Latin Blackness in Parisian Visual Culture, 1852–1932 by Lyneise E. Williams

Abstract

Reviewed by: Latin Blackness in Parisian Visual Culture, 1852–1932 by Lyneise E. Williams Lena Hill Lyneise E. Williams. Latin Blackness in Parisian Visual Culture, 1852–1932. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. $130.00 (cloth); $34.95 (paper); $31.45 (eBook). Whoever thought Josephine Baker's banana skirt might represent a sly critique of the commercial inadequacy and declining colonial power of France? In Latin Blackness in Parisian Visual Culture, 1852–1932, Lyneise Williams begins her keen analysis of French visual interpretations of Latin American immigrants in Paris by provocatively rereading Baker's iconic fruity attire. Miguel Covarrubias, the Mexican designer of the skirt, had long challenged European claims of artistic superiority. Noting this, Williams traces the conspicuous increase in banana imports to France from the Caribbean from 1897 to 1924—drawing attention to the specific banana varieties that likely comprised Baker's skirt—to suggest Covarrubias's familiarity with banana commerce inspired his decision to drape an African American woman in a skirt that symbolically embodies a failure of French capitalism in the Spanish Americas compared to rising US commercial dominance. In other words, Williams argues that as a Latin American's creative work, Baker's heavily codified banana skirt symbolizes much more than primitive sexual potency. With this disruption of established readings of Baker as the French epitome of primitivist modern Black femininity, Williams provocatively poses the broader question her study probes: what do we miss about French depictions of modern identity when we fail to understand their aggressive regulation of popular interpretations of elite immigrants from Latin America arriving in Paris from 1852 to 1932? Williams recovers what she describes as the Parisian "Latinizing" tendency, or their application of visual strategies that justified their promulgation of the inferiority of the Spanish and Portuguese populations they encountered during the eighty-year period when France pursued control over Latin America. Focusing on three case studies, Williams patiently peels back the layers covering distinct Latin American figures to reveal the complicated projections Parisians developed to define these immigrants as Black outsiders regardless of their phenotypic appearance. With careful historical contextualization, Williams details the Parisian attempt to affix a tripartite marking of European, African, and Indigenous Indian ancestry to the Latin American arrivals they sought to exclude from French society. In building the foundation for her study, Williams returns to critical venues such as the 1855 Exposition Universelle to demonstrate the sometimes subtle but persistent methods Parisians employed to substantiate their disparaging characterization of Latin Americans. For instance, A. Marc's 1885 engraving of Francisco Laso's Habitante de las cordilleras del Perú (Inhabitant of the Peruvian Highlands) reveals how the French artist and critic A. J. Pay intentionally revises Laso's depiction of a figure who appears more distinctly indigenous and African than Laso's original portrayal of the character with a more pre-Colombian appearance. Turning to the stage, Williams examines the play Le Brésilien (The Brazilian) to trace the creation of the character Acapulco, a wealthy Brazilian coffee planter whose appearance and inelegant speech highlight his desperate need for French guidance to assimilate into high society. Photographs from the production show Acapulco with darkened skin and prosthetics that exaggerate his mouth and nose. Williams explains that the stereotype that emerged made a lasting impression on Parisian audiences that evolved into the development of the term "rastaquouère" which was an "over-the-top comically showy depiction of Latin Americans" (37). This derogatory characterization quickly migrated beyond the stage to magazine covers and other popular visual media. With this established stereotype, Williams devotes chapter 2 to a nuanced examination of Chocolat the clown, and in so doing she exposes the intricate blossoming of the seed planted by the rastaquouère. While a cursory consideration of Rafael Padilla's performance as Chocolat might place him in the well-established role of a Black minstrel or primitive, Williams investigates Chocolat's character in stage performances, silent films, and print advertisements to reveal the multifaceted ways Parisian audiences interpreted the clown over the years in different venues. Chocolat rose to fame as part of a pantomime duo with British performer George Footit, and for the most part, his character assumed...