Claudine Raynaud, "Foil, Fiction, and Phantasm: 'Josephine Baker' in Princess Tam Tam" (page 10 of 10)

Other moments can be seen as direct allusions to Baker's lifestyle: she had a car and was a hopeless driver. She is shown at the opera, at the races. Baker owned a horse called Tomate. A photograph shows her in satin clothes riding a horse and competing with a jockey. The painting that the maharajah acquires in the film is an actual portrait of Baker. Other elements belong to a wider autobiographical script that the numerous memoirs help to reconstruct, albeit while introducing inaccuracies and pregnant silences. Baker was the symbol of the new woman, the garçonne, much like Max de Mirecourt's wife. The dance routine in the bar belongs to the star's earlier repertoire. It is a mixture of different dance steps that can be traced back to Baker's dancing career, first on the black vaudeville circuit in America and then on Broadway. A vestige of her difficult childhood, her love for food is also reported in her Mémoires, featuring African American recipes. One popular anecdote describes how she was once found naked in her dressing room eating lobster with her hands (M, 75). When Coton tries to find her to introduce her to the press, Alwina is shown eating rice with her bare hands and stuffing it disgracefully in her mouth.

If colonial overtones cannot be fully erased by these autobiographical references, the motion of come and go between the fictional—which, one must remember, is cast as a comedy and a satire of high society—and the autobiographical complicates the reading of the film. It disrupts the binary opposition between object and subject, or rather, between being mere "material" in the words of the other and being the author of one's own life. The final word—the ending of the 1949 Mémoires—belongs to Baker herself: "Americans had the idea of making a film out of my life. And they had asked Lena Horne to play the role of Josephine, quite simply.... Americans are like that. But I am the one who will play the film of my life" (M, 299). Princess Tam Tam's structure, with its embedded narrative directly relying on Baker's actual life transformation, proves that. In 1935 she starred in a film that explored the fictional potential of her life story and foregrounded her role as the ultimate performer of her own destiny. The fiction at the heart of the plot exposed the Pygmalion story as a phantasm, a scene in which desire (of the other) could readily lead to the reversal of the positions of foil and foreground.

Endnotes

1. The quotations are from the following edition: Les Mémoires de Joséphine Baker, collected and adapted by Marcel Sauvage (Paris: Dilecta, 2006), hereafter referred to as M. The translations are mine. Princesse Tam Tam was directed by Edmond T. Gréville (Arys Production, 1935). All references to Princess Tam Tam are to the 2005 Kino version. [Return to text]

2. Aouina, the French transcription of the Arabic, is spelled "Alwina" in the Kino DVD version. That the name has been chosen on purpose is made clear by a reference in the film to Alwina as a "source of trouble" by Coton. See Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (Champaign-Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 95. [Return to text]

3. A la page means somebody who follows the fashion of the day according to the books. [Return to text]

4. Freudian terminology is used throughout the text, and "phantasm" is consequently defined in light of Jean Laplanche, J.B. Pontalis and Gilles Deleuze's work as a "scene." The evolution of the Freudian notion from a real seduction of the daughter (the seduction theory) to a construction is crucial to the understanding of the concept. Phantasms of seduction are disguises. See Laplanche and Pontalis, "Phantasme originaire, phantasme des origines et origines du phantasme" Les Temps modernes 19 (1964) 1833-68; English translation: "Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality," The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 19:1 (1968) 1-18; Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris: PUF, 1968); Logique du sens (Paris: Editions de minuit, 1969). Alwina's seduction by Max de Mirecourt is the phantasm transcribed in his novel. [Return to text]

5. See Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie (Paris: Gallimard Seuil, 1980), p. 17. See also Claudine Raynaud, "Visual and Textual Selves" in Peter Vernon, ed. Seeing Things: Literature and the Visual, Papers from the Fifth International British Council Symposium, GRAAT 19, Tours: PUFR, 2005, 45-59. [Return to text]

6. Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire: Note sur la photographie (Paris: Gallimard Seuil, 1980), p. 54. [Return to text]

7. On the notion of star and stardom in French films of the period, see Claude Gauteur and Ginette Vincendeau, Jean Gabin: Anatomie d'un mythe (Paris: Editions nouveau monde, 2006). [Return to text]

