The New Woman and the New Empire:
Josephine Baker and Changing Views of Femininity in Interwar France
Over the past decade or so, studies of Josephine Baker have shifted
in emphasis from discussions of her life in general to analyses of the
roles she played on stage and screen. This change from biography to
performativity has brought new insights into the life of this celebrated
musical star, conceptualizing her as a symbol of the black aesthetic, of
jazz dance, of the African diaspora, or of the tensions of modernity as
a whole.[1]
In this paper I hope to contribute to our views of Josephine
Baker, performer, by exploring a specific theme that characterized many,
if not most, of her characters. To put it bluntly, I wish to consider
why the women Baker portrayed never got the guy; that is to say, never
achieved success as romantic leads. Time and time again, when we see
Baker on stage and screen, she is eating her heart out for a white
Frenchman who generally remains completely ignorant of her desire, and
who ends up instead with a white Frenchwoman, leaving Baker sad and
alone. This constant failure contrasts strangely not only with Baker's
own love life, but also with her prominence as a music hall and movie
star, since a key definition of such stardom, especially for women, is
romantic success. So how can we explain the fact that the woman who not
only exuded sexuality on stage but also generally got top billing,
nonetheless lost out in the race for love?
The most obvious answer, of course, is the observation that French
society in the interwar years was not willing to accept, let alone
celebrate miscegenation, and that Baker's performances respected
powerful social norms. The fear of race mixing certainly had a lot to do
with the limits on Baker as a performer, but I would contend it is not
the entire story. For if one refused to countenance the possibility of
love across the color line, then why make Josephine Baker a star at all,
and in particular why encourage her to exhibit such demonstrative and
alluring sensuality on stage and screen? Baker could never have
performed such roles in contemporary America, and certainly never could
have achieved stardom in doing so, thanks to that country's strict taboo
against interracial sex.[2]
The question is, therefore, why did French
producers and audiences enjoy the sight of Baker flaunting her beauty
and sexuality before their eyes yet refuse to accept the logical
consequences of such appeal?
I believe that the answer to this question is found in the tensions
of interwar French society and culture, in particular in the
intersection of two phenomena that reflected the problematic legacies of
the Great War. The first was the New Woman, the prospect of liberated
young women who rejected prewar social conventions and set out to shape
their own destinies. As a global phenomenon in France, it often
symbolized not only freedom but also danger, unmoored sexual boundaries
that could threaten society as a whole. To a certain extent, Josephine
Baker's prominence in France represented a triumph not just of
primitivism and blackness but also of this new vision of femininity, and
her performances illustrated both its positive and its negative sides.
The second phenomenon was the new relationship between France and her
overseas colonies. The war had created the beginnings of postcolonial
society in metropolitan France, and during the interwar years the French
people, to a much greater extent than before, wrestled with both the
appeal and the Otherness of empire. In portraying a kind of colonial
Everywoman, Baker's characters mirrored the ambivalence many French felt
toward their subjects and the imperial project in general.
In taking this approach, I wish to address two broader themes that
arise when one considers the life and work of Josephine Baker. The first
is the question of how we conceptualize black Europe and black European
studies.[3]
Blacks in Europe belong both to the African diaspora and to
European society, history, and culture; in foregrounding the latter
relationship in this paper, I do not intend to neglect or undervalue the
former. Rather, I ask another question: How do blacks and blackness
reflect and shape the life of the "white continent" in general? The
other theme is the relationship between gender, race, and colonialism.
Feminist scholars have both challenged the traditional idea that white
women bore primary responsibility for introducing racial segregation
into Europe's colonies, and also explored the ways in which not only
European women but feminism itself at times contributed to the colonial
project and to the racialization of the Other.[4]
Baker's performances
mirrored anxieties about the blurring of boundaries between
métropole and colony at the same time as they asserted a
modernist ideal of woman, and thus present an ideal site for exploring
interactions of different types of alterity.
Such broader reflections seem to take us far from the tragedies of
unrequited love. Yet ultimately the loss was not Baker's, but that of a
society unable to address successfully the contradictions of the world
it had created. Interwar France may have made Josephine Baker a star,
but it could not portray her simply as a human being who loved and was
loved in return.
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