Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity

Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity

by Monica L. Miller
Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity
Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity

Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity

by Monica L. Miller

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Overview

Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora.

Dandyism was initially imposed on black men in eighteenth-century England, as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging culture of conspicuous consumption generated a vogue in dandified black servants. “Luxury slaves” tweaked and reworked their uniforms, and were soon known for their sartorial novelty and sometimes flamboyant personalities. Tracing the history of the black dandy forward to contemporary celebrity incarnations such as Andre 3000 and Sean Combs, Miller explains how black people became arbiters of style and how they have historically used the dandy’s signature tools—clothing, gesture, and wit—to break down limiting identity markers and propose new ways of fashioning political and social possibility in the black Atlantic world. With an aplomb worthy of her iconographic subject, she considers the black dandy in relation to nineteenth-century American literature and drama, W. E. B. Du Bois’s reflections on black masculinity and cultural nationalism, the modernist aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance, and representations of black cosmopolitanism in contemporary visual art.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780822391517
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication date: 10/08/2009
Series: e-Duke books scholarly collection.
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 408
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

Monica L. Miller is Assistant Professor of English at Barnard College.

Read an Excerpt

Slaves to Fashion

BLACK DANDYISM AND THE STYLING OF BLACK DIASPORIC IDENTITY
By MONICA L. MILLER

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2009 Duke University Press
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-4603-6


Chapter One

Mungo Macaroni

THE SLAVISH SWELL

Dear heart what a terrible life I am led! A dog has a better, that's shelter'd and fed: Night and day 'tis de same, My pain is dere game: Me wish to de Lord me was dead. Whate'er's to be done, Poor black man must run; Mungo here, Mungo dere, Mungo every where; Above and below, Sirrah come, sirrah go; Do so, and do so. Oh! Oh! Me wish to de Lord me was dead.

Sung by the slave Mungo in The Padlock (1768)

What was new to 18th century experience-as codes of polite behaviours spread to broader and lower strata of society-was the frightening possibility that nothing stood behind decorum.... Fashion, masquerade, theater, cross-dressing emphasized the total disagreement between seeming and being, the deliberately fabricated incongruity between exterior and interior.

BARBARA MARIA STAFFORD, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine

On October 3, 1768, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, a character judged "well drawn" and "almost wholly new to the stage" by the London Critical Review appeared on the British stage. One of just five roles in The Padlock, a comic opera written by Isaac Bickerstaffe with a libretto by Charles Dibdin, the black servant Mungo dramatically entered London's theatrical and visual space. Clad in a tight-fitting, red-and-white-striped silk suit, Mungo strode across the stage in conversation with his master, Don Diego:

[act I, sc. vi.] Don Diego, Mungo with a Hamper of Provisions on his Back, which he throws down and sits upon.

Mung. Go get you down, you damn hamper, you carry me now. Curse my old Massa, sending me always here and dere and for one something to make me tire like a mule-curse him imperance and him damn insurance.

Dieg. How now?

Mung. Ah Massa, bless you heart.

Dieg. What's that you are muttering, Sirrah?

Mung. Noting, Massa, only me say, you very good massa.

Dieg. What do you leave your load down there for?

Mung. Massa, me lilly tire.

Dieg. Take it up, rascal.

Mung. Yes, bless your heart Massa.

Dieg. No lay it down: now I think on't, come hither.

Mung. What you say, Massa?

Dieg. Can you be honest?

Mung. Me no savee, massa, you never ax me before.

Dieg. Can you tell the truth?

Mung. What you give me Massa?

Dieg. There's a pistreen for you; now tell me do you know of any ill going on in my house?

Mung. Ah Massa, a damn deal.

Dieg. How! That I'm a stranger to?

Mung. No Massa, you lick me every day with your rattan; I'm sure, Massa, that mischief enough for poor Neger man.

Dieg. So, so.

A sassy, back-talking, physically comic slave, Mungo debuted a startling voice and new look for blacks in the British theater. He spoke an identifiable version of West Indian speech-a first for the London stage. His ostentatious silk costume was even more outrageous than his confrontational, unusual accent. Fabulous both for his flashy dress and extravagant speech, he was one of the first comic blackface performances on the stage of a patent theater. The combination of novelties that produced this moment had an electrifying effect. In a culture that has been called "a society of the spectacle," in which "[visuality] opens up, controls, or legislates the terrain upon which a large number of concepts are articulated," Mungo and The Padlock became a smashing success.

The Padlock was at Drury Lane only after Bickerstaffe and Dibdin (who also played Mungo) had convinced the theater manager David Garrick to take a risk. As a result, the play became "one of the most popular and lucrativeworks presented during [Garrick's] nine year regime." Contemporary theater critics raved: "Dibdin by his music, and still more by his acting in a comic opera ... produced that degree of sensation in the public which is called a rage." So popular was the character of Mungo in The Padlock that his name quickly became representative of his type and his race; the Oxford English Dictionary records the usage of "mungo" generically for "Negro slave" as originating with the performance of the play. By 1769 "mungo" was "a typical name for a black slave," "a Negro," as a result of the artistry of Bickerstaffe and Dibdin.

