Behind the Screen - Tap Dance, Race, and Invisibility During Hollywood''s Golden Age

How and why was outdated racial content - and specifically blackface minstrelsy - not only permitted, but in fact allowed to thrive during the 1930s and 1940s despite the rigid motion picture censorship laws which were enforced during this time? Introducing a new theory of covert minstrelsy, this book illuminates Hollywood's practice of capitalizing on the Africanist aesthetic at the expense of Black lived experience.

List of contents

• Acknowledgments


• Note on Language


• Preface


• Covert Minstrelsy: a Diagram


• Introduction: Masks in Disguise


• 1. Integrating the Screen: Sound Synchronization, Sonic Guises, and Pre-Code Blackface, 1927-1930


• sing-along: "Dinah," a Fleischer Screen Song


• 2. Optical Illusion and Design: Exposure Values, Protean Guises, and Eddie Cantor's Blackface 1930-1933


• cartoon short: The Three Little Pigs, an excerpted Walt Disney Silly Symphony


• 3. Public Works and Accolades: Race Film, Southern Repossession, and the Rise of Bill Robinson, 1929-1935


• dance break: "Have You Got Any Castles," Featuring Buck and Bubbles


• 4. Bon Homage: Female Figures, the Tribute Guise, and Pre-War Departures, 1934-1939


• travel ad: Skirting Censorship: Brownface and Technology in Transit


• 5. With a Glory Be: The Gabriel Variation, Jazz, and Everything in Between, 1934-1942


• war bond ad: "Any Bonds Today?" Produced in Cooperation with Warner Bros. and U.S. Treasury Dept. Defense Savings Staff


• 6. Hays is for Horses: Cartoons' Crossover Appeal, Dis-figuration, and the Animated Bestiary 1934-1942


• Coda. Enlisting the Tropes: Covert Minstrelsy in Action, 1942-1954


• Appendix: Excerpts from the Production Code (1934-1954)


• Index

About the author

Brynn Wein Shiovitz is Lecturer in the Department of Dance at Chapman University and the editor of The Body, the Dance, and the Text: Essays on Performance and the Margins of History.

Product details

• Authors: Brynn Shiovitz, Brynn (Lecturer in Dance Shiovitz, Brynn W. Shiovitz, Brynn W. (Lecturer in Dance Shiovitz
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.03.2023
• EAN: 9780197553091
• ISBN: 978-0-19-755309-1
• No. of pages: 392
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries; USA, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Dance, PERFORMING ARTS / Dance / General, Films, cinema, United States of America, USA, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, c 1930 to c 1939, c 1940 to c 1949, c 1939 to c 1945 (including WW2), c 1918 to c 1939 (Inter-war period), PERFORMING ARTS / Film / General, Black & Asian Studies, Film history, theory or criticism, Relating to African American / Black American people