Inside the Minstrel Mask
Title | Inside the Minstrel Mask PDF eBook |
Author | Annemarie Bean |
Publisher | Wesleyan University Press |
Total Pages | 332 |
Release | 1996-11-29 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780819563002 |
A sourcebook of contemporary and historical commentary on America's first popular mass entertainment.
Behind the Burnt Cork Mask
Title | Behind the Burnt Cork Mask PDF eBook |
Author | William John Mahar |
Publisher | University of Illinois Press |
Total Pages | 476 |
Release | 1999 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780252066962 |
The songs, dances, jokes, parodies, spoofs, and skits of blackface groups such as the Virginia Minstrels and Buckley's Serenaders became wildly popular in antebellum America. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask not only explores the racist practices of these entertainers but considers their performances as troubled representations of ethnicity, class, gender, and culture in the nineteenth century. William J. Mahar's unprecedented archival study of playbills, newspapers, sketches, monologues, and music engages new sources previously not considered in twentieth-century scholarship. More than any other study of its kind, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask investigates the relationships between blackface comedy and other Western genres and traditions; between the music of minstrel shows and its European sources; and between "popular" and "elite" constructions of culture. By locating minstrel performances within their complex sites of production, Mahar offers a significant reassessment of the historiography of the field. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask promises to redefine the study of blackface minstrelsy, charting new directions for future inquiries by scholars in American studies, popular culture, and musicology.
Demons of Disorder
Title | Demons of Disorder PDF eBook |
Author | Dale Cockrell |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 262 |
Release | 1997-07-28 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN | 9780521568289 |
A study of blackface minstrels in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Satire Or Evasion?
Title | Satire Or Evasion? PDF eBook |
Author | James S. Leonard |
Publisher | Duke University Press |
Total Pages | 292 |
Release | 1992 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780822311744 |
Ranging from the laudatory to the openly hostile, 15 essays by prominent African American scholars and critics examine the novel's racist elements and assess the degree to which Twain's ironies succeed or fail to turn those elements into a satirical attack on racism. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop
Title | Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop PDF eBook |
Author | Yuval Taylor |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Total Pages | 353 |
Release | 2012-08-27 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0393070980 |
Investigates the origin and heyday of black minstrelsy, which in modern times is considered an embarrassment, and discusses whether or not the art form is actually still alive in the work of contemporary performers--from Dave Chappelle and Flavor Flav to Spike Lee.
Style and Meaning
Title | Style and Meaning PDF eBook |
Author | John Gibbs |
Publisher | Manchester University Press |
Total Pages | 268 |
Release | 2005-08-06 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780719065255 |
With a common focus on the decisions made by filmmakers, the essays in this collection explore different aspects of the relationship between textual detail and broader conceptual frameworks. These texts reflect not only those areas of film history which have traditionally been explored through mise-en-scène criticism, but also areas such as the avant-garde and television drama which have not tended to receive such detailed investigation. In these ways, the book conducts a series of dialogues with issues in film study which are specifically provoked by close analysis.
Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask
Title | Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask PDF eBook |
Author | Dr Harriet J Manning |
Publisher | Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. |
Total Pages | 322 |
Release | 2013-08-31 |
Genre | Music |
ISBN | 1472402367 |
Blackface minstrelsy, the nineteenth-century performance practice in which ideas and images of blackness were constructed and theatricalized by and for whites, continues to permeate contemporary popular music and its audience. Harriet J. Manning argues that this legacy is nowhere more evident than with Michael Jackson in whom minstrelsy’s gestures and tropes are embedded. During the nineteenth century, blackface minstrelsy held together a multitude of meanings and when black entertainers took to the stage this complexity was compounded: minstrelsy became an arena in which black stereotypes were at once enforced and critiqued. This body of contradiction behind the blackface mask provides an effective approach to try and understand Jackson, a cultural figure about whom more questions than answers have been generated. Symbolized by his own whiteface mask, Jackson was at once ‘raced’ and raceless and this ambiguity allowed him to serve a whole host of others’ needs - a function of the mask that has run long and deep through its tortuous history. Indeed, Manning argues that minstrelsy’s assumptions and uses have been fundamental to the troubles and controversies with which Jackson was beset.