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Jedda BENJAMIN MILLER University of New South Wales

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Jedda BENJAMIN MILLER University of New South Wales 140 JASAL SPECIAL ISSUE 2007: SPECTRES, SCREENS, SHADOWS, MIRRORS The Mirror of Whiteness: Blackface in Charles Chauvel’s Jedda BENJAMIN MILLER University of New South Wales A young and unknown Charles Chauvel, before leaving for the theatre, stares into the mirror in his room and straightens his tie. He winks to himself, just as an American director had winked to him the previous week. Later, he takes his seat among men in suits and women in furs. The Hollywood theatre smells of stale tobacco; smoke hangs in the air. A piano rattles into action as one of the latest Westerns flickers into life. It’s the usual story—cowboy chases Indian, cowboy shoots Indian. People will gasp, laugh and leave feeling good. A young and unknown Charles Chauvel, Hollywood stunt-man, stares into the screen and waits for his entrance. Charles Chauvel travelled to America in 1921. He was hoping to break into the cinema industry. During this time Chauvel experienced Hollywood. He was playing roles in silent films to survive (in dark make-up as Mexicans and Arabs), and also worked as a publicity agent for the incredibly popular Douglas Fairbanks Snr, famed for his role (in dark make-up) as an Arab in The Thief of Baghdad (Chauvel Carlsson 29, 30). This article posits that Chauvel’s early experience in and with “blackface” was a significant influence for his own films. Michael Pate—an actor Chauvel later discovered, and who went on to star in the hit Australian TV show, Homicide—recalls of Chauvel’s time in Hollywood: [he], of course, handled himself like a true Australian bushie, in one shot galloping right-to-left as a Red Indian, the next hurtling by in the same direction, even on the same horse, as a cowboy chasing the same Red Indian (himself). (x) This image of Chauvel, “like a true Australian bushie”, chasing his own racial creations across the screen can be read as a potent comment on the Australian social imaginary’s construction of race. Reading Chauvel in blackface reflects his fictions of race back onto himself—he is “cowboy” and “Indian”. This article recounts a history of blackface performances, as well as ways of reading blackface, to fill some critical gaps in an iconic Australian film—Charles Chauvel’s Jedda (1955). My reading of Jedda will turn the film back onto itself to reflect not just Chauvel, but also a long 140 THE MIRROR OF WHITENESS 141 history of racial representation, spanning many continents and over 100 years, which was always radical and racist, benevolent and violent. When Chauvel wore and directed blackface he was, perhaps quite unconsciously, reiterating racial fictions that had justified violent colonialism and slavery since the eighteenth century. To understand this, Chauvel’s work must be read within a history of blackface. There is little doubt that blackface was used on the Elizabethan stage— Othello being an obvious example; however, just where and how it became blackface minstrelsy—the most popular form of nineteenth century entertainment—is not so clear. Mikko Tuhkanen has argued that in early “minstrel theory” (c.1920s-1960s) “blackface representations were assumed to be the transparent results of simple cultural borrowing” (16). According to these critics blackface was used by white performers in conjunction with an “authentic” cultural and racial mimicry of African people who had been transported to America as slaves. However, it is just as likely that those early white minstrels where actually indirectly mimicking themselves. The stiff dance-steps may have been African parodies of European dances.1 Blackface is not even strictly an American phenomenon, as is often assumed. The American blackface was influenced by local conditions as well as by the various forms of blackface being performed around the world, including, of course, in Australia. Richard Waterhouse’s From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville provides the most complete account to date of the history of blackface entertainment in Australia. Waterhouse provides an excellent account of, to use his phrase, “negro impersonations” (26) in Australia. However, despite his passing reference to “Aboriginal” acts, his history of the Australian blackface does not chart the emergence of an Aboriginal character played by white actors in blackface during the nineteenth century in Australia. Waterhouse convincingly argues for a complex world-influenced history of the Australian blackface minstrel. Blackface had been acted in both America and Britain by the late eighteenth century. Waterhouse argues that these “early characterisations of blacks” were “English in origin and based on Caribbean stereotypes”; they “portrayed them either in sentimental terms as romantic noble savages . or in comic terms, as ludicrous characters” (1). After the American “War of 1812”, a blackface character appeared on the American stage, singing patriotic American songs in a supposedly Afro-American dialect. It was an emerging success. At