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

Probably the most vicious of all attacks minstrels launched on their female characters, was the imagery describing the characteristic odor of the female body. This notion was founded upon a "widespread belief among whites" that blacks had a strong, unpleasant smell (Dennison 124), while willingly forgetting the possibility that their own body odors might disturb blacks very much the same way. "Ginger Blue," described this commonly held stereotype through the representation of the black female: Wid de nigga wenches ob de inhabitation De gals looked well, My eyes what a smell... /Dennison 124/ The Ugly Black Female of minstrelsy like her male counterpart was a composition of grotesque bodily features from head to toe, therefore undesirable yet somehow exotic and strangely alluring, comic and repellent at the same time. The magnification and distortion of body parts went to such lengths that the image reached the borderline of the horrific. Although minstrel imagery sometimes did express this horror at the sight of the black female, it was more the sheet music covers which reflected this aspect of the grotesque, where the image of the alleged black female approximated the inhuman and the ape-like. The cover illustration of "Coal Black Rose" (the first comic love song in minstrelsy discussed later in more detail) depicted the pseudo-black female as an ape attired in beautiful costume, where confrontation between body and dress, the ideal female and the vulgar pseudo-black female, horror and comedy manifested the very essence of the grotesque. This depiction of the black female as a composite of startling and often even disgusting features later came to be standard in the comic black female imagery of the coon songs of the 1880s. Still somewhat later several characteristics of the Ugly Female were transformed into the mammy character of vaudeville stages, cartoons, postcards, and a variety of popular paraphernalia. 99