Performativity and representation in transnational blackface: Mammy (USA), Zwarte Piet (Netherlands), and Haji Firuz (Iran)

Abstract

ABSTRACTOriginating in the 1820s minstrelsy entertainment shows, blackface in American cultural history was the wearing of black theatrical makeup by white actors who portrayed African-American fictional characters and real individuals in mocking and racist stereotypes. This article explores comparative blackface performativity and representation depicted in three transnational contexts exemplified by Mammy, USA; Zwarte Piet, Netherlands; and Haji Firuz, Iran. In the West, Mammy and Zwarte Piet are relatively well-known blackface figures derived from the repercussions of trans-Atlantic slavery. Less familiar, Haji Firuz is the blackface troubadour who joyfully heralds annual Nowruz celebrations in Iran and its Diaspora. Appropriating history, visual art, and theoretical approaches discussing race, gender, class, and carnivalesque performance, I contend that Haji Firuz emerged from an amalgamation of pre-Islamic ritualized enactments, Indian Ocean world slavery, and the vicissitudes of the African presence in Iran. A necessary paradigmatic shift regarding problematic blackface performativity and its racial wounding will contribute to “demasking” blackface in its myriad manifestations through social transformation.