Fetishizing the Other

David R. Roediger frames minstrelsy as that which is "able to both display and reject the 'natural self', to be able to take on blackness convincingly and to take off blackness convincingly" (116). Blackface is positioned as volatile mockery, as a way for white hegemonic culture to affirm their normative position. Similar to theorist Rosemarie Garland Thomson's argument that the freak shows and side shows of the late 19th and 20th centuries served as a space where the normative can reaffirm her/his normalcy, the minstrel shows functioned as a space where the white performer in blackface, and additionally, the audience members, could reaffirm their socially constructed position of dominancy. Roediger supports this reading, stating that the function of "blacking up served to emphasize that those on stage were really white and that whiteness really mattered" (117). In the space of minstrelsy, "blackfaced whites derived their consciousness by measuring themselves against a group they defined as largely worthless and ineffectual" (118). Such was the hierarchical relationship that was established by those caught within the regulatory features of freak shows and those who came to perpetuate the hegemonic gaze; the Other was fetishized and positioned in contrast to the normative.

Susan Smulyan progresses the parallel narrative between minstrelsy and freak shows by arguing that minstrel shows served as an activity that allowed the white middle class to reaffirm their whiteness and the socially constructed connotations that were derived from it. According to Smulyan, the content of minstrel shows "provided additional ways for the performers to create, teach, and reinforce racial hierarchy" (21). She focuses on the amateur minstrel instructional books, stating that the "Books disagreed on the 'proper' minstrel way to make up lips and eyes to look more or less grotesque" (20). It is her reference to the bodily grotesque that creates alliances with Roediger's reference of Mikhail Bakhtin and the carnival. Eurocentric (racial) ideologies are promoted, perpetuated, and maintained through the carnival environment of minstrels.

The structure of racial hierarchies is evident when one examines the historical genealogy of freak shows and minstrels. What are some current examples of cultural structures that, similar to minstrels, perpetuate what Smulyan identifies as a performance which "create[s], teach[es], and reinforce[s] racial hierarch[ies]?"