African American Humor

stepin fetchit

a black actor who played an ignorant fool on screen and WAS a trickster off screen...was pretty hard to direct because he always did his own thing. became the highest paid black actor and was his own agent, could sell a movie just with his name

bill foster

a black producer who insisted that blacks were ideal for movies because of their "low mellow voices" and featured movies with bert williams, but never really got famous because they were still racist

oscar micheaux

a director whose complex films emphasized inferior black stereotypes

stepin fetchit

a famous black actor whose career REALLY began with Hearts in Dixie in 1929

billy kersands

a famous black minstrel who had a HUGE mouth and was also funny, danced, and did acrobatics. recreated the Sambo character

Edwin Forrest

a famous ethiopian delineator who didnt do anything else

vaudeville

a more calm and restrained version of minstrelsy that didnt involve whores or swearing...started to change the nature of entertainment in America

langston hughes

a writer who wrote scripts for movies with black characters and wanted to portray them more authentically but was forced to write more derogatory things

naive humor

actually not knowing things and it being funny to others

george washington dixie

an ethiopian delineator who went on to become a minstrel performer

uncle remus tales

animal tales were also called these, involved the rabbit and other animals to portray that slaves used wit and cunning to outsmart their masters. was outwardly for children but had moral lessons that adults understood, lots written by Joel Chandler Harris

gosden and correll

began the amos n andy phenom, two white guys who started off singing but then portrayed (thru radio) black guys in their show sam and henry, then switched name to amos n andy and went on tv in blackface

willie best

black actor hired to replace fetchit because fetchit was demanding too much money, always looked like he was about to run away

mantan moreland

black actor huge eyes = double take became famous, played Birmingham the chauffeur, energetic comedian

bill bojangles robinson

black actor who danced with shirley temple, was also a comedian in vaudeville, america's most respected and distinguished black stage performer

hogan

black minstrel who wrote "all coons look alike to me". didnt try to be authentic or change the negative portrayals, rather was acting like a buffoon because it was popular

sam lucas

black minstrel who wrote minstrel songs that were less offensive and more about quick witted humor. was also the first black actor in both the film and stage production of uncle tom's cabin, was a transitional figure because he started to counter the prevailing negative image of black stage actors

Ethiopian delineators

blackface entertainers who just basically mimicked any african americans they saw in order to be funny, included Forrest, Dixie, and Thomas Rice.

Ostendorf

blacks are portrayed as culture-less and are greatly exaggerated, they have to lead double-edged lives where the private and public humor are different (who thought this?)

ellison

blacks need double vision, they need to be able to look at the word in this tragic yet comedic way (aka tragicomic) = bittersweet (who thought this?)

Du Bois

blacks should not partake in any aspect of negro humor because it will prevent them from ever getting anywhere in society, there IS such a thing as black culture and in fact it really influenced american culture, double consciousness was his shit (who thought this?)

thomas rice

coined the "Jim Crow" dance because he mimicked the crippled slave and made it look like all african american dance wast this way

bergson/sypher

comedy = intellectual exercise, has nothing to do with feelings or emotions and thus can only be for humans. comedy = SOCIAL and makes, is made by, and changes with society. "comedy demands incongruity", there is never 1 simple definition because comedy is the ability to see several sides...double view! comedy > tragedy open society = comedy! closed society = dictatorial, no comedy really which two scholars said these things ?

parody/travesty

comic device that means destroying the unity between a person's character and his/her actions (obama in a high voice that he doesnt usually have)

caricature

comic device that means making fun of and degrading a person's single trait, capitalizing on that

mimicry

comic device that means making objects humorous by mirroring and making fun of a person's speech, actions, attributes, etc.

