Laurie Essig

White (Family) Guys create modern minstrel show

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

According to an article by Jasmine Cannick  Fox TV is now giving us a modern day minstrel show. Ms. Cannick claims

Fox’s debut of the “The Cleveland Show” is a desperate attempt to work against the improved international image of black people after the election of a black president.   “The Cleveland Show,” where in just 22 minutes they managed to portray black mothers as unmarried promiscuous sexual objects, black teenage girls as headed down the same path as their mothers, young black boys as sexual deviants, and black people period as being unable to speak anything other than Ebonics — all in the name of comedy... There’s nothing funny about an animated television series that seeks to legitimize and reinforce every negative stereotype about black people during primetime to the delight of white audiences from coast to coast.

There may be nothing funny about a minstrel show, but blackface has always been at the center of American popular culture, an idea that Spike Lee explored in his film Bamboozled.

In the movie, Pierre Delacroix, (Damon Wayans)is a self-identified Negro who creates a modern day minstrel show, full of  Coon and Jezebel characters, in the hopes that it will be so bad that he'll get fired and be able to leave his contract working for white corporate TV. His plan backfires.  The modern day minstrel show is as popular as 19c minstrel shows.  White America loves  it.  Hell, Black America loves it (because apparently there's nothing funnier than laughing at some song and dance number in blackface with your white friends).

Of course, Mr. Lee's movie is a satire (unlike Fox TV which is producing a minstrel show without ironic distance).  Bamboozled is commentary on just how invested American popular culture remains with the stock characters of the minstrel show: the hyperagressive and even criminal Jim Crow who is also funny because he mimics the clothes and possessions of the upper classes (any gangsta of your choice), the overly sexualized Jezebel (hmm. sounds familiar), the asexual Mammy (Oprah) With "The Cleveland Show,"  Fox's "Family Guy" creators, Mike Henry, Seth MacFarlane and Richard Appel, have, like the fictional Delacroix,  created an actual minstrel show.   Unlike Delacroix, though, all three of the men are white (yes, I checked).  This is sad, but not surprising.  Blackface and minstrelsy were almost always produced by white men for white men. There are a lot of theories as to why this is, but one of the most compelling is put forward by David Roediger in The Wages of Whiteness.  According to Roediger, feeling good about themselves because they were white was one way that struggling white men were paid a racial benefit, a wage of whiteness.  By imagining Black Americans as "funny" and "stupid" and "ridiculous," working class white men could imagine that they were the real Americans, even if they too were exploited by the rich and worked seven days a week in a factory. This understanding of the minstrel show makes sense when we put it alongside that other great form of American pop culture, the Freak Show.  According to Rosemarie Garland, the Freak Show was part of the democratic process since it provided a way for all Americans, even the recently arrived immigrants or the recently migrated Black Americans, to go to places like Coney Island and feel that they were the "normal" and the "good" Americans, not some Freaks.  And in that way these tenuous Americans could feel as if they too belonged. Today, with the economy a mess and staying that way and white masculinity losing even more ground than other groups, with a Black President, and changing gender dynamics all around, it makes sense that white men would need to be paid in the wages of whiteness.  Of course, they'd be better off if they stopped engaging in feeling good about being white and started banding together with other Americans to get health care, livable wages, and an end to the wars. But today as in the 19c there is little doubt that white men would rather be paid in the symbolic wages of whiteness and just enjoy the  "fun" as some good ol' funny black folk shuffle and dance around a stage full of watermelon and fried chicken. The Cleveland Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

White (Family) Guys create modern minstrel show

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

According to an article by Jasmine Cannick  Fox TV is now giving us a modern day minstrel show. Ms. Cannick claims

Fox’s debut of the “The Cleveland Show” is a desperate attempt to work against the improved international image of black people after the election of a black president.   “The Cleveland Show,” where in just 22 minutes they managed to portray black mothers as unmarried promiscuous sexual objects, black teenage girls as headed down the same path as their mothers, young black boys as sexual deviants, and black people period as being unable to speak anything other than Ebonics — all in the name of comedy... There’s nothing funny about an animated television series that seeks to legitimize and reinforce every negative stereotype about black people during primetime to the delight of white audiences from coast to coast.

There may be nothing funny about a minstrel show, but blackface has always been at the center of American popular culture, an idea that Spike Lee explored in his film Bamboozled.

In the movie, Pierre Delacroix, (Damon Wayans)is a self-identified Negro who creates a modern day minstrel show, full of  Coon and Jezebel characters, in the hopes that it will be so bad that he'll get fired and be able to leave his contract working for white corporate TV. His plan backfires.  The modern day minstrel show is as popular as 19c minstrel shows.  White America loves  it.  Hell, Black America loves it (because apparently there's nothing funnier than laughing at some song and dance number in blackface with your white friends).

Of course, Mr. Lee's movie is a satire (unlike Fox TV which is producing a minstrel show without ironic distance).  Bamboozled is commentary on just how invested American popular culture remains with the stock characters of the minstrel show: the hyperagressive and even criminal Jim Crow who is also funny because he mimics the clothes and possessions of the upper classes (any gangsta of your choice), the overly sexualized Jezebel (hmm. sounds familiar), the asexual Mammy (Oprah) With "The Cleveland Show,"  Fox's "Family Guy" creators, Mike Henry, Seth MacFarlane and Richard Appel, have, like the fictional Delacroix,  created an actual minstrel show.   Unlike Delacroix, though, all three of the men are white (yes, I checked).  This is sad, but not surprising.  Blackface and minstrelsy were almost always produced by white men for white men. There are a lot of theories as to why this is, but one of the most compelling is put forward by David Roediger in The Wages of Whiteness.  According to Roediger, feeling good about themselves because they were white was one way that struggling white men were paid a racial benefit, a wage of whiteness.  By imagining Black Americans as "funny" and "stupid" and "ridiculous," working class white men could imagine that they were the real Americans, even if they too were exploited by the rich and worked seven days a week in a factory. This understanding of the minstrel show makes sense when we put it alongside that other great form of American pop culture, the Freak Show.  According to Rosemarie Garland, the Freak Show was part of the democratic process since it provided a way for all Americans, even the recently arrived immigrants or the recently migrated Black Americans, to go to places like Coney Island and feel that they were the "normal" and the "good" Americans, not some Freaks.  And in that way these tenuous Americans could feel as if they too belonged. Today, with the economy a mess and staying that way and white masculinity losing even more ground than other groups, with a Black President, and changing gender dynamics all around, it makes sense that white men would need to be paid in the wages of whiteness.  Of course, they'd be better off if they stopped engaging in feeling good about being white and started banding together with other Americans to get health care, livable wages, and an end to the wars. But today as in the 19c there is little doubt that white men would rather be paid in the symbolic wages of whiteness and just enjoy the  "fun" as some good ol' funny black folk shuffle and dance around a stage full of watermelon and fried chicken. The Cleveland Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.