African American Humor and Culture
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JULIEN’S AUCTIONS - PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF STEVE MARTIN PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release: JULIEN’S AUCTIONS ANNOUNCES PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF STEVE MARTIN Emmy, Grammy and Academy Award Winning Hollywood Legend’s Trademark White Suit Costume, Iconic Arrow through the Head Piece, 1976 Gibson Flying V “Toot Uncommons” Electric Guitar, Props and Costumes from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Little Shop of Horrors and More to Dazzle the Auction Stage at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills All of Steve Martin’s Proceeds of the Auction to be Donated to BenefitThe Motion Picture Home in Honor of Roddy McDowall SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2020 Los Angeles, California – (June 23rd, 2020) – Julien’s Auctions, the world-record breaking auction house to the stars, has announced PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF STEVE MARTIN, an exclusive auction event celebrating the distinguished career of the legendary American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician, and composer, taking place Saturday, July 18th, 2020 at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills and live online at juliensauctions.com. It was also announced today that all of Steve Martin’s proceeds he receives from the auction will be donated by him to benefit The Motion Picture Home in honor of Roddy McDowall, the late legendary stage, film and television actor and philanthropist for the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Country House and Hospital. MPTF supports working and retired members of the entertainment community with a safety net of health and social -
Blackface Behind Barbed Wire
Blackface Behind Barbed Wire Gender and Racial Triangulation in the Japanese American Internment Camps Emily Roxworthy THE CONFUSER: Come on, you can impersonate a Negro better than Al Jolson, just like you can impersonate a Jap better than Marlon Brando. [...] Half-Japanese and half-colored! Rare, extraordinary object! Like a Gauguin! — Velina Hasu Houston, Waiting for Tadashi ([2000] 2011:9) “Fifteen nights a year Cinderella steps into a pumpkin coach and becomes queen of Holiday Inn,” says Marjorie Reynolds as she applies burnt cork to her face [in the 1942 filmHoliday Inn]. The cinders transform her into royalty. — Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise (1996:183) During World War II, young Japanese American women performed in blackface behind barbed wire. The oppressive and insular conditions of incarceration and a political climate that was attacking the performers’ own racial status rendered these blackface performances somehow exceptional and even resistant. 2012 marked the 70th anniversary of the US government’s deci- sion to evacuate and intern nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The mass incarceration of Issei and Nisei in 1942 was justified by a US mindset that conflated every eth- nic Japanese face, regardless of citizenship status or national allegiance, with the “face of the TDR: The Drama Review 57:2 (T218) Summer 2013. ©2013 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 123 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00264 by guest on 01 October 2021 enemy.”1 While this racist reading of the Japanese (American) face has been widely condemned in the intervening 70 years, the precarious semiotics of Japanese ethnicity are remarkably pres- ent for contemporary observers attempting to apprehend the relationship between a Japanese (American) face and blackface. -
Aida Overton Walker Performs a Black Feminist Resistance
Restructuring Respectability, Gender, and Power: Aida Overton Walker Performs a Black Feminist Resistance VERONICA JACKSON From the beginning of her onstage career in 1897—just thirty-two years after the end of slavery—to her premature death in 1914, Aida Overton Walker was a vaudeville performer engaged in a campaign to restructure and re-present how African Americans, particularly black women in popular theater, were perceived by both black and white society.1 A de facto third principal of the famous minstrel and vaudeville team known as Williams and Walker (the partnership of Bert Williams and George Walker), Overton Walker was vital to the theatrical performance company’s success. Not only was she married to George; she was the company’s leading lady, principal choreographer, and creative director. Moreover and most importantly, Overton Walker fervently articulated her brand of racial uplift while simultaneously executing the right to choose the theater as a profession at a time when black women were expected to embody “respectable” positions inside the home as housewives and mothers or, if outside the home, only as dressmakers, stenographers, or domestics (see Figure 1).2 Overton Walker answered a call from within to pursue a more lucrative and “broadminded” avocation—one completely outside the realms of servitude or domesticity. She urged other black women to follow their “artistic yearnings” and choose the stage as a profession.3 Her actions as quests for gender equality and racial respectability—or as they are referred to in this article, feminism and racial uplift—are understudied, and are presented here as forms of transnational black resistance to the status quo. -
African American Performers on Early Sound Recordings, 1892-1916
African American Performers on Early Sound Recordings, 1892-1916 Finding music by African Americans on early phonograph records is more difficult than one might surmise. African American artists rarely performed on early recordings. Racial prejudice may only be a contributing factor. Although African American singers and musicians were well known, in its early years, the recording industry was not looking for known artists. At its inception, beginning in the 1890s, it was the song that sold a record, and not (with some exceptions), the artist. Talent scouts from the record companies were on the lookout to recruit anybody with a good clear voice, and good diction. Recruits were trained to utilize the various techniques of making a successful recording--such as backing away from the recording horn at loud passages to avoid "blasting." There was no need to seek out famous stage artists. The Berliner, Edison, and Columbia companies of the 1890s had established a cadre of professional white "recorders" able to render both up to the minute hits as well as old favorites--and for a lower fee than a famous performer required. These white recorders could also reproduce the works of African-American performers with "authentic" language usage. So why hire Ernest Hogan, Cole and Johnson, Williams and Walker, and others when the in-house talent could do the job? Besides, many artists famous for their strong stage voices did not record as clearly as the professional record makers. Earliest African American Recording Artists http://memory.loc.gov/cgi‐bin/query/r?ammem/dukesm:@field(DOCID+@lit(ncdhasm.b0814))In 1890 George W. -
Live from New York, It's the Translation of Cultural Humor!
Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection Undergraduate Scholarship 2015 Live from New York, it's the Translation of Cultural Humor! Megan Hosack Butler University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ugtheses Part of the Television Commons, and the Translation Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hosack, Megan, "Live from New York, it's the Translation of Cultural Humor!" (2015). Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection. 263. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ugtheses/263 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Scholarship at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NON-EXCLUSIVE LICENSE FOR USE OF MATERIALS in the DigitalCommons@Butler University This non-exclusive License defines the terms for the deposit of Materials in all formats into the digital repository of Materials collected, preserved, and made available through the DigitalCommons@Butler University. The Contributor hereby grants to Butler University a royalty-free, non-exclusive worldwide License to use, re-use, display, distribute, transmit, publish, republish or copy the Materials, either digitally or in print, or in any other medium, now or hereafter known, for the purpose of including the Materials in the DigitalCommons@Butler University. Butler University will not make any alteration, other than as allowed by this License, to your submission. Copyright and any other intellectual property right in or to the Materials shall not be transferred by this agreement and shall remain with the Contributor or the Copyright holder if different from the Contributor. -
In 193X, Constance Rourke's Book American Humor Was Reviewed In
OUR LIVELY ARTS: AMERICAN CULTURE AS THEATRICAL CULTURE, 1922-1931 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jennifer Schlueter, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Thomas Postlewait, Adviser Professor Lesley Ferris Adviser Associate Professor Alan Woods Graduate Program in Theatre Copyright by Jennifer Schlueter c. 2007 ABSTRACT In the first decades of the twentieth century, critics like H.L. Mencken and Van Wyck Brooks vociferously expounded a deep and profound disenchantment with American art and culture. At a time when American popular entertainments were expanding exponentially, and at a time when European high modernism was in full flower, American culture appeared to these critics to be at best a quagmire of philistinism and at worst an oxymoron. Today there is still general agreement that American arts “came of age” or “arrived” in the 1920s, thanks in part to this flogging criticism, but also because of the powerful influence of European modernism. Yet, this assessment was not, at the time, unanimous, and its conclusions should not, I argue, be taken as foregone. In this dissertation, I present crucial case studies of Constance Rourke (1885-1941) and Gilbert Seldes (1893-1970), two astute but understudied cultural critics who saw the same popular culture denigrated by Brooks or Mencken as vibrant evidence of exactly the modern American culture they were seeking. In their writings of the 1920s and 1930s, Rourke and Seldes argued that our “lively arts” (Seldes’ formulation) of performance—vaudeville, minstrelsy, burlesque, jazz, radio, and film—contained both the roots of our own unique culture as well as the seeds of a burgeoning modernism. -
THE UNDERPANTS, Stephen Neal (Director) Is on the Faculty at FIU and Holds an MFA in Directing from Florida State University
Florida International University FIU Digital Commons Department of Theatre Production Programs Department of Theatre Spring 4-3-2008 The ndeU rpants Department of Theatre, Florida International University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/theatre_programs Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Department of Theatre, Florida International University, "The ndeU rpants" (2008). Department of Theatre Production Programs. 59. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/theatre_programs/59 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Theatre at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Department of Theatre Production Programs by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WHO' SWHO DIRECTOR'SNOTES Steve Martin (Adaptation] : This actor, producer, Change can be terrifying or exhilarating, depending on your point of view . Just comedian, composer , writer, musician, and playwright is a recipient of the Mark TwainPrize for look at how the world has changed in the last hundred years. The first decade in American Humor and has been bestowed many the twentieth century was marked by the jockeying for world domination by the accolades for his numerous and varied contributions imperial powers of the time. Life in the Edwardian Era was serene on the surface, to the entertainment industry. As a playwright, especially for members of the upper classes . Their daily lives were filled with the Mart in created Picassoat The LapinAgile and did pursuit of personal pleasure, and the conspicuous consumption of the earth 's an adaptation of Carl Sternheim 's TheUnderpants. -
