Best performing arts history books according to redditors

We found 104 Reddit comments discussing the best performing arts history books. We ranked the 68 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Performing Arts History & Criticism:

u/A_Polite_Noise · 31 pointsr/movies

I think some people get confused by what blackface is on both sides. There are those who say "oh shuttup it's no problem PC baby" and those who are are a bit too quick and knee-jerky to examine the specifics of a situation before shouting "RACIST!" Blackface is not just about the makeup, but is about a sort of performance that reinforces negative stereotypes; a specific and unique kind of horrid artform that has its own cliches and tropes. I'm not going to say that Hugo Weaving in this image isn't problematic - I'm not touching the debate. I just think that, because he is playing all these characters and because we have yet to see him in action (is he affecting an unrealistic stereotypical accent, is the character akin to what a blackface character would be but for asians) that this isn't as cut and dry as people on both sides may want to make it.




Also, something like this has nuance...it can be part of a racist culture and art you can appreciate. If you are interested in the topic, read: Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop, which is a fascinating book about the history of blackface performance from its origins on the eastern docks of Manhattan where the supports of the Brooklyn Bridge now stand to more modern examples and criticisms (such as Spike Lee's fascinating but problematic film Bamboozled), and posits that while it was a horrific form of racism, that it was also a form of expression; many black actors who would never have been on a stage otherwise got their start in blackface, and when you parse some of the works they created you can often find, carefully hidden in lyrics and skits, subtle jibes at blackface itself and at racism that went unnoticed by the white audiences. There are always shades of gray to these things, so no one should be too quick to dismiss it as entirely racist or to forgive it as entirely acceptable. Things can be a bit of both.

u/jinsaku · 16 pointsr/todayilearned

Got her to come over and dictate. She's super excited talking about these.

Her 4 favorite historical fire books:

Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903

Tidbits above.

To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire

Huge school fire in Chicago in 1958 (always in Chicago :P). Arson started. 100+ people died, mostly children. Resulted in closed stairwells with fire doors instead of open stairwells in public buildings. (fire was started at the base of the stairs and swept up the open stairwell blocking escape from the second floor on up)

Fire in the Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy and Its Aftermath

Nightclub fire in 1942. Started from a bad string light catching fire and catching flammable decorations. 492 people died. The revolving door, the main entrance/exit to the club was stuffed with bodies to the ceiling. We now have laws saying every revolving door must have a normal door (with panic bar) next to it. Resulted in a huge leap forward in burn treatment technology that was applied to servicemen in World War 2.

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

Fire in 1911 in a factory that made shirtwaist (blouses) in Manhattan. Mostly women, over 90 died. The door was locked to keep the workers from leaving early or with goods. The fire was on the 8th floor. The girls in the 9th were locked in and mostly died via jumping or burning. This started a huge labor movement, huge strikes and formed a lot of the labor laws we have today. Yet again, nobody was ever prosecuted.

u/admiral_bringdown · 15 pointsr/StandUpComedy

It looks like a fictionalized take on the 2010 book I'm Dying Up Here which is a sorta-biography of the origins of The Comedy Store. It's an amazing read.

u/rmangaha · 9 pointsr/Magic
  1. Johnny Thompson Commercial Classics of Magic - $140

  2. Michael Ammar Complete Introduction to Coin Magic - $20

  3. Amateur Magician's Handbook - $15

  4. The Collected Almanac - $60, if available

  5. Three Uses for a Knife - $11

  6. Regular Decks Red and Blue - $4/Deck ~8

  7. 6 Kennedy half dollars - $3

  8. 1 Expanded Shell - $35

  9. 1 set of 4 sponge balls - $5

  10. Strong Magic - $35

  11. Tarbell Course in Magic - $168

    At this point, total is $500..

  12. Art of Astonishment vol 1-3 - $35/book = $105

  13. Five Points in Magic - $35

  14. Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic - $15

  15. Greater Magic - $195

  16. Conjurors Psychological Secrets - $50

  17. Essential Dai Vernon - $98

    Instructions to student:

    Read and study Three Uses for a Knife and Strong Magic. Notice the theories at work in other forms of media beyond magic.

