Dixon Carter Lee
Headliner
- Joined
- Nov 22, 1999
- Posts
- 48,681
I saw a bit of a KCET (PBS) special last night about a black artist who, among other works, painted a portrait of an iconic Elvis in blackface. He wasn't saying that Elvis was "Amos and Andying" it up in his career, but that Elvis, a white boy who could sing black (as the mythology goes) was an extension of the first truly great pop cultural phenomenon in America -- the Minstrel Show (which went on to to give birth to Vaudeville, then Burlesque, then sit-coms, and now "Fear Factor").
Minstrel shows were a lot like the old European circuses, where the "clowns" (like Harlequinn) were archetypes of real people (the "lover", the "grotesque", the "old man", etc.). The Mistrel Shows created a fantasy version of what Negros actually were, in white minds -- shifty, lazy, funny, over-sexed, etc. Sterotypes that I still see today, particularly in (some) Hip Hop culture projects.
I found this artist's rendering of Elvis in blackface really prescient, not only about where we were, but about where we're doomed to go, and it's fascinating to me that America's first pop culture phenomenon is still influencing pop culture today.
Minstrel shows were a lot like the old European circuses, where the "clowns" (like Harlequinn) were archetypes of real people (the "lover", the "grotesque", the "old man", etc.). The Mistrel Shows created a fantasy version of what Negros actually were, in white minds -- shifty, lazy, funny, over-sexed, etc. Sterotypes that I still see today, particularly in (some) Hip Hop culture projects.
I found this artist's rendering of Elvis in blackface really prescient, not only about where we were, but about where we're doomed to go, and it's fascinating to me that America's first pop culture phenomenon is still influencing pop culture today.
