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Signifying in Blackface: the Pursuit of Minstrel Signs in American Literature

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Signifying in Blackface: the Pursuit of Minstrel Signs in American Literature SIGNIFYING IN BLACKFACE: THE PURSUIT OF MINSTREL SIGNS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Értekezés a doktori (Ph.D) fokozat megszerzése érdekében az amerikanisztika tudományágban Írta: Varró Gabriella okleveles magyar nyelv és irodalom és angol nyelv és irodalom szakos tanár Készült a Debreceni Egyetem irodalomtudományok doktori iskolája Angol és északamerikai irodalom és kultúra programja keretében Témavezet ı: Dr. Virágos Zsolt A doktori szigorlati bizottság: elnök: Dr. …………….. tagok: Dr. …………….. tagok: Dr. …………….. A doktori szigorlat id ıpontja: 2005. ……………………… Az értekezés bírálói: Dr. ……………. Dr. ……………. Dr. ……………. A bírálóbizottság: elnök: Dr. …………….. tagok: Dr. …………….. tagok: Dr. …………….. tagok: Dr. …………….. tagok: Dr. …………….. Az értekezés védésének id ıpontja: 2005. ………………….. Én, Varró Gabriella, teljes felel ısségem tudatában kijelentem, hogy a benyújtott értekezés a szerz ıi jog nemzetközi normáinak tiszteletben tartásával készült. SIGNIFYING IN BLACKFACE: THE PURSUIT OF MINSTREL SIGNS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE CONTENTS Foreword 1 [1] Notes on Form and Style 4 Introduction 5 [1] The Project 5 [2] General Methodology 6 [3] The Premise 10 [4] Structure of the Present Inquiry 11 [5] The Relevant Terminology 14 Chapter I Theoretical Backgrounds 19 [1] Overview 19 [2] Minstrelsy Studies 20 (A) Currency of Blackface Research 21 (B) Chronological Classification 22 (C) An Introduction to Minstrelsy Studies as a New Field of Inquiry 24 [3] Theater and Drama Semiotics 26 (A) Historical Overview 27 (B) “Hunt for the Sign” 30 (C) Typologies of Theatrical Signs 34 (D) Semiotization of the Minstrel Theater 38 1. The Problem of Naming 43 2. Terminological Alternatives 44 3. Defining the Minstrel Sign 46 4. Classification of the Minstrel Sign: A Proposed Model 49 Chapter II The Semiotic System of Minstrelsy 53 [1] Structural Signs 54 (A) The Street Parade 54 (B) The Semicircular Stage Format 56 (C) The Tripartite Arrangement 56 [2] Literary and Generic Minstrel Signs 59 (A) Minstrel Songs 60 (B) The Stump Speech 63 (C) Minstrel Jokes: Puns and Conundrums 65 (D) Dance 68 [3] Aesthetic Minstrel Sings 72 (A) The Minstrel Mimicry 72 (B) The Minstrel Grotesque 75 1. Grotesque Elements in Minstrel Props 76 2. Grotesque Minstrel Scenarios 77 3. The Ideological Sources of Minstrelsy’s Lopsided World View 80 (a) Ambivalence or Joyful Relativity 81 (b) Liminality 82 (c) Utopia 82 (d) Scandal 84 (e) Parody 84 (C) Minstrel Character Clichés, Stereotypes 85 [4] Linguistic Marks as Minstrel Signs 92 (A) The Minstrel Dialect 92 (B) Malapropism 95 (C) Homonyms and Homophones 96 [5] Bodily or Physical Minstrel Signs 97 (A) The Mask 98 (B) The Minstrel’s Attire 102 (C) Physical Features 104 (D) Minstrel Cross-Dressing; or, the Wench Role 106 Chapter III The Commodification of the Minstrel Sign 108 [1] The Institution 110 [2] Strategies and Ideologies of Racial Objectification 116 (A) Aspects of Human Objectification 116 (B) The Cultural Forces Behind Minstrelsy: Ideologies of Belonging 119 (C) The Politics of Liminality 123 (D) Practices of Racial Objectification: Ideologies of Not Belonging (I) 126 (E) The America Versus Europe Syndrome: Ideologies of Not Belonging (II) 133 [3] Marketing the Product 136 (A) Originality and Authenticity: Products and Marketing Strategies 137 (B) Additional Rhetorical Strategies 140 (C) Promotional Strategies 142 Chapter IV The Minstrel Heritage as a Formative Influence in 19 th -Century American Literature 144 [1] Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Contradiction of Conflicting Discourses 148 [2] The Case of Herman Melville: Subverting the Minstrel Heritage 158 (A) The Minstrel Sign Revisited: A Reading of Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” 158 (B) The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade —A Rereading of Chapter 3 165 [3] The Adventures of the Minstrel Sign in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn 177 Chapter V 20 th -Century Literary Extensions of the Minstrel Sign 191 I. Minstrel Signs as Substantive Compositional Features 192 [1] Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man : A Satire on Masks 192 (A) The Hero as Minstrel Man 193 (B) Versions of Masks and Masking 194 1. Blackface Masking 194 2. The Darky Act 197 3. Masks of the American Absurd 199 (C) Minstrel Paraphernalia 200 (D) Minstrel Stereotypes 203 [2] John Berryman and the Minstrel Tradition 205 [3] Signifying Practices in Ntozake Shange’s spell# 7 211 (A) Minstrel Signification 212 (B) Authorial/Textual Strategies of Rebellion 214 1. Subversion 214 2. Undoing 215 3. Rewriting, De-spelling 217 (C) Blacks and the Blackface Tradition: A Dubious Alliance 218 II. Sporadic Literary Minstrel References 218 [1] Sporadic Minstrel Signification from the Pre-1945 Period 219 [2] Fragmentary Minstrel References from the Post-1945 Period 225 VI. Afterword: The Translatability of Cultures 230 Works Cited 235 Appendix Chart I: Tadeusz Kowzan’s taxonomy of theatrical signs Chart II: Patrice Pavis’ questionnaire Chart III: Keir Elam’s taxonomy of