    Watch Johnny Thompson and Ammar vids and observe the theories in practice. Work through Amateur Magician’s Handbook and Ammar vid.

    Read Five Points in Magic.

    Read Essential Dai Vernon and note how the five points work with those effects.

    Read Conjurors Psychological Secrets.

    Learn and practice Thompson effects.

    Pick and choose through remaining books what you want to learn.

    Keep re-reading theory books and modifying your routines.
u/invincibubble · 8 pointsr/techtheatre

Scene Design and Stage Lighting is an often-used text-book from what I can tell. I have an old version myself, but can't attest to the current version. Design and Drawing for the Theatre is also an old standby (and denser), though it appears it's out of print.

If you want something lighter and less expensive, perhaps Fundamentals of Theatrical Design or An Introduction to Theatre Design, though they aren't limited to just scenery. I haven't read the former, but the I've taught from the latter in an intro to design course. It's rather light, but that can be good for a first book.

You can also go the more theoretical route, and pick up the classic Dramatic Imagination by Robert Edmund Jones. What is Scenography? and Scenographic Imagination are chock-full of great theoretical discussion for the long term, but not suited for your first dip into the pool. Might be worth bookmarking for down the road, though.

And sometimes it's good to just have a survey of other's work. American Set Design isn't a bad place to start for that. I recently picked up World Scenography, and while I haven't had the chance to sit down extensively with it, it's a gorgeous book.

This is of course just going from scene design, there's also options out there about the history of design, useful technical handbooks for the craft, or even more specific things like model-making.

If you're already generally familiar with theater and roughly understand the production process, maybe grab one of the two in the first paragraph. If you're coming in completely fresh, starting with one of the cheaper super-introductory books in the second paragraph might be better to ease in. If you have the funds, I'd suggest one from each paragraph. Perhaps others in this sub have more specific choices they feel are definitively superior than other options.

Also, I'm guessing your university may not have a design professor, but you might suggest an independent study in scene design as a course. Hope this helps!

u/1ManCrowd · 7 pointsr/Screenwriting

Three Uses of the Knife - David Mamet

One of my favorites, and pretty heady stuff, but Mamet plays no games when it comes to drama.

u/QuickPhix · 7 pointsr/StandUpComedy

I'm Dying Up Here is a great book about the start of the stand up club industry, specifically the LA scene.

u/lucidfer · 6 pointsr/TrueFilm

This is a topic I've been wanting to get into! I just finished a book on the Grand Guignol (French Horror & Crime Theater, 1897-1962), and had been wanting to discuss the high point of the book for me; the crossover between theater and film.

For those who do not know, the Guignol was a long-running, world-renowned theater in Paris that specialized in horror, gore, and crime dramas that featured naturalistic plots. Madness, murder, sexual taboos, drug addition, torture, sadomasochism, and greed were the bread and butter of Guignol theater, with gore effects finetuned to try and make the audience faint or vomit. It was heavily featured in tourist pamphlets of the 1910's-1930's, and attracted all sorts of creatives and royalty to it's viewings in this era.

In the book, the author argues that much of the german expressionist acting that is found in german films of the time is actually based on the acting styles and themes found in the french Guignol theater.

The book references (but does not cite) that:

>"...[Caligari] was rejected by expressionist writers in a series of bitter manifestoes as an alien example of Expressionist style and philosophy. Hypnotic spells; the ultimate superiority of wicked, insane authority over bourgeois power; gratuitous violence; the frailty of love were the characteristic features of the Grand Guignol, not German Expressionism. Only the frame of a dreamer's nightmare over the core of the Caligari plot, tacked on late in the production, along with the decor and acting style exhibited theatrical Expressionism's attributes" (pg. 50).

