Wed Oct 3 The Blacked-up Face / Research Methods Pt2
Note About Readings for this Week: This page changed as of 1pm 28 September. Most of the material is the same, but the order and importance has been shifted to reflect what we’ll be talking about in class. I propose to talk about the ‘blacked up face’ first and foremost. Please read on–
[Assignment for this class due the Monday following this class, see syllabus and this site for more information. I want you to write about the materials here, and whether you write about the past or the present, the imagery and film provided here, or other material you find, or something from your own experience–this is all appropriate for the assignment. This is the last of three exercises assigned prior to Reading week. If you have questions, Sarah and I are here to answer them, in person or by email.]
A Class about ‘Blackface’ Minstrelsy
A necessary opening statement: This class treats the persistence of the tradition of ‘blackface’ performance on stage. This is a difficult subject, that no doubt many would prefer not to talk about. It is a subject that can be talked about in a safe environment, and with sufficient context. I hope that this class serves as such an environment; but if anyone in the class is uncomfortable, with text, imagery, or any moving images, please contact me, and we will have a conversation about it. I have written a good deal about this subject, and I am aware of its troubling nature. I am also aware of its importance.
Unfortunate fact: Without question, ‘blackface minstrelsy’ was the single most popular form of ‘stand-alone’ entertainment in North America from the 1840s through the 1910s, and although thats a long time ago, as I think you’ll see, it has never entirely gone away. In a course such as this–unfortunately–it is a subject of importance. Almost everything you experience in popular performance has some connection with this form. When we meet, if you give me an example, I will almost certainly be able to find the connection.
PART ONE: IMAGES OF ‘BLACKING UP’:
We will spend the first part of the class talking about these images of people blacking up and/or audiences responding to the act of ‘blacking up’. I will show these in class, at least in part.
These are more or less contemporary documents. But they each have a history. As a research method, the close examination and description of each of these documents, even out of context, can tell us something about the form (blackface) and the time. In ‘microhistory,’ the argument is that you can tell a lot from the ‘microscopic’ examination of one document. This is important when you’re studying popular performance which doesn’t have a lot of documents. Or documents you can trust– [Note: at the end of this page, there are some documents that are much older, and worth looking at.]
Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000)–Satire:
I strongly recommend that you see this film, if you can, some day soon. Briefly, it deals satirically with a (fictional) revival of blackface in television, which is proposed by a television executive (Damon Wayans) as a way to get himself fired–but turns into a great success. it includes a moving depiction of the application of blackface by two performers of colour (Comedian Tommy Davidson, and the great tap artist Savion Glover). Here are two very brief clips from the film showing this ‘blacking up’, the first as they do it for their first performance, the second after they have become a success, and begin to have second thoughts….
Blackface in Late Vaudeville/Early Television (1950)–Nostalgia:
Here is a clip of two entertainers, Vernon and Ryan, from live vaudeville, on a very early television show–so early, it basically looks like a stage performance filmed–doing their normal ‘act,’ which was to treat ‘blackface’ nostalgically. The word nostalgia is important here:
The Censored Blackface Clown (mid-1960s)–(failed) Satire:
And here is the ultimate blackface censored scene, an appearance by the comedian Pat Paulsen on an afternoon television talk show (The Mike Douglas Show) in the late 1960s. He came out in blackface, pretended he didn’t have it on, and proceeded to complain to the audience about all the ‘ethnic’ humour of the day. You can hear the audience laughing, but in an awkward and embarrassed manner. You can see the co-hosts behind Paulsen slinking off stage. The clip was never shown. But think about it–what was it that was unacceptable? We may know, but at the same time this clip was censored, blackface minstrel shows were still being performed live in many, many local communities. What’s the difference?
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PART TWO: THE PERSISTENCE OF BLACKFACE
I’m including below an introduction to a book of essays I edited in 2012. In this, I talk about the legacies of blackface minstrelsy, including a number of examples of its existence just then, in 2012. I have seen many examples since then.
I would be interested in knowing whether the examples I listed in 2012–on YouTube, for instance–are still there. This is something you can tell me. You may be surprised by the persistence of something we all thought had been eliminated from social practice, and that most of us think of as being archaic.
