English Ethiopians: British Audiences and Black-Face Acts, 1835-1865

Bratton, Jacky

doi:10.2307/3506263

Cited by 34 publications

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“…Due to minstrelsy being well known and conjuring specific ideas of racialized identity-for instance, parodied black accent, the banjo, the cherry, and humorous African-its inclusion in the play means the Indian's otherness was firmly established. 72 The presence of similar sonic signaling and characterization across geographical spaces also demonstrates the technique of defamatory synecdoche and placing values and identities as applicable to all heathens, as Jeffrey Cox describes. 73 In turn, this enables the constructed identities of Eastern subjects within the imagination, created through recognizable and expected sonic markers and soundscapes to become racialized and be placed within the racial hierarchy framework.…”

Section: The Mandarins Daughter and Lalla Rookhmentioning

confidence: 96%

Audible Empire: Soundscapes, ‘Sonic Markers’ and Creation of Eastern Identity in the British Empire at Home and Abroad, 1830-1900

Garment

2022

CJA

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Sound is an integral aspect of life and how we interact with the world around us. As such, it is remiss to not have utilised it as an analytical tool and approach within scholarship until recently. Consequently, this thesis uses sound as an approach to understand how eastern identity was formed and manipulated by Victorians both at home and abroad to further doctrines of racial superiority. By constructing specific sonic markers through which specific cultural and racial identities could be sonically distinguished, the West, and more specifically the British metropole, was able to further establish and spread their self-imposed doctrine of racial superiority. This thesis demonstrates that many kinds of sources– Travelogues, Diaries, Theatre Productions– can be re-read and analysed as ‘Earwitness’ accounts, providing new and fresh insights into their authors and wider societies conception of, in this thesis specifically, ‘the East’. It becomes clear that there was a systematic erosion of both the geographical space and soundscapes, whereby the Orient was reduced to a singular space and identity adhering to a set number of stereotypes. Sonic markers and soundscapes are integral aspects to doctrines of otherization and constructing racial hierarchies and thus must be further explored and appreciated due to the new perspectives on offer to answer both new and established questions on identity construction, cultural imperialism and Victorian popular culture.

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Section: The Mandarins Daughter and Lalla Rookhmentioning

confidence: 96%

Audible Empire: Soundscapes, ‘Sonic Markers’ and Creation of Eastern Identity in the British Empire at Home and Abroad, 1830-1900

Garment

2022

CJA

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“…For other work on British blackface minstrelsy, see Rehin (1975Rehin ( , 1981; Bratton (1981); Pickering (1986Pickering ( , 1991; and Scott (1989). But others are denied that, and are condemned either to silence or mockery.…”

Section: Ffiflticis Dfffaudmentioning

confidence: 99%

John Bull in blackface

Pickering¹

1997

Pop. Mus.

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For a mid-twentieth century historian of the music hall, blackface minstrelsy was the ‘oddest form of entertainment imaginable’. He found it ‘incomprehensible’ why people during the Victorian period had delighted in the ‘extraordinary spectacle of the apparently sane white man blacking his face and hands with burnt cork, painting his lips and eyes to resemble those of an African nigger, and then, to complete the incongruity, attiring himself in English evening dress while he sang ditties allegedly emanating from the cotton plantations of Ole Virginny!’ (Felstead 1946, p. 55). There are a number of things to be said about this evaluation, the first being that its severe disparagement of one of the most popular cultural forms of the Victorian period in Britain was, during that period, exceptionally rare. Indeed, the lack of criticism attests to its enduring popularity. From their first wave of success in the late 1830s and early 1840s, minstrel acts, troupes and shows figured as a staple item of the popular stage throughout the remaining decades of the century. What began with its early boom in the second quarter of the century continued to prove attractive to successive generations across all social classes, and among men and women of the large urban centres, provincial towns and outlying rural areas alike.

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“…The St. James Theatre specialized in Ethiopian Serenaders, and aristocracy and middle classes delighted in American "darkey" musical comedy. 12 Then P. T. Barnum, the shrewd, publicityseeking proprietor of New York's American Museum, took the capital by storm. From 1844 to 1846, "General" Tom Thumb, Barnum's man-midget, charmed all with his witty impersonations of classical and contemporary personalities, and his renditions of "Yankee Doodle."…”

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confidence: 99%

Wild American Savages and the Civilized English: Catlin’s Indian Gallery and the Shows of London

Lewis¹

2008

ejas

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George Catlin was the outstanding painter of nineteenth-century American Indian life, and a flamboyant showman. Brian Dippie has shown that the two roles were intimately connected. 1 Catlin had a grand design to record "doomed" Indian cultures for posterity. "I have flown to the rescue of their looks and their modes," he pronounced from London in 1841. White settlers were exterminating them, "yet, phoenix-like, they may rise from 'the stain of the painter's palette,' and live again upon canvass, and stand forth for centuries to come, the living monuments of a noble race." 2 To this end, he persevered with his field research: he devoted half-a-dozen years in the 1830s to sketching and painting "wild" "red men" in the Great Plains, and spent several more in South America in the 1850s. He was scrupulous in recording the customs unique to the Plains tribes. In his Gallery catalogue, he certified that "every painting has been made from nature, BY MY OWN HAND," and showed "true and facsimile traces of individual life and historical facts." He took pains to establish his credentials as a true witness; to verify his claims, he quoted pages of testimonials from the great and the good associated with the Indian question and displayed their signatures to authenticate his illustrations. 3 His purpose, as he repeated many times, was to "impart useful instruction to those who are curious to learn the true character of the Indians." 4 2 For the remainder of his long life, he finished portraits and landscapes in the studio, produced numerous copies for sale, and decade after decade, lobbied Congress and appealed to wealthy benefactors for assistance. But when patronage failed to meet his pressing financial needs, he resorted to exhibitions that combined authentic artefacts Wild American Savages and the Civilized English: Catlin's Indian Gallery and ...

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English Ethiopians: British Audiences and Black-Face Acts, 1835-1865

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Audible Empire: Soundscapes, ‘Sonic Markers’ and Creation of Eastern Identity in the British Empire at Home and Abroad, 1830-1900

Audible Empire: Soundscapes, ‘Sonic Markers’ and Creation of Eastern Identity in the British Empire at Home and Abroad, 1830-1900

John Bull in blackface

Wild American Savages and the Civilized English: Catlin’s Indian Gallery and the Shows of London

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