The dark side of the farce: racism in early cinema, 1894–1915

Abstract

ABSTRACT In its title sequences, the Keystone Comedy Studio referred to its films as a “farce comedy.” Farces are supposed to evoke laughter. Yet, from the very first images projected, dark racist images were prevalent and these representations contain violent imagery directed toward African American men, women and children. These images represent a time capsule of what I call the dark side of the farce. Because of the popularity and prevalence of certain types of films, it is conceivable that these films reflect consumer tastes unique to the time period in which they were produced. And while books, newspapers and periodicals are valuable resources for reconstructing past opinions, these sources may only have reached a limited audience. On the other hand, at its inception the motion picture was viewed by a diverse audience that included immigrants, the working poor, women and children. Hence, while films are not in any sense commensurate with polling, they are one tool that helps us to understand how people at the turn of the twentieth century perceived issues of race. Millions of Americans attended the movies daily. What they saw were the kinds of movies that were produced and these productions provide one valuable insight regarding public attitudes toward race. In this article, I examine films made between 1894 and 1915 as a reflection of the public attitudes of the time. I focus on comedy films because this was the only genre that existed literally from the projection of the first motion pictures to the middle of the twentieth-century’s second decade. I end the analysis with 1915 because after that year feature films became more dominant in theaters, while virtually all of the films discussed in this article are short subjects, ranging from 30 seconds to approximately 15 minutes.