Article written together with Giedre Degutytė
According
to Annie Fratellini, a clown who performed in the mid-70s,
clowns don’t have gender, they are neither man nor woman, but
‘something different’. Gender-neutral. A clown is just a clown. While that may not be true for all clowns, a lot of them like to actually play with feminin or masculin gender, it does say a lot about Annie who said to never have really felt like a woman, but always have felt more like a clown. For that
reason, Annie choose to have an adrogynous oversized clown costume and refrain from speaking during performances.
(1989: 164) Thus, what is referred to as ‘cross-dressed’ costume
by, for example, Paul Bouissac (2015: 58), is meant to be
‘gender-neutral’ by Annie.
How
do we recognise gender as clown, anyway?
By
appearance, could be one of the possibilities. Could the style of the
oversized clothes serve as the detached symbol of clown (like the
nose or shoes), i.e. no longer gendered? Maybe. If clown fashion
exists, Annie’s costume might
also be identified as ‘clowned’. Nonetheless, there is more than clothes to consider in
terms of clown identity as being constructed and performed. Annie was
revolutionary not only for wearing ‘male-clowned’ clothes but
also for their androgynous auguste. But it's not just the costume, it's also the way Annie moves in them. Even in daily life, Annie claims to have heard men saying: ‘What a pity, she looks cute, but she walks like a
clown.’ (1977: 95) Which is not just sexist, it may also been seen as misgendering of an androgynous person.
***
Earlier,
performer Josephine Baker exposed her female body to the world, while at the same time
exploiting the eroticism
and exoticism of the 1920s in Europe. In Paris at that time, it was
quite normal for women to dance naked, not for black women though. It
was also quite normal to have open-air exhibitions of ‘villages’
with black people,
‘showing’ Parisians what the colonial world looks like.
Josephine’s dancing body was a combination of these two things that
were normal at that time, yet the way she merged them was
revolutionary. Sadly, the original footage of her famous banana
skirt dance doesn’t exist, but this
version captures its essence too:
Dancing
with naked or covered breasts, in the banana skirt or marabou
feathers, dressed in the ragamuffin costume or not
wearing anything really – Josephine
explodes with the sexualised representation of her gender and race.
She makes use of the most stereotypical image one could possibly have
of black people and especially, black women:
While
exposing her femininity in a very explicit way, she was rarely adored
simply as a woman, but as ‘something different’. As one Parisian
commentator described her performance in 1925:
Woman
or man? Her lips are painted black, her skin is the color of bananas,
her cropped hair sticks to her head like caviar, her voice squeaks.
She is in constant motion, her body writhing like a snake or more
precisely like a dripping saxophone. Music seems to pour from her
body. She grimaces, crosses her eyes, puffs out her cheeks, wiggles
disjointedly, does a split and finally crawls off the stage
stiff-legged, her rump higher than her head, like a young giraffe.
(Baker and Bouillon, 1995: 55)
Or
as social critic Theodor Lessing commented on her performance in
Berlin:
She
dances so primitively and so genderless that one doesn’t know if
one is watching a girl or a lovely boy.
(Nenno, 1997: 155)
The
sexual element of Josephine Bakers' nudity, on the other hand, her banana skirt or her buttocks
shaking rapidly always blurs with the primitive-as-childlike
crossing-eyes and folding knees. As Sowinska argues:
The
banana skirt was an embodiment of Baker’s contradictory character —
engaged in constant dialectics between the savage and the civilized,
the humorous and the glamorous, the seduction and the menace,
childish naiveté and conscious self-creation
[…]. (2006: 52)
Following
the idea that clowns are like ‘innocent children’ it would make sense to think that their sex(uality)
is of no importance for – and
should have no place in – their
performance. Although there are even childlike, ‘innocent’ ways
to play around with gender and sexuality, of course. But I think the
way Josephine uses her sexuality goes further than that. As a
performer, she seems to be aware of her sensuality and uses it as an
adult woman, not as a little naive girl. Okay, so maybe she’s not a
clown? But she is generally considered to be and if for the sake of
the argument we decide to agree for a moment that she is... Then,
what makes this grown-up person’s sexuality clown?
Not
the fact that it’s ‘innocent’, but simply the fact that it’s
ridiculous. The fact that she makes fun of it. Absent from
hesitation, Josephine seems very receptive to everything that is
happening around her. It looks like she is having a conversation with
herself, but I don't care what it is about. With a sense of parody,
Josephine confirms and challenges the conventions by pointing at
nothing in particular albeit her-self. ‘It is the intelligence of
my body that I exploited,’ as Josephine quoted saying. (Hammond
and O'Connor,
1988: 90)
In
America, when she was younger Josephine was often called 'too ugly,
too skinny, too dark'. While at the same time her mother used to
bully her for being not dark enough as she reminded her of
Josephine's father. She was never enough and then she used it and
turned it around. She didn’t become beautiful in Paris. She just
made use of how others perceived her and added her perception.
***
You
will be a sensation – the first Negro to dance nude on the stage in
Paris. The first in the world!’’ Dance nude? Josephine shivered,
suddenly cold. […] ‘But I am a comic, miss. A clown? Remember?’
‘Yes, you are. You will make them laugh, yes, even as they are
adoring your wonderful dancer’s body.’ (Jones,
2018: 117)
They
had the idea to dress me with a belt of bananas! Oh! How people
ridiculed this idea! And how many drawings and caricatures came out
of it. Only the devil, supposedly, could have invented such a thing.
(Baker and Chase, 1993: 135)
Who
cares whose idea the banana skirt was? It was never just about the
costume, but the way Josephine danced and presented herself. Though there cases are clearly not the same, both Annie and Josephine constructed and
deconstructed their clown identities on what others took for granted.
While Annie was constantly reminded of ‘not being a man',
Josephine – exactly the opposite – of being a woman, but a
different one. Instead of disguising it though, Josephine embraced
her difference by mocking her sexuality, while simultaneously mocking
her audience for being hypnotised by it. It’s a (new) form of
(black) femininity which Josephine introduces by enacting and
negotiating between the sensual and the comic. While Annie is androgynous by experience and lets humor derive from things that are not gender related, Josephine exposes feminity up to a point where it becomes ridiculous. What both have in common is that there's a shift from being a ‘lust object’
to being a ‘laughter object’,
what they, obviously, preferred.
References:
Destin
de clown by Annie Fratellini (1989)
Josephine:
The Hungry Heart by Jean-Claude Baker
and Chris Chase (1993)
Josephine
by Josephine Baker and Jo Bouillon (1995)
"Femininity,
the Primitive, and Modern Urban Space: Josephine Baker in Berlin by
Nancy Nenno (1997)
Dialectics
of the Banana Skirt: The Ambiguities of Josephine Baker’s
Self-Representation by Alicja Sowinska (2005/2006)
The
semiotics of clown and clowning by Paul
Bouissac (2015)
Josephine
Baker’s last dance by Sherry Jones
(2018)
*
Joséphine
Baker - Première icône noire:
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