8. Elisabeth Coquart and Philippe Huet, Mistinguett: La Reine des années folles (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996). [Return to text]

9. Her preface to Mon sang dans tes veines (Paris: Isis, 1931) explains that the heroine Joan would have preferred the country of Devotion (le pays du Dévouement) to the pearls and diamonds showered on her: "While biting into fruit stolen here and there from large baskets, Joan and I made a thousand plans to escape along the big river, and to flee an unjust continent. ... We would reach a country where they would treat us like fairy tale princesses. We would dance, we would sing, covered with diamonds, pearls, and feathers, under lights much brighter than African suns" (p. 6, translation mine). [Return to text]

10. My analysis runs counter to Phyllis Rose's comment: "If in real life it all began with desire, in the film versions of her transformation, all traces of desire are erased. Neither Zou Zou nor Aouina, the heroine of Princesse Tam Tam, is responsible for her own change. Each is the passive object of the other's activity." Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 164. [Return to text]

11. See Andy Fry's reading of Baker's performance in Offenbach's La Créole in view of the changes made by the librettist to use the opera as a shrine for Baker's talent: "Du jazz hot à La Créole: Josephine Baker sings Offenbach," Cambridge Opera Journal 16: 1, 2004, 43-75. See also Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, Josephine Baker: Image and Icon (St Louis, Missouri: Reedy Press, 2006); Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (Champaign-Urbana: Illinois University Press, 2006). [Return to text]

12. Rivière, Joan. "Womanliness as Masquerade." The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10 (1929) in Formation of Fantasy. Eds. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (New York: Methuen, 1986), 35-44. [Return to text]

13. Marcel Sauvage was a journalist and a writer who claims that he harbored some "affection" for the black world in the preface to Pierre Massoni's Haïti, reine des Antilles (Paris: Nouvelles éditions latines, 1955), p. 8. He is the author of Les Secrets de l'Afrique noire (Paris: Grasset aventures, 1981). Only a close look at the manuscript, if available, might help assess what was Baker's and what was Sauvage's own import to what the readers are given here as Baker's voice. One knows that her opinions on World War II were excised from the Mémoires and that she had a quarrel with Sauvage at one point in their collaboration. [Return to text]

14. See Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): "The plot is a metaphor for Baker's own story; it echoes the revivification trope underlying the dynamics of primitivism" (p. 108). [Return to text]

15. Biographies also mention Tangiers as another possible location. [Return to text]

16. Baker mentions that she was often taken for an Arab in Tunisia: "Between takes, people hail me in Arabic, and naturally, I understand nothing. They became quite aggressive at times. I questioned our interpreter who informed me that the Arabs, convinced that I am one of them, wondered with certain vehemence why I didn't answer them. This proves how well cast I have been." Joséphine Baker and Jo Bouillon, Joséphine (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976), p. 143, translation mine. English translation by Mariana Fitzpatrick, (New York: Marlowe and Company, 1988), p. 100. [Return to text]

17. Tahar is named Dar (house in Arabic) in the subtitles of the Kino version. [Return to text]

18. The French established numerous counters in India in the 16th century (Pondichery, Zanzibar, Chandernagor), and their influence prevailed over a large part of India's territory in the 18th century. [Return to text]

19. Joséphine Baker and Jo Bouillon, Joséphine (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976), pp. 100-101. [Return to text]

20. Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 18. [Return to text]

21. Alexander Calder's iron-wire sculpture of Josephine Baker (1927-29) also features a coil at its center and for the breasts. [Return to text]

22. These two stage props often act as transitions between sets. [Return to text]

23. Julia Kristeva, La Révolte intime (discours direct): Pouvoirs et limites de la psychanalyse. (Paris: Fayard, 1997), pp. 136-137 (translation mine). [Return to text]

24. The congas used in Cuba are called the tumbadoras. From African instruments of Ashanti, Fan, Bantu and Yoruba origin, they are the product of the creolization that derives from the migration of African peoples during the slave trade. These instruments, like many other percussion instruments, have benefited from a considerable number of improvements to achieve the desired form and tension. [Return to text]

