Oriental, Black, and White

Josephine Lee

Description

In this book, Josephine Lee looks at the intertwined racial representations of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American theater. In minstrelsy, melodrama, vaudeville, and musicals, both white and African American performers enacted blackface characterizations alongside oriental stereotypes of opulence and deception, comic servitude, and exotic sexuality. Lee shows how blackface types were often associated with working-class masculinity and the development of a nativist white racial identity for European immigrants, while the oriental marked what was culturally coded as foreign, feminized, and ornamental. These conflicting racial connotations were often intermingled in actual stage performance, as stage productions contrasted nostalgic characterizations of plantation slavery with the figures of the despotic sultan, the seductive dancing girl, and the comic Chinese laundryman. African American performers also performed common oriental themes and characterizations, repurposing them for their own commentary on Black racial progress and aspiration. The juxtaposition of orientalism and black figuration became standard fare for American theatergoers at a historical moment in which the color line was rigidly policed. These interlocking cross-racial impersonations offer fascinating insights into habits of racial representation both inside and outside the theater.

Sujets

• Asian Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sissieretta Jones
• Thomas Dilward
• Shuffle Along
• Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones
• In Dahomey
• Ira Aldridge
• Afro-Asian
• Flower Drum Song
• Salome
• Aladdin
• Laundry
• Abyssinia
• Au rythme des tambours fleuris
• Bert Williams
• Aladin
• George Walker

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469669632
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Oriental, Black, and White

Oriental, Black, and White
The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater
Josephine Lee
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS Chapel Hill
2022 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Designed by Jamison Cockerham Set in Scala and Golden Hills by codeMantra
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Complete Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010529 . ISBN 978-1-4696-6961-8 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4696-6962-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4696-6963-2 (ebook)
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)-a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries-and the generous support of University of Minnesota Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, openmonographs.org .
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION Oriental, Black, and White
1 The Racial Refashioning of Aladdin
2 The Lesser Roles of Ira Aldridge
3 Blackface Minstrelsy s Japanese Turns
4 The Tricky Servant in Blackface and Yellowface
5 The Chinese Laundry Sketch
6 Maybe Now and Then a Chinaman : African American Impersonators and Chinese Specialties
7 Divas and Dancers: Oriental Femininity and African American Performance
8 Oriental Frolics and Racial Uplift in the Early African American Musical
9 Pleasure Domes and Journeys Home: In Dahomey , Abyssinia , The Children of the Sun , and Shuffle Along
10 Fantasy Islands: Staging the Philippines, 1900-1914
CONCLUSION Racial Puzzles, Chop Suey, and Juanita Long Hall in Flower Drum Song
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Harold Nicholas and Fayard Nicholas in Tin Pan Alley
Walter Crane, New Lamps for Old Ones
Walter Crane, He Found That He Had Fallen Back Lifeless upon the Couch
Aladdin, at the Lyceum
Joseph Grimaldi as Kazrac in Aladdin, Or, The Wonderful Lamp
Character Sketches from Aladdin at Drury-Lane, and Cinderella at the Crystal Palace
The Virginia Mummy
Thomas Dilward, or Japanese Tommy
Natural Mistakes, published in Harper s Weekly
Harry Fiddler and Reuben Shelton
Fiddler and Shelton: Those Two Clever Boys
Main cast of the 1865 Paris Opera premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer s opera L Africaine
Anna Madah Hyers in the role of Urlina in Urlina, The African Princess
Sheet music for The Oriental Coon by Ed. Rogers
Aida Overton Walker
John W. Isham s Oriental America: 40 Minutes of Grand Opera lithograph
John W. Isham s Oriental America: The Manhattan Club, Grand Hunting Chorus lithograph
John W. Isham s Oriental America: Fantaisies d Orient lithograph
Sheet music for The Wedding of the Chinee and the Coon
Noble Sissle and chorus from Shuffle Along
Juanita Long Hall and ensemble in Flower Drum Song
Acknowledgments
A project of this size necessarily involves too many people to acknowledge properly, but I will do what I can. I owe great thanks to those who helped to edit and produce this book at the University of North Carolina Press, including Lucas Church, Mary Carley Caviness, Julie Bush, and Lindsay Starr. A special thanks to Dylan White, whose kindness, enthusiasm, and energy for this project buoyed me up whenever I got bogged down. I received a generous fellowship for my research from the National Endowment for the Humanities; any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the NEH. The College of Liberal Arts and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota also provided much-appreciated support for my research. I am grateful for the support of John Coleman, Jane Blocker, and Andrew Elfenbein in providing institutional resources to focus on this project. I also wish to thank Frances Spaulding and Alexandra Brown for their help in preparing my application for the NEH Fellowship as well as Kate McCready and Emma Molls for their assistance with the TOME award.
In May 2018 I was fortunate enough to participate in a Library Sprint with the University of Minnesota Libraries. The incredible team of Ben Wiggins, Cecily Marcus, Deborah Ultan, Yao Chen, Nancy Herther, Marguerite Ragnow, and Dorothy Berry devoted considerable time, effort, and expertise in order to help me access materials that would completely transform this project. Mark Horowitz at the Library of Congress, John Calhoun at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and Matthew Wittmann at the Harvard Theatre Collection also provided valuable assistance and advice from afar.
Each of my chapters builds on the painstaking and admirable work and wisdom of fellow scholars as well as fans of theater history, as can be seen in the many names listed in the notes. In particular, Mari Yoshihara and Dave Roediger expressed their unwavering support for my scholarship and for this project; Robin Bernstein and Stephanie Batiste patiently made their way through an early draft; and anonymous readers provided excellent advice on behalf of the University of North Carolina Press. The ever-amazing Esther Kim Lee offered meticulous and inspiring suggestions that helped this book take its final shape. I am also indebted to Krystyn Moon once again for sharing her vast store of archival knowledge as well as her enthusiasm for scholarship in the history of the performing arts.
Many friends, colleagues, and students sustained me through the writing process with food for thought (and actual food), and I am grateful for their interest and encouragement. Last, but certainly not least, I am indebted to my family members far and near. My husband, Kevin Kinneavy, and sons, Julian and Dylan Lee Kinneavy, deserve lots of applause for their patience and encouragement. It has been a joy and a gift to be able to work on this project with you cheering me on at each and every step of the way.
Oriental, Black, and White
Introduction
Oriental, Black, and White
On November 2, 2000, a post appeared on the forum the Mudcat Caf , an online space dedicated to discussion of British and American folk music, requesting help in identifying the words to a song, My Castle on the Nile, which the user remembered singing at Girl Scout camp. 1 Subsequent replies provided different versions of the lyrics as well as information about various recordings. Other posts readily identified the song s origins: composed by John Rosamond Johnson, with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson and Bob Cole for the 1900 musical Sons of Ham , the song was used in one of several African American musicals that starred the comedy team of Bert Williams and George Walker and was later incorporated into In Dahomey , another Williams and Walker musical, first produced in 1902.
For those familiar with the contributions of Williams and Walker to the history of American musical theater, the lyrics of My Castle on the Nile easily conjure up Williams s familiar sad-sack stage persona, an impoverished and comic figure who muses on current misfortunes and longs for an alternative way of life.

