Racial considerations of minstrel shows and related images in Canada
By: by Lorraine Le Camp.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 472
Subjects: Minstrel shows -- Canada -- History.; Blackface entertainers -- Canada.; Blacks -- Canada -- History -- Errors, inventions, etc.; Blacks in mass media; Stereotypes (Social psychology) -- Canada.; Prejudices -- Canada.; Racism -- Canada.; Social perception -- Canada.
Description: This study demonstrates that public performances are powerful tools which inculcate in the viewer particular beliefs and practices that support and uphold the values and goals of dominant mainstream White Euro-Canadian society. It is argued that popular culture and educational institutions are informal and formal sites of interconnected learning by which racist and sexist ideologies are produced and reproduced within Canadian society; therefore such related educational activities are the context where practices of "Othering" are formulated. Drawing an analogy to a medical physiological virus, traveling blackface minstrel shows, much like a destructive social plague, visited and infected almost every community by conveying overt and covert messages that debased African-Canadians to those who were yet unacquainted with same, or legitimizing and reinforcing existing negative stereotypes of the "Other." As forms of popular entertainment, early blackface minstrel stage shows, individual performances and related advertising materials were powerful instructive instruments that impacted, in different ways and to various degrees, on individuals due to differences in their age, maturity and level of formal education.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 436-470).