Harlem Duet: Othello & Billie

Situated in present day Harlem, Harlem duet is a play that transitions from comedy to tragedy relating to the African American experience simultaneously. It documents and uses the struggle of race and relationship to demonstrate possibilities and angst from the perspective of a torn black woman. Similarly Shakespeare Othello, Harlem Duet is not based on racist ideologies; instead it focuses on the notions of race in context of relationships between the Black man and the Black woman and the effect of a white woman role in the termination of black union. Harlem Duet provides a deeper understanding of how the black man search for his identity and acceptance by white social valueshave negatively affected the black women and how his masculinity is threatened by the strong black woman.

The play is located geographically at the intersection of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King in Harlem at the location of an apartment that births the marriage of Othello and Billie. They were married for nine years and Billie is now resentful that Othello has abandoned her, especially for a white woman, Mona. Billie relents that Othello leaving her for a white woman is turning his back on his culture and chasing a dream of “whiteness”. However Othello states:

Spiritually beyond this race bullshit now. I am an American . The slaves were freed over 130 years ago. In 1967 it was illegal for a Black to marry a White in sixteen states. That was less than thirty years ago…in my lifetime. Things change, Billie. I am not my skin, My skin is not me (Sears 73-74).

Othello presented an assimilate approach but yet he stated he prefers white over black women: “They are easier – before and after sex […] They weren’t filled with hostility about the unequal treatment they were getting at their jobs. We’d make love and I’d fall asleep not having to beware being mistaken for someone’s inattentive father. (Sears 71). For Billie, Othello’s willingness to assume white ideals and abandon black identity is equivalent to marital infidelity and desertion, reflected in Sears’s alternate 1860 chronicle of Him and Her, in which Him, a slave and representation of Othello, chooses to abandon his partner Her, a slave and representation of Billie, in order to stay with his white master as he “loves her” (Sears 63). According to Burgest and Bowers:

Most Black men are indoctrinated to believe in the myths created by white society that the white female is the epitome of womanhood, or the effeminate elite […]the images that that Black men possess about white femininity interferes with the Black male/Black female relationship because many Black men attempt to make “White women” out of their Black women (86)

It is evident that Othello is contradictory in his beliefs and so he responded by attacking Billie on the same stereotypical views his white counterparts share. Thus Othello preferred and resort to the stereotypes and myths created about the role of the white female and once these myths are exposed, “black men will impose the stereotyped images of white females onto Black women” (Burgest and Bowers 86).

bell hooks links a negative representation of black masculinity to a patriarchal culture: “wise progressive black women have understood for some time now that the most genoci-dal threat to black life in America, and especially to black male life, is patriarchal thinking and practice.” (134). Othello says, “Our experience, our knowledge transforms us. That’s why education is so powerful, so erotic. The transmission of words from mouth to ear. Her mouth to my ear. Knowledge. A desire for that distant thing I know nothing of, but yearn to hold for my very own” (Sears 73). Reynolds III states that, “For the emotionally deprived black man, he is constantly roaming and searching for affirmation of his identity and his “manhood” (59). This is what essentially Othello has found himself, relaying on Mona to provide “education”, which ultimately serves as seduction. Othello himself is an educated man; in fact he is a professor at Columbia. However between the walls of the university, Mona and her white peers where able to “enlighten” Othello on what he was missing. Once a man who advocated for affirmative action for blacks, Othello was now searching to be accepted by the whites.

Education and advancement are clearly linked to “whiteness” throughout the play. Billie says, “But development is going to White schools…proving we’re as good as Whites... like some holy grail... all that we’re taught in those White schools. All that is in us. Our success is Whiteness. We religiously seek to have what they have. Access to the White man’s world. TheWhite man’s job” (Sears 55). The impact of this “education” on Othello is relentless and perhaps most obviously expressed in how he responds to Mona’s influence. Othello has been seduced by whiteness. Othello stated, “My mama used to say, you have to be three times as good as a white child to get by, to do well. A piece of that pie is mine. I don’t want to change the recipe. I am not a minor. I am not a minority” (Sears 73). Burgest and Bowers further contends that: “Black men who are married to White women, […] it appears that the white women gets the “cream of the crop” of Black males” (86). For that reason, the most prestigious black men do not stay with women of color and instead opt for a marriage with white women.

Throughout the play, we see Othello break his marriage bond with Billie, a sanctified bonding sacrament from times of slavery, which they performed when they first got their apartment together. Reynolds states that the reason for the black man to long for a relationship with white women is due to “a lack of peace of mind and a little bit of happiness for the black man, which he finds he can get from the white woman” (80). Othello states that “White men have maintained a firm grasp of the pants” and he feels “unrecognized as a man” in a relationship with a black woman since “Black women wear the pants that Black men were prevented from wearing”; (Sears 55) therefore, he rejects Billie, and thus the original dream he shared with her of a separate black identity. Although it’s clear that he longs for Billie (they have sex when he comes to pick up things from the apartment), when Mona calls on the apartment intercom suddenly and speaks to Othello, he is completely dominated by her. She doesn’t have to say anything and he rushes to leave. We see Othello as defenceless, and Billie, the stage directions indicate, “is unable to hide her astonishment” (Sears 61). The next time Othello comes to the apartment, he tells Billie that he and Mona are getting married. The liberation that Othello speaks of about his relationship with Mona is inexistent. Instead we see Billie as the strong black woman and Othello as the feeble black man who yields to the white woman. The interaction between Othello and Billie is quite different that the limited interaction we see with him and Mona. In the presence of Billie, we see Othello has a man that is quite sure of who is his and who he wants to be. Yet with Mona, he seems meeker and more subdued. In a conversation with Magi, Billie explains:

BILLIE: Now he won’t have to worry that a White woman will emotionally mistake him for the father that abandoned her.

