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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.

I think that our discussion of “The Commitments” this week has been a rather revealing one for the way that I tend to analyze the texts we have been reading this semester. I’ve found that just due to the nature of the course’s objectives, that I come to every piece of literature with the lens of race, and the history of oppression. When I examined “The Commitments” this week, I was not able to see the economic impact in the novel at all. I was immediately drawn to the race aspect of Rabbitte’s comparison of the Irish and African Americans – and everything followed suit from there. Consequently, my examination of how the movie focused so much on the economic standpoint of Ireland was also based on race (though to a lesser extent). I’ve learned this week that I should try to broaden my lens, rather than focusing solely on race and oppression when drawing comparisons between these two cultures.

At first, Joey “The Lips” Fagan seems like the savior of The Commitments. Joey brings a sense of genuine Soul artistry to the group of Irish misfits, being that he claims to have toured in America with professional Soul artists. But when he brings his talent to The Commitments, the reader starts to see that he may not be the genuine Soul artist he claims to be, and rather, is a poser attempting to appropriate black culture. I believe that Doyle intended for the reader to doubt the authenticity of Joey’s character and his music because he does not believe that the Irish and African American experiences are comparable.

Joey acts as a vessel that brings American Soul to Ireland. He is able to transmit the basic tropes of Soul to the band, but does not seem genuine in his performance of the music. He specifically sets boundaries in what the band can perform, describing them as “corners.” He claims these corners are to prevent the band from delving into the realm of Jazz, a music that he believes is too intellectual and against the working man. This is troublesome because Jazz was created by working-class American blacks. He intentionally sets limits on the black music he is able to perform, showing that he worships black music but cannot access it entirely due to his distance from American black culture. Hints that point toward Joey being a wealthy man also lead to this conclusion because they show he is not a member of the working class, and therefore cannot properly connect with the music of the working man. He also seems to believe that he cannot genuinely perform Soul music due to his own lack of blackness.

Joey’s frustration with not being born black penetrates the novel in often uncomfortable ways. He describes some of the greatest Jazz musicians as not genuinely black and even goes as far to say Charlie Parker had “no right to his black skin.” This shows that he believes the ability to genuinely perform black music comes from having black skin, not entirely from musical talent. When the band inevitably breaks up, Joey comes to the conclusion that Soul just wasn’t right for Ireland, revealing that he does not believe non-blacks can have a genuine appreciation of black music. When Joey tells Jimmy that he is going back to America to perform with a dead artist, this implies that he has realized he is nothing more than an appropriator and ultimately cannot live as the great Soul artist he formerly saw himself as.

 

Beyond just the music played by the titular band, The Commitments also shows the variety of other ways in which the group adopts black identity, which can lead to issues of appropriation and misinterpretation of African-American culture.   In Joey the Lips’ insistence that the female back-up singers wear black when they perform, this literal costume shows both the band’s donning of the cultural facade of African-American identity and culture and hints towards Joey’s deep desire to possess and fetishize black bodies.   He constantly attempts to take leadership of the band because of the persona he creates for himself as a session player for countless blues and soul acts.  His sort of artificial blackness which he uses to gain the position of de facto leader is later revealed as a possible sham, touring with a dead musician in America. His seduction of the Commitmentettes despte their considerable age difference shows what lengths he will go to posses the image of blackness, both sexually and in his knowledge of soul music.

His criticism of Charlie Parker also shows Joey’s deep envy of “blackness,” feeling that Parker wastes his race and identity creating jazz music, whichb Joey feels is inauthentic to black culture and art because it is not simple enough.  This effectively exposes Joey’s love for “blackness” as superficial, without much concern for the artists themselves and only focusing upon how he can take what they have created and make it his own.  This performance acts as a kind of microcosm of Doyle’s subtext of the novel, in which these Irish characters can find connections to African-American art and expression but soon their wish to possess it more fully and place their own troubles upon the same level as that of African-American leads to failure, seen in the band’s quick ascent and later dissolution.

