{"id":10356,"date":"2019-02-18T15:33:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T20:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=10356"},"modified":"2019-08-05T14:31:27","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T18:31:27","slug":"10356","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2019\/02\/18\/10356\/","title":{"rendered":"The Commodification of Black Culture: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Ariana Grande"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin for a class in the last month, and I\u2019m stunned at the aftermath it had on American culture. From traveling theatre companies with white actors in blackface, to little collectable postcards; from children\u2019s picture books of the slave narrative, to framed lithographs that middle-class families could hang up over their mantelpieces– popular American culture hooked onto the soap-opera-like novel and profited greatly from its popularity. And it got me thinking: people love to commodify black culture when it is beneficial, and drop it the moment it\u2019s deemed un-cool or unprofitable. It\u2019s written deep into America\u2019s history, and keeps emerging in contemporary culture as well– the most recent I can think of being Ariana Grande\u2019s subtle but unmistakable plagiarism of lyrics from black rappers and hip-hop artists. I\u2019d always been conscious of the magnitude of cultural appropriation in America, but it was until reading Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin that I realized the full scope of America\u2019s entrenched history in stealing or distorting marginalized cultures for profit. It\u2019s disgusting. <\/span><\/p>\n

Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin was written in installments in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a white abolitionist. The book reads like a soap-opera: overly dramatic with characters breaking out in sudden all-important realizations and constantly crying; the black characters and their lives are romanticized and the \u201cgood\u201d white characters are often portrayed as being saviors (see: little Eva). Though it attempts to humanize slaves– a concept quite foreign to nineteenth century Americans– Stowe, as a comfortable white woman from the North who has experienced not even a fraction of what the characters in her book have experienced. In short, it relies heavily on stereotypes and caricatures. The book\u2019s overall aim is to resist the institution of slavery, and it was wildly successful at that aim; but just because it\u2019s anti-slavery certainly didn\u2019t make it anti-racist. <\/span><\/p>\n

I think these points of in-authenticity allowed people to capitalize on the success of the book. In today\u2019s parlance, Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin went <\/span>viral<\/span><\/i>. As my professor put it, it spread like an internet meme. Lots of knick-knacks and household collectible were created, many paintings, records, children\u2019s picture books, translations, postcards. My class visited the Clement\u2019s library behind Hatcher to view some of these pieces; here are some examples:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Eliza crosses the Ohio River which divides slave states from non-slave states. She looks practically white.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Collectable postcards from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
The letter from Terry’s Big Two Car Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were even traveling theatre companies that performed Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin as a play for entertainment, mainly with white actors in blackface. In a letter from one such theatre company to the owner of a theatre, the company explains that they have not only white actors, but black actors, describing the black actors in language I\u2019m too disgusted to reproduce here. I was stunned and horrified, the irony of the situation painfully bitter. These companies were using slaves for their own gain. They took an anti-slavery book and used it for profit while perpetuating the very thing the book tried to destroy. And then it hit me– of course. America won\u2019t give up racism until it\u2019s not economically beneficial. And for all of its history, racism has been <\/span>wildly<\/span><\/i> beneficial. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s why we still see atrocious rates of mass incarceration of black men, why we see police brutality, why we see blatant acts of cultural appropriation by celebrities. It\u2019s economically beneficial. Ariana Grande, with visibly darker and tanned skin, her lyrics thick with a \u201cblackcent\u201d, her music videos with black girls as a way to \u201cmake up\u201d for her appropriation, and the outright plagiarism of her lyrics, adds to this recurrent narrative. Of course, just like all the actors from the theatre company, and like the creators of Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin paraphernalia, and perhaps even like Stowe, Ariana Grande and so many other people of privilege will walk away unscathed, leaving behind a population that continues to be hurt and injustice that goes on, and on, and on.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All images courtesy of University of Michigan’s Clements Library. Special thanks to Professor Sara Blair from the English Department and Clayton Lewis, Curator of Graphics Material at the Clements Library.<\/p>\n

References:\u00a0La Case de L’Oncle Tom. \/ Heroisme de L’Amour Maternal. Paris: Chez Mine\u00b4, [ca. 1850s]. [Lithograph\u00a0broadside<\/span>, hand colored]
\nOnkel Tom’s H\u00fctte. Serie 2. Elmshorn, Holstein: Wagner & Co., [ca. 1928]. [Six color lithograph collecting cards]
\nTerry’s Big Two-Car Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company. [Little Sioux, Iowa]: Terry’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin Co. circa 1910. [Promotional\u00a0circular letter<\/span>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin for a class in the last month, and I\u2019m stunned at the aftermath it had on American culture. From traveling theatre companies with white actors in blackface, to little collectable postcards; from children\u2019s picture books of the slave narrative, to framed lithographs that middle-class families could hang up over their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1334],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10362,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356\/revisions\/10362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}