Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)
STUDIES - Gabriella Varró: The Theme of Comic Love in Blackface Minstrelsy: The Anatomy of the Grotesque
The third "vehicle" (besides minstrel lyrics and sheet music covers) that brought the physical grotesque of minstrelsy into the spotlight was the minstrel performer himself. As Toll and several other critics of minstrelsy note, the mainstream of minstrelsy was all-male even in the 1860s and 70s (139), and therefore female roles were traditionally acted out by male performers. Minstrel transvestism or the wench role, as it is popularly known, was introduced by the great masters of minstrelsy such as Barney Williams and George Christy (to whom the first song of this kind, "Lucy Long" is attributed), and later by Francis Leon, who was one of the most popular actors in this genre, and who was frequently taken for a member of the female sex because of his ingenious imitations. The notion of the minstrel "wench," that is, the blackface male minstrel cross-dressing as a "sweet young thing" flirting and forcing beaux to steal kisses from "her" (Toll 140), was by itself the very embodiment of the grotesque. Here the binary opposition, which is at the heart of the grotesque , came full circle. The minstrel performer posing as the ne plus ultra of female sensuality was both repulsive and strangely attractive, familiar yet distant and different in a bizarre manner, comic as well as sadly deformed, male and female at the same time. Although, as Toll observes, the prima donna or wench role was different from the low-comedy burlesque female role (of the Ugly pseudo-black female), it being "played seriously by an elegantly dressed performer in a very delicate manner" (140), grotesque deformity was undeniably part and parcel of this role. Eric Lott goes much further in his interpretation of the wench character of minstrelsy. He analyzes minstrel transvestism as an expression of the "white men's fear of female power," which was overcome through the act of cross-dressing. "The attraction of all such representations," Lott declares, "appears to consist in portraying 100 )
