Kathleen Casey’s The Prettiest Girl on Stage is a Man: Race and Gender Benders in American Vaudeville kind of brings this essay full circle with its exploration of the adoption of gender and racial performances in American vaudeville, a popular form of entertainment during the early twentieth century. Vaudeville performances are characterized by physical humor, masquerade, and metamorphosis. This particular type of performance is not much different than “camp” explored in Newton’s Mother Camp, which emphasizes gay humor and theatrics. While camp is performed by drag queens, the vaudeville performers explored in Casey’s work perform gender in different ways. One of the four case studies in the book is that of Eva Tanguay who embodies female …show more content…
What sets Eltinge a part from other female impersonators such as those in Newton’s work is his refusal to incorporate camp into stage routines nor did he change his voice. Casey posits that rather than campy performances, Eltinge’s stage performances conjures up thoughts of drag balls like those in New York City, more specifically Harlem and Greenwich Village. While he had the opportunity to be apart of this subculture, he refused since he was at risk of being a fairy, something he tried to avoid. According to George Chauncey, fairies performed femininity through cultural strategies such as mimicking female voices and gaits. While his onstage persona is a female impersonator, Eltinge’s off-stage masculine mannerisms ensured that he would not be seen or defined as a fairy. His performance of white womanhood is exemplified in not only in style of dress, which included heavy, floor length gowns but also wear whitening powder on his face. His performances in white facial powder helped him to become an entrepreneur selling whitening powder, cold cream, and publishing a magazine targeted for women offering fashion tips for women wanting to imitate his version of white womanhood. Casey concludes that instead of his female impersonations being seen as mocking women, his performances were instead viewed as …show more content…
Her performance included portraying a black dandy singing about the past of the Antebellum south as a black male impersonator. During the era of Jim Crow, performing as a male impersonator provided Brown with opportunities to (re)present new notions of black manhood. Casey argues that being black at the turn of the century was “limiting” but being black allowed Brown to “’transgress gender boundaries on the stage.” Unlike Eltinge who did not change his voice on stage, Brown need to sound as masculine as possible to keep up with the men she performed with and to convince audiences to buy into her brand of masculinity. It also allowed her to show her true self. She would reveal her waist length hair on stage to show her femininity. Hair length is a power symbol of gender and sexuality. Brown’s mixed heritage did not always speak to her blackness but her hair texture was an important racial indicator that spoke to her race in ways that her coloring and features did not. Her hair was also important to her femininity since she did not intend to be a male impersonator all of the time. The revealing of her long hair was also important to her performance, it was the highlight. This allowed Brown to shed her masculinity and unveil her true self. In these moments, Brown and her audiences understood the sexual and gendered implications of hair. Brown, like many other male impersonators, reveal their feminine
Gill, Glenda Eloise. No Surrender! No Retreat! : African American Pioneer Performers of Twentieth-Century American Theater. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. Print.
...ey choose to represent themselves. S ikivu Hutchinson writes that 20 Feet From Stardom is an example of how “women of color back-up singers are still treated like expendable objects, eye candy and soulful exotics while fighting tooth and nail for recognition and a shot at center stage.” None of the women in 20 Feet had exceptional solo careers because within the historical context they would never be respected as solo artist unless they asserted themselves in a sexual way that would be on the same level of Elvis. This would be harder for an African-American woman because they are already sexualized as back-up singers. There would be then a need for overt sexualization as displayed by Tina Turner. Although Tina Turner is an extraordinary performer her success is banked on that overt sexualization where’s the women of 20 Feet hoped to rely on their vocal talents.
Cullen, Frank, Florence Hackman, and Donald McNeilly. Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America. New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Women during this Jazz era were freer about their sexuality, but due to this freeness, an article called “Negro Womanhood’s Greatest Need” criticized the sexuality of Black women. In this article, the writers criticized Black women of the Jazz era; one part stated “.“speed and disgust” of the Jazz Age which created women “less discreet and less cautious than their sisters in the years gone by”. These “new” women, she continued, rebelling against the laws of God and man” (p.368). Women expressing their sexuality is not only an act against God, but also against men. In Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” Twyla’s mother Marry had no problem expressing her sexuality because she was a stripper, who danced all night, she wore a fur jack and green slacks to a chapel to meet her daughter Twyla.
The film presents the stereotypical behavior of gay men that is evident in our society. Many of the costumes are designed to highlight the characters and the way they live. For example, Bernadette wears long flowing clothes usually white or an off cream. ‘She’ is an older ‘women’ and dresses to look like one with flowing skirts and tops with her hair done up simply.
