Shylock and Jessica - Maurycy Gottlieb

This painting from 1876 is by Maurycy Gottlieb, a Jew from Ukraine. This sympathetic portrayal of Shylock came after the move toward playing him sympathetically on stage, which likely began with Edmund Kean in the 1810s. In the early 20th century, Jacob Adler would play the role of Shylock in Yiddish in an otherwise English language production. Arnold Wesker continued this trend of Jews "reclaiming" Shylock and turning him into an image of the struggles of the Jewish people in his adaptation called The Merchant. It's fascinating to me how stereotypes can be taken back by the community they are perpetuated against and transformed into more positive cultural symbols. I wonder if this sort of reappropriation, much like black people have done with the "n word," or GLBT people have done with "queer," is always positive however. With something given such high artistic rank as a work by Shakespeare, I guess a community has to do something to transform negative images within the text, but I wonder if a hands-off approach wouldn't be better. So much racism or sexism seems to become justified by calling something a great work of art - which I guess is why things like Heart of Darkness still get taught - but it becomes a bit sinister to ask a reader to look beyond prejudice in a work rather than actively thinking about it.