The book then goes on to say that Hollywood films like The Cat and the Canary, The Phantom of the Opera and The Film Coffin are overtly Guignol, with the latter being taken from a Guignol plot. The author then claims that Tod Browning's subjects and many of the early horror film stars "...all personified the acting styles that Choisy and his troupe perfected in the twenties.", and that Mad Love and Lorre is a Guignol-inspired film.

But after that, Hollywood went with zombies, monsters, and vampires, all villians distinctly belonging to the 'other' rather than 'outlaw/insider/outsider society', with the threat expressing the Modern era's needs of conquering non-society with scientific means. And as we all know, Germany's Weimar era came to a close and changed drastically.

................

It is my opinion that there really is no pure German Expressionist film. None totally embody the experience-driven, personal story that is Expressionism. But they all overt in particular aspects, and that is the best we ever got in film. Perhaps there was just too many requirements (artistic, story, audience-attention, financial, etc.) for a truly expressionist film to ever make it to celluloid in long form. I think there is more expressionism in some avant garde films of the era in France and the US than what ever came out of Germany. But I think that's alright; like pmcinern mentions, expressionism is a small pool to draw influence from, so to try and work only in that medium the resources are very quick to dry up, if they can even translate at all.

u/painted_flowers · 4 pointsr/oakland

Hello! Nice to meet a fellow art deco enthusiast. As far as books I have this one which is general Oakland https://www.amazon.com/Oakland-Postcard-History-Annalee-Allen/dp/073853014X/ and Theaters of Oakland - https://www.amazon.com/Theatres-Oakland-Jack-Tillmany-ebook/dp/B0099EAJFO/ They have pictures and a lot of interesting facts and descriptions on the buildings. I found them cheaper on booksprice btw. There is also the Art Deco Society which I have not participated in yet but heard good things http://artdecosociety.squarespace.com/ Welcome :D

u/the1manriot · 3 pointsr/playwriting
u/vladesko · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Sorry for the wait, delivering!

I recently moved, so most of my books are still in boxes. However, I've already unboxed the best ones, so I'll list them here (note that most of them are not written by anthropologists per se, but are good books nonetheless):

  1. Mechademia. Technically, it's not a book (it's a journal), but it's by far the best publication in the area. There are lots of articles on the most diverse subjects, and even reviews of related publications. (If you haven't got JSTOR access, come see us on /r/Scholar!);
  2. Frederik Schodt's Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics is THE classic on manga. 10/10, will definitely read again. (there's a sequel, Dreamland Japan, but I haven't read this one yet);
  3. Paul Gravett's Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics is a good overview on the history of manga;
  4. Roland Kelts' Japanamerica: How the Japanese Pop Culture has invaded the U.S. is fairly good, specially the chapter on hentai. But beware: it's a little less academic than I would like it to be;
  5. Patrick Galbraith's [The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to The Subculture of Cool Japan] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Otaku-Encyclopedia-Insiders-Subculture/dp/4770031017/ref=pd_sim_b_6) is an amazing book, a fast read and full of awesomeness. I can't recommend it enough. (He has another book called Otaku Spaces and has recently edited a book about idols, but I have yet to read these two);
  6. Last but not least, Hiroki Azuma's Otaku: Japan Database Animals is an excellent book on otaku culture. Azuma's overwhelming knowledge is well conveyed by the translation, IMO.

    OK, I'll stop here. If you want more recommendations (specially stuff on other languages, like Portuguese, French or Japanese, that I didn't bother listing here), feel free to PM me ;)
u/LeonardNemoysHead · 2 pointsr/Games

It's like nobody realizes that theatre exists when trying to compare gaming to other media. It was nice seeing a shoutout to commedia, but there's much much more to it than centuries old touring improv acts. Modern day theatre isn't just fourth wall proscenium shit, it's been doing interactive and emergent storytelling and breaking the actor-audience barrier for fifty years at least. Children's theatre in particular has so many tools to use to tell stories and not limit the audience to a traditional authoritarian relationship.

