Felicia McCarren, "The Use-Value of 'Josephine Baker'" (page 4 of 5)

With the African material, dance steps transposed into a different context, we could say that Josephine's dancing creates a use value endimanché: these moves mean something else, somewhere else, even if here (in Europe, onstage) they are on display. These moves might also be seen as ultimately rejoining an African space that is the space of Africa created by photography and on film, the only way many Europeans would ever see it, as a filmic construct. The African material is not simply cited by Baker but, on film, reconnects to the space of Africa as it had been and was being filmed: bringing the world to the world, le monde tout proche, in the formulation of Louis Lumière.

This displacement of moves, the notion of the natural created by and through the artifice of film, what Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinématheque Française, described as "the natural that only 'primitives' manage to maintain in front of the camera"—is clearly seen in two cinematic moments from Josephine's oeuvre. First, there is the famous scene from Princesse Tam Tam in which Alwina strips off her glamorous garb and, presumably shaming her Pygmalian mentor, Max de Mirecourt, reveals her real identity to the Parisian elite gathered at the maharajah's ball.[video] But, of course, the entire scene is the creation of Max's novel and the set is a movie stage; Alwina's dance is a huge success, a Busby Berkeley-type floor show that reveals the Princesse de Parador, alias Alwina, and ultimately, Josephine as its star.

Princesse Tam Tam: Maharajah's Ball [Back to text]

Baker's dancing in the film serves as the key to her perception as an "uncivilized" colonial; it is posited as telling some inevitable truth about identity that dressing up cannot hide. The notion of dance as a revealing gesture, betraying origin and identity, is acted out as Alwina easily sheds the layer of proper European femininity and descends into a dance that turns out to be a high-tech industry spectacle, a "natural" in sync with the drums, but also highly produced. In Le Cinéma colonial au maghreb, Abdelkader Benali emphasizes the positioning of Alwina as uncivilized, dancing at the opening of the film for a group of children at the ruins at Dougga, a site of Roman civilization. It should be noted that the authenticity of the location shot is belied by the lack of concern about the cultural specificity of the music and dancing.

In Zou Zou, Baker plays both a free-spirited circus freak and a glamorous industry star. But the two stereotypes are also represented by two other actresses we see on screen: the "natural" uncredited dancer of color [video] who appears in a port in Manila and the "industry product," Miss Barbara, the platinum-haired star played by Ila Meery. In the scene immediately following the dance in the Manila port, the action shifts to Zou Zou in France. As she clowns for a little French girl [video], her freedom of movement—although not the moves themselves—recalls that of the woman we have just seen with the label "born dancing." Zou Zou jumps from the table, picks the child up in her arms, spins her around, and lands her on the ground. Then, during the ensuing dialogue, Zou Zou reaches to pull down her skirt, caught between her legs, and leaves her hand on her skirt, a small gesture, but with tremendous resonance.

Zou Zou: Dancing Girl [Back to text]

Zou Zou: Clowning [Back to text]

Baker's back is to the camera, and the skirt is pulled down not for the viewer, but for an internalized public, represented here by the little girl. Beyond the film's story of the mainstreaming of Zou Zou the circus performer, her "whitening" alongside the French working-class women in the laundry, and the caging and staging of her talent, this gesture reads as one choreographed by Josephine herself. This small gesture, which would be unthinkable in her tiny feathered costume on her swing in her birdcage, reveals that freedom of movement includes a gesture of propriety as natural as a movement of abandon. While the bird costume, like the banana costume, stages the question of the liberation of the body (needing to be caged, or consumed), the "Haiti" number [video] enacts the structure of this already-present censure, or self-restraint, that constructs the frame of Josephine's liberating moves. This self-possession is the other side of the possession often projected onto her dancing.

Zou Zou: Haiti [Back to text]

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