Masks in Disguise:
I have constructed a theory of covert minstrelsy to describe a process that occurs when a choreographer, director, or animator utilizes a combination of invisible masks simultaneously in an effort—though not always a conscious one—to distract the audience from seeing all parts of the whole. In each of the performances I analyze, these different masks interact to produce an “agreeable” show that places artificial boundaries between the supposed threat of the black body and the alleged purity of a nation that favors its white citizens. I seek to illuminate how the very simultaneity of perceptible (yet invisible) components goes unnoticed under deceptive narratives and political charades; minstrelsy need not be blatant or even visible to construct a social paradigm of the “Other”.
I began to explore this concept in my dissertation (UCLA, 2016) Masks in Disguise: Exposing Minstrelsy and Racial Representation within American Tap Dance Performances of the Stage, Screen, and Sound Cartoon, 1900-1950 and since its completion have been working to refine and nuance covert minstrelsy. My current manuscript (Oxford, 2022) examines covert minstrelsy as it exists in Hollywood dance films made between 1930 and 1953. Not only was this Hollywood's most prolific period, but it also marks the reign of the Motion Picture Production Code, which officially went into effect in 1934. I am particularly interested in the ways in which Hollywood skirted Code guidelines by using invisible means of blacking up, as opposed to the obvious references it made to the minstrel stage prior to 1930.
Tap dance plays a very important and specific role in all of the performances I survey. Not only has tap dance survived as one of the oldest and uniquely all-American dance forms, but also its history is inseparable from America’s complex chronicle of cultural hybridity. Furthermore, this narrative has run parallel—if not concomitant with—a history of blackface in this country. Because of tap dance’s mixed Irish and West African heritage, its ties to the black body that make it suitable for minstrelsy’s caricatures were embedded long before T.D. Rice introduced blackface to American audiences c. 1830. I trace the significance of tap dance within covert minstrelsy showing that its Africanist presence is responsible for both its triumphs and tribulations: as a result of tap dance’s affiliation with minstrelsy and thus its ties to caricatures of blackness, tap dance on its own has come to signify not only “blackness” but a national identity that creates space for the white body through the exclusion of the black. Unlike blackface minstrelsy, the legacy of tap dance and its ability to place value on race, has survived because of its unique use of rhythm, lyric, label, and invisible/inaudible modes of masking that deliver claims about race and the nation in a way that is more aesthetically palatable and ethically sound to many of America’s white citizens than any performance that seeks to do the same solely through blackface makeup. This manuscript examines the role that tap has played in shaping the national narrative, both as it has contributed aesthetically to American entertainment and as it has simultaneously qualified the Other’s body and place within the nation and will thus add to a long canon of dance, film, and minstrel studies as they relate to race and national representation.
I began to explore this concept in my dissertation (UCLA, 2016) Masks in Disguise: Exposing Minstrelsy and Racial Representation within American Tap Dance Performances of the Stage, Screen, and Sound Cartoon, 1900-1950 and since its completion have been working to refine and nuance covert minstrelsy. My current manuscript (Oxford, 2022) examines covert minstrelsy as it exists in Hollywood dance films made between 1930 and 1953. Not only was this Hollywood's most prolific period, but it also marks the reign of the Motion Picture Production Code, which officially went into effect in 1934. I am particularly interested in the ways in which Hollywood skirted Code guidelines by using invisible means of blacking up, as opposed to the obvious references it made to the minstrel stage prior to 1930.
Tap dance plays a very important and specific role in all of the performances I survey. Not only has tap dance survived as one of the oldest and uniquely all-American dance forms, but also its history is inseparable from America’s complex chronicle of cultural hybridity. Furthermore, this narrative has run parallel—if not concomitant with—a history of blackface in this country. Because of tap dance’s mixed Irish and West African heritage, its ties to the black body that make it suitable for minstrelsy’s caricatures were embedded long before T.D. Rice introduced blackface to American audiences c. 1830. I trace the significance of tap dance within covert minstrelsy showing that its Africanist presence is responsible for both its triumphs and tribulations: as a result of tap dance’s affiliation with minstrelsy and thus its ties to caricatures of blackness, tap dance on its own has come to signify not only “blackness” but a national identity that creates space for the white body through the exclusion of the black. Unlike blackface minstrelsy, the legacy of tap dance and its ability to place value on race, has survived because of its unique use of rhythm, lyric, label, and invisible/inaudible modes of masking that deliver claims about race and the nation in a way that is more aesthetically palatable and ethically sound to many of America’s white citizens than any performance that seeks to do the same solely through blackface makeup. This manuscript examines the role that tap has played in shaping the national narrative, both as it has contributed aesthetically to American entertainment and as it has simultaneously qualified the Other’s body and place within the nation and will thus add to a long canon of dance, film, and minstrel studies as they relate to race and national representation.