From: "Bell, John" <john.bell-AT-uconn.edu> To: "'puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org'" <puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org> Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 15:20:37 -0400 Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] minorities & entertainment Thank goodness for Alan Cook's thoughtful and valuable perspective on these important issues of puppetry! When I saw the new Transformers movie last week, the people laughing the most at the "racist" stereotypes (the two "black" transformers) appeared to be the two African-American men sitting near me. Which complicates things of course; the stereotypes involved in the Transformers movie still reflect racism, I feel. These bots-of-color are given quite definitely subservient roles. Something similar went in the Lord of the Rings movies--the Maori performers in that trilogy were uniformly cast in heavy makeup and prosthetics as Orcs, and there was no place in that Middle Earth for people of color, except as members of an evil army. Dr. John T. Bell Director Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry University of Connecticut 6 Bourn Place Unit 5212 Storrs, Connecticut=A0 06269-5212 office: 860 486 0806 cell: 617 599 3250 www.bimp.uconn.edu To make a contribution to the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, please go to https://secure.ga4.org/01/uconn_foundation_giving, and select "Ballard Puppetry Museum" from the "Purpose" list. Thanks for your support! -----Original Message----- From: puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org [mailto:puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org] On Behalf Of Alan Cook Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 2:55 PM To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Subject: [Puptcrit] minorities & entertainment An aspect of many folk puppet shows, including Turkish KARAGOZ, Greek Kataghiozis, Brazilian MAMULENGO, is the use of various minority characters, rich & poor to boot. They reflect the community at large, whatever it is at the time. Vaudeville marionette shows often duplicated in miniature such large presentations of popular entertainment as horse races, Wild West Shows, Circus, Minstrel Shows, as well as standard numbers like the pianist and the singer (Concert in miniature). With rod puppets, Ernest Wolff did miniature opera in Chicago, Salzburg Marionettes still does MAGIC FLUTE. And in the 1960s Sid & Marty Krofft did a miniature Vegas show, LES POUPEES DE PARIS (after all, Sid had done solo acts in Vegas, so the show just got bigger and bigger) There were showgirls walking down steps, can-can dancers and other razzle dazzle. So whatever is reflected from the bigger world on the puppet stage, tells us something about the culture at the time. But also, wherever talent lay, that too got expressed. 1930s and 1940s animated cartoons could be racist. Ever see DW Griffith's "Birth of a Nation", in which real African-Americans were cast as extras, while more primary Black characters were depicted by white people in Black makeup? Now THAT is tacky. There were Black actors doing "Uncle Tom's Cabin". We forget that the storyline began as a protest against slavery, and even President Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe and suggested that she had started the Civil War wih her play. Now "Uncle Tom" has a different meaning than it did then. A member of the Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry, Alma Cooper, was a Guild officer. She was African American, and proud of her family's career in theater, including a production they did of "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Currently the USA is still working through the inequities dealt to Gay Americans, but popular entertainment reflects that struggle and and it also reflects sexism in our culture and our religion and our politics. But entertainment also provided a means of recognzing talent wherever it existed. In 1965, at the International Bucharest Puppetry Festival, I was interviewed for the daily Festival newssheet, and was asked what was the purpose of puppet theatre? My response was "to be subersive in the eyes of whatever government the puppeteer lived under." Since Rumania was a Soviet satellite, and the communist tendency was to try to control the people's thinking, my quote was totally garbled by faulty translation---even the original English version got translated back into English from Rumanian, French, German, Russian to English and the result was gibberish. Unfortunately, there is plenty of gibberish to go around the world---we had plenty of it in the USA during the past 8 years. One long-running example is the ridiculous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of our military forces. President Truman desegregated the services in the 1940s. I was in the army 1953-55 and stationed in the Third, Fouth & Fifth Armies in that brief time. Suprisingly, there was less desegregation in the army in Missouri (Ft Leonard Wood) than at Camp/Fort Chafee, Arkansas. Even after official changes are "put in place" there are reactionaries who will use every opportunity to delay progress. -----Original Message----- From: Bell, John Sent: Monday, July 6, 2009 7:24 AM To: 'puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org' Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Arizona video Greetings! As Alan Cook suggests, the history of minstrelsy is complicated, ambiguous, and contradictory. Eric Lott points this out in his book "Love and Theft," and academic studies in recent years have revealed ever more complex layers of race, gender, politics, and sexuality in minstrel show traditions. However, I disagree with Alan about the history of the form as we know it. Yes, the term "minstrel" has its roots in the 12th century word "menestral", meaning a servant or entertainer, but the term "minstrel show" and the everyday associations most people make with the term "minstrelsy" pertain to a tradition born in the 19th century in the U.S., in which white performers imitated black artists. Stereotype and caricature were definitely essential to blackface minstrelsy, and the unequal power relationships of whites and blacks in the U.S. were played out in its performances. Some black performers, as Alan points out, did eventually come to make a living from minstrelsy, but they had to do so by negotiating the tricky aesthetics of blacks imitating whites imitating blacks--in other words, as black performers they had to perform their versions of white stereotypes of blacks. The situation of minstrel puppets is a huge and as yet unacknowledged and unanalyzed aspect of American puppetry--definitely worth more thoughts and words! But I do feel that race and racism are at the heart of blackface minstrelsy and shouldn't be avoided, whether we are looking at performance with actors or performance with puppets. Dr. John T. Bell Director Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry University of Connecticut 6 Bourn Place Unit 5212 Storrs, Connecticut=EF=BF=BD 06269-5212 office: 860 486 0806 cell: 617 599 3250 www.bimp.uconn.edu To make a contribution to the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, please go to https://secure.ga4.org/01/uconn_foundation_giving, and select "Ballard Puppetry Museum" from the "Purpose" list. Thanks for your support! -----Original Message----- From: puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org [mailto:puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org] On Behalf Of Alan Cook Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 12:26 PM To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Arizona video Looking at past expressions through contemporary lenses can be misleading Minstrel Shows date back to the Middle Ages. So how did the term come to mean blackface performances, or Black- Performed shows. Was it always caricature? (NO). Did it provide a chance for Black Performers to make a living and have talent recognized? (YES). It is a MIXED BAG. -----Original Message----- From: Robert Rogers Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2009 8:56 AM To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Subject: [Puptcrit] Arizona video It's amazing how many minstrel marionettes were made in the past. Such a racial slur. Then again, I grew up watching cartoons with "Joe Jitsu" and "Speedy Gonzales" and thought nothing of it. Good luck, Hobey, with the video. Sounds great. Robert Rogers _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Admin interface: http://lists.puptcrit.org/mailman/listinfo/puptcrit Archives: http://www.driftline.org _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Admin interface: http://lists.puptcrit.org/mailman/listinfo/puptcrit Archives: http://www.driftline.org _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Admin interface: http://lists.puptcrit.org/mailman/listinfo/puptcrit Archives: http://www.driftline.org _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Admin interface: http://lists.puptcrit.org/mailman/listinfo/puptcrit Archives: http://www.driftline.org _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org Admin interface: http://lists.puptcrit.org/mailman/listinfo/puptcrit Archives: http://www.driftline.org
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