear the plateal velvet [sic] and the most amazing singer in the limelight, he doesn't even paint his face with smoke from the bottom of a pan. He's really black. He's a little over half a meter tall. As angry as a saci…
Menotti is clearly impressed by that young Othello who, unlike the actors who played Shakespeare's character, did not use the artifice of black face. The young Othello he described was a black actor, so black that, to him, he resembled Saci. In short, “an intelligent little black boy, found by pious souls on the benches of the public garden of Uberabinha”.
It is important to note that, for Menotti, Grande Othelo was not an extremely intelligent child, but rather a “very intelligent little black boy.” As expected, the racialization of the child was immediate because, for the intellectual, the fact that Grande Othelo was an extremely talented child gains another component – a component that brings a degree of surprise to his writing – when it is emphasized that he was “a little black boy.” “A little black boy” who, if it were not for the charitable (and white) souls who took him in, “would have been a vagabond or a gavroche. He would have stolen brown sugar and tied knots in the tails of the horses tied to the posts next to the shops in the small town.” Which means that, for Menotti, the young Grande Othelo would not have followed his destiny – that is, his destiny as any “little black boy,” as a saci – because he counted on the kindness and good will of the people who “took him in” and took him to Rio de Janeiro.
It is after this presentation that the intellectual informs the reader that the young singer/actor had gone to the newspaper’s offices to publicize the work of the Company he was a part of. After describing the elegance of the boy’s attire, Menotti concludes: “Swirling, lively, sagacious eyes, a squishy little nose, a head of cucumbers, bristling with pixie dust. But what vivacity! What intelligence!”
The author seemed impressed by the child who, according to him, despite being black, was lively and intelligent. Reality prevailed over Menotti's prejudice about the child. The intellectual spared no praise when referring to Grande Othelo's performance, praise that arose in the midst of a thought structure riddled with racist elements:
[Othello] last night […] gave us a few moments of joy. That half-meter of black skin, with two prematurely mischievous eyes, with his tactile and open lips in every way [sic] of a gramophone, sang “Ciondolo d’oro” with the emotion that would make him a great artist. This in Italian. Then he showed that he knew Spanish. And he said the sonorous sorrow of a tango […] then he recited verses from Campoamor. Then a monologue…
Emotionality “that would make him a great artist”. It is interesting to use “would” instead of “will”. It is as if Menotti, despite recognizing Grande Othelo’s talent, did not trust in the possibility of that child becoming a great star. The intellectual does not explain why. However, when he describes the young artist’s departure from the stage, it is as if Grande Othelo returned to the anonymity and marginality from which he came:
The devil in black! We all liked him. He came out like a martin, hopping around, aware of his success, feeling like a “star” who will surely end up turning the head of the most beautiful and blackest star of the Black Company, who is up to mischief around there…
For Menotti, Grande Othelo was nothing more than a curiosity with no real importance for Brazilian art and culture. He was a circumstantial phenomenon. It was impossible to invest in him, since his status as a “demon” deprived him of any possibility of gaining a future. Menotti certainly thought the same about the Companhia Negra de Revista, which, in his words, instead of making art, did “devilry around there…”
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As mentioned, most of the opinions expressed by Menotti Del Picchia were not original. On the contrary, they continued (and expanded) preconceived ideas that had long inhabited the imagination of most white Brazilians, middle class, intellectual or not. As supposed heirs and continuers, in the Americas, of the Latin racial and cultural legacy, it should not be reasonable to recognize as legitimate, and/or welcome any attempt to share the cultural stage with Afro-descendants, even in a production linked not exactly to erudition, but to the mass culture that was then gaining strength (after all, the Companhia Negra was a revue theater company).
Black people could express themselves through music and dance of African origin, as long as they were properly separated from any insinuation of practices outside the white bourgeois order, and crystallized as a supposedly pure manifestation without contradictions.
Thus, the young and talented Grande Othelo was nothing more – and could not and should not be anything more – than a captivating curiosity, yet another exotic element of that group of people who were and should remain on the other side of the “real” Brazilian society: white and heirs of the European tradition.
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Here lies the importance of the film Othello the Great: in it, the actor is revealed and defined by himself, without intermediaries, without anyone to fit him into any type of label. In his testimonies we perceive an individual who threw himself entirely into life and his professional life, and faced the adversities that appeared in his path as a man and as an actor.
We do not find the “great black actor” in the film. The script and direction of the documentary lead us to come across a professional (and an individual) who reflects on his own life and career in theater, film and television, without, at any point, being run over by views about the supposed exceptionality of being an artist, who “despite being black”, managed to break through the white bubble. Othello the Great does not bring this trap of exceptionality. The film seems to deal with the awareness that, if it did so, it would be reaffirming the marginalization of the black population in the country, in which only one or another subject would be able to escape the fate of living under exclusion.
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Finally, I would like to point out that, in my opinion, the prejudiced positions of Menotti and other local intellectuals should not be used to cancel them all. If we act in this way, we run the risk of, in the end, leaving few, very few names on whom we can form a less superficial understanding of Brazilian society, leaving aside a debate that takes into account all the nuances that racism has assumed and continues to assume in our community. The case of the reception of Grande Othelo's talent by a white Brazilian intellectual like Menotti Del Picchia is just one of the countless examples of the effective rejection that, behind it, sustained the benevolent (and false) white commiseration towards blacks.
