Saw a play last night on Broadway aka "The Great White Way called The Scottsboro Boys Musical. The premise : A minstrel show performance to tell the tale of 9 young Black men who were charged with assaulting and raping two white women in a train car during the year 1931 in the state of Alabama. I couldn't help but think of W.E.B Dubois and double consciousness as I took in this mode of a storytelling device .
Some definition in the actual quote before I go on:
From W.E.B Dubois
"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder"
I watched the show from double perspectives.
Two-ness:
Consciousness 1) In terms of the art of it all -The acting was flawless. The staging was clever. The history accurate. The props and minimal set -brilliant . The songs-wonderful and touching. I would make a terrible critic, because I usually get what the creators are trying to do and say . In this case I believe that it was showing through the minstrel show how ridiculous the dehumanizing imagery appears in the context of a story that shows what the inside lives of these innocent victims of American stereotyping and fear of the Black man looks like if you changed the lens in which this was viewed. The cultural diet that fueled the hate and violence perpetuated against us for so long was fortified by images on stage, film, visual art and even toys that presented us as comical savages who could on a dime into wild beasts that had to be contained by any means necessary. Minstrel shows were very popular forms of entertainment for folks who liked a good , fun, and safe coon show. In this production by using the Black actors to play the white folks in all their ridiculousness , hatred, manipulations, and negative contribution to the narrative of a justice journey reenacted from the prospective of the wronged using the tool(the minstrel show itself), a reversal was the intent.
Consciousness 2 ) The first 15 minutes of this show was such a tour de force coon show that it left a knot in my stomach that stayed the entire show. As many of the non blacks laughed hardily at the depictions of exaggerated showmanship . bad jokes, rubbery faces , I had to keep telling myself that there was a bigger point to the whole thing. Sheer will kept me from just walking out. My logical self kept telling my emotional self that any non Black person who bought tickets to a show titled The Scottsboro Boys was probably not a member of the KKK-but what was so damn funny about Tambo and Bones? The clothes, makeup, dancing, singing , were painful reminders that entertainment first-history 2nd was the priority order. I could have absorbed so much more of the story without having to calm myself down throughout when the cooning would become to much. The ending tried to tie all of it together by bringing all of the characters on stage in blackface for the finale; They then wipe it off in an act of defiance against the White ringmaster. I get it. I would have gotten it anyway( without the final trip into degradation). The history of this gross miscarriage of justice is enough of a story-it doesn't need to be guided by a white man, buffoonery as a guide into the real storytelling, or anything else but the truth of it all.
I am not the art police. I know how tricky intent and final execution can be in the creation of art. I have a character in my show " Memories of Self: Timeless Journey To Weeksville who is a minstrel performer. The premise is that you are the first white visitor into his house. This performer bought his house from the proceeds of his "entertaining" He quotes Shakespeare and Plato often. When he believes that he is exposing to much , he slips back into the dialect that he believes is the only way that the visitor can accept all of his story. Why ? I will quote that great poet Dunbar; We Wear the Mask
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
The show is closing soon. I suggest that you see it -so that we can talk about it( From either or both layers of our consciousness.
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