Read the fucking manual and know who Augusto Boal, Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, Andre Gregory, and Jerzy Grotowski are. There's so much here to learn from. At the very least, watch My Dinner with Andre.

u/obscure_robot · 2 pointsr/funny

Book-length version of what you just said.

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/playwriting

The Power of the Playwright's Vision by Gordon Farrell: I have the privilege of being able to learn from Gordon Farrell directly this year (he is, among other things, a professor at NYU's Dept. of Dramatic Writing) and I cannot endorse his genius enough. His understanding of the techniques and mechanisms that playwrights use in their craft is mind-boggling, and they're catalogued in this book in a surprisingly digestible way. The best thing about this book is that it isn't prescriptive; Farrell doesn't tell you "this is how you write a naturalist play" or "this is where you would always put a reversal." Rather, he familiarizes you with all the tools you can use to write an effective script and how to combine them. To me, this is as good as it gets.

Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet: This is a slightly more controversial (and much shorter) text, in which famed playwright David Mamet sits down and tells you what it's all about, man. It's rather rambly, and some people say it's contradictory, but I absolutely love the way he breaks down dramatic technique in informal ways. It's tangential and a bit of a mess at times, but you get a sense of why Mamet's plays are so damn good. Farrell's guide you understand rationally, this one you just experience.

Those are my two favorites, and I highly recommend you read both.

EDIT: Forgot about a very important piece of information that you probably already know but that I'll toss in regardless. Reading books on playwriting is a good way to get better, but the best way to get better is to write more plays. There is no better teacher than experience (read: catastrophic failure). Yes, reading books is a great way to understand the techniques and basic structure you can use, but don't cling to the things you read about. Martin McDonagh--arguably today's most successful playwright--came to prominence by writing plays that actually disrespected theatrical convention through his elaborate staging and action sequences (smashing skulls with hammers, shooting cats, shooting an oven with a shotgun). He didn't study classical playwriting techniques, he watched a lot of movies and read Jorge Luis Borges and brought that to the stage.

Basically what I'm saying is: finding your voice is worth a great deal more than learning the "right" way to write.

u/screenwriter101 · 2 pointsr/Screenwriting

Two books that I found very helpful:

[The Anatomy of Story by John Truby](https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Story-
Becoming-Master-Storyteller/dp/0865479933/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494365551&sr=8-1&keywords=john+truby)

(Also look him up on Youtube: Anatomy Of Story: The Complete Film Courage Interview with John Truby)

and

Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet

u/Hippoponymous · 2 pointsr/quotes

It's from the book "Something Wonderful Right Away" by Jeffrey Sweet about the Second City improv group. This quote in particular comes from the founder, Paul Sills.

Edit: Accidentally linked to a review rather than the book.

u/DLWormwood · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Didn’t you do the same thing for “convention research” for that book you wrote? (-;

u/c1-10p · 2 pointsr/IAmA

There is a great book called "I'm Dying Up Here' that talks about Steve a lot. He made a movie called "Dante Shocko" that was never released that I would love to see.

u/Johann_Seabass · 2 pointsr/Theatre

For Chekhov I always start with these photos:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
And this book (I gave mine to a friend, so now I ask BN to order it and then don't buy it so I can look at it in the store.)
http://www.amazon.com/Anton-Chekhov-Moscow-Theatre-ebook/dp/B000Q36EMO
Wikipedia's entry on Cherry Orchard gives a great place to start for general character analysis.
It's been a long time now, but in Chicago I used to go to the Russian / Slavic neighborhoods and eat at a cafe observing people about the same age of the character I was playing. I did that for Kulygin and Astrov. I believe there are similar neighborhoods in Queens.
Hope this helps! Any other questions, throw them my way :-)

u/_apunyhuman_ · 2 pointsr/Theatre

I think there are a lot of good answer in this thread, but i just wanted to add the link to Brecht on Theater, a collection of essays written by Brecht regarding his view of theater.

