Read Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America

Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America

Robert C. Toll

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Description:The most popular entertainment form of the nineteenth century featured white men masquerading as blacks. What does this say about America?Blacking Up, the most comprehensive history and analysis of the minstrel show that has yet appeared, is the first book to portray minstrelsy as an institution that spoke for and to huge numbers of common Americans. The changes in in the minstrel show's structure and content during its fifty-year heyday provide unique insights into the thoughts, feelings, needs, and desires of the common people who shaped the show in their own image.Performed by the white man in blackface makeup using what they claimed were Negro dialects, songs, and jokes, the minstrel show literally swept the nation in the 1840s from the White House to the California gold fields, from New Orleans to New England, from riverboats and saloons to 2500-seat theaters. It was the earliest uniquely American popular entertainment form, the first stage in the growth of American show business and the precursor of vaudeville, burlesque, and other entertainment forms. Such troops as the Christy Minstrels, the Virginia Serenaders, and Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels provided an outlet for and an escape from bewilderment, frustration, and anguish for people living through revolutionary social changes they neither controlled nor understood. The show was a microcosm of American race relations for both blacks and whites. White minstrels portrayed Negroes as happy slaves and ludicrous dandies. When blacks entered show business as minstrels after the Civil War, they had to appear to confirm these stereotypes while at the same time trying to please their sizeable black audiences. The images of Negroes created by minstrels and their latter day successors like "Uncle Remus" and "Amos 'n' Andy" deeply embedded caricatures of blacks into American popular culture. The minstrels also caricatured the other major social issues of the day — women's suffrage, immigration, Indians, fashions, urbanizations, and morality — always condemning social change and reaffirming traditional values. Robert Toll presents a comprehensive review of the evolution of the minstrel show, with its cakewalk, endmen, interlocutor, Stephen Foster songs, and familiar tunes like "Dixie." He brings to life the antics of the major performers, including black entertainment pioneers who have been virtually neglected. Informative and entertaining for theater buffs and nostalgia lovers, his extremely perceptive analysis will at the same time be illuminating for those who seek a broader understanding of the social functions of popular culture and for students of American race relations.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. To get started finding Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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ISBN: 019502172X

Description: The most popular entertainment form of the nineteenth century featured white men masquerading as blacks. What does this say about America?Blacking Up, the most comprehensive history and analysis of the minstrel show that has yet appeared, is the first book to portray minstrelsy as an institution that spoke for and to huge numbers of common Americans. The changes in in the minstrel show's structure and content during its fifty-year heyday provide unique insights into the thoughts, feelings, needs, and desires of the common people who shaped the show in their own image.Performed by the white man in blackface makeup using what they claimed were Negro dialects, songs, and jokes, the minstrel show literally swept the nation in the 1840s from the White House to the California gold fields, from New Orleans to New England, from riverboats and saloons to 2500-seat theaters. It was the earliest uniquely American popular entertainment form, the first stage in the growth of American show business and the precursor of vaudeville, burlesque, and other entertainment forms. Such troops as the Christy Minstrels, the Virginia Serenaders, and Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels provided an outlet for and an escape from bewilderment, frustration, and anguish for people living through revolutionary social changes they neither controlled nor understood. The show was a microcosm of American race relations for both blacks and whites. White minstrels portrayed Negroes as happy slaves and ludicrous dandies. When blacks entered show business as minstrels after the Civil War, they had to appear to confirm these stereotypes while at the same time trying to please their sizeable black audiences. The images of Negroes created by minstrels and their latter day successors like "Uncle Remus" and "Amos 'n' Andy" deeply embedded caricatures of blacks into American popular culture. The minstrels also caricatured the other major social issues of the day — women's suffrage, immigration, Indians, fashions, urbanizations, and morality — always condemning social change and reaffirming traditional values. Robert Toll presents a comprehensive review of the evolution of the minstrel show, with its cakewalk, endmen, interlocutor, Stephen Foster songs, and familiar tunes like "Dixie." He brings to life the antics of the major performers, including black entertainment pioneers who have been virtually neglected. Informative and entertaining for theater buffs and nostalgia lovers, his extremely perceptive analysis will at the same time be illuminating for those who seek a broader understanding of the social functions of popular culture and for students of American race relations.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. To get started finding Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America

Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America

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