Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation
Nicholas Sammond is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930-60, and the editor of Steel Chair to the Head: Essays on Professional Wrestling, both also published by Duke University Press.
Conclusion: The “New” Blackface
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Published:August 2015
This chapter frames this retelling of the early history of American animation as part blackface minstrelsy in order to reconsider some of the classic theories of comedy, humor, and laughter. It argues for the significance of race and racism in the seemingly universal concepts of the laughing subject, and in the objects of jokes in the United States. It uses this analysis to discuss why minstrelsy is still practiced today, and why in a supposedly postracial era in the United States the donning of blackface, both professionally and by amateurs, has actually increased. The resurgence of a seemingly inherently comic...
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