A Brief History of Black Representation in American Animation Part I: Exploitation 

Before I begin this overdue investigation, I want to apologize for the fact that the series of essays that will follow are neither as comprehensive nor as thorough as I would like them to be. 

Despite having access to an all but infinite amount of archival footage, documents and studies, my point of view—like anyone else’s—remains, at the end of the day, regrettably limited. 

As a white person, I obviously cannot know black culture in quite the same way a black person can. My goal, therefore, is not to uncover any kind of authentic take on the subject, but offer careful outside observation of it instead. 

Since this survey is by no means going to be definitive, I hope that—at the very least—it will be somewhat insightful to those interested in how artists gave shape and form to ‘blackness’ throughout the ages. 

Vaudeville and Racial Stereotyping

A vaudeville poster promoting a blackface performance by Carroll Johnson, 1899

For most of animation history, the concept of race hardly ever played an important role on screen. When it did, however, it was always presented through the eyes of white artists working for white companies producing content for white audiences. 

Before movies, vaudeville was the dominant form of entertainment in America. Born in France and popularized during the nineteenth century, it featured a series of short sketches whose purpose was comedic first and moral second. 

Whereas religious stories, fairy tales and legends typically included an important lesson about the world, one which they tried to communicate through symbolic subtext, vaudeville was thought to be plain old fun, no educational strings attached. 

Because these performances supposedly lacked any hidden meaning, they became an early form of mass entertainment, and by extension a precursor to the film and animation industries that were yet to arise. 

In the United States, vaudeville shows often featured white actors in blackface. This type of act, as the cultural historian John Strausbaugh once put it, was to display “blackness for the enjoyment and edification of white viewers.” 

Actors covered their faces with burnt cork and grease paint in order to appear dark-skinned. Many of them also drew exaggerated, bright red rings around their mouths so as to enlarge their lips, and completed their ensembles with top hats and gloves. 

African American stereotypes were amplified and put in situations which turned them into the butt of their own jokes: screwballs antagonized others with their antics; dandies were mocked for their high self-esteem, and rogues best by their own cynicism. 

Cartoon Minstrels

 

Understanding the relationship between race and vaudeville is an important step toward understanding the relationship between race and animation, as the themes and practices of the former directly inspired those of the latter. 

Because animation was an extremely labor-intensive process, scripts were kept short, sweet and uncomplicated. Since cartoonists had neither time nor technology to tell comprehensive stories, they settled for the simplistic sitcoms seen in vaudeville.  

Like vaudeville, which often appropriated African American song, animation relied heavily on music, as the first cartoons to emerge during the 1920s were Disney’s Silly Symphonies, MGM’s Happy Harmonies and Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes. 

Both were also exclusively comedic. As Hollywood grew, white actors portrayed black characters in serious roles. Following public outcries over films like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, though, blackface was banned from drama. 

Perhaps the strongest and most telling similarities between the two mediums have to do with character. In their video essay on the subject, Vox points out how vaudeville performers not only gave cartoon characters their gloves, but their demeanor, too. 

Like those performers, cartoon characters often played the underdogs of their own stories. “Mischievous, rebellious and good-natured,” they habitually thought outside the box, challenged social norms, and at times even altered the fabric of reality itself. 

While blackface, whether used for comedic or dramatic purposes, was widely regarded as inappropriate come the 1930s, animators did not conform so quickly, as blackface gags continued to recur as late as Friz Freleng’s 1953 short Southern Fried Rabbit. 

From Blackface to Bosko

 

Although hardly anyone has heard of him today, Bosko remains one of the clearest examples of racial stereotyping in all of cartoon history. His legacy brings a tenuous closure to this first period of black representation in American animation. 

Created for Leon Schlesinger’s newly-established Looney Tunes series, Bosko is in a sense a precursor to some of the world’s most popular two-dimensional personas, including Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny. 

Ambiguously drawn, his true identity is shrouded in mystery. While co-creator Rudolf Ising claims he was neither a human nor an animal, but an “inkspot” that behaved like a kid, his colleague Hugh Hartman reportedly copyrighted the character as a “Negro boy.”

Bosko’s race was debated by scholars for decades. While Looney Tunes executives denied claims of racial stereotyping, various competitors have noted a handful of blatantly obvious offensive characteristics associated with the “Talk-Ink Kid.” 

Animation historian Leonard Maltin takes particular issue with Bosko’s speech, which he calls a “Southern Negro dialect.” This dialect was stronger in some shorts than others, but can be heard best in his drawling catch-phrase, “Dat sho’ is fine!” 

The character’s mannerisms, moreover, are said to have been modeled after white actor Al Jolson’s performance in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, a motion picture that earned Jolson the title “king of blackface.” 

Last but not least, Schlesinger’s racist undertones found expression in the direction of the shorts themselves. One in particular, 1930’s Congo Jazz, juxtaposes Bosko against a monkey and a gorilla, highlighting their identically-drawn facial features. 

Complications

Over time, the Bosko cartoons came to occupy a tenacious place in animation history. Though some praised him as one of the “most balanced portrayals of blacks in cartoons,” others believe that artists never intended to draw attention to his race.  

Notwithstanding the character’s inappropriate design as well as potentially malevolent direction which I outlined above, there is yet another group of scholars who laud Bosko’s personality for exhibiting positive qualities like courage and resourcefulness. 

And yet, as characters like the calm and content Uncle Remus from Disney’s Song of the South—who is himself a stereotype promulgated by vaudeville performances—show, a portrayal does not have to be evidently negative in order to qualify as racist.