Introduction to Burnt Cork: Traditions and Legacies of Blackface Minstrelsy. Edited by Stephen Johnson. Amherst, Mass: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
Read (‘skim’) only pages 1-9, to ‘throughout this volume.’ And please read the last paragraph.
Johnson BurntCork Introduction(1)
What Examples of Blackface are ‘out there’ and readily accessible?
In the assigned reading above, I include the names of a number of ‘vestiges’ of blackface on ‘the web,’ including (remember, this was six years ago): Robert Downey, Jr in Tropic Thunder; Sarah Silverman in an episode of her (late) series; episodes of Mad Men and Little Britain; the British televisions program Black & White Mintrels (still broadcast in the 1970s); and so on. Take a look at that section of the reading, and take a tour yourself to see what’s out there.
As I point out in this piece of writing, ‘blackface’ never really left us. It was only suppressed in certain kinds of mass media. In fact, it has been ‘just off screen’ all the time.
Bamboozled again–the surprising offending scene:
The clip below is the part of the film that caused the greatest outrage when it was released. Ironically, it wasn’t during the narrative, but at the end, when Lee showed a two-minute montage of excerpts of films and television shows from the history of 20th century entertainment, all using blackface. Audiences, as I remember this, were outraged–because most had never seen these clips, and (though this is my theory only) had thought the preceding film was an impossibility, and that there had been no blackface.
Now, if you punch the word ‘blackface’ into YouTube, you will have plenty to look at. My guess is that every one of these brief film clips will be there now, somewhere. But when the film was released, only 18 years ago, my guess is that all of these were inaccessible.
BAMBOOZLED CLIP
Coda on Contemporary Blackface–in the ‘legitimate’ theatre:
You should also bear in mind, as you examine these images, that there has been a recent resurgence in the exploration of this form in the ‘legitimate’ theatre. I suggest you take a look at the work of Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins, notably Neighbours, and An Octoroon, which was produced at the Shaw Festival last year (some of you may have seen it). Both of these plays make strong use of blackface, and stand in contrast to, and provide an important context to another contemporary playwright, Bruce Norris, who explores the history of the presentation of race on stage by other means–notably in Clybourne Park, a play with which some you will have a passing acquaintance….
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The following is entirely optional, and I don’t expect you to get to it–but it will be referred to:
About a podcast:
Here is a podcast interview with (yes) me, that talks about just about everything that follows. Sometimes a podcast helps save time, and sometimes it takes longer. It’s here if you need it.
See Scene Change: Turning Points in Canadian Theatre and Performance History
Podcast interview with Stephen about Blackface
AND ONE MORE NOTE ON BY-LAW NO. 50
HISTORICAL CASE STUDY AND MICROHISTORY
The Petitions against the Performance of the Character ‘Jim Crow’ in Toronto in the early 1840s
Remember Bylaw No. 50? It returns to haunt us….
From 1840 to 1843, a group of Toronto’s citizens, most of them representatives of its black population, submitted petitions to their City Council, requesting the banning of a certain kind of performer that, they argued, damaged their reputation and incited racial violence toward them. The performer they protested was the blackface clown, the venue the circus, and the law they appealed to for protection was a new licensing act (No. 50) that was meant to control the activities of travelling performers within the city limits.
This episode in the history of performance in Canada raises questions that remain relevant:
- What is the relationship between a government and its citizens when it comes to controlling public performance?
- How do governments control the performance of hate, and the incitement toward violence, in theatrical presentations?
- And at what point does social satire and mockery become unacceptable in society?
The story of these petitions and the performances they were intended to prevent is a story of the presentation of race, the persistence of tradition, and the prospects of changing the perceptions of people toward one another.
The documents reproduced here were produced by this combination of events and help to tell its story.
An image of the Minstrel Show from 1843, the year the following petitions stopped.
The first petition: Below, you’ll find a transcript and an image of the first petition submitted to Toronto’s City Council, asking that it refuse to allow the performance of a particular character within the city limits. In examining this document in relation to the others (another is included here), it would be good to consider the following: the formal prose and organization; who wrote it, and when (were all these people in the same room?); who signed it. Histories of popular culture are overloaded with questions like this, and the questions are as important as the single right answer.
