Minstrel show notes

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key ideas-
  • minstrel shows was most popular musical stage shows of the early and mid 19th century
  • founded on the comic enactment of racial stereotypes
  • featured to exaggerate portrayal of african american music, culture, vernacular english for entertainment
  • performers both white and black donned blackface
  • in these shows, white men blackened their face with burnt cork to lampoon blacks, they performed songs and skits that sentimentalised life on southern plantations
  • in these shows, blacks were shown as naive buffoons who sang and danced the days away
  • minstrelsy was the first example of the way american popular culture would exploit and manipulate afro-americans and their culture to please and benefit white americans
  • despite such drawbacks, minstrelsy provided african american performers with their first professional stage outlet

characters-
  • the coon- violent, uneducated adult male
  • mammie- overweight older black maid- mother type character
  • pickaninny- unkept and unlooked after uneducated child

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