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

of the complexity and the unique external and inner properties of the latter. It should be noted, however, that the essence of the aesthetic "error," the core of the grotesque, often lies in transferring the biological to the level of the culturally significant. Minstrel props or accessories might have their roots with the Italian commedia, where players "wore demonic, bestial, leering masks; [and] ... leather phalluses that might be stuffed full for the Zani or hang limp for the Pantalone; later ones carried a sword and pouch in place of genitalia, and the Bawd carried a purse as a sign of her business or a rosary when she played a hypocrite" (Barasch 564). Clearly these commedia accessories show striking similarities with the paraphernalia applied in minstrelsy. Yet, whereas in the commedia these props served as mere triggers to stimulate laughter, in the minstrel theater comic accessories (just like the minstrel comedy in general) could not be divorced from their racial implications. In minstrelsy "[t]he body was always grotesquely contorted, even when sitting; stiffness and extension of arms and legs announced themselves as unsuccessful sublimations of sexual desire.

[...] Banjos were deployed in ways that anticipated the phallic suggestions of rock 'n' roll" (Lott 117). The explicitly vulgar imagery of sheet music covers and of minstrel lyrics served to strengthen, on the one hand, and to immediately undermine, on the other, the black man's sexual power and appeal. Therefore most grotesque minstrel props should be seen within this secretly communicated, coded racial subtext. The most frequently applied props were the common minstrel instruments (banjo, bones, violin), which, as noted, often carried sexual implications, just like the accessories of the Comic Black Soldier such as "coattails hanging prominently between characters' legs [...], sticks or poles strategically placed near the groin or with other appendages occasionally hanging near or between the legs" (Lott 120). These grotesque props primarily belonged to the male stereotypes of the comic love theme, where sexual implications played a central role. The grotesque emerged partly as a result of the substitution of male sexual organs by objects (which by itself was a bizarre practice), plus the use 102