Department of English and American Studies English Language And

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Kateřina Urubková Representation of African American Women in Film Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. 2016 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Kateřina Urubková Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, Mr. Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, for his guidance during the process of my writing. I would also like to thank my family and friends for support. Table of Contents Introduction 5 The origin and the definition of the stereotype 7 African American actresses and the mammy stereotype 21 Hattie McDaniel 24 Ethel Waters 26 Whoopi Goldberg 28 Octavia Spencer 30 Analysis of the selected films 33 Gone with the Wind 33 Pinky 37 Clara’s Heart 39 The Help 42 Conclusion 46 Bibliography 48 English Résumé 53 Czech Résumé_ 54 Introduction Film has an enormous power, since it reaches wide audiences around the world and people often tend to perceive distorted images on screens as truthful representations, which subsequently maintains prejudice and racism among people. In the past, stereotypes of African Americans were used for influencing views of whites on them and creating notions about them in order to manifest their inferiority. Film employed these stereotypes of African Americans and played an important role in the process of popularization of the stereotypes. As a visual medium, film brings the stereotypes to life, providing them with real shapes and real faces of African American actors and actresses, which contributes to the intensification of the belief that stereotypical portrayals on the big screens are based on truthful representations of real people with real life experience and stories. Today, permanent preservation of distorted stereotypes of African Americans and their constant displaying continues to degrade African Americans and thus has negative impact on how people perceive them. Therefore, Hollywood, as the centre of American cinema, should redefine their images and stop perpetuating and even honouring stereotypical roles. In the early 19th century, many stereotypes of African Americans were developed, popularized and established as part of American popular culture and they have been preserved up to this day. In the thesis, I am going to concentrate on one of the stereotypes of African American women, the mammy stereotype. The first chapter is concerned with its origin and development. There is showed the way this stereotype has been popularized and employed in various spheres of American popular culture, including literature, theatre, advertising and also film and television. I am going to argue that it is not based on a correct portrayal of real African American women, but rather on a distortion of reality. 5 The second chapter concentrates on positions of African American actresses in Hollywood. They continue to be relegated to supporting and stereotypical roles and still struggle to gain visibility and opportunity. In the chapter, four selected actresses, namely Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters, Whoopi Goldberg and Octavia Spencer, and their decisions to accept stereotypical roles are discussed. All of them portrayed a mammy figure throughout their careers and they have been selected, since they played a mammy character in films that are going to be analysed in the last chapter, namely Gone with the Wind (1939), Pinky (1949), Clara’s Heart (1988) and The Help (2011). In the third chapter, I am going to analyse these four selected films, in which mammy character plays a central role. What I am going to argue is that despite various changes and alternations, mammy stereotype maintains many similar characteristics as at the beginning of its emergence. Particularly, the essential aspect of each mammy figure, her devotion to her white masters and employers, remains unchanged. This deep and almost mythical devotion of mammy to her white employers and white children is what appeals to white audiences and thus film continues to preserve this fantasy and maintains it for future generations. 6 The origin and the definition of the stereotype Stereotypical portrayals of African Americans have a long tradition in the United States of America. Ever since Africans were brought to the New World on the ships to work there on the plantations as slaves in the 16th century; they were perceived as unintelligent and primitive, therefore it was common, as Jennifer Bloomquist remarks in “The Minstrel Legacy: African American English and the Historical Construction of ‘Black’ Identities in Entertainment,” that “Blacks served as amusement for White audiences on plantations throughout the enslavement period” (411). The notion of African Americans as a source of entertainment and laughter was, therefore, deeply rooted in American society and culture long before the foundation of the United States of America. The notion endured and later made its way to the popular culture. In “Black Stereotypes as Reflected in Popular Culture, 1880-1920,” Stanley J. Lemons asserts that “the black person as entertainment and comic figure has emerged twice in the popular culture, and at both times race relations were extremely bad” (104). First, it was in the minstrel show during 1840s, “when the slavery issue was becoming a serious political question” (Lemons 104), and second, “again in the 1880s and 1890s, when race relations were at their worst, most violent level, the comic black man became the most common figure in America’s new popular entertainment – vaudeville and musical revue” (Lemons 104). During the era of minstrel show, Americans developed many stereotypical portrayals of African Americans, among which the most common and frequent, as displayed in the documentary Ethnic Notions (1986), were Sambo, Coon, Uncle/Pappy, Aunt/Mammy and Pickanniny. These stereotypes were also referred to as stock characters and they were created in order to defend slavery in the antebellum era, when the debates between abolitionists and pro-slavery authorities over the institution of slavery, at that time also called “peculiar institution,” took place. African Americans 7 were portrayed as contented and faithful slaves in the antebellum era. After the Civil War, images of African Americans were shifted from faithful slaves to savages, as George Fredrickson asserts in Ethnic Notions, whites feared that “blacks no longer under the benign or beneficent or kindly guidance of white were reverting to savagery.” In addition, Erskine Peters in Ethnic Notions observes how the perception of African Americans was being manipulated according to what was convenient for the society at that moment, when he states, “earlier we wouldn’t have gotten an image of a brute Negro… because this wouldn’t have helped in the defense of slavery … The image that they needed was that blacks were docile in antebellum times. During Reconstruction the black is a challenge to the political system and … they are saying that the blacks are an offense to civilization.” As Peters suggests, images of African Americans displayed in American culture were changing according to the needs of whites, since it reflected their attitudes to social and racial issues. As Stanley J. Lemons states, “the dominant popular culture was created by and for whites, they showed themselves in a flattering fashion, while blacks were usually exaggerated in the worst way” (113). The first massive emergence and propagation of the stereotypes of African Americans, including the mammy character, came with the emergence of minstrel show in the 19th century. Minstrel show was “an indigenous American theatrical form, popular from the early 19th to the early 20th century, that was founded on the comic enactment of racial stereotypes” (“Minstrel show”). White men performing in blackface were entertaining white audiences by parodying African Americans and their experiences as slaves on plantations. They were singing, dancing and giving comical speeches; all that they presented, then presented as authentic African American culture, even though “in the early days of minstrelsy, more often than not, the actors had little or no real contact with African Americans, so their version of Black culture was almost 8 entirely grounded in racist stereotypes” (Bloomquist 411), thus what the minstrel show presented as authentic was in fact fictional. The minstrel show was widespread both in the North and in the South, because the performers were touring all around the country and “[they] drew large and enthusiastic White audiences, many of whom had never seen an African American face-to-face – and even those Whites who were familiar with Black culture accepted these comedic distortions of Black life as valuable entertainment” (Bloomquist 412). These so-called genuine depictions of happy slaves appealed to white audiences and they served as the defence of slavery. Their aim was to propagate among white audiences a positive outlook on the institution of slavery. Blackface performers depicted the relationships between masters and slaves as harmonic and almost idyllic and the lives of slaves full of singing, dancing and joy. As George Fredrickson states in Ethnic Notions, “the old plantation was presented as a kind of paradise. White Americans were being constantly bombarded by the image of happy slaves … so slavery must be a good institution if the slaves were happy and the masters were kindly.” Mammy, as one of the stock characters, is seen as further manifesting how good the relationships between slaves and masters were and also how contented the slaves were on plantations. They were depicted as good-humoured and as Patricia A. Turner asserts in Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies, they were “always singing from dawn to dusk” (45). Moreover, they were portrayed as “innocuous, docile black women who posed no threats to white families they served” (Turner 45). Mammies were non- threatening not only in terms of their behaviour, but also in terms of their appearance, since they were portrayed as overweight with glossy round face and bandanna over their hair in such fashion that they appeared asexual.

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