The Merchant, the Jew and the “bastard”

“So is it not about time we stopped tossing them favours when they have a right to justice?”
Sigmund Freud, on his Comment on anti-Semitism, 1938

The day before yesterday I sat to watch Michael Radford’s (2004) adaptation of “The Merchant of Venice” on MBC2, however I was puzzled when one of the most powerful scenes of the movie (that is, the play) did not appear, thus I decided to wait until the day after to watch the movie again with greater care. The scene was still missing. The scene was actually so well removed from the film that it missing could not have been known by someone who has never read the play or seen the movie…
But what is part of Shakespeare’s story, how could I play with it and what of all the stories?

“The Merchant of Venice”, MBC2 and a Game

“The Merchant of Venice” is amongst the most renouned of Shakespeare’s plays. Set mainly in Venice, the story is about a merchant, Antonio, who for the love of his dear friend, Bassanio, decides to get a loan from a Jew, Shyllock, so that Bassanio may finance the journey to claim his love, fair Portia. Shyllock is at odds; a Christian-man, the merchant, who has repeatedly scorned him, called him dog and spat at him in public for his money-lending practices was now at his door requesting of a bond; what should he do, he asks the merchant. What would the merchant do had the Jew been him and him a Jew?

Shyllock decides to pay the bond the merchant has requested but instead of credit to be paid his only condition is a pound of flesh off the merchant’s chest, which Shyllock would receive if the bond is not paid within three months. The merchant agrees with what he sees as a generous offer from Shyllock, after all he is certain of his gains. In the meantime, the merchant’s friend claims his love, fair Portia while Shyllock’s only-daughter Jessica, although herself a Jew, elopes with her Christian love, Lorenzo, with the help of Bassanio, the merchant’s friend. The merchant’s ships are all lost in high seas and all the money he awaited coming in to pay his dues are gone. Shyllock seeks revenge for all the scorn he has received from the merchant and for the loss of his only daughter. When at audience with the Duke of Venice, Shyllock craves for the law to be upheld and requests the forfeit of his bond: the pound of flesh from the merchant’s chest. The Duke asks Shyllock how does he hope for mercy when he renders none and Shyllock tells him

“…You have among you many a purchased slave, which…you use in abject…Because you bought them shall I say to you, let them be free, marry them to your heirs? Why sweat they under burthens? Let their beds be made as soft as yours and let their palets be season’d with such viands? You will answer ‘the slaves are ours’ so do I answer you. The pound of flesh , which I demand of him is dearly bought, ’tis mine and I will have it. If you deny me , fie upon your law! There is no force in the decrees of Venice I stand for judgment: answer, shall I have it?”

When the merchants’ friend Bassanio appears to pay twice the sum to Shyllock or, if that does not suffice, ten times the sum on forfeit of his hands, his head his heart, Shyllock declines the offer saying

“An oath, I have an oath in heaven: Shall I lay purjury upon my soul? No, not for Venice.”

The play takes another turn when Portia, dressed as a boy, arrives at the Palazzo as a young and learned doctor of law and after a series of ups-and-downs she says that the bond says a pound of flesh, but “not a drop of blood”. How would it be possible for Shyllock to get his pound of flesh without a drop of blood?

Shyllock accepts the proposed payment of three times the sum but the young doctor (Portia) explains that he can only get his pound of flesh and nothing more:

“ The Jew shall have all justice; soft! no haste:He shall have nothing but the penalty..”

When Shyllock is about to leave the proceedings Portia stops him telling him that the laws of Venice clearly state that if it is proved against an alien that by direct or indirect attempts he seeks the life of any citizen then the citizen whose life is at stake seizes one half of the aliens’ goods while the other half goes to the state and that the offenders life lies in the mercy of the Duke himself. What a turn! Now it is the Duke who is to show the mercy not given by the Jew.
The Duke pardons Shyllock before him asking to be pardoned and the merchant finally requests for the one half of Shyllocks’ good to be given to his daughter but more importantly for Shyllock to convert to Christianity.

