How on earth did a huge popular phenomenon as weird and unabashedly racist as the minstrel show develop?

Why?

What did it look and sound like? Many recordings exist, hear some in this episode.

What are its remnants and influences today?

Many (even most) other histories settle for bashing it as an ugly, racist travesty, and it was. But such an unsettling thing needs a clear-eyed look to see why it appealed to such a huge audience, and how it can have lingered so long.

What, it's not dead yet? Nope.

See the details and download the podcast HERE

More about Minstrel Shows can be found here,

http://www.sideshowworld.com/MinstrelShows.html

Good or Bad it's a part of entertainment history.

John
Sidshow World

So was feeding Christians to the lions.

And I, for one, would very much like to understand how an entire society could find feeding Christians to the lions (and all else that went on in the Colosseum) "an afternoon's light entertainment". It's surely not the same as dragging somebody from our worlds back to that time and buying them a ticket - how did these people see the world, what did these people think that we don't think?

I put together the "minstrel show" episode because I thought it was worth a look. Examining it is not the same as approving of it. I think most people that have looked at things this controversial fall into one of two traps:

1) Simply holding it up for wholesale automatic ridicule and disapproval ("look how ugly and unfair everything about this was, wasn't it awful?") - WHICH IT DESERVES, except you don't learn anything that way;

2) Pretending to study it, while actually trying to excuse it, as a disingenuous mask for one's own racism. ("Oh, we're just having a little fun, we don't mean anything by it.")

I thought that a phenomenon that strong deserved a straight-ahead clear-eyed look, and I learned something from it:

I learned that audiences now are not really all that different from audiences then: we love and approve of ugly, biased entertainment, especially when strong issues are on the table ... as long as it confirms our own biases.

Think back: during the recent election, how many cheap cracks did you laugh at that demonized whichever side you opposed? Do you really believe that every [fill in the blank: Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative] is an ignorant buffoon who has no idea what America stands for? But it's so comforting to laugh with one's friends at the antics of those buffoons on the other side, and reassure yourself that everybody around you agrees ... "nope, no need to question my world-view, look how many good people agree!"

The only difference between The Colosseum and Soccer
is in Soccer the audience gets maimed...

Allright! More ballycast. I liiiike it.

"Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative] is an ignorant buffoon who has no idea what America stands for?"

Yes.

I knew a Vaudvillian George Burney (spelling may be wrong) who had played Minsteral shows in his early years. His act when I knew him was taking a huge pile of wooden chairs and picking them up using his jaws. He was a crusty old dude (a black man) and had had a great attitude about life in general. In those days even the blacks were in 'Black Face' he told me. Some shows were for Blacks in Black areas. But his general take was positive in that it allowed him and the other black entertainers to WORK in areas they normally could not. It was not only a matter of survival but a way to ply their trade and put on the SHOW. He said it beat the hell out of workin' for a living. As time went on (even into the 50's) it bacame a nostaligic thing and was still performed on occasion even on TV. He also metioned that it was the Civil Rights era that made him feel guilty about it all but he wasn't going to be ashamed because for the time that's what you did if you were an entertainer who wanted to work. Black or White...

Kind of like what Roger Corman told me once..."He made the crappy movies so he could afford to release the art films he loved. It's what people would pay for...Monsters.

John Carradine said the saame thing pretty much. He made all those horrible cheap movies to foster his first love which was teaching Drama at Universities.

Yeah...black face Minstral sucked when measure against today's attitudes...and it's easy to Sunday Quarterback... there was incredible talent and entertainment offered up and it was the way it was...it could not have been any other way back then.


Consider it was just done AGAIN in the hit 'Tropical Thunder' movie with Robert Downey Jr. For the same reasons matter of fact they did it back then...only last year they didn't have to.

Thanks for the piece Ross. Most enlightening.

The Idea that most of the history of Sideshow has been looked at as exploitation of the folks that were exhibited in the shows.

Minstrel Show are not a lot different. If one can look upon the history as it is, not as one thinks it is, then you can get a look at what it was really like.

It's hard not to put ones spin on things, just look at TV, News, Politics, etc.

Are we different today, or are we just politically correct.