MAGI: Isn’t he worried the White woman might mistake him for the

butler?

BILLIE: He’s be oh so happy to oblige

MAGI: I see them do things for White women they wouldn’t

dream of doing for me.

BILLIE: It is a disease […] (Sears 67)

“Too many black women have been hurt, abused, abandoned, left pregnant, helpless, and homeless by black men who refuse to accept responsibility for their marriages or their relationships; hence the reason for this anger by black women (Reynolds III, pg xi). Perhaps this was the reason Billie resorted to comically diagnose Othello’s condition: “Corporeal malediction. [...] A Black man afflicted with

Negrophobia.” […] “A crumbled racial epidermal schema [...] causing predilections to coitus denegrification” (Sears 66).

The turning point in the play to a tragedy was when Othello told Billie of his plans to marry Mona. Billie is then left in disarray and her mental and cognitive functions are beginning to deteriorate. The handkerchief that she kept so very close to her heart has become a betrayal used by Othello. And so Billie decides she will manipulate the same handkerchief to get revenge at Othello by poisoning it in her Ancient Egyptian potions. Billie seeks retaliation and descends into a kind on madness. This madness the black man argues is negative attribute to the black woman. Instead with the white woman:

The black men learn to develop their capacity to love and care.

Black men feel a manliness that they never knew possible. They

are called upon to make the major decisions, and although his

spouse may not agree, she will more likely attempt to change his through dialogue and discussion (Reynolds 83)

Arguably Billie attempt to change Othello mind, was by getting rid of him altogether. This plays upon the stereotypical view that black women are not able to control their emotions and often resort to outrageous measures. However Reynolds state that “the black man has conditioned himself to believe that the problems associated with marrying or dating a white woman are much less than the amount of discomfort that he experiences from a personal relationship with a typical black woman” (83). Franklin states:

There is an intense fear of the competition of white women

for Negro men…The middle – class Negro woman’s fear of

the competition of white woman is based often upon the fact

that she sense her own inadequacies and shortcomings…The

middle class white woman not only has white skin and straight

hair, but she is generally more sophisticated and interesting

because she has read more widely and has a larger view of the

world. (133)

This may explain the anxiety Billie was feeling; as though she wasn’t good enough to keep a man of Othello character. Furthermore, Othello instigated this stigma by reiterating the same ideology has a justification to why he left Billie for Mona, a white woman. The relationship between Billie and Othello is set in a present time, and uses dialogue from the 1860 and 1928, which are interwoven in the story line to provide depth to the characters adaptability and inevitability in any era. These stories have unambiguously tragic outcomes which indicates Othello’s downfall after his abandonment of a black woman for a white woman. This outcome was not clearly documented in the present day story line; because Billie back peddled on her original plan to poison Othello. She leaves the handkerchief in a box for Othello to pick up, but then changes her mind and asks her father to throw it out; however, Othello finds it and takes it out of the box. It was not clear if Othello was poisoned or not because he did not reappear in the plot subsequently. Perhaps this was deliberately written in this format by Sears, allowing the outcome in the imagination of the audience.

The final scene at the end of the play is where we see the setting of the play change. It transitioned from the safe haven apartment for Billie that had sentimental value. For Billie this is the cultural vision which they share and, according to She, what they have “always dreamed of”: freedom and a chance to form “a sanctuary”, or a protected place, where “Black boutiques, Black bookstores, Black groceries…Black doctors and dentists. Black banks…owned by Blacks from the faintest gold to the bluest bronze” (Sears 77) can form a community independent of white prejudice the possibility Given these facts, Othello’s abandoned this domestic space, consciously pulled into the public world represented by Mona. Franklin states: “When a woman gets the blues, she tucks her head and cries; when a man catches the blues, he catches a freight train and rides” (69). Billie’s engagement always takes into contemplation the importance of her culture and arguably her identity, whereas Othello contradict this domestic positioning and strives to survive in the public sphere based on European ideologies and motives.

Othello identity was now consumed with the white academic community, his judgment, thoughts, endeavours, goals, even his phone calls are entangled in what the white society represents and not his own. Consequently we see Billie in a psychiatric hospital, with the ambiguous blue eyes that kept flashing: “flash, flash, flash,” (Sears 115), representing a white nurse that couldn’t understand the pain that Billie was feeling because there’s no possible way that she can relate. Billie is at her worst, singing remembered songs. Similarly like Desdemona in her bed chamber when she tells Emilia about a song her mother’s maid Barbary sang: “She was in love,” says Desdemona. “And he she loved proved mad / And did forsake her” (4.3.27-28): an accurate description of Billie’s condition. Billie sings a children’s song with Magi, reminiscent of this sombre moment between Desdemona and Emilia (Sears 114-16). Except Billie was the outsider and not Othello in Harlem Duet, she was now the moor amongst the “others” in Othello’s world.

In Harlem Duet, Sears demonstrates the progressive conflict between Billie and Othello’s perceptions of identity, as Othello comes to view black identity as defined by white values while Billie resists such ideals and adheres to the idea of a separate and culturally rich black nation. Othello identity is defined by black masculinity which, according to him, is superseded by black feminine superiority. As a result, Billie is left to create a new identity independent of the black union she shared with Othello and consequently descent into madness because of the cataclysm.