Also this book 20th Century Theatre which does a good job of boiling down the salient bits from Brecht on Theater, as well as including essays from some of Brecht's actors (e.g., Helene Weigel). This is also a great reference for pretty much everyone of note in 20th Cent. Theater, from Vakhtangov and Mayakovsky, down through Brecht, Grotowski, Peter Brook, etc.

u/Allisonmac · 2 pointsr/orphanblack
u/thmsbsh · 1 pointr/hiphopheads

Okay, so I'm two months too late to this thread so this might not ever get seen, but you would probably be interested in this book! Fascinating read, I referenced it a lot for my degree. Cool story, I know.

u/jsnef6171985 · 1 pointr/philosophy

Life: the Movie by Neal Gabler comes to mind.

It's mainly an examination of American entertainment culture, and how it shapes our personalities. Quite a fascinating read.

u/SpeakeasyImprov · 1 pointr/improv

You may be interested in the works of Augusto Boal. He was a theater practitioner who used improvisational techniques to give voice to oppressed peoples. Here is his seminal work, Theater of the Oppressed; it's a good place to start.

This may be related: Amy Seham's Whose Improv Is It Anyway? It talks about improv as the struggles that pertain to women and people of color up to 2001.

Considering modern improv has only existed since about the late 40s, I doubt you're going to find much that relates it directly to colonialism.

u/Assorted_Bits · 1 pointr/BABYMETAL

It's uncertain to say for these kids, but the Japanese idol culture is based on extreme capitalism, japanese conservatism and involves many svengalis. Hence I'm afraid it might be so, but I can't tell for sure. I do know that the business practices behind the facade tends to be quite pathetic or unethical (in my opinion).

This book has been written by (foreign) scientists who live in Japan and have researched the culture. It's an interesting read to say the least. You can find it elsewhere as well.

u/o_de_b · 1 pointr/sca

This is not technically true. There are some texts, like Medieval Fantasy as Performance by Michael Cramer (Valgard Stonecleaver, IIRC).

https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Fantasy-Performance-Creative-Anachronism/dp/0810869950

u/amazon-converter-bot · 1 pointr/FreeEBOOKS

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

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amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

u/Philosophile42 · 1 pointr/askphilosophy

There is a VERY good essay that introduces the concepts of P-zombies to laypeople in The walking dead and philosophy: zombie apocalypse now, from open court. That chapter is free to download at amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Are-Just-Braaaiiinnnsss-Something-More-ebook/dp/B007HRTKNW

u/Shemhazai · 1 pointr/rpg

Here is your answer, straight from an academic in the field:

"1. Play Between Worlds- TL Taylor
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Play-Between-Worlds-Exploring-Culture/dp/0262512629/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303123694&sr=8-1
This one is based on a study of Everquest players and might not be relevant if they're interested solely in table top, but it is my all time favourite video game studies book and does have bits on online role play/avatar studies. I've also studied under the author- she's on my FB friends' list too!

2. Dungeons and Desktops by Matt Barton- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dungeons-Desktops-History-Computer-Role-playing/dp/1568814119/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303123917&sr=1-1
Historical time line of the development of RPGs- from early baseball stats games post WWII to WoW. Very comprehensive.

3. Shared Fantasy- Gary Alan Fine http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shared-Fantasy-Playing-Social-Worlds/dp/0226249441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303124135&sr=1-1
This is probably the text they'd find most useful. Its a bit dated, but it deals with focus groups from D&D players about their experiences.

4. Medieval Fantasy as Performance by Michael A Cramer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Medieval-Fantasy-Performance-Creative-Anachronism/dp/0810869950/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303124316&sr=1-1
An account of (somewhat) LARP/ recreation as an expression of social identity."

EDIT: Waaagh!! Bloody reddit and its double-posting tricksiness...

u/akward_tension · 1 pointr/ParisComments



comment content: This is a topic I've been wanting to get into! I just finished a book on the Grand Guignol (French Horror & Crime Theater, 1897-1962), and had been wanting to discuss the high point of the book for me; the crossover between theater and film.

