Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American CultureOxford University Press, 20 Apr 2000 - 327 halaman When the actor Ted Danson appeared in blackface at a 1993 Friars Club roast, he ignited a firestorm of protest that landed him on the front pages of the newspapers, rebuked by everyone from talk show host Montel Williams to New York City's then mayor, David Dinkins. Danson's use of blackface was shocking, but was the furious pitch of the response a triumphant indication of how far society has progressed since the days when blackface performers were the toast of vaudeville, or was it also an uncomfortable reminder of how deep the chasm still is separating black and white America? In Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, Susan Gubar, who fundamentally changed the way we think about women's literature as co-author of the acclaimed The Madwoman in the Attic, turns her attention to the incendiary issue of race. Through a far-reaching exploration of the long overlooked legacy of minstrelsy--cross-racial impersonations or "racechanges"--throughout modern American film, fiction, poetry, painting, photography, and journalism, she documents the indebtedness of "mainstream" artists to African-American culture, and explores the deeply conflicted psychology of white guilt. The fascinating "racechanges" Gubar discusses include whites posing as blacks and blacks "passing" for white; blackface on white actors in The Jazz Singer, Birth of a Nation, and other movies, as well as on the faces of black stage entertainers; African-American deployment of racechange imagery during the Harlem Renaissance, including the poetry of Anne Spencer, the black-and-white prints of Richard Bruce Nugent, and the early work of Zora Neale Hurston; white poets and novelists from Vachel Lindsay and Gertrude Stein to John Berryman and William Faulkner writing as if they were black; white artists and writers fascinated by hypersexualized stereotypes of black men; and nightmares and visions of the racechanged baby. Gubar shows that unlike African-Americans, who often are forced to adopt white masks to gain their rights, white people have chosen racial masquerades, which range from mockery and mimicry to an evolving emphasis on inter-racial mutuality and mutability. Drawing on a stunning array of illustrations, including paintings, film stills, computer graphics, and even magazine morphings, Racechanges sheds new light on the persistent pervasiveness of racism and exciting aesthetic possibilities for lessening the distance between blacks and whites. |
Isi
| 3 | |
Blackface Lynchings | 53 |
Myths of Racial Origin in the Harlem Renaissance | 95 |
4 DE MODERN DO MR BONES and All That Ventriloquist Jazz | 134 |
Queer Colors | 169 |
6 WHAT WILL THE MIXED CHILD DELIVER? Conceiving Color Without Race | 203 |
A Postscript | 240 |
NOTES | 263 |
WORKS CITED | 293 |
INDEX | 313 |
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aesthetic African African-American Al Jolson appears artists baby become Berryman biracial Birth black and white black envy black talk blackface body Bones burnt cork calls Carl Van Vechten century character child Colescott's color Courtesy cross-racial Cunard curse dance dark Désirée Dick Gregory difference Dream Songs ethnic explains face Fanon fantasies father female Figure girl Ham's Hannah Höch Harlem Renaissance homosexual Hurston's identity imagination Jazz Singer Jean Toomer Jessie Jewish Jolson lesbian looks Lynch Mailer's male Mammy masculinity mask masquerades means minstrel minstrelsy miscegenation modernist mother movie mulatto murder Nancy Cunard narrative nigger Noah novel Nugent Paul Robeson penis performance phallus photograph play poem portrait race racechange racial impersonation racial ventriloquism racist remains Richard Bruce Nugent Robert Colescott role sexual skin slave slavery song Spencer stage stereotypes story tion transracial turn twentieth-century Vechten ventriloquism Western White Negro white woman Williams women writers
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