African American Apparel Character Analysis

African American Apparel Character Analysis

The times are changing. It is the close of the 19th century and clothes, music and entertainment (to some extent) are changing to keep up with the times. One thing, however, seems to remain the same...the mistreatment and misrepresentation of African American's in society, especially when portrayed through theater. This is clearly evident through the Virginia Minstrel shows and their use of "Stock Characters" which play on the harsh and demeaning stereotypes society had created about them. Quite sad really, to look back at these shows and understand how popular they were, even though they blatantly demoralized the race they were depicting. Minstrel shows at this time used what was called "Stock Characters". Stock characters were based on the stereotypes against African Americans and each had specific attributes that would make them the target of many jokes. Meanwhile, these characters were so stereotypical that it was easy to write a script for these shows. For ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...These stock characters names were Jim Crow, Zip Coon and either Mr. Tambo or Mr. Samba. One character, very easy to pick out, in my opinion, would be Zip Coon. Some of his features that stood out were that his clothes were a little garish and audacious. In other words, the outfits he wore were over the top and out of place for where he was. Another attribute is that his speech sounds so illiterate while his sentence structure and wording made him sound unintelligent. Various stories depicted the Zip Coon character as someone who sometimes gets duped into doing a job for someone or flirting with a white woman. Zip Coon, and the others, were very easy to write for due to the fact that they were based on stereotypes and their original stories were spoken. So in the end of all of this, the writers could make these stories up to be anyway they want just go around the stock

... Get more on HelpWriting.net ...