When Lutie applies for different jobs, there is always an alter motif involved. For example, when she auditions to become a singer for Mr. Crosse, he says she has to go through six weeks of training that will cost her $125, which is money Lutie doesn’t have. Boots presents Lutie with the opportunity to sing, but like every other opportunity, it falls through. When Bud asked why white people want colored people shining shoes, Lutie couldn’t come up with an explanation. She figured that it must be “hate that made them wrap up all Negroes in a neat package labeled ‘colored’; a package that called for certain kinds of jobs and a special kind of treatment”(71) that limits their overall experiences as African-Americans.
Slide, Anthony. The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Google Books. Web. 1 May 2014.
First, no matter what is represented on stage, the fact that boys are actually playing cross dressing men and women is insistently metaphorical; the literal fact of trans-vestism (that is, the boy actor impersonating either a woman, a woman cross dressed as a man, or a man cross dressed as a woman, not the represented character) is divided between the homoerotic and the blurring of gender. On the other hand, the represented female character who cross dresses functions literally to relieve the boy actor, at least for a time, from impersonating a woman. Represented characters who cross dress may pre-sent a variety of poses, from the misogynist mockery of the feminine to the adroitly and openly homoerotic. In the case of the title character of Jonson's Epicoene, the motif is utilized as disguise intended to effect a surprise ending for Morose and his heterosexual audience, for whom the poet also pr...
Lee, Josephine D.. Performing Asian America race and ethnicity on the contemporary stage. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. Print.
Early life and introductions to theater and dance began when Katherine was just a young girl. Katherine’s childhood was neither the easiest nor the best. Grew up as a middle class child, till the loss of her mother whom died and left her brother and herself to their father, later due to financial situations the family had to sell their home (Banes, 1998). With no place to go Katherine’s sibling and her self, went to permanently live with their aunt (O’Connor, 2002). Living with Katherine’s aunt is where she acquired interest in the world of entertainment as she watched her aunt and cousin rehearse for black vaudeville shows. Shortly after that Kather...
The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset, and Wallace Brown.
This paper will look at the different conceptions highlighted by Bulman in his article through the use of different methods used by the actors in the play. Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare captures the different conceptions of gender identity and different sexualities within the Elizabethan period.
When I first watched Chicago at the movie theater, I was not fully satisfied. I wanted more, so I went back to get some and watched it six more times with different friends and family members! Last summer during a visit to my native Mexico City, I had the opportunity to watch drag queens perform several numbers from the movie-musical. They did an amazing job, without surpassing the outstanding performances of the actors in the film. Last year, I visited NYC for the first time and indulged in the rows of the Ambassador theatre experiencing Chicago, the Broadway musical, and because I had seen the movie many times before, I knew all the songs and dances by heart. I loved it, but it was actually the movie that influenced me to become a “Chicago fan.” The movie is based on the 1996 Chicago revival of the original musical version of 1975. It was thrilling knowing that the making of the musical into a mainstream production would increase its accessibility and widen its distribution into all the corners of the world; now there is no excuse for people not to experience Chicago, and though not everyone can go to Broadway to see it, just about anyone can indulge themselves in this dazzling movie in the comfort of their homes. In addition to a fantasy world of singing, dancing and Vaudeville, the film also provides a narrative that is explicitly presented through Roxie’s point of view, creating a counter human side to Roxie’s fantasy world so that the audience can easily identify and engage. Chicago is a must see film for anyone who likes to spoil themselves with an outstanding award-winning musical composed of a catchy plot, truly superb acting, commendable direction, and a clever soundtrack.
For example, in the musical Rocky Horror Picture show. Richard O’Brien chose to create a character that was a man, who dressed as a woman and took on women characteristics. This movie was one of the first forms of media to portray a genderqueer role, of a man taking on the role of a transvestite. Another example of media which portrayed non- binary gender roles is in the musical Hairspray. The writers decided to have the role of Tracy Turnblad’s played by a man in drag. This made the character to seem more masculine to the audience than a typical mother would. The writers chose to create this role as a secret for the audience to know she’s a man, but the cast of charecters doesn’t know. The sight of a transvestite onstage can compel pleasure and applause when the sight of the same transvestite on the seat next to us on the bus can compel fear, range and violence. When we see a person playing a transvestite on stage to us they are just portraying an idea. Then when we see one in normal day life we are lead to feel uncomfortable because it is not considered to be a “normal” appearance, it is out of the ordinary. One may wonder how we can stop these feelings from occurring or if they will never be something that we consider to be a social
Madison, D. Soyini. "Pretty Woman Through the Triple Lens of Black Feminist Spectatorship." From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1995. 224-35. Print.