Blackface has a long history in vaudeville
Last Friday night, sideshow performer Rush Aaron Hicks got up on stage at New York’s famed Slipper Room. The difference this time? He was in blackface.
As recent documentary Exposed showed in ample detail, the venue is not exactly shy of shocking its audience in the name of entertainment. Slipper Room producer James Habacker and his high quality roster of burlesque and vaudeville stars have pushed the envelope of the underground scene for many years and long may they continue to do so.
This was something very different though. In a weekend when race drama 12 Years A Slave walked off with the Best Film Oscar and Kim Kardashian – not a woman noted for her sensitivity – waltzed away from a $500,000 gig in Vienna when confronted by a blackface waiter, Hicks’ actions couldn’t have come at a worse time.
The cream on the cake? A Facebook defence which largely rests on a few fallacious arguments. This is what Hicks said shortly after his performance.
Whether any more women of colour will be prepared to sleep with him now, we couldn’t possibly comment on. Putting his penis into an annualised figure of a dozen black women does not make him the next Martin Luther King. Saying you have black friends is “the greatest excuse that racists use to make it look like they’re not racists“, something that Bourgeois & Maurice superbly satirised on their track Tolerance. Hicks’ volunteer work is commendable but does not in itself explain or excuse his last-minute decision. In an industry not exactly teeming with non-white faces at any level, perhaps more (not less) should be done to encourage participation from all sections of society.
Does Hicks’ use of blackface constitute artistic expression? And, indeed, what are the limits of his art? Obviously, this is debatable and we’ll let his fellow performers, Friday night’s Slipper Room audience and the local critics discuss that one. His initial response to the incident, though, was far from commendable.
The online response to it was quick and brutal. Feminist blog Jezebel whaled on Hick’s white behind at length and NYC-based black burlesque performer Akynos Shekera angrily spoken out in a number of videos. Meanwhile, Hicks’ own Facebook page has a number of comments with people coming out for and against him.
To his credit, Hicks hasn’t dived for cover. More used to swallowing swords than words, he recorded an apologetic video yesterday in which he goes into much more detail about the background to what happened on the night, his upbringing, racism on stage and the overwhelming reaction and over-reaction including death threats over email.
Given the apparent “random” nature of this incident, it would be difficult to apportion any blame to anyone here but Hicks. It is worth bearing in mind that Hicks is still relatively new to live performance having been a yoga instructor in Brooklyn until a few years ago. In the UK, Frank Sanazi regularly outrages audiences with his crooning Hitler act while other performers on the London scene like Rose Wood, Traumata and MisSa Blue can often leave audiences extremely discombobulated; in all these cases, though, the effect is part of a routine that has been crafted over months if not years. We hope Hicks doesn’t lose his sense of spontaneity and his latest apology is taken in the spirit it was intended.
Further reading: Sex, Lies And Stripping: Porn Controversy Hits New York Boylesque Festival
Image credit: Creative Commons via Wikipedia
I cannot for the life of me see what possible comparisons can be made between Hicks and say, Traumata, or some other artists mentioned in your article, perhaps with the exception of Sanazi. An audience being shocked by an act is a far cry from an audience being offended at perceived racism, as in the case of Hicks’ blackface. This last paragraph reads as very sloppy writing and is extremely insulting to those performers.