Month: May 2020

I think that over the course of this past semester, it would be easy to say that our attempts to define the Black and Green Atlantic could be seen as a journey in and of itself. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the idea that African American experience could be compared to Irish experience, at first. My first thoughts were that, at best, the comparison would end up being surface-value only; and at worst, that the comparison would be wrong entirely. However, over the past weeks it has been gradually made clear by our examinations of different texts and theory that there is much more in common between the Black and Green than I had ever imagined before.

Beginning with the theory of a Transatlantic identity was essential. The connection of the sea and movement between different cultures acted as a foundation for the beginning of our comparison. The idea that the sea could be basis for a broad identity was confusing at first; but eventually, it began to make sense.  Almost every text we have read has had to do with movement or the sea, whether explicitly or implicitly. After we got through this theory, we began with Gulliver’s Travels – a text filled with both identity crises and movement across the sea. I thought that our movement back and forth across the Atlantic (with regard to the texts we read in the order we read them) was a key factor in our eventual understanding of the comparisons between the Black and Green. It allowed us to never linger too long in one spot, in one view. Rather, we were constantly shifting between cultures, which forced us to search for comparisons closer than we might have had there been two separate units of texts. As our list of texts grew, so too did our understanding. The comparisons we were making started moving beyond the obvious, surface-level comparisons between texts; they moved on to the cultures behind the texts, as well. And when we had reached this depthness, we went farther still: from focusing solely on race and oppression, to factoring in economy, the history of each people as “not yet ready”, and the connections that could be made between these concepts. And finally, we ended our semester with An Octoroon. I think it was right to end with this text for many reasons. For one, it gives us a very modern text for us to compare the rest of the texts with (as we had moved through history with those texts, as well). For another, it serves almost as a counterpoint to the first literature we began with, Gulliver’s Travels. But most importantly, it brought together all the concepts and complexities about the Black and Green that we had been examining over the last few weeks, after we reached our understanding of what it could mean. Without the history of the texts we had read, and the meanings that each of those texts gave us, An Octoroon would have been a very strange and confusing play to read.

I think what I most appreciate about having gone through this journey is that I can understand the complexities of a transatlantic world that I never even considered could exist, much less one that does. In our discussions, we’ve made it clear that there are several valid ways in which the Black and Green can be connected to one another. We’ve also seen ways in which it is invalid to compare the Black and the Green, which helped to enlarge our understanding of just where the comparisons can be before they go too far.

Branden Jenkins approach to An Octoroon was very unique. It is clear that he was inspired by Boucicault, but also challenge him as a playwright. Although it was not explicitly said, I saw the adaptation as professional competition. In addition, I saw Jenkins inclusion of Boucicault in the play as a tribute towards him. While the modern world may have overlooked him, Jenkins clearly admired Boucicault’s work and appreciated that he highlighted very real issues in a time where it was abnormal. With that being said, the competition was found in Jenkins attempt to challenge some of the representations that were in the original.

In discussion we talked about authenticity, and with An Octoroon, Jenkins clearly challenges that. From his casting to his dialogue, whether it was because of want or necessity,  he intentionally distinguished his work from the original. For example, Jenkins disagreed with the typical portrayal of slaves in theater. We don’t know how slaves actually talked. If anything, it was most likely far from the depiction presented through minstrelsy. Ultimately minstrelsy was an art form that valued the art over accuracy, therefore, the imitation didn’t need to be accurate. While Boucicault created his characters based on observations, he was still an artist that was intrigued with the art form.

With that being said, although Boucicault was alive during slavery, his depiction of slavery is not anymore authentic than Jenkins. Boucicault was an Irishmen who never experienced slavery. Likewise, Jenkins was black, but he too never experienced slavery. Jenkins’ comedic approach versus Boucicault’s observational approach are both acceptable in the world of minstrelsy. Minstrelsy was a form of entertainment that imitated black people. And imitations are not authentic. 

As both the most recent text of the course as well as our last, I think Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “An Octoroon” points to the complex hope of a world in which black artists can create works which are separate from the recycling of previous black narratives in America.  His prologue perfectly shows how Jacobs-Jenkins feels trapped by his works being put into a different box because he is a “black playwright” although he “[doesn’t] know exactly what that means,” and he just wants to create works to tell human stories, not necessarily always dealing with the race issue in America.  His aggression that people always try to place these bigger cultural burdens, such as the adaptation of African folklore when he merely uses animals to illustrate his own point, shows that he wants for his work to speak for itself and not be as tied down to one specific meaning.

This wish to use preexisting material to simultaneously move past these experiences because of the multiple levels of the play’s presentation and humor.  Most notably with its racially swapped casting, Jacobs-Jenkins uses this practice as a means to show that race is somewhat arbitrary and a social construct.  This point goes all the way back to our early readings of Gilroy and theory, so Jacobs-Jenkins uses these well known texts as his foundation for “An Octoroon,” while also moving drastically past these notions.  Even the title shows this sense of exhaustion with the abundance of the race question and critics viewing his work through a racial lens.  Moving from “The Octoroon” to “An,” Jenkins suggests that despite the incredibly modern and subversive elements which Jacobs-Jenkins adds to Boucicault’s original, this is just another play and that the novelty of racial mixing has worn off and become common now.  His use of humor during the play most clearly shows Jacobs-Jenkins’s belief that there is now enough time passed between the days of “The Octoroon” and his own time that not only can he adapt and deconstruct the themes of the original play and its context, he can laugh at it.  Although this concept for a play sounds controversial on paper, I don’t think that he explicitly makes these changes just to make an audience for his work because of mere curiosity.  Jacobs-Jenkins has clearly done his research, and makes a hard case for the reader that we still have to talk in certain ways about certain topics.  The fact that has the audience laughs at slavery and BJJ even encourages that laughter shows his belief that not only can these experiences can be joked about, they can also stop overshadowing African-American art to allow new black artistic forms to come into being.

Looking back over the semester, I thought it was only fitting to end on “An Octoroon.”  Not only does it apply multiple themes from across the class, even going all the way back to January, but it brings all this history together to put his own spin on it, making parts of the play nearly incomprehensible without the proper context of these older texts and plays.