Minstrelsy
Jan. 9th, 2024 08:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo I've been thinking about minstrelsy, blackface, Al Jolson etc, etc...
My friend Judy teaches a course on Jewish songwriters in which sooner or later the issue comes up and has to be faced.
She shows clips from the Jazz Singer. White kids in her class pull faces as if in pain.
I tell her about the British blackface entertainer- G.H. Elliot- whose gravestone was removed in 2020 from the churchyard at Rottingdean because it carried a racial epiphet beginning with the letter "C". And this morning in my cautious circumabulation of the minefield I looked online to see if there had been any developments.
Good news. Elliot's stone and that of the entertainer Alice Banford who is buried next to him (which also carried the "C" word) have been replaced by near replicas in which the offensive designation has been replaced by "music hall artiste". This was a sad business whichever angle you viewed it from and I can't think of a better way of resolving it...
My friend Judy teaches a course on Jewish songwriters in which sooner or later the issue comes up and has to be faced.
She shows clips from the Jazz Singer. White kids in her class pull faces as if in pain.
I tell her about the British blackface entertainer- G.H. Elliot- whose gravestone was removed in 2020 from the churchyard at Rottingdean because it carried a racial epiphet beginning with the letter "C". And this morning in my cautious circumabulation of the minefield I looked online to see if there had been any developments.
Good news. Elliot's stone and that of the entertainer Alice Banford who is buried next to him (which also carried the "C" word) have been replaced by near replicas in which the offensive designation has been replaced by "music hall artiste". This was a sad business whichever angle you viewed it from and I can't think of a better way of resolving it...