Now the scene professionally cut from this movie by the MBC2 people is the scene where two of the merchant’s friends, after having heard of the destruction of the merchant’s goods by the high seas, reproach Shyllock for screaming that he will take his pound of flesh.

What would a pound of flesh be good for, they ask, and Shyllock answers :

“To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew.”

And here exactly, at this point, it is where the scene is cut and the following does not appear in the film.

“Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.”

Now in Venice Jews were all confined to the (maybe first of its kind) Ghetto. One can still today visit the Jewish Ghetto, at the northern part of the island, whose separating doors were locked after dusk. Jews in Venice were by law required to wear a red hat, so as to be distinguished and identified as such. In business they were not, again by law, buy property and very rarely Venetian (Christian) citizens would employ them, thus leaving them with no alternative but work as money-lenders. Now just in case one has been lost from my blabbing around, I am referring back to the 15th century here.

I have been wondering long and hard about why exactly did the MBC2 people decide to chop off a scene so powerful and important in the whole movie, how exactly did they thought they could just deny a play part of its whole meaning, so indicative of the human condition, so expressive, old yet so contemporary, the very qualities that make this play, and other of its kind, so important in the arts, in life, in us.

But here it is not only that which one should merely stand and pause; it is not only of the act of dismembering but more the story behind it and when I am in such a difficult position I always play a game: I always change characters keeping their words, attempting to give the story a contemporary note and in this case what else but turning the Jew into a Muslim, or maybe a Buddhist and so on and so forth.

What then of the story? What then of the words Shyllock barks under one of Venice’s bridges? Would MBC2, an Arab satellite channel, have removed the scene then? Not only that, but I would care to go further in my wondering: did the channel think that it’s (predominantly) Arab (and Muslim) audience does not know of the play, its content and its parallel meanings? Or did it intentionally and with ulterior motive strap from the movie one of its more important scenes and if so why?

Are Shyllock’s Jewish words too much for Muslim ears? Or is it the truth in them, how close they struck home, that fears?

The last word from a Jewish “bastard”

On the 25th November 1938 on the 7th issue of Die Zukunft: Ein neues Deutschland, ein neues Europa, a German journal published in Paris, the then exiled to Vienna Sigmund Freud published an article. It is after “studying the statements in press and literature occasioned by the latest Jewish persecutions” that he came across an article that “struck” him as so extraordinary that he selected excerpts from it to use it himself. To my knowledge, it is the only purely political article he ever published, even though many would argue that his breakthroughs in psychoanalysis proper and psychoanalytic theory, as they have placed him along the other two so-called “bastards of history”, could easily be characterised as such.
In it, Freud roughly recounts what his self-confessed weak memory allows him to of the initial article he read on the anti-Semitic eruptions of the day. The original author, Freud says, goes somewhat like that:

“All right, I don’t like Jews either. To me, there’s something foreign about them, something antipathetic. They have many unpleasant characteristics and major defects. I also think the influence they have on ourselves and our affairs is predominantly harmful. Clearly, compared to our own, theirs is an inferior race…And then, without contradiction…However, we profess a religion of love. We are supposed to love our enemies as ourselves…We should protest against these things, regardless of how much or how little the Jews merit such treatment…”
and he continues
“I have to say that all these pronouncements leave me dissatisfied. As well as the religion of love and humanity there is also a religion of truth, and it this that comes off badly in such protests. The truth is that for long centuries we have treated the Jewish people unjustly, and that we are still doing so in unjustly condemning them today. Anyone amongst us who does not confess our guilt has failed in his duty in this matter. The Jews are no worse than we are;…Since we have permitted them to to share in our cultural endeavours, they have made valuable contributions in all fields of science, the arts and technology; they have amply repaid our tolerance.
So is it not about time we stopped tossing them favours when they have a right to justice?”

The game for you to play…
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b.t.w. I already contacted MBC2 and inquired on the reasons behind the cut. When I get a response I shall publish it.