Week 3 - The Emergence of Pop Culture

Character Types:

  • Sambo:

    • Lazy

    • Irresponsible

    • Buffoon

    • Childlike and docile

  • Zip Coon

    • Violent and ruthless

    • Buffoon

    • Failed imitation of white upper class = black people could never truly be white

    • white people were scared of black people joining society, ending slavery

  • Mammy

    • Large

    • Dark-skinned

    • Masculine

    • Asexual

    • Controlling with her family

    • Sweet and kind to the white family

  • Jezebel - promiscous, interested in white men, Sapphire - masculine, dominant drove partners away

  • Mistrel shows broke away from Victorian standards

Andrew Jackson

  • “Jacksonian Era”

  • Child of Irish immigrants

  • Revolutionary child soldier

  • 7th president (1829-1837)

  • Founding the democratic party

  • Universal White Male Suffrage

  • Individualism

    • Democrat - small government

    • Republicans - big government

      • opposite of modern day

  • Manifest Destiny =

    • virtue of the american people and their institutions

    • Mission to spread these institutions

    • destiny under God to do so

  • forced 70k natives to move westward, and outlawed their legal status

    • Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears

  • believed in slavery, land owning

Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831)

  • went house to house killing white planters, sparking poor farmers

  • 55 people were killed

  • Slave rebellion

  • Provoked fear against free black people

Abolitionist Movement

  • William Lloyd Garrison

  • Frederick Douglass

  • End of slavery becoming a reality, nostalgia to save it

  • Black people portrayed as happy and stupid, they cant revolt

Alexander Saxton’s “Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology” (1975): 

  • Minstrelsy originated in the 1830s-40s through figures like Thomas Rice, Dan Emmett, E.P. Christy, and Stephen Foster. 

  • Showcased elements like African American dance and music through the white lens of performance. 

  • It became the biggest form of entertainment from 1840-70 in the US, through the Jacksonian democracy. 

  • “Blackface convention” included satire, sexual innuendos, class critiques, and taboo subjects that would not be usually seen on a standard stage. 

  • Using “blackness” as a way to entertain humor and display mockery, through racist remarks and content. 

  • Performances often contained explicit, sexual, homoerotic, or pornographic elements 

  • Characters built on black stereotypes: “the plantation slave”, “Broadway dandy”, the Bowery fireman “Mose 

  • Ridiculed the black community masked behind jokes and hilarity 

  • Depicted the South as a timeless plantation world, reminiscent of white childhood, reinforcing old stereotypes and plantation myths, taking on a proslavery stance. 

  • Minstrelsy aligned with the political fight against slavery. 

  • Pre-Civil motifs defended slavery, attacked abolitionists, and ridiculed black people. 

  • Civil War criticized republican stances, mocked emancipation, and supported democratic candidate George McClellan 

  • Reconstruction era disparaged black people, expanding racist caricatures to other POC, Native Americans and Chinese Immigrants. 

  • Minstrels reflect Jacksonian ideology, highlighting racial hierarchy and stereotypes. 

  • Minstrelsy is built on white supremacy 

  • Blackface – a way to create racist narratives, using black people as puppets, dehumanizing 

 

Week 3 Lecture Video: The Emergence of Pop Culture 

  • Blackface minstrelsy was the first truly American form of entertainment, derived from American history and tradition. 

  • Stories that was centered around a plantation setting with Black stereotypical characters. 

  • Stereotypes: “sambo”, “zip coon”, “mammy” = blurred how Black people truly felt about slavery, reinstated the vision that Black people were happy with slavery 

  • Why were they popular? 

  • The 1830s saw the peak of debate regarding slavery and its place within the abolitionist movement of the United States. 

  • Nat Turner led a rebellion of enslaved and free Black people in Virginia lasting four days. It resulted in the death of 55 white men, women, and children. 

  • Rebellion destroyed the notion white people about Black people, that they are incapable of resistance and that slavery was necessary. 

  • Minstrel shows were an excuse to break away from social codes 

  • Through vulgarity, music, and sexual innuendoes, audiences could release themselves from strict social norms and use Black stereotypes, stories, and jokes to fulfill that desire. (free from victorian morality) 

  • Jacksonian Democracy created whiteness as a social category 

  • Immigrant groups (irish, germans, italians) saw whiteness as an ability to move forward in society by joining democracy 

  • Attending or performing minstrel shows became a way to assert whiteness, away from Blackness