25. "If I don't get love, I will get a name ... Bird of the Islands" (M, 158). [Return to text]

26. Claude Gauteur and Ginette Vincendeau, Jean Gabin: Anatomie d'un mythe (Paris: Editions nouveau monde, 2006), pp. 232-239. [Return to text]

27. In Zou Zou, Jean Gabin is the one who ends up in jail. [Return to text]

28. Baker also starred in a fourth film, The French Way (1945). [Return to text]

29. See Petrine Archer-Straw, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000); Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Michel Fabre, "International Beacons of African-American Memory: Alexandre Dumas père, Henry O. Tanner and Josephine Baker" in Geneviève Fabre and Robert O'Mealy, eds. History and Memory in African American Culture (New York: 1994), 122-129; Terri Francis, "Embodied Fictions, Melancholy Migrations: Josephine Baker's Cinematic Celebrity" MFS, Vol. 51, 4, Winter 2005, 824-844. For the more specific literary context, see Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Black Paris: The African Writer's Landscape (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois, 1998); Michel Fabre, From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France 1840-1980 (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991). [Return to text]

30. See Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994). [Return to text]

31. Josephine Baker thought that she should have married the maharajah. She claims that Pepito Abatino is responsible for the ending. Baker is reported as having a love affair with a real maharajah. [Return to text]

32. Here is the list of the memoirs and autobiographies: Les Mémoires de Joséphine Baker, recueillis et adaptés par Marcel Sauvage avec 30 dessins inédits de Paul Colin (Paris: Kra éditeur, 1927); Les Voyages et aventures de Joséphine Baker par Marcel Sauvage (Paris: Editions Marcel Sheur, 1931), Préface de Fernand Divoire, avec photos et dessins; André Rivollet, Joséphine Baker: Une vie de toutes les couleurs (Grenoble: B. Arthaud, 1935); Les Mémoires de Joséphine Baker, recueillis et adaptés par Marcel Sauvage (Paris: Correa 1949); Jacques Abtey, La Guerre secrète de Joséphine Baker (Paris: Siboney, 1948). Josephine Baker, Jo Bouillon and Piet Worms, La Tribu arc-en-ciel (Paris: Opera Mundi, 1957). [Return to text]

33. It may be the 1968 testament letter referred to by Bonini in La Véritable Joséphine Baker (Paris: Pygmalion, 2000), p. 279. [Return to text]

34. Josephine Baker and Jo Bouillon, Joséphine (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976), p. xii. [Return to text]

35. Collaborative autobiography always poses the vexed question of authorship. See Philippe Lejeune, Je est un autre: L'autobiographie de la littérature aux médias (Paris: Seuil, 1980). [Return to text]

36. On the artistic relationship between Colin and Baker, see Karen C.C. Dalton and Henry Louis Gates Jr., "Josephine Baker and Paul Colin: African American Dance Seen Through Parisian Eyes," Critical Inquiry 24 (Summer 1998), 903-934. [Return to text]

37. See Claudine Raynaud, "L'Espace autobiographique et la construction d'une vedette de music-hall: Les mémoires de Joséphine Baker." Unpublished paper, "Genèse et Autobiographie," ITEM-CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 16 January 2007. [Return to text]

38. See Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie (Paris: Seuil, 1980), p. 49. Within the scope of this paper, I can only allude to some of these overlaps. [Return to text]

39. For a more thorough analysis of the generic implications of this effect, see Claudine Raynaud, "Les Mémoires et les films de Joséphine Baker ou l'espace autobiographique comme construction en miroir." Unpublished paper from the Conference "Self-Writing in the Americas," Université de Versailles-St Quentin, 20 June 2007. [Return to text]

40. It was also a nickname for Baker in her earlier career. [Return to text]

41. Baker is associated with Cubism, Primitivism, and Surrealism and, in addition to Alexander Calder and Paul Colin, with the following artists: Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Kees Van Donger, Le Corbusier, Man Ray, Henri Laurens, Tsugouharu Foujita, Georges Rouault, Marie Laurencin, Louis Aragon, Adolf Loos, and Colette. Photographers, architects, and haute-couture designers also found in her a source of inspiration. [Return to text]

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