Behind the Screen: Tap Dance, Race, and Invisibility During Hollywood's Golden Age
Brynn Shiovitz
Oxford University Press
Introducing a new theory of covert minstrelsy, this book illumines Hollywood’s practice of capitalizing on the Africanist aesthetic at the expense of Black lived experience.
The book looks at how and why outdated racial content, and specifically blackface minstrelsy, was not only permitted but in fact thrived during the 1930s and 1940s, despite the rigid motion picture censorship laws enforced during this time.
The book also recuperates the stories of several of the Black artists whose labor was abused during the choreographic and filming process. Behind the Screen recovers the visibility of Black artists whose names Hollywood omitted from the credits and whose identities America has written out of the national narrative.