[PDF] Antiquity Echoes: A Photographed Tour of Abandoned America by Rusty Tagliareni; Christina Mathews at Arts-Photography

Description

In Birth of an Industry; Nicholas Sammond describes how popular early American cartoon characters were derived from blackface minstrelsy. He charts the industrialization of animation in the early twentieth century; its representation in the cartoons themselves; and how important blackface minstrels were to that performance; standing in for the frustrations of animation workers. Cherished cartoon characters; such as Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat; were conceived and developed using blackface minstrelsys visual and performative conventions: these characters are not like minstrels; they are minstrels. They play out the social; cultural; political; and racial anxieties and desires that link race to the laboring body; just as live minstrel show performers did. Carefully examining how early animation helped to naturalize virulent racial formations; Sammond explores how cartoons used laughter and sentimentality to make those stereotypes seem not only less cruel; but actually pleasurable. Although the visible links between cartoon characters and the minstrel stage faded long ago; Sammond shows how important those links are to thinking about animation then and now; and about how cartoons continue to help to illuminate the central place of race in American cultural and social life.