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Understanding Black face As a Cultural Object in The United States: Post #3

4 questions for blackface minstrelsy:

  1. Why were white audiences so taken in by Blackface minstrelsy in the first place? 

  2. How popular was blackface minstrelsy across globally? Especially to the point where Al Jolson who was from Lithuania, and became the most popular blackface artist of the 20th century?

  3. When did black entertainers feel more confident to compose works unrelated to their pre-disposed harmful stereotypes?

  4. How did the williams and walker company stand out among the rest of black musical theater companies?

These questions came across my mind strongly whilst reading History of Minstrelsy From “Jump Jim Crow” to “The Jazz Singer” but also taking into the concepts from Grazian such as Defining Culture, “to the sociologist, culture refers to a mode of living in the world as a social being, as represented by the shared practices, rituals, behaviors, activities, and artifacts that make up the experience of everyday life.” We know that Rice took these superficial observations of African American Speech, and turned them into a show of mockery of African American slaves, demeaning them. White actors that put on this “Blackface would always be Janus-faced, allowing the artist to speak freely against the interests of the powerful, a potent symbol of Jacksonian democracy. On the other hand, blackface dangerously dehumanized blacks by introducing and reinforcing racial stereotypes. Blackface popularized inaccurate representations of blacks while preventing blacks from representing themselves.”

Minstrel actors thought black face allowed them to hide behind these caricature masks in what they considered an act of retaliation to voice their opinions against authority. As Grazian states “When vast numbers of people invest in a cultural object with shared meaning, it has potential to hold sway in the world as if it were absolute and irrefutable, rather than socially constructed.” we see here it answers the first question I had in this reading and that finding the answer we dive in deeper how we view America and the context within which it is produced and consumed, and what we learn about the United States by studying blackface critically were able to understand that the cultural object of “Blackface” in America as defined in Grazian is “are social expressions of meaning that have been rendered into something tangible or intangible.” Because of the detrimental and false narratives minstrel actors used to feed into the growing pop culture,  exploring these concepts we also learn the importance of a more genuine and accurate representation for African Americans. For example the Williams and Walker company, which was arguably the first to bring postwar black musical theater that contested the cultural ownership of racial representations to the attention of a white mainstream audience. Entering into the 1920s there started to grow more options of employment that was not only restricted to blackface or minstrel shows anymore, but rather many black entertainers would go on to compose classical, ragtime, and jazz music and were recognized as great musicians of their time.

Grazian, David. Mix It up: Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Society. W.W. Norton, 2017.

University of Florida. “Summary of The History of Minstrelsy · USF Library Special & Digital Collections Exhibits.” Omeka RSS, exhibits.lib.usf.edu/exhibits/show/minstrelsy.

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