The Mammy Archetype‏: A Black Maiden Syndrome

Black actors and the Dress

“Male comedians appearing in drag seemingly has universal appeal that cuts across cultural lines. Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Jamie Foxx, Kenan Thompson of “Saturday Night Live” and Tyler Perry are among the African-American performers who have generated laughs by cross-dressing.

But despite the popularity of Perry’s gun-toting, insult-hurling Madea, Lawrence’s turns as Sheneneh on his sitcom “Martin” and the cranky title character in “Big Momma’s House,” and the various women Murphy has played in “The Nutty Professor” films and “Norbit,” some observers inside and outside African-American creative circles say the sight of black male performers in drag also carries troubling cultural baggage. They contend the caricatures are no laughing matter and jeopardize the image of African-American masculinity.” – Baltimore Sun

“John Singleton griped to Black Star News, “I’m tired of all these Black men in dresses … How come nobody’s protesting that?” And comedian Dave Chappelle told Oprah Winfrey that during a shoot with Lawrence, the writers and producers had twisted his arm to do drag. “‘Every minute you waste costs this much money,'” he recalls them telling him. “The pressure comes in … I don’t need no dress to be funny,” he said. Chappelle also suggested that their insistence amounted to a “conspiracy,” and he got applause for implying a connection between cross-dressing and “Brokeback Mountain,” a film in which neither main character — both of whom are arguably bisexual — wears anything but hyper-masculine attire.

Chappelle’s comment both presumes that impersonating a woman will emasculate him, and that emasculation is equivalent to homosexuality (or at least gay sex, judging by his poorly chosen example). Despite Chappelle’s insinuation, it’s debatable whether this phenomenon has much to do with a gay sensibility. Perry has denied the abundant rumors about his sexuality, telling Essence magazine that having to fend off the speculation has “given [him] a firm seating in [his] manhood.”

The newest breed of bruthas in drag has only the most tenuous connection to the decidedly queer cross-dressing entertainment craze of the ’90s, exemplified by Wigstock, “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” and “To Wong Foo” — the main difference being the emphasis on frumpiness.

When straight Black comedians do drag, they aren’t trying to make women look fabulous. They reach for the floral housecoats and the chartreuse polyester pantsuits. It’s anyone’s guess why the no-nonsense old ladies hold more appeal for them — perhaps grandmotherly aggression and take-no-prisoners masculine attitude have more in common than meets the eye. The clumsy fashion sense is certainly a match.

Like Chappelle, blogger Darryl James sees the phenomenon as part of an effort to neutralize Black masculinity. For him and a lot of other straight Black men, gender-bending comedians are “castrated clowns,” whose emasculation makes them palatable to White people and man-hating Black women alike. “The Black man in drag is one of the new coons,” he writes. Never mind that he’s also one of the old coons — according to Marjorie Garber’s 1999 book, “Vested Interests,” the men who played women in minstrel shows were “the best-paid performers in the minstrel company.”

If the humor in minstrelsy arises in part from the reversal of class aspirations, then White men adopting the comic appearance of Black women represents the ultimate topsy-turvy world. We consider upward mobility natural (even if we frown on strategies for advancement that include, say, passing for White), but downward mobility is crazy. And so a Black man who plays the role of a Black woman is also taking part in the ridicule of people who in some respects lie further down the social pecking order, in terms of gender if not economic power, mimicking discrimination by Whites against people of color.” – Copyright © 2023 Salon.com

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