The only thing offensive about Travolta’s role in *Hairspray *is that he was cast in the first place. It should have been Harvey Fierstein.
Sure, that’s an aspect of some drag performances, but not always. Drag isn’t necessarily comedic to begin with, and even when it is comedic, the drag element isn’t always part of the humor. The Kids in the Hall had a lot of drag performances, but the humor never (or at least, rarely) was derived simply from the idea that a man in a dress is funny. Usually, it was simply a side effect of the fact that they were an all-male comedy troupe that often needed people to fill female roles.
Thanks to you guys for the responses to an esp. poorly worded OP. Just didn’t have time to explain what I meant very well - Blackface wasn’t an esp. good comparison. I do tend to agree obviously with what Push You Down posted - often this kind of comedy is demeaning to women.
The UK has a tradition of “blackface” that has nothing to do with race, though we do have that too. The “Black and White Minstrel Show” was mentioned above.
There’s a much older tradition of it though in Mummer plays and Morris dancing that has, I believe, to do with the dancers and actors using face blacking to conceal thier identities from puritan land and mill owners who dissaproved of dance.
Here’s a link to a dance troop in that tradition …
And miners’ galas and so on, where the performers black up because… they’re personifying coal miners. Has been known to attract criticism from the usual suspects.
It’s possible that the older English tradition IS, in fact, race based . “Morris” dancing might derive from “Moorish”, and the blackface would then be in imitation of the dark-skinned Moors. see this page (which I found linked to the earlier link to “Blackface”):
The UK has a tradition of “blackface” that has nothing to do with race, though we do have that too. The “Black and White Minstrel Show” was mentioned above.
I have to admit, I’d never heard of this British tradition before, and it might indeed have to do with coal mining or easy disguise (what’s easier than smearing your face with the soot that was everywhere?), but I can’t dismiss the Moorish connection out of hand.
Extra Bonus Point weirdness: The Blackface page also links to Ganguro, a current Japanese fad:
Plus, I just feel pretty wearing a nice bra and panty set.
They really are pretty different in style and content. The gender equivalent of blackface would be something like just throwing on a wig and really red lipstick and really blue eyeshadow and acting like a larger than life stereotypical female, whatever that my be. The racial equivalent of drag would usually be something more like “wiggers” who dress and talk to match black culture as they see it. Or in a theatrical role more realistic skin makeup.
The blackface makeup isn’t supposed to look black, it’s supposed to look over the top stereotypically black in a mocking way. It’s theoretically possible to do it in a funny non offensive way, but that would depend on context. I can’t think of anyone trying to do blackface for any reason in the last 50 years besides Ted Danson, and supposedly Whoopie put him up to that, but it was altho received poorly, it was more a commentary on how other people felt about their interracial dating than anything.
I’ve always wondered about the episode in a Little House book where Pa appears in blackface in a minstral show. Is this what we want to teach our children about (and I can just hear the giggles over the word “minstral.”)
How could it when it doesn’t exist?
:dubious: What do you think drag performances are?
FWIW I see no difference between the two. Minstrel shows and drag shows are nearly parallel in every way, down to the fact that the performers are rumored to actually identify with subjects they’re mocking, or at least feel more liberated when in costume.
And for clarity’s sake, a male actor playing a woman, such as in situations like sketch comedies (SNL’s “Carol” or any Kids in the Hall sketch with a female character) or other all-male acting troupes, isn’t necessarily a “drag performance”, just like Darrel Hammond and Jimmy Kimmel aren’t doing blackface acts when they play Jesse Jackson and Karl Malone.
Actually, the American minstrel show goes back at least to the 1840s.
In a way, it’s sad that it’s gone. It was the only uniquely American form of stage entertainment ever invented, AFAIK. (Broadway musicals derive from European operettas.)
Eddie Murphy has performed numerous ‘white characters’ in films and on SNL.
A distinction is being made here between blackface (which is linked to minstrel shows) and white actors playing black characters. While Murphy and Dave Chappelle and other black comedians have played white people, pizzabrat is saying there’s no such form as “whiteface.”
I shouldn’t have been so absolute - whiteface could exist, I’ve just never seen it, and I can’t even fathom what it would be.
Other examples of Black Guys Playing White Characters in Makeup include 2004’s White Chicks:
And Godgrey Cambridge in the MUCH earlier (1970) Watermelon Man:
There were whiteface minstrel shows during the heyday of Irish immigration to the US, 1840-1900. They were spoofing Irish characters, with the purpose of distinguishing the Irish character from the white working class in a negative way. The Irish were often equated with blacks as society-destroying outsiders by nativists, so it fits with tone of transgressive parody that blackface embodied.
Does it still exist? I don’t know. Eddie Murphy dressing as a white man on SNL, exaggerating the worst/most mockable characteristics of white people, could constitute latter-day whiteface. Chappelle did something similar in his Interracial Wife Swap skit, where the white character is an object of derision. In both of these situations, the send-up was of white behavior in its most laughable manifestations, for the purpose of exposing the absurdity. I’d be interested in hearing how it’s quantifiably different from blackface. It’s not minstrelry, a format that doesn’t really exist anymore, but it does seem to be its modern equivalent.
For the record, as a white person, I think Murphy and Chappelle are quite funny and I don’t find their whiteface offensive. If I were the kind of person who did find the stereotyping and ridicule of white people for the purpose of comedy offensive, then I probably would.
Pretty sure the characters in White Chicks were black men, who then dressed up in the film as white women. That’s kinda different than black men actually playing characters who were white women.
For whiteface, I would think of Dave Chappelle, who does nameless white characters (not impressions of real people) doing stereotypical Caucasian things. That’s about the closest to traditional blackface I can think of.
I think you’re splitting hairs pretty thin with this.
Mime?