Behind the Screen

How and why was outdated racial content - and specifically blackface minstrelsy - not only permitted, but in fact allowed to thrive during the 1930s and 1940s despite the rigid motion picture censorship laws which were enforced during this time? Introducing a new theory of covert minstrelsy, this book illuminates Hollywood's practice of capitalizing on the Africanist aesthetic at the expense of Black lived experience.

Brynn Wein Shiovitz is Lecturer in the Department of Dance at Chapman University and the editor of The Body, the Dance, and the Text: Essays on Performance and the Margins of History.

Acknowledgments
Note on Language
Preface
Covert Minstrelsy: a Diagram
Introduction: Masks in Disguise
1. Integrating the Screen: Sound Synchronization, Sonic Guises, and Pre-Code Blackface, 1927-1930
sing-along: "Dinah," a Fleischer Screen Song
2. Optical Illusion and Design: Exposure Values, Protean Guises, and Eddie Cantor's Blackface 1930-1933
cartoon short: The Three Little Pigs, an excerpted Walt Disney Silly Symphony
3. Public Works and Accolades: Race Film, Southern Repossession, and the Rise of Bill Robinson, 1929-1935
dance break: "Have You Got Any Castles," Featuring Buck and Bubbles
4. Bon Homage: Female Figures, the Tribute Guise, and Pre-War Departures, 1934-1939
travel ad: Skirting Censorship: Brownface and Technology in Transit
5. With a Glory Be: The Gabriel Variation, Jazz, and Everything in Between, 1934-1942
war bond ad: "Any Bonds Today?" Produced in Cooperation with Warner Bros. and U.S. Treasury Dept. Defense Savings Staff
6. Hays is for Horses: Cartoons' Crossover Appeal, Dis-figuration, and the Animated Bestiary 1934-1942
Coda. Enlisting the Tropes: Covert Minstrelsy in Action, 1942-1954
Appendix: Excerpts from the Production Code (1934-1954)
Index