For those who do not know, the Guignol was a long-running, world-renowned theater in Paris that specialized in horror, gore, and crime dramas that featured naturalistic plots. Madness, murder, sexual taboos, drug addition, torture, sadomasochism, and greed were the bread and butter of Guignol theater, with gore effects finetuned to try and make the audience faint or vomit. It was heavily featured in tourist pamphlets of the 1910's-1930's, and attracted all sorts of creatives and royalty to it's viewings in this era.

In the book, the author argues that much of the german expressionist acting that is found in german films of the time is actually based on the acting styles and themes found in the french Guignol theater.

The book references (but does not cite) that:

>"...[Caligari] was rejected by expressionist writers in a series of bitter manifestoes as an alien example of Expressionist style and philosophy. Hypnotic spells; the ultimate superiority of wicked, insane authority over bourgeois power; gratuitous violence; the frailty of love were the characteristic features of the Grand Guignol, not German Expressionism. Only the frame of a dreamer's nightmare over the core of the Caligari plot, tacked on late in the production, along with the decor and acting style exhibited theatrical Expressionism's attributes" (pg. 50).

The book then goes on to say that Hollywood films like The Cat and the Canary, The Phantom of the Opera and The Film Coffin are overtly Guignol, with the latter being taken from a Guignol plot. The author then claims that Tod Browning's subjects and many of the early horror film stars "...all personified the acting styles that Choisy and his troupe perfected in the twenties.", and that Mad Love and Lorre is a Guignol-inspired film.

But after that, Hollywood went with zombies, monsters, and vampires, all villians distinctly belonging to the 'other' rather than 'outlaw/insider/outsider society', with the threat expressing the Modern era's needs of conquering non-society with scientific means. And as we all know, Germany's Weimar era came to a close and changed drastically.

................

It is my opinion that there really is no pure German Expressionist film. None totally embody the experience-driven, personal story that is Expressionism. But they all overt in particular aspects, and that is the best we ever got in film. Perhaps there was just too many requirements (artistic, story, audience-attention, financial, etc.) for a truly expressionist film to ever make it to celluloid in long form. I think there is more expressionism in some avant garde films of the era in France and the US than what ever came out of Germany. But I think that's alright; like pmcinern mentions, expressionism is a small pool to draw influence from, so to try and work only in that medium the resources are very quick to dry up, if they can even translate at all.

subreddit: TrueFilm

submission title: The German Expressionist Movement

redditor: lucidfer

comment permalink: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/63fwrj/the_german_expressionist_movement/dfu04mz

u/DasGanon · 1 pointr/techtheatre

I quite enjoy Making the Scene. It's just a general history of the craft, but it's a gorgeous book and exceedingly well thought out.

u/JanePoe87 · 0 pointsr/inthenews

From the article:

" this Halloween is like every Halloween of the last two or so decades, at least one white college student or minor celebrity will arrive at a party wearing dark-brown face paint as part of a costume imitating a famous black person, photos of the incident will emerge on the Internet, and condemnations will rain down from authority figures.

In recent years, Facebook surveillors discovered and publicized photos of six University of Southern Mississippi students who colored their white skin to depict the Huxtable family from The Cosby Show, two Northwestern University students who painted themselves coal-black and dressed as Bob Marley and Serena Williams, Raffi Torres of the Phoenix Coyotes and his wife dressed and darkened as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, and a blonde Dallas Cowboys cheerleader appearing at a costume event as the rapper Lil' Wayne, complete with gold teeth, long black braids, tattoos, and chocolate-brown makeup covering her body.

As with all blackface performers since the civil rights era, charges against the latest range from insensitivity to outright racism. But virtually all critics of blackface agree that, as the Northwestern University president put it, the practice "demeans a segment of our community."

Some recent instances of blackface were obviously and viciously hostile toward African Americans. A photo of a 2001 Halloween party at the University of Mississippi showed a white student dressed as a policeman holding a gun to the head of another, who was wearing blackface and a straw hat while kneeling and picking cotton. A year later, two fraternity brothers at Oklahoma State were photographed wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and holding a noose over the head of another sporting black face paint and a striped prisoner's uniform.

