Memo - Oct. 12 - Minstrelsy and the Ideology of Race It may seem hard to imagine now, but one of the most popular forms of popular entertainment in nineteenth-century America was the minstrel show: a kind of theatrical variety show in which men would darken their faces with burnt cork to look "black" and occasionally dress up as women as well. The term "minstrel" originally referred to a Medieval musician or poet who travelled from town to town, but in the American culture the term has become permanently linked to blackface performance. In recent decades historians have been particularly interested in minstrel shows (or "minstrelsy," the generic term) as a window on to the connection between American ideas of race and the deep, inner workings of American culture. Our two readings for the week grow out of this interest. The first reading, chap. 3 in Popular Culture in American History, centers on an excerpt from Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (1998), by W. T. Lhamon, Jr., a distinguished cultural historian at Florida State University. His work attempts to do something slightly different than other recent scholars. In various ways, their work has tried to open up the complex meanings of race (i.e. racism) in the minstrel shows. More than them, his tries to understand not only the racism but also what made these shows so appealing? (If you're interested in reading more about this, check out the work of Robert Toll, Alexander Saxton, and Eric Lott.) The second reading is also about blackface entertainment, but it focuses on the twentieth century and on movies. The reading comes from Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (1996), by the late Michael Rogin, who was a professor at the Universtiy of Califronia, Berkeley. Rogin seeks to understand the effect that Hollywood movies have in reordering ideas about race, culture, and power in the twentieth century. In the book, he notes that the four most important films in the early years of cinema (1900-1940) were all about race and the place of African Americans within the national culture. (Those films were: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903), a silent film based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel about slavery; Birth of a Nation (1915), the first full-length narrative feature film, which depicted African Americans during Civil War and Reconstruction as barbarians, buffoons, and rapists; The Jazz Singer (1927), the first talking film, about a Jewish blackface entertainer; and Gone with the Wind (1939), the grand, nostalgic Civil War-era epic that is often considered the quintessential Hollywood "classic.") As you're reading, try to think about blackness not as a historical "fact" but as a historical "idea." That is, blackness is not an inherent quality that some people possess but an idea that is assigned to some people by other people. A few questions about the excerpt by W. T. Lhamon: What characteristics did minstrel performers promote as "black"? In what ways was "blackness" used not just to refer to physical attributes (e.g. black skin) but also to a specific identity or character? What did that identity or character consist of, as depicted by minstrel performers? To what extent did the alleged characteristics of black people derive from real slaves and non-slaves of African descent? To what extent were they the invention of the performers? What did minstrel performers and audiences get out of blackface performance? What did it offer them that they couldn't express or experience otherwise? What was the connection between minstrelsy and the political situation of the urban working class in the antebellum north? A few questions about the Rogin excerpt: How had the structures of American culture changed by the time The Jazz Singer was made, compared to the time period Lhamon discusses? How was the blackface performance in Hollywood films an extension of the nineteenth-century minstrel shows on stage? How was it different? What is the significance of The Jazz Singer being about a Jewish entertainer, not just any (white, gentile) entertainer?  Can you think of any aspects of minstrelsy that still circulate in our culture today?