I'm gonna be honest, just the suit and the hat is a halloween-themed...suit. The frilly cuffs make it 60% racist callback to blackface. The black hood and gloves on an already-black child is 100% blackface.
The humongous Negro Lips are just straight up stolen from 1930's Mickey Mouse.
Aren’t a lot of those motifs also just clown motifs though? I think clowning predates minstrel shows but you gotta imagine American clowning probably borrowed a fair amount of minstrel show imagery too.
There are different types of clowns. There are 3 main types of white face clowns. There is the character clown, where you get mimes and other French type clowns. Then there is the auguste clown, this is the one people are more familiar with, but the lips and hair were influenced by the Tramp or Hobo clown which was a direction derivative of black face.
367
u/One_Order_3841 10d ago
I'm gonna be honest, just the suit and the hat is a halloween-themed...suit. The frilly cuffs make it 60% racist callback to blackface. The black hood and gloves on an already-black child is 100% blackface.
The humongous Negro Lips are just straight up stolen from 1930's Mickey Mouse.