ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

Illusionistic sketches of two dancers, an acrobat, a singer, and a pianist mix with sketches
of three clowns, one a blackface guitar player. The blackface clown’s exaggerated facial
features seem almost apelike next to the smooth, naturalistic features of the ballerina.
The ballerina’s light cocoa complexion, provocative outfit, and delicate form suggest the
cultural hypocricy that made Josephine Baker a star. 196 The whiteface clowns are more
exaggerated, suggesting that more humorous displays by the Podrecca marionettes were
accomplished by more distorted objects. At a time when only African American female
performers with light skin and less visibly ethnic features were enshried with the emblem
of stardom, Podrecca’s star puppet is only vaguely stamped with the exaggerations of
blackface. At a time when more ethnic-looking actors were relegated to more
stereotyped roles, Podrecca’s minstrels are radically ethnicized.
Hastings would have been attracted to Podrecca’s variety style. She reported
disliking every quality of Remo Bufano’s Orlando Furioso in Fantastic Fricassee except
the comedic action, rejecting his “hurriedly made and crudely finished” folk puppets. 197
Bufano’s work, discussed in the next section, was radically experimental. Hastings may
have been rejecting what was not, as she perceived it, a lack of artistic integrity, but a
lack of realism. But this distinction does not appear to have entered her mind. For her, it
seems, professionally made puppets must be realistic. In her guide, she advised
196 One characteristic of white/black relations in America is a cultural politics that make lightskinned
African American women acceptable for “celebrity status,” and forced darker women to play
domestics or other stock roles. The interesting contradiciton of Josephine Baker’s career is that she was
considered a little too dark at first, but later accepted as “light enough.” Discussed throughout: Kathy
Russell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall, The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color among African
Americans (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992).
197
Dorlis M. Grubidge, Sue Hastings: Puppet Showwoman (North Vancouver: Charlemagne
Press, 1993), 28.
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