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| FILE - This Oct. 1, 2013 file photo shows actress Julianne Hough at the 20th Annual "FFANY Shoes on Sale" Gala presented by QVC and FFANY in New York. Hough apologized on Twitter amid criticism for darkening her skin for a costume as Crazy Eyes from "Orange is the New Black" at a Hollywood bash. |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Is donning blackface to dress up as a favorite TV character ever OK for Halloween?
How
about a bloody hoodie and blackface for a costume riff on the slain
teen Trayvon Martin, or full-on minstrel at a splashy Africa-themed
party for the fashion elite in Milan?
Each of
those costumes made headlines this Halloween season. And the answer to
each, African studies and culture experts said, is never.
"The
painful history of minstrelsy is not that long ago for us to think that
now, somehow, we can do it differently or do it better," said Yaba
Blay, co-director of Africana Studies at Drexel University in
Philadelphia.
Julianne Hough found that out
the hard way. She apologized on Twitter over the weekend amid criticism
for darkening her skin for a costume as Crazy Eyes from "Orange is the
New Black" at a Hollywood bash.
Hough
explained on Twitter: "I am a huge fan of the show Orange is the New
black, actress Uzo Aduba, and the character she has created. It
certainly was never my intention to be disrespectful or demeaning to
anyone in any way. I realize my costume hurt and offended people and I
truly apologize."
There's a fine line between
mockery and tribute - and it's a line that blackface has the power to
obliterate, said Marita Sturken, professor of media, culture and
communication at New York University.
"It's
never something very simple, and if you're going to don a costume and
put on a black face there's no possibility of nuance there," she said.
"It doesn't matter that it was a character from a TV show. That doesn't
get her off the hook. If she's going to put some substance on her face,
that constitutes blackface and this incredibly complicated history gets
evoked."
Historically, blackface emerged in
the mid-19th century, representing a combination of put-down, fear and
morbid fascination with black culture, said Eric Lott, a visiting
American studies professor at City University of New York's graduate
center. Among the most prominent examples: Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor.
"It's
constantly a form of entertainment that backs itself into all kinds of
trouble, whether political trouble around slavery or a kind of mental
trouble having to do with fantasizing about black people," said Lott,
who wrote the 1993 book "Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy &
the American Working Class."
As for Hough, he
said: "It's just a stupid thing to do. It's a racist thing to do. What
blackface does is give the white people privilege of representing black
people, of taking black images and treating them as a thing owned."
Kelsey
Crowe, who teaches social work in San Francisco, has been following the
fracas on Facebook. She sees more tribute to Crazy Eyes than hatred in
Hough's costume. Other recent examples are far more troubling, she said.
"Trayvon
Martin, that's awful," Crowe said of two Florida men whose photo
circulated on social media ahead of Halloween on Thursday.
One
was in blackface with a simulated bloody bullet hole at the chest and
the other simulated a gun to the head of the faux 17-year-old while
dressed as George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who
fatally shot Trayvon in Florida and was acquitted in court.
She
was also "not into" the minstrel costumes in Milan. But the look for
Hough "didn't strike me as exploitative at all," she said.
"In
other cases blackface is used to make fun of people. I really saw this
as a way to embody a character that you like," said Crowe, who will be a
cat for Halloween with her 3-year-old daughter.
"Everybody likes the character of Crazy Eyes," she added, "but I guess that could be said of Aunt Jemima, too."
Bad judgment on blackface for Halloween is nothing new to Blay.
"I've
taught at predominantly white institutions for seven years," she said.
"And every Halloween like clockwork there is a blackface incident, if
not on our campus then on somebody's campus."
What
if Hough, the "Rock of Ages" singer, dancer and actress, had eliminated
blackface from the equation, keeping her simulation of the Bantu
knotted hairstyle worn by the character, along with the orange prison
jumpsuit she and her friends zipped on as a posse of female inmates from
the Netflix series?
"Yes, leave the skin
color alone. Leave the stereotypical performance of it and I would
imagine to some degree that could be middle ground," Blay said. "People
dress up as other people all the time. That's what happens at Halloween.
But she didn't do that. And as far as Trayvon, no. Never."