If we don't learn from our history, then we are likely to repeat it.

John
Sideshow World

It is easy to look back in our modern vision and see how horrible things were. And in this day and age, the performances are horrible, expect, I would say, it a historical or teaching context. Otherwise is hard to understand the context and the effects of different practices.
We don’t live in their time or think in their mindset.

Black were not the only “victims” in Vaudeville. The were many awful ethnic caricatures in Vaudeville: Irish, German, Italian, Swedish, Jewish, Hispanic. I remember when I was doing research for my books coming across an editorial in the Chicago Tribune in which the headline read, “Rather a N***** than an Irishman.” The article opined that they rather have a N***** living next door to them than an Irishman.

Author Trav S.D. makes an interesting point in his important and excellent history of Vaudeville, No Applause-Just Throw Money, that these caricatures were a necessary evil allowing these various cultures into the melting pot of America. Sort of an initiation rite. First we laugh, then we accept. The unfortunate thing here is that the white ethnics were accepted long before any non-whites. Non-whites having trouble to this day.

I do believe the entertainment community is much more progressive than the culture. For the most part I find that entertainers don’t care about race, creed, or sexual orientation and care only about good or bad performers.

As it should be.

Mike Royko, the legendary columnist for the Chicago newspapers, once wrote an article about Riverview Amusement Park.

He went a visited the dunk tanks, where black me were being dunked but the white patrons. Even the tanks were decorated in decidedly racist paintings. Mike wrote an article about this travesty.

Riverview acted, as Royko’s articles often made people do. Riverview fired the men and remade the tanks.

The next day, the now out of work men paid a visit to Royko’s office to wonder what they were supposed to do now. He put the six of them out of work. When he asked why they wanted to do that work in the first place, they replied that is was the only place they could taunt the whites without getting lynched. They could vent their frustrations and get paid well for it, too.

The next day, Royko wrote an article explaining that his article was well meaning, but he did not know the full story. He apologized and asked for work for the men.

Excellent points. I'll bet they didn't get their jobs back. Freakin' do gooders. Pulled the same thing with the freaks. Put 'em on welfare when they could have been working.

I would point to another CURRENT racist exploitation...The Jerry Springer Show. Really disgusting displays.

Another Marshall Brodien story from Riverview:

Sealo, the seal boy, would talk about how during the depression he could light his cigars with $5 bills. He put much of his family through school and into business with the money he made exhibiting himself. But now, this was in the 50s I would guess, those “do-gooders” were helping him by putting him out of business and on the public dole.

This is a common story among freaks at the time.

Many of these do-gooders meant well. The irony is while trying to give freaks humanity, they denied them their humanity and their lives. They ignored their intelligence and freedom to choose.

As Ward Hall said, a lot of these people dreamed to be in show business, but this was the only show business they were allowed to be in.

The real point is talk to the person you want to help and make sure you are really helping them.

A thought about vaudeville-era ethnic caricatures (interestingly, EXCEPT humor aimed at blacks):

You could laugh at the guy onstage portraying a clueless immigrant hick, because most of the audience were immigrants and over here they felt like hicks. Didn't matter what ethnicity, in fact it was even funnier when you'd see "Levi and Cohen, the Irish Comedians"

Why was it OK for Groucho and Chico to portray a Jewish trickster and an Italian rube? Because they both were outside higher-class (Anglo) society, and Groucho wasn't smarter than Chico, he just got off the boat a week earlier so he knew how things work for guys like that over here.

Certainly a facinating topic from so many angles. Lets keep it going...

Synopsis for The Elephant Man:
"A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous facade, there is revealed a person of intelligence and sensitivity."

Rescued from the freakshow!
If only I could be so lucky....
High tea with the aristocracy...
1 show daily...
No ticket sales-just cash the large checks...
What we need today is more Victorian surgeons!!

Yes, more victorian surgeons
I haven't had a good bloodletting in...oh...ever.

Victorian medicine ... hmmm ... my wife definitely needs another treatment for her hysteria. The Victorians had some pretty good ones.

Good wives or good hysteria?

The Victorians had very large closets, with many things kept in them.