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE ZIEGFELD GIRLS BEAUTY VERSUS TALENT A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts in Theatre Arts By Cassandra Ristaino May 2012 The thesis of Cassandra Ristaino is approved: ______________________________________ __________________ Leigh Kennicott, Ph.D. Date ______________________________________ __________________ Christine A. Menzies, B.Ed., MFA Date ______________________________________ __________________ Ah-jeong Kim, Ph.D., Chair Date California State University, Northridge ii Dedication This thesis is dedicated to Jeremiah Ahern and my mother, Mary Hanlon for their endless support and encouragement. iii Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis chair and graduate advisor Dr. Ah-Jeong Kim. Her patience, kindness, support and encouragement guided me to completing my degree and thesis with an improved understanding of who I am and what I can accomplish. This thesis would not have been possible without Professor Christine Menzies and Dr. Leigh Kennicott who guided me within the graduate program and served on my thesis committee with enthusiasm and care. Professor Menzies, I would like to thank for her genuine interest in my topic and her insight. Dr. Kennicott, I would like to thank for her expertise in my area of study and for her vigilant revisions. I am indebted to Oakwood Secondary School, particularly Dr. James Astman and Susan Schechtman. Without their support, encouragement and faith I would not have been able to accomplish this degree while maintaining and benefiting from my employment at Oakwood. I would like to thank my family for their continued support in all of my goals. -
The Linguistic Pragmatics of American Humor
Vol. 1 No. 4 Language and Semiotic Studies Winter 2015 The Incommensurate/Illogical in Perelman/Marx: The Linguistic Pragmatics of American Humor Peter A. Yacavone Soochow University, China Abstract This article offers a preliminary analysis of the language of certain varieties of American comedy that arose out of the Vaudeville theater (from roughly 1910 – 1930) and, later, out of the culture of popular magazines from (roughly) the 1920s to the 1950s. The focus is on the exemplary and highly original comic language of S. J. Perelman (1904 – 1979), the Jewish prose humorist, and Perelman’s quasi-mentor, the legendary stage and screen comedian Groucho Marx (1890 – 1979), who was renowned for his improvisational wit. The article’s purpose is to explicate, with reference to important developments in 20th century linguistics and semiotics, some aspects of these highly original, self-conscious and indeed modernist verbal practices. It also tentatively explores the significance of these unconventional linguistic intuitions in regards to broader questions concerning the possibility of effective communication and, thus, the links between discourse and social ideology in a mid-century American context. The theoretical perspectives brought to bear on this subject include Grice’s theory of conversational implicature and Austin’s Speech Act Theory—both cornerstones of linguistic pragmatics—as well as Deleuze’s concept of a ‘minor literature,’ a theory of modernist literary practice substantially determined by earlier developments in semiotic theory and philosophical pragmatism. Keywords: Marx Brothers, Perelman, Deleuze, pragmatics, comedy 1. Introduction Beginning in the 19th century with the popularity of the serialized works of Dickens, the magazine, with the daily newspaper, was the dominant form of American prose literature. -
Bert Williams
