http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Blackface

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Blackface is the tradition of a performer putting on stylized black makeup to appear as a stereotyped character of African descent. The usual version includes dark or pitch-black makeup and bulging red or white lips. Blackface was often used in Minstrel Shows. The image became associated with negative stereotypical depictions of black people in the Anglo-Saxon world and became shorthand for anti-black racism. As much as some people would like to forget it, blackface performances were mainstream American entertainment for almost 100 years until racial backlash ultimately capsized it.

Because of its pervasiveness in the US and the UK for such a long timenote Minstrel shows often toured Britain and remained popular beyond WWII unlike in the States, at least until the Afro-British population surged in the 1950s and 60s, blackface imagery was also transported to other countries, where the lesser cultural stigma allowed it to continue for longer. While most European countries nowadays do not consider the trope as mind-blowingly offensive as the Anglosphere, a mix of Eagleland Osmosis and a greater awareness about racism has lead to it becoming increasingly socially unacceptable and controversial. Blackface characters still pop up in Japanese culture and media from time to time, often causing massive headaches for exporters.

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The trope remains a sensitive subject to this day and will cause quite a backlash if it ever shows up in mainstream American culture. Even making jokes that criticize the trope or people who engage in it can get a work in trouble. In 2020, several instances of white characters donning makeup to make themselves look black were dubbed "blackface" and got the episodes banned from streaming services.

Instances of Fake Nationality involving a lighter-skinned actors playing darker skinned characters will often raise eyebrows due to straying too close to the trope as well as But Not Too Black implications.

Yellowface is a similar practice involving Asian characters, while Brownface is for characters of various "brown" races.

The inversion, black actors playing white people, is rarely done straight. When this happens, it's almost always in-universe and for comic effect.

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Tropes associated with Blackface

Works in which Blackface appears

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Anime and Manga

Comic Books

An old Golden Age issue of Captain Marvel had Billy dressing up in Blackface as part of a Paper-Thin Disguise.

Black characters in Asterix tend to be drawn like this. One story in Uderzo croqué par ses amis parodies the fact by depicting a ridiculously bad strip supposedly drawn by a young Uderzo. It features a Roman optio and his 'politically-incorrect Romans', soldiers who are drawn in a blackface style even more extreme than the style in the original comics.

In an April Fools' Day crossover strip made for Pilote, the original magazine that ran Asterix and other characters like Barbe-Rouge (a gang of pirates who the perennial useless pirates in Astérix are based on). In the comic, the Gauls and the (two white) pirates team up to play a joke on one of the other Pilote characters, who was always drawn in black and white, pretending they were going to colour him in with paint but instead just painting him completely black. While they're all laughing at him, Baba (a reasonably-drawn black pirate) comes in at the back, saying hi and asking what's going on. The captain's response: Redbeard: Um... why don't you get back on board?

Films — Live-Action

Jokes

In a horror movie, Sean Bean and a black man appear. Who dies first? Sean Bean plays the black man.

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

An entire genre of music, the "coon song" was dedicated to mocking black people, sung by performers in blackface. Paradoxically, such songs were often written by African American composers such as Ernest Hogan, Sam Lucas, and Bob Cole. The genre was a precursor to ragtime and was eventually replaced by it. Note that in popular usage, "coon song" was often applied to music sung, originating from, or merely in the style of, Negro music, without regard to content. One who sang Negro songs was a "coon shouter."

Appears rather shockingly in the video for Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" as Boy George is convicted by a jury of jazz-handing minstrels.

Florence + the Machine's music video for "No Light, No Light" has two savage people in blackface menacing the white singer, who is saved by white choirboys and seen at the end with a white lover. Supposedly, the men in blackface are meant to be demons.

The European version of the video for Taco's cover of "Puttin' on the Ritz" has tuxedo-clad dancers in blackface lean into view each time the words "Super duper" are sung, and the instrumental shows them tap-dancing. For the North American market, a photo of Gary Cooper (name-dropped in the previous line) replaces the blackface dancers, and the tap-dance segment shows them only from the waist down. The only part where blackface is still briefly seen is in profile on a few dancers in a longer-distance shot of Taco moving in slow-motion.

Joni Mitchell appeared in blackface on the cover of her 1977 album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter as her alter ego, a man named Art Nouveau, who she claimed represented her "black soul."

Music video for Tyler The Creator's "Tamale" criticizes censorship hypocrisy by openly showing lots of sexual content while censoring the short blackface minstrel bit appearing near the beginning of the video. DUE TO "GRAPHIC" NATURE OF THIS FILM I WAS FORCED TO BLUR BECAUSE PEOPLE AREN'T READY TO HAVE INTELLIGENT CONVERSATIONS BEFORE THE JUDGE. WELCOME TO AMERICA.

for Tyler The Creator's "Tamale" criticizes censorship hypocrisy by openly showing lots of sexual content while censoring the short blackface minstrel bit appearing near the beginning of the video. Joe Letz of industrial band Combichrist has performed in blackface during their 2017 tour, including photoshopping his head next to buckets of fried chicken in promotional materials.

The video for "Norupo " by Nordic band Heilung shows the difference between Blackface and painting your face black: one is a mocking imitation of another race, the other is looking like a shaman lurking deep in the woods.

Professional Wrestling

In 1998, D-Generation X mocked the mostly black Power Stable The Nation of Domination by dressing as them, complete with blackface. This somehow received little to no complaints, and is still considered one of Raw's funniest moments.