Transcript:
July 20, 1840
To his Worship the Mayor and the Corporation of Toronto
The Subscribers of this humble petition represent to his Worship the Mayor, and the Corporation that they have remarked with sorrow that the American Actors, who from time to time visit this city, invariably select for performance plays and characters which, by turning into ridicule and holding up to contempt the coloured population, cause them much heart-burning and lead occasionally to violence. They therefore respectfully entreat His Worship, and all those to whom the right pertains, to forbid in future the performance of plays likely to produce a breach of the public peace.
Your petitioners are, in all dutiful respect to you, Her Majesty’s devoted and loyal subjects.
A NOTE: The ‘Jim Crow’ figure made his way across the border with the circus–an intimate space that promoted audience participation, and disrupted the normal segregation of audiences.
The petition didn’t work, in large part because of that theatrical licensing law already discussed in the first class.
The Fourth Petition, 1843: Following is a transcript and image of the fourth and last of the petitions. It is very different from the first–but how? It is signed by a smaller group of people. It seems to suggest that only the ‘coloured citizens’ of Toronto signed it. It is more specific about the damage done by the clown ‘Jim Crow.’ There is a sense of real danger and desperation. There also seems to be a real frustration with the members of the City Council, who have done nothing about this problem.
Here are some questions that we can ask about this document: why the change in the people who signed; what ‘violence’ are we talking about; what does it mean to ‘take off’ a figure, and why does it only seem to lead to violence for the black population? Something very troublesome was clearly happening here; and yet the newspapers of the time seem to be silent on the subject.
Petition No. 4:
April 21, 1843
To His Honor the Mayor, the Aldermen, and Councilmen of the City of Toronto
We Her Majesty’s colored subjects, residents of the City of Toronto, having found by reference to an act passed in 1834 that your honorable body have the right to license or refuse the request for the exhibition of shows etc in this City–and we also find that your body have the power to make such laws, as will tend to the peace, welfare, and safety of the inhabitants of this city. And as the season for the exhibitions of plays, shows, etc is now approaching, we anticipate that our city will as usual be visited by such persons and certain acts, and songs, such as Jim Crow and what they call other Negro Characters, performed by them has heretofore been productive of many broils and suits between the white and colord [sic] inhabitants of this city. We your humble petitioners pray that your honorable body will act as have been done by the authorities of Kingston, to wit, refuse to license such exhibitions, unless the exhibitions pledge themselves under a penalty, not to exhibit such songs or plays. Your petitioners are well aware that other persons are [taken?] of[f] in those plays, but they are also aware that these take off [sic] and go no farther, which is not the case with us. They serve to degrade us as well as involve us in difficulties.
Respectfully Yrs
THE RESULT: The petitions did not prevent the return of this “Jim Crow” character. On the contrary, by the end of this decade he had become the main attraction of a new genre of performance, the “Minstrel Show,” which sold itself as an “authentic” depiction of southern plantation slaves, and therefore of a black population more generally. Its aggressive caricature, in voice, makeup, costuming, gesture, and characterization, took hold of the public imagination in ways that no one could have predicted.
In Toronto in the early 1840s there was an attempt to stop something that has since had a significant effect on our cultural practice.
Here is an image of the ‘type’ of Jim Crow, T. D. Rice, who popularized the character internationally.
The following image shows Dick Pelham, the performer who was travelling to Toronto just as the first petition was submitted. The difference in the imagery clearly shows a difference in the kind of performance: Pelham’s is an extreme grotesque, and a frightening image. This kind of distortion is what the citizens of Toronto were trying to stop.
ON MICROHISTORY: How do we know things about the past? We don’t. We interpret, and sometimes the smallest details net the greatest insights.
There is a basic rule here: if you read something about the past, and it seems very strange to you (living in the present), but didn’t seem to be strange in the past, then–that’s the ‘thing’ to look more closely into. It’s called ‘the exceptional normal.’
A good ‘microhistorical’ question from above: If this kind of clown had been around for years already, then why was this particular appearance so frightening? Answer (perhaps): the canvas tent….
And here’s one that will make you cringe: A black performer named Juba was a great star on the minstrel stage, across the US and in Britain. Then he disappeared. The last known reference to him said that, not long after his death, his skeleton was on display in a museum. Why?
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Performance and Popular Culture 