When Jimmy first starts working with the Commitmentettes, he also shows  desire to put on an authentic portrayal of soul music, even to the extent that he strips the girls of their distinct Irishness.  As he insists “An’ yis shouldn’t be usin’ your ordin’y accents either.  It’s Walking in the Rain, not Walkin’ In De Rayen,” this push for artistic authenticity poses threats to both the band’s Irish background and also the African-American songs which they perform.  By consciously switching their voices in order to fit the appropriate form for the song, they strop themselves of their Irish background for the sake of adopting another culture for their own.  Likewise, their goal to repurpose these songs for their own artistic performance suggests that black identity is something that can merely be switched on or off if you practice and learn it, which also severely undercuts the racial burdens of African-Americans.  Despite the clear love and admiration Doyle has for this culture, he shows in The Commitments that trying to quickly and effectively adapt a foreign identity and experiences has many problems, approaching the territory of appropriation.

Even though Doyle approaches this comparison from an economic and political lens, as African-Americans and Irish both suffer from broad societal issues of poverty and oppression, his use of the band’s efforts to bridge this transatlantic gap show that despite the great connections brought about the exchange of ideas, commodities, and identities, it opens up even more room for differences and inappropriate comparisons.

While Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments show us the different ways Irish and Irish-Americans understand the black experience, I begin to think about the influence of black culture on other cultures. For example, through Jimmy and Joey, they are without a doubt influenced by soul music, and are moved by it. And even though a genre of music may have been created by a specific group of people, it does not belong to any one person/ entity. With that being said, in class discussion there were a lot of questions surrounding Joey and his legitimacy within the group. While we have come to the conclusion that his role was more deceptive than reliable, I would argue against that position. I don’t argue that his tendencies and actions were problematic, but I am not quick to label him as a fraud.

We come to understand that there is a difference in status between Joey and other members of the group. Therefore, their understanding of the music, and of black culture will naturally be different from each other. Joey seemingly is in a better financial situation than Jimmy and the others, which not only alters his experience of black culture, but of Irish culture. In addition, aside from the knowledge of the music, Joey has been in direct contact with, and has experience first hand the impact of soul music, which should mean that he is legit. Arguably, just because he surrounded himself with “those people” doesn’t mean he knows anything about them or their experience (but the same could be said for the band). Nevertheless, he is impacted by the music in some way. Even if his facade is in fact pretend behavior, it was most likely influenced by American culture. I say this because, although we have discussed the disconnect between Irish and Irish-Americans, if in this instance Joey represents the Irish-American perspective, he doesn’t seem to be in conflict with the other members. By conflict I am referring to a misunderstanding of each other’s Irish background.  Because it doesn’t seem that their issues are about their Irishness, rather their understanding of black culture. 

Along those lines, we see through The Commitments that the connection was being made from class and struggle. Jimmy and the other members were not black but yet connected with the music and with the culture. They were trying to associate with it, while maintaining their Irishness within the music. Yes, Joey formed a false-connection with the culture, but his lack of knowledge does not determine whether or not he actually liked the music. He doesn’t have to be able to recite all soul artists, or know everything about black culture (even though he pretends to). Even if he just liked one specific song, it is clear that he was impacted enough to want to put on a “charade”.  Whether it was joy, hate, or envy, the music makes you feel a certain way, and in that way you are impacted by it. 

In addition, I would argue that many cultures misunderstand the black experience, including blacks. For example, was InDahomey a misunderstanding of black identity or a redefining of black identity? The backlash that they received from the black community would suggest that they were wrongfully altering the black experience. Nevertheless, how is what Joey doing different? Maybe because he’s Irish and the two experiences are not the same. This may be true, but when you involve the arts (theater and music), the lines definitely get blurred.

1. “Ethnicity is not something that influences Irish American’s lives unless they want it to” (Eagan 28). How does the meaning of gesturing to the African American experience change when it is out of want rather than need?
2. Specifically looking at Onkey’s discussion of the the 1863 New York draft riots (or applied to other instances), how can we reconcile the circum Atlantic identity with the direct interaction between Irish Americans and African Americans?

1. Since art (specifically music) is meant to be expressive and have “creative freedom”, should artist be exempt from misidentifying with African American culture.
2. Does the African-American/Irish analogy degrade both cultures because of the comparison between Black-Americans and Irish-Americans?  Also, do these analogies  connect the Irish to whiteness more than to blackness?