[April 20th marks the 50th anniversary of NPR’s first broadcast. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of radio histories and contexts, leading up to a Guest Post from a colleague whose upcoming book on college radio should be a must-read!]
On blackface
radio, and what makes it distinctive from other such performances.
In this
piece for my Saturday Evening Post
Considering History column, I traced some of the many layers to blackface
performance’s influences on 20th century American culture. As usual,
when I share another piece of my writing, I’ll ask you to check that out if you
could, and then to come on back here for the remaining paragraphs of this post.
(And if you want to read more on blackface, check out the work of historian Rhae Lynn Barnes,
our leading expert on the subject.)
Welcome back! It
stands to reason that if (as I argue in that piece) every other genre and
medium of 20th century American popular culture was influenced by
blackface performance, from film to TV to animation, then radio would be as
well. And indeed it was, with one of the longest-running radio programs in
history, Amos
‘n’ Andy (1928-1960), as a striking case in point. Created by a pair of
white actors and comedians, Freeman
Gosden and Charles Cornell, who had met in Durham, North Carolina and were
each steeped in the blackface
minstrelsy tradition, A&A
featured Gosden and Cornell performing the voices of
its titular two African American characters who lived in Harlem. As with so
much of blackface performance, the show relied on exaggeration and stereotypes
to create laughs, putting its characters in ridiculous situations and letting
their caricatured perspectives and contrasting personalities produce hilarity
out of those extremes. But you don’t need to listen to a word to know that the
show epitomized blackface performance—just look at the
original poster!
So Amos ‘n’ Andy was definitely an example
of blackface performance, and needs to be criticized for the same flaws and
faults, and the same destructive cultural and social effects, as the genre overall.
But I would say that there’s at least one difference when it comes to blackface
radio compared to other media, and while I don’t want to overstate it, I believe
it has some significance. Because a radio program can’t use visual cues,
slapstick comedy, exaggerated reactions, ridiculous makeup, and so on, it
relies almost entirely on the voices of its characters. And while of course
those voices can be exaggerated and stereotyped as well (and were in the case
of A&A), the simple fact of two characters being voiced week after week,
over a period of decades, creates a more multi-layered and three-dimensional
depiction of those voices, perspectives, and characters than might be possible
in more visual forms of blackface performance. Amos Jones and Andrew Hogg Brown
certainly weren’t the most progressive of characters (again, far from it), but
they are likely two of the most well-developed in the history of radio and pop
culture, and there’s a resonance to that which I would argue illustrates the
potential of radio programs even amidst cultural limitations.
Next
RadioStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other radio histories or stories you’d share?
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