he MessengerFIFTEEN CENTS A COPY . 00.000,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,000,0 A Voice From The Dead X Bert Williams An Interpretation ODHOHOHODODO - O ODCHOCHCHOCHDHOODHO THE MESSENGER [April, 1922 . Royal Theatre 15th & SOUTH STS . PHILADELPHIA WHEN IN PHILADELPHIA The Most Handsome Colored Photoplay House in Go to the America . Olympia Philadelphia Stands in a class by itself in . Prominent for the high class Photoplays shown here and the high grado music fur. Organ Theatre by our $ 30,000 Moller . nished CO-OPERATION FOR For information on organistas cooperative spelaties apply to CO -OPERATIVE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 2 Weet 13th Street New York the finest, most gripping THE MESSENGER Published Monthly by the MESSENGER PUBLISHING CO ., Inc , York . Main Office : 2305 Seventh Avenue New Telephone , Morningside 1996 Largest Motion Picture 16e. per Copy $1.50 per Year 446 TOAD ) U. S. U. S. 20. Outoldo House of its kind in $2 Outside , . No. 4. VOL . IV . APRIL 1922 South Philadelphia . CO N T E N TS I. EDITORIALS 385 388 2. EcoxOMICS AND POLITICS STS . 389 BROAD & BAINBRIDGE 3 . EDUCATION AND LITERATURE 394 4 . Who's Who 394 5. OPEN FORUM , July , , at the Entered as Second Class Mail 27 1919 , of March 3, 1879 . Post Office at New York , N.Y. under Act Editors : OWEN A. PHILIP RANDOLPH CHANDLER Contributing editor : GEORGE FRAZIER MILLER W. A. DOMINGO 385 April , 1922. ) THE MESSENGER Editorials ANTI LYNCHING LEGISLATION AND LABOR RUSSIAN CHILDREN STARVING . , Lynching labor , , THE Dyer Anti- Bill should interest WHILE the farmers in the West use corn for fuel , Out of the four thousand or more persons who millions of innocent helpless Russian children , country , be . -
Humor in America*
Humor in America* WHEN America was young a traveler in the West could never tell what he might find over the next rise in the road or beyond another bend in the river. There might be Davy Crockett himself, astride an alligator or riding the lightning, grinning his fierce, hyena grin that curled the bark off trees; or the Devil-Jack Diamond-Fish, a bullet- proof creature ten feet in length, that Audubon the naturalist, solemn- faced but tongue-in-cheek, described to a visitor from France. One spring day in 1808, walking along the docks at Natchez, a New Yorker, Christian Schultz, Jr., came upon two drunken fiatboatmen in an argument. 'One said, "I am a man; I am a horse; I am a team. I can whip any man in all Kentucky, by G-d." The other replied, "I am an alligator, half man, half horse; can whip any man on the Mississippi, by G-d." The first one again, "I am a man; have the best horse, best dog, best gun, and the handsomest wife in all Kentucky, by G-d." The other, "I am a Mississippi snapping turtle; have bear's claws, alligator's teeth, and the devil's tail; can whip any man, by G-d." This was too much for the first, and at it they went like two bulls. They were fighting, Schultz later learned, over a Choctaw woman. What Schultz encountered that April day along the Missis- sippi was almost the archetypal expression of humor in America. The battle of the riverboatmen contains nearly all the themes and elements that have gone into the most creative, most enduring forms of Ameri- can humor — grotesque imagination, extravagant bragging, sexual competition, and the climatic eruption of violence. -
For Use by Media Beginning
Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, August 1, 2019 Bradley Cooper Tiffany Haddish Kevin Hart Trevor Noah Jon Stewart John Legend & Chrissy Teigen and Other Special Guests Celebrate the Humor of DAVE CHAPPELLE Recipient of the 22nd Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall October 27, 2019 at 8 p.m. Program to be Broadcast Nationally on PBS January 6, 2020 at 9 p.m. (WASHINGTON)—A lineup of leading performers, including Bradley Cooper, Tiffany Haddish, Kevin Hart, Trevor Noah, Jon Stewart, John Legend & Chrissy Teigen, and others will salute Dave Chappelle at the 22nd annual Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday, October 27, 2019 at 8 p.m. The program will pay tribute to the humor and accomplishments of Chappelle, and will be broadcasted on PBS stations on January 6, 2020. On-sale and ticketing information for this event will be available at a later date, and sponsorship packages and Party Passes for the Mark Twain Prize gala performance are on sale now. Capital One® is the Presenting Sponsor of this year’s Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor as part of the bank’s three-year, $3 million gift to fund Comedy at the Kennedy Center, a signature program at the Center focused on elevating comedy as an art form and uniting the community through laughter. The event will be co-chaired by Tamia and Grant Hill. The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recognizes individuals who have had an impact on American society in ways similar to the distinguished 19th-century novelist and essayist Samuel Clemens, best known as Mark Twain.