At WrestleMania VI, Roddy Piper fought Bad News Brown with half his body in blackface, after Bad News Brown called him racist. Apparently he did it to show that color doesn't matter. The paint was a concoction that could only be removed by a specific solvent (so Piper wouldn't sweat or smear the paint off during the match). Piper would claim later that André the Giant and Arnold Skaaland, as a joke, dumped the solvent down the drain and replaced it with plain water; it took weeks of scrubbing and sitting in a sauna for the paint to finally come off.

During a feud with Team 3D, the James Gang mocked them by cosplaying as them, complete with Kip James in blackface to imitate Brother Devon.

Theatre

Most black vaudevillians wore blackface. Some were light enough that they needed to put on burnt cork to make it clear to the audience; others just bowed to vaudeville standards. Minstrel shows were parodied in the late 19th century by the "Two Real Coons", a duo of black men who did minstrel shows. These minstrel shows parodied the mainstream minstrel show by featuring an entire black cast with only one person in blackface, popular vaudeville actor Bert Williams, also being black. Bert's minstrel shows and later his appearances in early film made him one of the first African-American celebrities. As he gained more success, his works phased out the extreme racial humor. His popularity among white and black audiences ultimately made him a force for increased racial tolerance. Bill Robinson, popularly known as "Mr. Bojangles", was among the first black performers to make it big without blackface.

The title character in Shakespeare's Othello was traditionally played by a white actor in makeup, though the original King's Men might not have used it. It wasn't until 1943 that a black actor played the role in a major stage production of the play, but the success of that production didn't stop the common practice of using blackface to last well through the 60s.

The antagonist Aaron in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus was often played by a white man in blackface, most notably by Anthony Quayle in the 1955 staging at Stratford-on-Avon that starred Laurence Olivier in the title role.

Inverted with Ira Aldridge, a nineteenth-century African-American actor who emigrated to the UK and Europe to get away from American racism and became well-known. While he often played black characters like Othello, he sometimes played white characters, in which he usually wore whiteface make-up.

In opera, the title part in Verdi's adaptation of Othello and Monostatos in The Magic Flute were written for white actors using makeup, and some portrayals veered toward blackface caricature. Today they are usually done without the makeup (or with black performers) to avoid accusations of blackface.

Referenced in the play No Sugar, which revolves around a family of Australian aborigines in the 1930s. In one scene, they recall a recent trip to the cinema, where they saw an American film with a blackface performer, who they joke must have been having a really rough time as a whitefella if he saw becoming black as a step up.

Depending on the country and the company, blackface is still used in some ballets, such as for the Moor doll in Petrouchka, the Moor doll in The Nutcracker (if the production has one), and the children in the Golden Idol sequence in La Bayadere. In the US and UK, some companies have eliminated blackface or cast the roles with dancers of color, although the practice has still not disappeared.

Word of God says that the Hungarian version of Avenue Q replaced the Gary Coleman character with Michael Jackson to avert this trope. This way, the character could be played by a white actor and still be considered African-American.

In a very much Fair for Its Day production of Macbeth, Orson Welles relocated the story to the Caribbean and played the title role in blackface. The rest of the cast was themselves black, and Welles used his notoriety to further promote the play. Despite initial fears of Uncle Tomfoolery, the play was renowned for its quality cast.

After a rather infamous bootleg production of the show in Italy which utilized this trope, Marc Shaiman banned the useage of blackface in all productions of Hairspray. As a a result, if a production of the show has actors of a different race in the roles of the African Americans, the following message was put into the program of each show: "And so, if the production of Hairspray you are about to see tonight features folks whose skin color doesn't match the characters (not unlike how Edna has been traditionally played by a man), we ask that you use the timeless theatrical concept of "suspension of disbelief" and allow yourself to witness the story and not the racial background (or gender) of the actors. Our show is, after all, about not judging books by their covers! If the direction and the actors are good (and they had better be!) you will still get the message loud and clear. And hopefully have a great time receiving it!"

Referenced in The Mikado with N-Word Privileges that are generally reworded these days. "The n- serenader and the others of his race" shows up on the original version of "I've Got a Little List" of "society offenders who might well be underground", showing what Sir William S. Gilbert thought of the practise.

Toys

"Golliwogg" dolls are dolls made in the style of a person in blackface. They can still be purchased in some areas.

The "Jolly Nigger Bank" is a tin can money bank depicting a person in blackface as greedy.

Video Games

Webcomics

An inversion is mentioned in Unsounded: the people of Cresce are black, so actors in a Crescian play with fair-skinned roles wear paleface.

In this Scandinavia and the World , Netherlands insists that South Africa dress as Sinterklaas, so that Netherlands himself can dress as a traditional Zwarte Piet in blackface.

Web Original

In Brad Jones' Demo Reel, Gretchen said she played Othello while wearing blackface, and then whiteface over that.

The pilot of the original Demo Reel had a bit where Tacoma, playing the Joker, wasn't sure if a black man wearing whiteface makeup was offensive or not.

Bart Baker had a few parodies with himself in blackface. An elderly Chris Brown in "Senior Citizen Love" (International Love) Rihanna in the "Pour It Up" parody Kanye West in the "Bound 2" parody.

The "Firing mah Lazer" meme. (Complete with a whole "Lazer Song" on Youtube, and whatever. Shoop-da-whoop.)

Satirized by [[Web Video/Jreg]], One of the ideologies featured in Centricide 6 that join Nazi's "International Union of Nationalists" is Pan-Africanism, which is depicted by Greg Guevara himself wearing a paper with the word "BLACKFACE" attached to his face.

Western Animation

Other