But while blackface is nearly always assumed to be anti-black, the most common charge against contemporary blackface performers is that they are ignorant of its meaning and history—that they don't "know" that it's necessarily bigoted—which suggests that their intentions were not in fact hostile.

In fact, blackface performances are not always unambiguously antagonistic toward African Americans. Several scholars of the phenomenon have argued that blackface has usually been, to some degree, an expression of envy and an unconscious rebellion against what it means to be "white." There is substantial evidence that this was especially true in the first half of the 19th century, when white men first painted their faces with burnt cork and imitated slaves on stage in what were called "minstrel" shows.

Some early blackface minstrel performance was clearly little more than anti-black parody, but many historians see the songs and dances of T.D. Rice, Dan Emmett, Dan Rice (Abraham Lincoln's favorite), and other originators of the genre as expressions of desire for the freedoms they saw in the culture of slaves. "Just as the minstrel stage held out the possibility that whites could be 'black' for awhile but nonetheless white," David Roediger, the leading historian of "whiteness," has written, "it offered the possibilities that, via blackface, preindustrial joys could survive amidst industrial discipline." Similarly, the Smith College scholar W.T. Lhamon argues that slave culture represented liberation to blackface performers and fans, who "unmistakably expressed fondness for black wit and gestures." In early blackface minstrel shows, whites identified with blacks as representations of all the freedoms and pleasures that employers, moral reformers, and churches "were working to suppress."

The latest addition to this revision of our understanding of blackface is Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen's book Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy From Slavery to Hip-Hop. The authors focus on the many, largely unknown, African Americans who performed in blackface from before the Civil War to the middle of the 20th century, but they also rescue white blackface performance from the simplistic moralizing that normally greets it. "If you dismiss [minstrelsy] as simply 'demeaning,'" they write, "you miss half the picture."

Taylor and Austen's book is an encyclopedic record of not only the black performers who coaled their faces but also of the minstrelsy's many contributions to what is now considered respectable popular culture: "If we were to throw out every song originally composed for the minstrel stage, every joke first uttered by painted minstrel lips, every performer who blackened up, every dance step developed for the olio (variety) portion of a minstrel show, our entertainment coffers might seem bare." They show that much of American music, dance, and comedy originated in an art form that was "wildly popular with black audiences" but is now reflexively dismissed as mere racism. For whites, they argue, minstrelsy offered the opportunity to indulge in a "carefree life liberated from oppression, responsibilities, and burdens"; and for blacks it represented freedom as well. "Despite the appearance of minstrelsy as a servile tradition, there were elements ofliberation in it from its very beginning, and these were instrumental to its popularity."

The enormous popularity of blackface in the 19th century cannot be explained without understanding that it coincided with a period in American culture in which Puritan values merged with Victorian ideas about work, leisure, sex, and emotional expression. Nineteenth-century children's books, school primers, newspaper editorials, poems, pamphlets, sermons, and political speeches told Americans that work in itself was a virtue, regardless of what one gained from it materially. European visitors frequently commented on what they called the American "disease of work." Typical was a popular textbook of the time, which instructed children that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."

There was no such idea of work as godly in Africa, nor among American slaves. According to the African-American social scientist W.E.B. DuBois, the slave "was not as easily reduced to be the mechanical draft-horse which the northern European laborer became. He was not easily brought to recognize any ethical sanctions in work as such but tended to work as the results pleased him and refused to work or sought to refuse when he did not find the spiritual returns adequate; thus he was easily accused of laziness and driven as a slave when in truth he brought to modern manual labor a renewed valuation of life."

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u/Chronikle · -5 pointsr/MMFB

I feel like you should go to jail again because you just stole a minute of my life with your dramatic title. How about you stop crying all over the internet and go get yourself some life?

PS: You are not depressed you are 17 and remember, stop crying on internet go get life!

http://www.amazon.com/Get-Life-William-Shatner/dp/0671021311/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376987671&sr=1-2&keywords=get+a+life