And this issue needs to be explored further by whites and blacks, because it concerns all of us Brazilians.
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* 1I am grateful for the careful reading of the text by my friend Fabio D´Almeida and my friend Eliane Pinheiro.
²Grande Othelo, born Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata in Uberabinha (present-day Uberlândia, MG) was a descendant of slaves. With acting skills, he was taken to Rio de Janeiro where he began working in the theater as a child. He became one of the leading Brazilian actors. He died in Paris in 1993.
³The son of Italian immigrants born in São Paulo in 1892, Paulo Menotti Del Picchia became famous as a poet and novelist. He was a critic and publicist. He participated in the Modern Art Week of São Paulo in 1922 and was one of the protagonists of the most conservative/reactionary wing of the modernist movement in São Paulo. A lawyer, he was a congressman for São Paulo. He died in his hometown in 1988.
⁴With this study, I informally continued the work carried out by researcher Yoshie S. Barreirinhas who, in 1983, published a book (named below) containing a significant sample of the texts published by Del Picchia, between 1917 and 1922. My survey seeks to expand the period covered by my colleague, including the author's production, between 1922 and 1932. BARREIRINHAS, Yoshie Sakiyama (org.). Menotti Del Picchia. The Gideon of Modernism. Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Civilization, 1983.
⁵In the text, Menotti Del Picchia states that Grande Othelo was 1926 years old in 7, which is not correct. The artist was 11 years old when he came to São Paulo.
⁶In his memoirs, Del Picchia says this about his parents, who were born in the Tuscany region of Italy: “[My mother] was born (…) near Pisa (…). She was of rural stock (…) She had a sharp, uncultivated intelligence, served by a severe energy that gave her dignity (…)
I know little about my paternal background. My father was always careless and discreet about the traditional things of the world. As a socialist (…) he chose Brazil as his new homeland.
Painter, architect, journalist, satirical poet, the multiplicity of his skills and the love he had for all of them did not allow him to choose a particular art as a professional. He was an eclectic, using them all as a leader of such diverse artists that he led more as a companion than as a contractor and whom he gathered at home as friends”. DEL PICCHIA, Menotti. The long journey. 1970, p. 1.
From this information we learn that Del Picchia's parents were a couple who, at first, did not fit into the norms of immigrants of agrarian origin. Although his mother was born in a village and dedicated herself to domestic work, his father, in addition to working in a notably urban area – he was a contractor – was also involved in the arts and culture in general.
⁷On the eve of the start of Modern Art Week, Menotti, to justify why the modernist movement of 1922 began in São Paulo, published an article in which he compared the people of São Paulo to the “northerners”, noting the following fact: it was to São Paulo that a new wave of Europeans came who, by transplanting the rejuvenated Latin culture here, transformed the city and state into the most vibrant and innovative in Brazil: “The meaning of the term [futurist] – which needs to be well understood – expresses the specific modality, […] of the people of São Paulo, the complete antipode of the brooding compatriots of the north, who still rest peacefully in the old ancestral norms, without the creative disturbances of competition, of sleepless industrialism, of the American financial battle.
With such an origin, the Paulista must have felt, in all manifestations of his activity, the reflection of the environment in which he moved. Restless, pioneering, hard-working, he freed himself from fatalism. The marvelous and historic work of establishing nationality […] was followed by the natural denervation [sic] that broke the race that formed the first ethnic group of the Brazilian nation. The new Latin waves, coming from other parts of the sea to strengthen this enervation, found the blessed land well fertilized […].
Converging on São Paulo, this surge of new blood created, before any other federative unit, a powerful surge of updated life within its borders, an integral civilization, incorporated day by day by the latest ships, as if a piece of the world were moving, geographically, to Brazilian America” DEL PICCHIA, Menotti. “Semana de Arte Moderna”. Paulista Post Office. São Paulo, n. 21.052, February 11, 1922, p. 5. Republished in BARREIRINHAS, Yoshie, op. citp. 317.
⁸Soon after, following protests against the virulence of the article – among them, that of Mário de Andrade –, Menotti will back down from his radically prejudiced position, trying to separate Alencar’s character from the real indigenous person. DEL PICCHIA, Menotti. “Let’s Kill Peri!”. São Paulo: Journal of Commerce, n.83, January 23, 1921, p.3. Republished in BARREIRINHAS, Yoshie, op. cit. p. 194. In addition to this, other articles on the subject were published in the collection.
⁹In August 1922, in an article about the supposed sadness of Brazilians, the critic proposes a curious definition of the three “races” that would have formed Brazil. Ignoring the indigenous people, he replaces them with the European immigrants who were arriving at the time. Thus, the Portuguese and other immigrants from Europe would form the majority of the Brazilian “race”. This definition recognizes the role of the population of African origin, although as a minority element with little influence. In the text, the author refers to the people who came as slaves from Africa as follows: “The black man, abruptly uprooted from his cradle like a tree, came here to wither, sick with sadness, filling the air with the nonsense he sang in the samba…”. In other words, a sad, weak and homesick population, without the vigor of the immigrants who came from the European continent. DEL PICCHIA, Menotti. “Laugh! Laugh! It is necessary to laugh!”. Paulista Post Office. São Paulo n. 21.232, August 16, 1922, p. 3 Republished in BARREIRINHAS, Yoshie, op. cit. p. 357
