Casting

Author(s):  
Katrina Dyonne Thompson

This chapter examines the manner in which African captives were forced to perform music, song, and dance during the Atlantic voyage. Within the Middle Passage, white slavers brought the slaves on deck for airing. While on deck, the slavers drenched the captives with salt water, inspected them for any hint of disease, and, ironically, made them sing and dance. Historically, music and dance during the Middle Passage were viewed as a form of exercise used to preserve the human cargo. This chapter analyzes those scenes to illustrate the transformation of the top deck of the ship into a stage upon which race and gender roles were prescribed and performed. It shows that European and American ideals of Africanness were forced upon the captives in order to transition the diverse populations into chattel. The coerced performances on slave ships distorted the normally sacred or ritualistic meanings of music, song, and dance.

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-320
Author(s):  
Julia J. Chybowski

AbstractThis article explores blackface minstrelsy in the context of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's singing career of the 1850s–1870s. Although Greenfield performed a version of African American musicality that was distinct from minstrel caricatures, minstrelsy nonetheless impacted her reception. The ubiquity of minstrel tropes greatly influenced audience perceptions of Greenfield's creative and powerful transgressions of expected race and gender roles, as well as the alignment of race with mid-nineteenth-century notions of social class. Minstrel caricatures and stereotypes appeared in both praise and ridicule of Greenfield's performances from her debut onward, and after successful US and transatlantic tours established her notoriety, minstrel companies actually began staging parody versions of Greenfield, using her sobriquet, “Black Swan.” These “Black Swan” acts are evidence that Greenfield's achievements were perceived as threats to established social hierarchies.


Author(s):  
Outi Hakola

Vallattomat naiset – Naisen muuttuva paikka Orange Is the New Black -sarjassaNaisvankilasta kertova yhdysvaltalainen komediallinen draamasarja Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, 2013–) on herättänyt keskustelua siinä esitettyjen naisrepresentaatioiden monipuolisuudesta. Sarjan on nähty sekä rikkovan että toistavan olemassa olevia luokkaan, sukupuoleen, etnisyyteen ja ihonväriin liittyviä stereotyyppisiä representaatioita.Sarjamuotoisuus on mahdollistanut erilaisia tulkintoja, sillä jaksosta toiseen eri henkilöhahmojen motivaatioita määritellään uusissa konteksteissa. Sarjan monipaikkaista kerrontaa rakennetaan vaihtuvilla kerronan näkökulmilla, kuten takaumilla. Tällä tavoin aiemmin esitettyjä tulkintoja esimerkiksi hahmojen syistä joutua vankilaan voidaan kääntää päälaelleen.Representaatioiden joustavuus mahdollistaa kurittomuutta kyseenalaistamalla sitä, millainen naiseus on ihannoitavaa. Tarinan päähahmot liikkuvat sujuvasti erilaisten sukupuolittuneiden normien lomitse haastaen oletuksia ”miesten” tai ”naisten” rooleista. Myös intiimi ruumiillisuuden ja seksuaalisuuden kuvaus kyseenalaistaa amerikkalaisen populaarikulttuurin kauneusihanteita korostamalla erilaisia kehoja ja arkisia ruumiintoimintoja. Analysoin naiseuden kerronnallistamista ja erityisesti Netflixin sarjallisuuden vaikutusta Orange is the New Blackin henkilöhahmojen kuvaukseen feministisestä ja intersektionaalisesta näkökulmasta. Tuon esille, miten valitut kerrontamuodot luovat kuvaa naisista, jotka haastavat yksiulotteisia määrittelyjä ja olemassa olevia sosiaalisia ja symbolisia käytänteitä toimimalla tavoilla, jotka rikkovat naisten sukupuoleen, luokkaan, etnisyyteen, ihonväriin tai ikään liitettyjä käytösnormeja. Unruly Women – Repositioning Women in Orange Is the New BlackOrange is the New Black (Netflix, 2013–), a women’s prison drama-comedy, has inspired critical discussion on the diversity of its representations of women. The series has been claimed to both break down and reproduce existing stereotypes of class, ethnicity, race and gender. Varied interpretations are partially explained by the serial format: every episode re-frames characters, their motivations and histories by using changing narrative perspectives and contradictory flashbacks.The constant adjustment of representations emphasizes also the unruliness of the characters. In this series, being a woman has no fixed meanings. The main characters move past the gendered norms and challenge existing gender roles, for example by welcoming criminality into the womanhood. Additionally, intimate imaginings of everyday bodily functions, varied sexualities, and bodies of different shapes, races and ages redefine idealized femininity in American popular culture.In this article, I analyze from feminist and intersectional perspective how the serial format of Netflix affects the representations and narration of women in Orange is the New Black. I will bring forward the narrative solutions that imagine women who at the same time are identifiable and challenge existing gender practices by breaking down the expectations for socially desired behavior.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
Cullen Goldblatt

Fatou Diome’s first novel, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (2003), can be read as a work of migrant literature in which the Atlantic figures as a separating expanse beholden to a single past, that of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The ocean divides contemporary African migrants to Europe from the continent, as it did enslaved Africans taken forcibly to the Americas; it consumes a returned impoverished migrant, as it swallowed those who did not survive the Middle Passage. Yet for the authorial protagonist, Salie, and her island home, the Senegalese fishing village of Niodior, the Atlantic evokes multiple histories and experiences. This ocean is a place of freedom, as well as its absence; of daily sustenance, as well as migration; of life, as well as death; of postcolonial violence, as well as the violence of the Trade. The novel’s Atlantic, like the text as a whole, alludes to many pasts and, at times, abandons the dualities of place, race, and gender that organize most contemporary discourse about migration and oppression. Passages of opaque desire and oblique critique diverge from a dichotomous geography of continents and subject positions. Where Salie and Niodior emerge uncontained by categories inherited from colonial discourses, there are intimations of what genuinely postcolonial freedom might be.


Crisis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Rodi ◽  
Lucas Godoy Garraza ◽  
Christine Walrath ◽  
Robert L. Stephens ◽  
D. Susanne Condron ◽  
...  

Background: In order to better understand the posttraining suicide prevention behavior of gatekeeper trainees, the present article examines the referral and service receipt patterns among gatekeeper-identified youths. Methods: Data for this study were drawn from 26 Garrett Lee Smith grantees funded between October 2005 and October 2009 who submitted data about the number, characteristics, and service access of identified youths. Results: The demographic characteristics of identified youths are not related to referral type or receipt. Furthermore, referral setting does not seem to be predictive of the type of referral. Demographic as well as other (nonrisk) characteristics of the youths are not key variables in determining identification or service receipt. Limitations: These data are not necessarily representative of all youths identified by gatekeepers represented in the dataset. The prevalence of risk among all members of the communities from which these data are drawn is unknown. Furthermore, these data likely disproportionately represent gatekeepers associated with systems that effectively track gatekeepers and youths. Conclusions: Gatekeepers appear to be identifying youth across settings, and those youths are being referred for services without regard for race and gender or the settings in which they are identified. Furthermore, youths that may be at highest risk may be more likely to receive those services.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana J. Ferradas ◽  
G. Nicole Rider ◽  
Johanna D. Williams ◽  
Brittany J. Dancy ◽  
Lauren R. Mcghee

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