‘The … monster, which doth mock/The meat it feeds on’: R.E.M.’s Monst(e)rous Othello

Drawing on the distinction between a ‘text’ and a ‘work’ as defined by Joseph Grigely and revised by Thomas Cartelli and Katherine Rowe, this article argues that R.E.M.’s 1994 album, Monster appropriates some of the themes, situations and character-functions of the work Othello in order to illuminate and demystify the ways in which the mass media and mainstream rock and roll culture, in Iago-like fashion, attempt to seize and rewrite the identities of youths and inspire in them Othello-like effects of possessiveness and jealousy that can lead to male-on-female violence. Crucially, however, the album does not dramatize black male-on-white female violence; rather, it de-races the kind of possessiveness, jealousy and gendered violence that we find in Shakespeare’s play, usefully reminding us that such violence has no necessary connection to race.