The cartoon begins with Armstrong and crew providing background music for Betty Boop, Bimbo and Koko the Clown’s safari into a vast jungle the troop is unceremoniously attacked by swarthy, grotesque-faced cannibals, who kidnap Betty Boop and prepare to cook her. Blackface is the joke that comforts white Americansīlackface occasionally appeared as a peculiar form of part-mocking homage, and perhaps the clearest example of this is in a remarkable 1932 episode of Betty Boop, I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You, which featured Louis Armstrong and his band. In this way, blackface was a demeaning vehicle to success, a prerequisite for achieving posterity well into the early 20th century. Yet he had to humiliate himself in order to proceed he had to, as a foundation, exist as a carnivalesque gag onstage, so that his white viewers might, after a hearty laugh and jeer, have a chance of noticing the extraordinary movements of his feet. He was a prodigy, dancing in public from age 10 in the mid-1830s. Lane astonished audiences, dancing a modified Irish jig and reel set to syncopated African rhythms, which laid the foundations for tap dancing. Such was the case with one of the most famous black stage actors of the 19th century, William Henry Lane – better known as “Master Juba” – who was forced to wear blackface until he became sufficiently famous around the globe to travel, sans blackface, with a troupe of white actors. So lucrative was blackface that even African American performers had little choice but to wear it if they desired a modicum of success with white audiences. ‘Blackface occasionally appeared as a peculiar form of part-mocking homage.’ Photograph: AP The segregationist Jim Crow laws took their name from a minstrelsy act, Jumping Jim Crow, by blackface showboat Thomas Dartmouth Rice – sometimes considered “the father” of minstrel performance – who claimed it was based on a slave he knew. Blackface shows were marketed as a peculiar mix of high- and lowbrow entertainment they were bawdy and crude, planting, in this way, the seed of vaudeville, but they also attempted to translate more elitist forms of art, such as opera, to a popular stage. They often featured singing, dancing, skits and instrumental music, the latter often some form of “Negro melodies”. The performances began in a number of north-eastern states. In the 1830s, however, blackface took off in its most recognizable form today, when it was integrated into onstage performances by white Americans who donned dark makeup, red lips and rough curly wigs, the blackness of their makeup amplifying the whiteness of their eyes and teeth. These images sought to portray black people as clowns and freakish beings, exaggerating features so as to suggest the “otherness” of black bodies. As an image, the iconography of blackface dates back centuries, appearing in colonial-era illustrations of black Africans. The entertainer in blackface – even when it was a black American forced to put on blackface makeup – “is white”, Ellison noted.Īt the height of its popularity in the late 19th century, seeing white performers adorned in coal-black makeup, woolly wigs and outlandishly red lips was one of the most beloved pastimes for white American families. It was an act of both offense and defense: an attack through derision, and a kind of psychological defense against a deeply feared group. When white Americans dumped tea into the Boston Harbor, Ellison argues, they were wearing the costumes – the masks – of Native Americans when white Americans wished to ease their discomfort with black Americans, they simply adopted blackness itself as a costume, a clown suit, attempting to at once crudely mimic African Americans through stereotypes and to create a caricature that could be easily laughed at and spoken down to.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |