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From the Peter Neil Isaacs collection.
A sourcebook of contemporary and historical commentary on America's first popular mass entertainment.
Document from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: --, Saarland University (Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: A native form of entertainment that came up in around 1843 was the minstrel show. The minstrel show was a show that consisted of melodies by slaves and jokes by white actors in blackface in order to imitate the blacks. Led by Mr. Interlocutor, the master of ceremonies, three more actors in blackface sat in a semicircle. The endmen or cornermen were known as Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, who joked together or made fun of slaves. Thus, the minstrel show was double-edged: on the one hand, racism in the United States was reinforced; on the other hand, so many white Americans have become aware of black popular culture. No wonder therefore, the rise of the minstrel show coincided with the growth of the abolitionist movement in the 19th century. But without doubt, racial discrimination was played down in the minstrel show. The minstrel show was meant as a form of entertainment, which was not intended to be taken seriously. Although the minstrel aimed to create a native and distinctly American form of entertainment, the songs they adopted were of English, Irish or Scottish origin. Furthermore, they presented parodies of European-style entertainment or parodied works by William Shakespeare. The book gives an overview of the history of the minstrel show. Marc A. Bauch is a scholar of American Literature and has specialized in American Theater, including the American Musical.
For over two centuries, America has celebrated the same African-American culture it attempts to control and repress, and nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the strange practice of blackface performance. Born of extreme racial and class conflicts, the blackface minstrel show appropriated black dialect, music, and dance; at once applauded and lampooned black culture; and, ironically, contributed to a "blackening of America." Drawing on recent research in cultural studies and social history, Eric Lott examines the role of the blackface minstrel show in the political struggles of the years leading up to the Civil War. Reading minstrel music, lyrics, jokes, burlesque skits, and illustrations in tandem with working-class racial ideologies and the sex/gender system, Love and Theft argues that blackface minstrelsy both embodied and disrupted the racial tendencies of its largely white, male, working-class audiences. Underwritten by envy as well as repulsion, sympathetic identification as well as fear--a dialectic of "love and theft"--the minstrel show continually transgressed the color line even as it enabled the formation of a self-consciously white working class. Lott exposes minstrelsy as a signifier for multiple breaches: the rift between high and low cultures, the commodification of the dispossessed by the empowered, the attraction mixed with guilt of whites caught in the act of cultural thievery. This new edition celebrates the twentieth anniversary of this landmark volume. It features a new foreword by renowned critic Greil Marcus that discusses the book's influence on American cultural studies as well as its relationship to Bob Dylan's 2001 album of the same name, "Love & Theft." In addition, Lott has written a new afterword that extends the study's range to the twenty-first century.
THE WAGES OF WHITENESS provides an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States. In an Afterword to this second edition, Roediger discusses recent studies of whiteness and the changing face of labor itself--then surveys criticism of his work. He accepts the views of some critics but challenges others.
For over two centuries, America has celebrated the very black culture it attempts to control and repress, and nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the strange practice of blackface performance. Born of extreme racial and class conflicts, the blackface minstrel show sometimes usefully intensified them. Based on the appropriation of black dialect, music, and dance, minstrelsy at once applauded and lampooned black culture, ironically contributing to a "blackening of America." Drawing on recent research in cultural studies and social history, Eric Lott examines the role of the blackface minstrel show in the political struggles of the years leading up to the Civil War. Reading minstrel music, lyrics, jokes, burlesque skits, and illustrations in tandem with working-class racial ideologies and the sex/gender system, Love and Theft argues that blackface minstrelsy both embodied and disrupted the racial tendencies of its largely white, male, working-class audiences. Underwritten by envy as well as repulsion, sympathetic identification as well as fear--a dialectic of "love and theft"--the minstrel show continually transgressed the color line even as it enabled the formation of a self-consciously white working class. Lott exposes minstrelsy as a signifier for multiple breaches: the rift between high and low cultures, the commodification of the dispossessed by the empowered, the attraction mixed with guilt of whites caught in the act of cultural thievery.
 The minstrel show occupies a complex and controversial space in the history of American popular culture. Today considered a shameful relic of America's racist past, it nonetheless offered many black performers of the 19th and early 20th centuries their only opportunity to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment world, where white performers in blackface had by the 1830s established minstrelsy as an enduringly popular national art form. This book traces the often overlooked history of the "modern" minstrel show through the advent of 20th century mass media--when stars like Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Mickey Rooney continued a long tradition of affecting black music, dance and theatrical styles for mainly white audiences--to its abrupt end in the 1950s. A companion two-CD reissue of recordings discussed in the book is available from Archeophone Records at www.archeophone.com.
Beyond Blackface