unmasking

comic device that means showing an aspect of someone that is totally not what we would expect but is true of them (dave chappelle acting serious in a business meeting, tripping and then starting to swear and talk ghetto)

williams and walker

comic duo who really had style and brought their success from "two real coons" to broadway and vaudeville. we better actors than the other duo but also brought ragtime. also cakewalk

miller and lyles

comic duo who refined the stage duo of black minstrels, they heavily influenced amos n andy and wrote "shuffle along" which went on broadway in 1921 and was a HUGE success= very important for black performers. brought ragtime and non-racial (more backwoods/frontier) humor to the forefront

bert williams

considered the best comedian of his time (amongst all comedians), was the first black superstar (ziegfield follies) and the highest paid performer at the time. he was a wise man who played a fool on stage, but was still able to humanize the "darky" stereotype...which is something black comedians couldnt do again for av ery long time. also pantomimed. didnt want to be on stage with whites

1865

date of the start of black minstrelsy

d.w. griffith

directed birth of a nation...made kkk look heroic = WICKED racist

butterfly mcqueen

female black actress who was childish and mind was in another world (female stepin fetchit)

haddie mcdaniels

female black actress who was in gone with the wind, tough and aggressive

louis beavers

female black actress who was kind of like the aunt jamima character, loving and caring

dan emmett

founder of the virginia minstrels

Aristotle

humor is the juxtaposition of 2 incongruous ideas or images, we laugh because of the surprise and misdirection a (who believed this?)

freud

introduced naiveté, that comedy is FOUND but jokes are MADE, comedy comes from digressions from the norm, so when someone does something uncivilized it is funny because the norm of society is to be civilized (who believed this?)

Hobbes

laughter is what happens when we realize we are superior to others, laugh at the expense of them (who believed this?)

Toll

minstrelsy was a good thing (for whites) because it was comforting and reassuring to feel that blacks liked feeling inferior (who thought this?)

Ellison

minstrelsy was bad because it created the burden of race where blacks just thought about how bad it was that they were black, it was a form of cultural domination because minstrels reduce blacks to negative/grotesque people (who thought this?)

Huggins

minstrelsy was bad because it was a caricature (inherently negative) of African American society (who thought this?)

Rourke

minstrelsy was good because it helped to shape american culture, we have to look beyond the racist aspects of minstrelsy to find that it is beneficial, it combines the 3 humors (backwoods, frontier and negro) to create a new and novel culture (who thought this?)

edison and biograph

originally just filmed blacks doing every day things, but when scripted movies came out it was only whites

misleading naivete

pretending to be stupid and not knowing things because others expect it and it's funny, but really knew better

jim crow

rural black stereotype that developed in minstrelsy

Lott

scholar who said that it minstrel shows were not either people's culture or cultural domination, but rather were both

samboism

slaves developed this method as a way to express their emotions without saying them, thru misleading naiveté really

Virginia Minstrels, 1843

the first minstrel group and the date they began. founded by dan emmett, mix of backwoods and frontier humor

numbskull and trickster

these tales included Jon and the black snake and the fake competition one

john and ole massa

these tales were about the slave misleading the master, HUMANS and not animals

lincoln motion picture

this company was the first organized black producing company that made "race films"

hallelujah

this movie was directed by king vidor, all black cast, did things that previous movies didnt, and reflected the director's genuine interest in the southern lifestyle

hearts in dixie

this stepin fetchit movie came out in 1929 and had an all black cast with some comedic aspects but was on a plantation still

Backwoods

this type of humor was braggy, raunchy, and wild west-esque

yankee

this type of humor was quick witted and had lots of puns/satire

ritual of delusion

this was how blacks and whites interacted, involved double conc., vision and edge. essentially slaves had to pretend to be the stereotypes that whites portrayed them as, = amusement but this lead to the idea that they needed whites to support them

zip coon

urban black stereotype that developed in minstrelsy

people's culture

view of minstrelsy that is more positive, says that the shows celebrated black culture and authentically presented it on stage, Mahar subscribed to this view

cultural domination

view of minstrelsy that it was negative and was a demeaning portrait of blacks that wasnt authentic at all

james bland

was a black minstrel who wrote minstrel songs that were still about sambo and derogatory...songs were bought by white guys and he never got credit for them

henry juba lane

was a famous black minstrel who was best known for his dancing