Blackface Astronaut
Jean Renoir’s 1927 film SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON blew my mind long before I saw it. I read about it way back in Art of the Harlem Renaissance class and have been thinking about it ever since. Our last video piece IM UR SLAVE had something to do with it.
Now I’ve finally seen it. Holy shit.
Here’s the plot:
In the future, an explorer from Central Africa (played by the African American dancer Johnny Huggins, in blackface) flies his space-pod to post-apocalyptic France. There he meets a wild child (Catherine Hessling, Renoir’s wife) and her monkey friend. She ties the explorer up and dances for him. He recognizes the dance as the “traditional dance of the aboriginal whites”, the Charleston and offers to take her back home with him if she teaches him the dance. As you can guess, dude learns pretty quick.Basically, Princess Tam Tam with the colors and locations reversed.
Its goodness inspired me to finally learn how to make torrents. I posted a torrent of the film to Cinema Obscura. My posting awesomely got somebody to call me an “upload provocateur.”
I highly recommend you download this film. The dancing is amazing and often in slomo, the special effects are way inventive and post-apocalyptic France back then looks just like post apocalyptic France nowadays.
Oh, and:
NOTES ON THE BLACKFACE
People tend to be squeamish about blackface, and with good reason. But I would argue that in the case of SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON - not only is the film not racist, it’s not racist only because of the blackface. Seriously.
In terms of the plot, Huggins’ character doesn’t need to be in blackface. He definitely shouldn’t be wearing the ‘tramp’ outfit he’s in. My guess is that Johnny Huggins always performed in blackface - it was his uniform. That alone could let everyone off the hook. But I think it goes deeper.
Huggins might not have been recognizable to the audiences of Paris. A first level google search suggests he wasn’t a superstar. If he read to the audience as a nobody, then the joke of this film would be that black men are naturally good Charleston dancers. But in blackface, he’s not just any African, but unmistakably a professional African-American performer.
In other words, in SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON, blackface is a constant reminder that the story is an artificial setup for the real purpose of the film: beautiful ecstatic dancing.
Now get some shoe polish on your face. It’s Halloween!
L