theatrical subcodes Figure I: Semicircular stage format Figure II: Grotesque illustration of the Virginia Minstrels Figure III: The blackface grin FOREWORD My long journey undertaken to research and study the history, iconography, cultural and literary implications, interdisciplinary and intertextual problematics, and cultural survival of the minstrel phenomenon started a good decade back, sometime in 1992. The tradition of white entertainers’ masking their faces with black cork, and acting in imitation (and surely also in parody) of black people in the framework of popular theatrics began around the 1830s in the American North. Researching the historiography and broader cultural contexts of blackface minstrelsy , as the phenomenon is popularly referred to, has grown on me, and come to mean more than an academic commitment: it became a fascination and an addiction. A strange fascination, to be sure, especially for someone situated outside of the culture of both the 19 th century and that of the United States. Also, since the blackface tradition is tied so much to what could be broadly referenced as the culture and history of black America and the representation of these by whites, I was very much aware of my precarious position as an outsider to the field, being both white and European. Yet, after I became aware of the significant cultural, historical and social knowledge that this popular theatrical tradition had to offer pertaining to issues of race, class, society and literature, there evolved an ever greater urgency in me to learn—and hopefully discover—more about minstrelsy’s specific cultural import and contexts. In no age can the study of theater be separated from the history, societal structure and cultural contexts of the times, and this is true, in more senses than one, in the case of the popular theater. When one researches any particular facet of the 19 th -century American popular stage in the United States, there is no escaping the assessment of the various elements that acted upon its shaping and shared in the creation of its formulas. Mine too was a work that involved constant learning about popular culture, the entertainment industry, audience behavior, ideological ramifications, ethnic and class conflict in the 19 th century, the history of the rise of African American art and culture within the often alien context of mainstream American art, as well as about issues of cultural continuity and survival. In a way, the present work will document how the thematically rather diverse criticism of blackface minstrelsy influenced my thinking about the minstrel phenomenon, and how by the end of this research I hope to have found an independent critical path distinct from contemporaneous critical debates. Back in 1993 I still hoped to get acquainted with the tradition of blackface mostly from critical works, and developed a focus of analysis largely based on the knowledge and personal comprehension of major critical writings pertaining to the field. By 1998-99, besides absorbing the new critical works on minstrelsy, I also immersed myself in primary documents that helped me demythologize many of the legendary assumptions that still linger about minstrelsy. In brief, I gained a critical focus entirely my own. The original impetus to start research in blackface minstrelsy was prompted by a book that—at that time my professor now a colleague—Zsolt Virágos published in 1975 in Hungarian about the heritage and representation of Afro-American culture in American literature, with the title Négerség és az amerikai irodalom [”Blacks and American Literature”]. In this book, the subchapter introducing the figure and stereotype of the Comic Negro caught my attention as having manifold connections to the American stage, popular culture as well as to American and especially African-American history (among other things), all aspects of culture that interested me greatly at the time. My professor’s encouragement to initiate studies on this central stereotypical character of minstrelsy, the comic black, was just the incentive I needed. The research developed in phases, first I learned more and more about the social, historical, geographical contexts of the minstrel phenomenon—mostly from books by outstanding scholars in the field, such as Robert Toll, Carl Wittke, Hans Nathan, Eric Lott, etc. In 1994 I managed to spend five months at Indiana University, where I studied materials on blackface’s historical development in the theatrical world of the US. It was there that I developed a typology of those comic stereotypes that grew out of the minstrel show, and later invaded American culture. In 1995, summarizing my findings of typological analyses, I wrote my doctoral dissertation with the title The “Comic Negro” in American Culture: A Study of a Popular Cultural Icon and Stereotype . Having concluded my research, I kept contributing conference papers on meeting points between the minstrel phenomenon and contemporary trends in literary and cultural criticism. Although questions pertaining to the implied power struggles and the underlying postcolonial perspectives of minstrelsy kept the field open for novel interrogations and the discovery of novel insights, at one point I was quite certain that my studies in blackface minstrelsy were coming to an end.
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