Crossword clues for blackface
Wiktionary
n. A style of theatrical makeup in which a white person blackens their face in order to portray a negro.
WordNet
n. the makeup (usually burnt cork) used by a performer in order to imitate a Negro
Wikipedia
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used by non-Black performers to represent a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation" or the " dandified coon". In 1848, blackface minstrel shows were an American national art of the time, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. Early in the 20th century, blackface branched off from the minstrel show and became a form in its own right, until it ended in the United States with the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for roughly 100 years beginning around 1830. It quickly became popular elsewhere, particularly so in Britain, where the tradition lasted longer than in the U.S., occurring on primetime TV, most famously in The Black and White Minstrel Show, which ended in 1978, and in Are You Being Served?s Christmas specials in 1976 and finally in 1981. In both the United States and Britain, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition, which it both predated and outlasted. Early white performers in blackface used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Later, black artists also performed in blackface.
Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrels not only played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes, and perceptions worldwide, but also in popularizing black culture. In some quarters, the caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist to the present day and are a cause of ongoing controversy. Another view is that "blackface is a form of cross-dressing in which one puts on the insignias of a sex, class, or race that stands in opposition to one's own."
By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface makeup used in performance in the U.S. and elsewhere. It remains in relatively limited use as a theatrical device and is more commonly used today as social commentary or satire. Perhaps the most enduring effect of blackface is the precedent it established in the introduction of African-American culture to an international audience, albeit through a distorted lens. Blackface's groundbreaking appropriation, exploitation, and assimilation of African-American culture—as well as the inter-ethnic artistic collaborations that stemmed from it—were but a prologue to the lucrative packaging, marketing, and dissemination of African-American cultural expression and its myriad derivative forms in today's world popular culture.
Blackface is a studio album by the R&B group Shai. It is the follow-up to their debut album ...If I Ever Fall in Love.
Blackface is a theatrical makeup to portray a stereotype of African Americans
Blackface may also refer to:
- Blackface (sheep), certain breeds of sheep
- Blackface (album), by Shai
- Blackface Naija, or just Blackface, Nigerian dansehall, ragga and reggae singer and songwriter and former member of the Nigerian band Plantashun Boyz
- Fender Blackface Amplifiers
- Ganguro, or Japanese Blackface, a Japanese fashion
- Kalamukhas sect of Kapalika
See also: Black Face
Blackface in sheep may refer to:
- Boreray Blackface, a breed of sheep
- Blackface Norfolk Horned, a breed of sheep
- Hebridean Blackface, a breed of sheep
- Scottish Blackface, a breed of sheep
See also Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
Usage examples of "blackface".
We can only image the immediate effect the black entertainers' refusal to wear blackface had on the white establishment, but seven years later, 1917, Storeyville was completely shut down.
Vereen had been invited to perform for the Reagan Inauguration and had accepted only on the condition that he could tell the entire "blackface" story - but the whole first half of Vereen's show, depicting Bern Williams and blackface, was censored by Reagan's people on ABC TV, contrary to the special agreement Vereen had with them.
Half of the whites were in blackface, with wide white-greasepainted lips, while two blacks were in whiteface.
Cassie, in a play within a play, took the part of a white southern college belle in blackface, trying to sort out her relationship with a black radical in whiteface.
Although he was obviously in blackface, none of the victims, when they were talking to the cops, could ever get beyond the blackness, even though they knew .
Born Nate Furt, the only child of Sepsis and Donna Furt of Cheese Falls, Wisconsin, he went on the vaudeville circuit at sixteen, tap dancing while singing and simultaneously juggling flaming snakes, in blackface.
This was, of course, a filthy lie, but Nate never again performed in blackface.
Henry Heth, quicker on the uptake, figured out why: "They haven't been biting cartridges all day, not with these new brass ones, so they've no need to look as though they were in a blackface minstrel show.
With them open, so much smoke poured in that all the soldiers would have taken on the look of a traveling blackface minstrel show.
And everybody cheered and applauded and somebody slapped me on the back and said, "That's what you call an armrassler's fart, blackface.
They were streaming into the car park from all quarters now: the orphan Frasque, the injured and crazed, survivalists in blackface with camouflage rucksacks, dissatisfied robots, drunken spacers on furlough, looters on speed, smiling plugheads in blue cagoules, Perks toting trophies, Thrants in leather, corpses of all kinds with Alteceans going through their pockets.
Robeson is David Duke in blackface: This Stalin Peace Prize winner turned his back on Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union.
There was a picture of the tarbaby sitting in the middle of the road, looking like one of those old-time Negro minstrels with the blackface and great white eyes.
That was the title of a popular song in Harlem that had originated with two blackface comedians on the Apollo theatre stage doing a skit about a colored brother coming home drunk and trying to get Richard to let him into the house.