first these comic minstrels, forged in the name of American patriotism and influenced by Caribbean stereotypes, were generally only found in “bit- 142 JASAL SPECIAL ISSUE 2007: SPECTRES, SCREENS, SHADOWS, MIRRORS parts” or as comic relief during a show. However, over the next decade the minstrel show became an international sensation. The British were entertained by an American performer, T.D Rice, in 1836. Then, seven years later, the Americans were entertained by the Virginia Minstrels in what is generally regarded as the first formal full evening of blackface minstrelsy. The Virginia Minstrels were also popular in Britain during the 1840s. Helen Gilbert argues that minstrelsy was not an isolated British/American phenomenon, but that “the transnational flows of minstrelsy were complex and extensive” (683). Gilbert states that, as well as being popular in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, “minstrel shows also found a colonial audience in India, Jamaica, Nigeria, and South Africa” (683). The blackface minstrels, circulating across the globe, had moved from between the scenes to become an entire show; a worldwide touchstone for popular opinions on race at the time. Minstrelsy’s popularity and form could not be attributed solely to the Caribbean, Britain or America, but relied on worldwide circulation. Given the worldwide popularity of minstrelsy during the nineteenth century it is hardly surprising that the first locally produced Australian plays incorporated “black” characters (see Burn, A.B.C, McLaughlin, Cooper, and Benbow). White actors would no doubt, have played these characters in blackface. In what is commonly regarded as the first play written and performed in Australia,2 Henry Melville’s The Bushrangers (1834), an Aboriginal character makes an appearance: NATIVE. — Me want baccy and bredly—me had none long time— me got very old blanket. ELLEN. — Well blackey, you shall have both, if you will dance a corroboree! NATIVE. — He, he! corroboree? ELLEN. — Yes! corroberee.[3] No baccy without corroboree. [NATIVE sings and dances the corroboree] ELLEN. — Well now, blackey, I’ll sing you a song. [ELLEN sings a song] . ELLEN. — There now, will you promise not to send begging here, any of your gins and piccaninies, if I give you what you want . I don’t know which is worst, the bushrangers or you natives. NATIVE. — Bushranger rob, steal, kill, murder—little make them savage—black native love white man, till murder wife, piccaniny. ELLEN. — Come be off . (18-19) THE MIRROR OF WHITENESS 143 The song and dance was most likely improvised, with little or no authentic mimicry of an indigenous ceremony. For an impression of what such a dance may have entailed, a dance by Aboriginal characters is described in a play by David Burn (who had lived in Tasmania, like Melville, but returned to his native Scotland where his play was first performed in 1829). In that play, also titled The Bushrangers: (. PEGGY returns with bread, tea, sugar and tobacco. The BLACKS pull the kangaroos from the fire, tear them with their teeth, munch the bread and keep up a great gabbling. When they have done, they all exclaim, ‘Corobbora — Corobbora!’ They then start up and perform a rude dance in which they go spinning round and round and throwing their arms about in an extravagant manner and singing.) TOM [the Aboriginal ‘chief ’]: Well, matta [as in “master”], how you like black fello corrobora? (30) These dances may well have incorporated minstrelsy dance-steps (“rude”- ness was certainly a feature of a minstrel skit). Given that American and British blackface performances are recorded by Waterhouse as taking place at Australian race-meets throughout the 1820s and 1830s (27), Melville and Burn would most probably have witnessed an early form of minstrelsy. In regards to language, Fotheringham notes of Melville’s scene that the words “corroboree” and “gin” were poor approximations from the language of Sydney’s Dharuk clan (the latter’s usage pre-dating the word’s inception into dictionaries of the time) (xlix). The term “piccaniny” [sic], however, is originally a term for children from the Caribbean (Fotheringham fn19). The transnational language of minstrelsy had travelled from the Caribbean, via Britain and the US (where “pickaninnies” were minstrelsy show regulars), to Australia. Melville’s play also provides some interesting insights into inter-racial encounters in the nineteenth century. There is a fascinating cultural exchange of songs; the play almost functions as a space where cultural artefacts intertwine and are exchanged at will. However, the power differentials cannot be escaped as the “Native” sings for basic rations and blankets (it is a system he is addicted to via “baccy”/tobacco, much to the benefit of white settlers). Further, the Aboriginal song is improvised and not included in the script whereas Ellen’s song is transcribed. This displays an assumption of white superiority through the authentic transcription of an Irish song. This is particularly telling in contrast to the indigenous “culture”, which is presented as a spontaneous, comic, mimicry.
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