Jolly Roger

Roger put on blackface in the latest episode of Mad Men. (It's called "My Old Kentucky Home," which is the number he performed. In fact, this was Mad Men as musical--Paul sang "Hello My Baby," Joan sang "C'est Magnifique" and Pete and Trudy danced the Charleston.) Here's a comment from Alan Sepinwall at The New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Also, shocking as the blackface moment is to modern sensibilities, the concept wasn't entirely dead after Roger's day. In the early '90s, Ted Danson got in some hot water for donning blackface for a Friar's Club roast of his then-girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg. (Goldberg later said she helped him come up with the idea as a response to the hate mail they were getting for their interracial relationship.) And Spike Lee's 2000 movie "Bamboozled" was all about blackface, albeit with black actors donning the makeup themselves.

I think Sepinwall misses the point of these latter-day appearances. I've never read any systematic study of blackface, but I've watched enough movies and TV shows to have a feel for its propriety.

Blackface was a stylized makeup generally playing on racial stereotypes that was donned by both black and white performers, and goes back well into the 1800s. Minstrelsy was a highly popular form of entertainment for decades, and was fondly remembered after its heyday. Countless performers blacked up onstage.

There were plenty of whites performing as blacks in silent film, and as soon as sound came to the movies, and performers could sing, they started blacking up--including Jolson in the first big sound feature The Jazz Singer (1927). Throughout the 30s and at least part of the 40s, in popular entertainment, blackface was perfectly acceptable. It was not considered offensive--it was more a sign that real entertainment would follow--and so you get the top entertainers of the day doing it in one form or another. Some, like Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, were known for it. Others, like Judy Garland, Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, ended up putting it on for particular performances.

However, World War II seemed to put people on notice about racism, and after the war, there were attempts (however halting) in the movies to deal with bigotry. There was still blackface (The Jolson Story right after the war was a huge hit) and ugly racial stereotypes, but they were becoming less common. This coincided, of course, with the rise of the modern civil rights movement. A show like Amos 'n' Andy, which was immensely popular on radio, could be adapted to television, but the characters would now be played by actual African-Americans, and after its run in the 50s, would essentially be buried.

By the early 60s, when Roger on Mad Men does his act, blackface was getting to be a very uncomfortable subject. (There was still plenty of overt racism around, but things were definitely changing.) In a 1965 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, "A Show Of Hands," just having dyed their hands black by mistake is a major embarrasment to Rob and Laura as they have to attend an interracial banquet.

Of course, Roger on Mad Men grew up in the 20s and 30s. He sees blacks every day, but as domestics and elevator operators. He's not ready to hire one at Cooper Sterling, or invite one to his country club. Still, he'd probably be surprised, perhaps angered, if anyone called what he did offensive--he probably figures he was just having a little fun.

While blackface might have lived on in some private entertainments, it was essentially gone as a straight, unashamed type of performance by the 60s, and certainly by the 70s. Sure, you'd occasionally see some blackface, but it would generally be a comment on blackface. There was a 1975 episode of All In The Family where Archie was performing in blackface, and then was called elsewhere, much to everyone's embarrassment.

The Friar's Club incident with Danson and Goldberg was, of course, meant to be outrageous. The place was traditionally a private club where members could let their hair down, and here was a couple trying to get laughs by being as offensive as possible--the exact opposite of the blackface acts in the 30s, who were considered acceptable, and harkening back to an era of what was considered joyful entertainment.

Then there's Spike Lee's dour, near-incoherent Bamboozled. The plot has a black TV writer who wants out of his contract so he pitches a minstrel show, complete with racist jokes and stereotypes. It actually gets on the air and becomes a big hit. (One of the many problems with the movie is the show itself is not merely offensive, it's not entertaining.) At the end, for no good reason, we see a montage of offensive racial stereotypes. I'm sure Lee is trying to make a point, but what you notice is 1) almost all of these clips come from before 1950, even before 1945, and 2) they're all highly offensive today, which suggests significant progress has been made. Somehow, I doubt Lee's point is we've made great progress.