However, just a year later, in 1770, "mungo" also meant "a person of position, a 'swell.'" Soon after Mungo's initial performance, almost immediately after the appearance of the slave in a strange, glittering uniform, it had apparently become typical to think of black slaves in terms of society and fashion. How and why mungos or black slaves in England became swells-people distinguished in the eighteenth century for their unique, often flamboyant, hyper-haute dress and mischievous attitude-is the subject of this chapter. The relationship between slaves, swells, the English stage, and the British empire tells the story of the emergence of the first black dandies, captured and, later, free Africans who learned to use dress, style, gesture, and wit to redesign the roles assigned to them. These dandies illustrate and mediate the political, social, and cultural power of visuality and visibility in an age of colonialism, imperialism, revolution, and nation building.

The Padlock Open'd

Though most famous as a stage character in 1768, Mungo has origins in The Padlock's source, "The Jealous Husband," a tale by Miguel Cervantes from 1613. The "Advertisement" for the opera notes its provenance and indicates the nature of the changes required for the adaptation: "Some little variation has been necessary in the ground-work, in order to render it dramatic; but the characters are untouched from the inimitable pencil of the first designer." Perhaps written in deference to the reputation of the source text's well-known author, this statement isn't exactly true. In fact, the variations or changes Bickerstaffe made to the Cervantes text are meaningful, especially those concerning the character on which Mungo was based. Bickerstaffe's condensation of Cervantes's morality tale turns Luis, a complacent Negro eunuch, into Mungo, a slave with an attitude.

"Render[ing] it dramatic" depended on emphasizing, exaggerating, and making spectacular the role of the slave from one text to the other. This change reflects the contemporary cultural climate in mid-eighteenth-century England and thus made theatrical and box office sense. Unsurprisingly for a morality tale, the plot of the Cervantes text turns on a consideration of rectitude in the face of temptation. Supposedly guarding the gate-affixed with a giant padlock-protecting his master's mansion and the beautiful young wife secreted inside, the slave Luis and the wife's nurse are easily bribed by a young, wealthy, handsome man plotting to gain access to the house. Eventually, the master of the house learns of the breach and of his wife's willing transgression with the interloper; a generous man, respectful of free will, he forgives everyone, blesses the younger couple, and quickly dies. Despite this turn of events, happiness eludes the new couple: the wife's guilt sends her to a convent, and the young man sails for the Indies in despair. In contrast, Luis is freed, perhaps because he had not been expected to act better-only the nurse, presumably a white, Christian woman who should know how to behave, is punished. The narrator of the story glosses the lesson offered: "All I wanted was to get to the end of the affair, a memorable example which illustrates how little one should trust in keys, revolving doors and walls when the will remains free."

In his expanded role in The Padlock, Mungo is not at all a naïve dupe; he presents a radically new representation of black servitude. This difference is exemplified in the quantity and tenor of Mungo's speeches. As he himself announces in the song that serves as the epigraph to this chapter, he and his voice are visible and audible, "here, dere, and everywhere." Marianne Cooley, a linguist who has studied Mungo's speech, confirms that, "appearing in both acts, Mungo speaks about a quarter of the lines in the play, whereas African-American characters in other 18th-century plays usually had fewer than ten [lines]." Mungo is not the first black slave to lament his abject position on stage (as some adaptations of The Tempest's Caliban and the popularity of Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko attest), but he may be one of the first to combine the sympathy evoked by the oration of a typical noble savage with caustic hilarity. In The Padlock, Mungo is the source of all the comic relief. The amusement he generates is only emphasized by the incongruity of his abjection: ironic verbosity emanating from a black body in fancy dress.

Mungo obviously disappoints his duty as a faithful retainer much more than did his predecessor Luis. This disloyalty is registered verbally before it becomes action in the opera. As we can see from the banter that accompanies Mungo's initial entrance onto the stage, the relationship between Mungo and his master is figured as a contest between the master's rattan switch and the slave's surly speech. "Licked," or beaten, by the rattan, Mungo responds by playing off the other meaning of the word-he attacks with his own tongue. The slave's tendency to reposition the licks aimed at him does not always end in a verbal coup for Mungo. For a slave, or at least this one, arguably the first dramatic depiction of an insolent house Negro, the last word is difficult to secure, no matter how compelling the harangue. At best, no clear winner in this contest can be declared, despite the fact that through his own impudence Mungo demands recognition by exposing the master-slave relationship as one in which servility might not include lip service as well.

