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Many cartoon
characters have just four fingers---to mark their world as like the human
and animal worlds, but different. They also usually wear white gloves---a
genealogical trace of the cartoons's origins in blackface and then vaudeville,
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century forms of theatre where the various
characters all had white gloves to "mark" them as recognizable
characters. (Early- and middle-period Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons often
incorporated racist comic characters and routines directly from blackface
entertainment as well. Moral: if you think such pop entertainments are somehow
free of the blindness of their times, think again.) Both Porky Pig and pals
and the Wolf wore gloves, and nobody minded: gloves in the early cartoons
just seemed "natural." And they persisted in cartoon characters
long after vaudeville and blackface entered the netherspace of American
historical memory (that is, amnesia).
Here is Mickey in a classic pose, from a 1990s rendering:
Time to make a time jump now.
Mickey's pose above is taken directly from the
vaudeville/blackface stage shows popular just a few decades earlier, back
into the 19th century.
Check out the gloves and pose of Al Jonson in blackface
singing "Mammy," his arms outspread, in the first "talking
picture" [movie], 1927:
Now no one's claiming that our icon Mickey is really
in blackface, though lots of his face is black. Rather, it's the pose and
the props (the gloves)--for the early fans of Mickey in the 1930s especially,
they would have understood the connection easily, because vaudeville and
blackface was a living memory.
Jolson may have been the most popular stage singer
for whites in the first half of the 20th century, in part because he helped
"ethnic" European immigrants to urban America become both "American"
and "white" via the use of blackface routines. Jolson himself
was Jewish, as was his character in The Jazz Singer, and via the
medium of blackface performance he loses his "ethnic" Jewish identity
and becomes American, performing "American" music rather than
the synagogue singing his father wants him to devote himself to. He even
changes his name from Jakie Rabinowitz to Jack Robin!---all through the
power of blacking up, and wearing those gloves.
Jolson's story was popular enough to be revived
frequently into the 1950s, when seismic cultural changes brought upon by
civil rights struggles made Jolson's whole blackface routines seem suddenly
not just dated but embarrassing to many. (There are fansites on the Web,
though.) Before the 1960s, blackface routines were routinely accepted in
popular Hollywood movies---so popular, in fact, that the plots were often
absurdly manipulated just to be able to introduce minstrel/blackface song
and dance: cf. Bing Crosby's hugely popular "White Christmas,"
where the blackface routines done by all the stars gives a whole new meaning
to the movie's title. Later Disney stuff played with vaudeville and blackface
too, especially the notorious Song of the South, based on the Uncle
Remus stories, which isn't shown much anymore because its contents now seem
so racist they make even black mouse ears blush.
Video
game heroes may be millennial cyber upgrades of cartoons, but they rarely
wear white gloves. Instead, they prefer black gloves made of black leather
or a synthetic equivalent.
For example:
Lara Croft; Crash Bandicoot; a ToughGrrrl drawn
by Alphonso Go, a girl in the Philippines; another drawn by a pro:
 
 
Cultural sources for these black gloves?
Pro Wrestling gloves? 
Hollywood action films, especially solo renegade villain/heroes like Han
Solo and Indiana Jones
gun gloves for shooting (police, military, gun clubs)
mountain/downhill biker gloves; motocross and motorcycle riding gloves
driving gloves---esp. NASCAR? but these tend to be whole-hand gloves, to
protect against burns
Madonna's gloves, early and late. (Note: Madonna may be the only heroine
equally attracted to black leather gloves and silk gown gloves)
Xena's leather gloves (and other body armor)
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- anime heroines? Princess Mononoke?
other sources?
With gloves, what is the meaning of this shift from blackface white to kombat
black? Don't search for answers by assuming that white gloves must be benign
while black gloves symbolize violence. Blackface's white gloves and open
hand masked a fist, a disguised form of cultural violence. And if white
gloves were worn by both heroes and villains in cartoons, black gloves similarly
are worn by the good guys n girls and the bad in cyber/playstation space....
Sometimes
women action figures have a black full-body-hugging suit to go with black
gloves (or not).
Cultural sources for this "action" suit
for women?
Emma Peel (The Avengers, 1960s British TV; the best Emma
Peel in the series was Diana Rigg. She always wound up wearing it just
before she got in a fight. The suit had a dumb nickname: "Emmapeelers."
Emma Peel pioneered the bare midriff look for an action figure too, long
before Emma, I mean Lara, Croft.) But how much cultural sophistication
(as opposed to weapons knowledge) is Lara given, compared to Emma Peel?
Catwoman (Batman). Catwoman become part of the Batman comix in the
early '40s. Did she have a "catsuit" and black gloves? Artist:
Bob Kane. Writer: Bill Fingers.
The rise of leotards in popularity (beginning in the 50s, though especially
after?), from the dance world?
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But go farther back: Kali, the Hindu goddess. You don't need so big an equipment
belt (like Lara wears) if you've lots of arms:
The next Levels try to come back to some of these
gender questions from other angles and feints. As in Grrrr-l.
In the meantime, let's end with this:
Most game and 'toon action heroes have their gender
very sharply drawn: no gray areas.
But some do not: Sheik, for example.
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(ideology:
Hand-in-Glove with Entertainment) |
