Bulldykes, pansies, and chocolate babies: Performance, race, and sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance.
Item
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Title
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Bulldykes, pansies, and chocolate babies: Performance, race, and sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance.
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Identifier
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AAI9969744
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identifier
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9969744
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Creator
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Wilson, James F.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Jill Dolan
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Music | Black Studies | History, United States
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Abstract
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Whereas previous studies have focused on the history of specific communities during the Harlem Renaissance, "Bulldykes, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies" looks primarily at theatre and performance on Broadway, in the Harlem nightclubs, speakeasies, rent parties, and drag balls. Using the histories of marginalized performances as a starting point, I interrogate the ways in which black theatre and performance both mirrored as well as resisted the 1920s associations of race, gender, class, and sexuality. I begin with a discussion of Wallace Thurman and William Jourdan Rapp's Broadway melodrama, Harlem (1929), which the authors described as an "educational drama." The play was intended to assail I black theatrical stereotypes, but Thurman and Rapp's "authentic" version of Harlem reflected a contested view of African-American identity. Similarly, David Belasco's controversial production of Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur's Lulu Belle (1926) depicted a raucous, libidinous view of Harlem. Yet the title character took on a life of her own outside of the play. In the margins of Harlem's nightlife, the drag subculture adopted the image of the insolent, melodramatic heroine and named a speakeasy after her. My dissertation looks at the circulation of the Lulu Belle figure within a burgeoning gay and lesbian subculture that blossomed in Harlem's rent parties, drag balls, and nightclubs.;Lulu Belle also raises important issues about representations of black women, who were culturally viewed as sexual snares. Miraculously, performers like Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, and Gladys Bentley transcended hoary stereotypes and managed to find voice within the popular theatre and music of the day. I examine the careers and performances of Mills, Waters, and Bentley, and discuss the ways in which they triumphed in the black musical revue and blues music of the era, which were among the few arenas in which a black woman performer might find commercial and artistic success. Instead of focusing on the movement's failure to produce a lasting entertainment tradition that might have toppled stereotypical images to create a new African-American theatre, my dissertation highlights the occasions in which black performers challenged and even transcended the assumptions surrounding race, gender, class, and sexuality.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
