{"id":25672,"date":"2012-09-30T03:58:49","date_gmt":"2012-09-30T03:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25672"},"modified":"2017-04-13T16:11:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T16:11:35","slug":"racechanges-white-skin-black-face-in-american-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25672","title":{"rendered":"Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Oxford University Press<\/a>
\nMay 1997
\n356 pages
\nPaperback ISBN13: 9780195134186; ISBN10: 0195134184<\/p>\n

Susan Gubar<\/a><\/strong>, Distinguished Professor Emerita and Ruth N. Halls Professor Emerita of English
\nIndiana University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When the actor Ted Danson<\/a> appeared in blackface<\/a> at a 1993 Friars Club<\/a> roast, he ignited a firestorm of protest that landed him on the front pages of the newspapers, rebuked by everyone from talk show host Montel Williams<\/a> to New York City’s<\/a> then mayor, David Dinkins<\/a>. Danson’s use of blackface was shocking, but was the furious pitch of the response a triumphant indication of how far society has progressed since the days when blackface performers were the toast of vaudeville<\/a>, or was it also an uncomfortable reminder of how deep the chasm still is separating black and white America?<\/p>\n

In Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture<\/em>, Susan Gubar, who fundamentally changed the way we think about women’s literature as co-author of the acclaimed The Madwoman in the Attic<\/em>, turns her attention to the incendiary issue of race. Through a far-reaching exploration of the long overlooked legacy of minstrelsy<\/a>\u2013cross-racial impersonations or “racechanges”\u2014throughout modern American film, fiction, poetry, painting, photography, and journalism, she documents the indebtedness of “mainstream” artists to African-American culture, and explores the deeply conflicted psychology of white guilt. The fascinating “racechanges” Gubar discusses include whites posing as blacks and blacks “passing<\/a>” for white; blackface on white actors in The Jazz Singer<\/a><\/em>, Birth of a Nation<\/a><\/em>, and other movies, as well as on the faces of black stage entertainers; African-American deployment of racechange imagery during the Harlem Renaissance<\/a>, including the poetry of Anne Spencer<\/a>, the black-and-white prints of Richard Bruce Nugent<\/a>, and the early work of Zora Neale Hurston<\/a>; white poets and novelists from Vachel Lindsay<\/a> and Gertrude Stein<\/a> to John Berryman<\/a> and William Faulkner<\/a> writing as if they were black; white artists and writers fascinated by hypersexualized stereotypes of black men; and nightmares and visions of the racechanged baby. Gubar shows that unlike African-Americans, who often are forced to adopt white masks to gain their rights, white people have chosen racial masquerades, which range from mockery and mimicry to an evolving emphasis on inter-racial mutuality and mutability.<\/p>\n

Drawing on a stunning array of illustrations, including paintings, film stills, computer graphics, and even magazine morphings, Racechanges<\/em> sheds new light on the persistent pervasiveness of racism and exciting aesthetic possibilities for lessening the distance between blacks and whites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In “Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture,” Susan Gubar, who fundamentally changed the way we think about women’s literature as co-author of the acclaimed The Madwoman in the Attic, turns her attention to the incendiary issue of race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1196,8,17,6462,20],"tags":[1237,55,12202,342,12200,12199,12198,12201,490,150],"class_list":["post-25672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-harlem-renaissance","tag-john-berryman","tag-oxford-university-press","tag-richard-bruce-nugent","tag-susan-d-gubar","tag-susan-gubar","tag-vachel-lindsay","tag-william-faulkner","tag-zora-neale-hurston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53472,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25672\/revisions\/53472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}