Dere ain t no use in try n to rise up in de social scale, Less you kin trace yo name back to de flood. You got to have ancestral halls an den you mus nt fail, To prove dere s indigo mixed in yo blood. I done foun out dat I come down from ole chief Bungaboo My great-gran -daddy was his great gran chile. An so I m gwin ter sail away across de waters blue, To occupy my castle on de Nile. In my Castle on de river Nile I am gwinter live in elegant style Inlaid diamonds on the flo A Baboon butler at my do When I wed dat princess Anna Mazoo Den my blood will change from red to blue Entertaining royalty all the while In my Castle on the Nile. 2
However, as indicated on the Mudcat Caf , My Castle on the Nile was not always performed by African American singers. For instance, it was recorded by the baritone Arthur Francis Collins, billed as the King of the Ragtime Singers, who sang songs using the personae of black characters so frequently that publicity by Edison Phonograph took pains to ensure that he was not mistakenly seen as a Negro. 3 Like other popular songs written by Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson (for instance, their 1902 hit Under the Bamboo Tree ), 4 My Castle on the Nile had many encores in professional and amateur settings, probably with most of its singers unaware of the song s origins on the early African American musical stage. 5
My Castle on the Nile can be read as yet another instance of the many complicated and unequal racial interactions enacted through American theater and music. Its words emphasize the black-white dimensions of a long and troubled history of expression, exchange, impersonation, and appropriation. Denied the blue blood of European elitism, the dialect-speaking character at its center sets his version of royal ancestry in Egypt. His naming of the river Nile reflects a popular interpretation of the Old Testament in which African Americans were seen as the descendants of Ham, cursed by Ham s father, Noah, and relegated to slavery. Interestingly enough, this emphasis on black lineage is not the only kind of racial reference in the song. The lyrics of My Castle on the Nile point to tropes not only associated with blackness but also defined by orientalism, imagining a diamond-encrusted castle in a faraway land, foreign status and leisure, and marriage to the princess Anna Mazoo. These oriental allusions allow the central character to voice discontent with hierarchies based on descent ( indigo mixed in yo blood ) and longing for alternative spaces of social power. They also enhance the comic exaggeration of the song, exposing the ludicrous nature of a fantasy done up in elegant style as exotic adventure and luxury are translated into the baser terms of stereot