The “strange affinities”: early Chinese American Vaudevillians’ blackface performance

Year 2021, Volume: 2 Issue: 2, 157 - 168, 31.12.2021

Yingze Huo

Abstract

In the first two decades of the early twentieth century, Chinese American vaudeville artists reinterpreted their appearances on stage by utilizing Black performative languages. As a consideration of commercial selection value and a direct response to American ethnic relations, Chinese American vaudeville performers picked black-themed cultural works to perform. The way in which the early performers portrayed Chineseness exploited the imposed stereotypical labels and indicated a self-consciousness among second-generation Chinese American on stage. However, these on-stage self-representations, though likely a response to Sinophobia, were more of a passive reaction than a conscious decision. Similarly to their African American counterparts, to succeed in vaudeville, early Chinese American vaudevillians had to negotiate between well-developed preconceptions and their own artistic desires, which required them to bear the burdens of the past’s ugliness. Most of their performative languages, especially physical features, thus preserved the long-held stereotypes of Chinese people, such as the queue, the costume, etc.

Keywords

Vaudeville, Chinese American, blackface, Black Theatre, Performance Studies

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