While Bickerstaffe and Dibdin did not plan to use their adaptation of Cervantes's exemplum to teach a lesson about how funny it might be to toy with the aspirations of freedom for both blacks and women, the finale of their opera nevertheless communicates just that. Both are liberated from their master's house, but neither women nor slaves gain much by the end. Though patriarchy and white male supremacy are not named explicitly as the target of their mutual revolt, an attentive, sympathetic audience understands the connection intimated between them. Indeed, when the curtain descends on the opera, Mungo does not enjoy freedom, as he did in the story, but suffers instead "bastinadoes" ("a blow or cudgell, sometimes to the feet with a stick") for his "drunkenness and infidelity." His punishment, the blows to his feet, attempts to establish a distinction between his physical and linguistic or cognitive freedom. The young wife, however, suffers the opposite fate. Her newly betrothed sings the final lines of the play, adapted from "An English Padlock," Matthew Prior's poem of 1704 which gives the opera its name: "Be to her faults a little blind,/Be to her virtues very kind;/Let all her ways be unconfin'd,/And clap your padlock on her mind." Presumably this sentiment-establishing the line between slavery and freedom as a thin one for both women and slaves-ushered in the thunderous applause accorded to this eighteenth-century rage and hit. In the end, a considerable amount of the opera's allure included, ingeniously, the containment of subversive blacks and women in oppressive antics made palatable, even amusing. Yet, this containment is presented in such a way that it is incomplete-even though the curtain closes, Mungo was not exorcised from the public imagination. Still in his striped suit, a sensation and rage that the audience does not or cannot forget, he remains "here, dere, and everywhere."

Like any other drama that turns on characters in blackface, The Padlock presents a challenge to those desiring to claim the oppositional behavior of "black" characters as antislavery material or, in the case of more contemporary performances, an ironic defense of black civil and political rights. A slave's complaint like that in The Padlock can seem like an abolitionist speech or, if performed differently, an exposure of black foolishness. Mungo in The Padlock perfectly illustrates the complexity of this phenomenon as, on the one hand, his complaints are registered, yet, on the other hand, his oppositional gestures are seemingly undermined from the onset and at every turn. Indeed, depending on how you assess a seemingly singular element of his novelty-his costume-he might be seen to embody a critique of his own complaints. Mungo's glittering uniform can be read as either appropriate or ridiculous for a Negro slave in the eighteenth century, as it perhaps covers up the dehumanization and emasculation he already suffers as a chattel or indeed emphasizes it. The threat of this dehumanization and emasculation is clear when Mungo's master opens the opera by singing, "My doors shall be lock'd/My windows be block'd,/No male in my house,/Not so much as a mouse,/Then horns, horns, [of a cuckold], I defy you" (act I, sc. i), insisting that no man will gain entrance into his house, while also implying that no man (besides himself) already lives there. In The Padlock, Mungo is not a man, not a mouse, apparently not a threat to the chastity of the beautiful woman confined within. Under these circumstances, all Mungo can do is embody and display the confusion attendant to his position and identity by entering the stage scenes later cursing the burden of his blackness and servitude-on his fancily clad back.

Fashioning Character, or Circum-Atlantic Suits

A reprint of The Padlock from 1823 boasts inclusion of "Notes, Critical and Explanatory" that advertise the play as "an amusing trifle," "favourably received," nevertheless with "nothing in the plot to distinguish [it]." Fifty years after its original, sensational production, The Padlock became an ostensible mediocrity, a play deemed to employ the "usual stratagems." Responsibility for the earlier favorable reception remains a mystery only hinted at in these "Notes": "There is some truth, and a great deal of humour, in the characters of Mungo and Ursula [the nurse]." Unlocking why there was "some truth" and a "great deal of humour" in Mungo's character is to engage, rather than dismiss, the confused genealogy of this witty and sartorially ostentatious slave.

Though the depiction of Mungo in The Padlock appears to simplify his character as it inaugurates the stereotype of the uppity, sassy house slave, in fact, Bickerstaffe's characterization of Mungo should be read differently. Stereotypes-true to the origin of the word in a printing process that produces a text from a copy of a printer's plate (not an original)-derive their force from their seemingly a priori reproducibility. One recognizes stereotypical imprints the instant they are formed because of their overdetermined familiarity. More important than a stereotype's original plate is its stereotyped shadow. It is this image that gives the stereotype its currency. The date of Mungo's "birth," 1768, thirty years before the origin of the concept of stereotype, indicates that rather than considering Mungo as such, one had better think of his persona in terms of type or character. Characters and types are the literal and metaphorical elements of a stereotype's manufacture.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from Slaves to Fashion by MONICA L. MILLER Copyright © 2009 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction. Stylin' Out 1

1. Mungo Macaroni: The Slavish Swell 27

2. Crimes of Fashion: Dressing the Part from Slavery to Freedom 77

3. W. E. B. Du Bois's "Different Diasporic Race Man 137

4. "Passing Fancies": Dandyism, Harlem Modernism, and the Politics of Visuality 176

5. "You Look Beautiful Like That": Black Dandyism and the Histories of Black Cosmopolitanism 219

Notes 291

Bibliography 347

Index 371
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