Claudine Raynaud,
"Foil, Fiction, and Phantasm: 'Josephine Baker' in Princess Tam Tam" (page 7 of 10)
The fact that the indigenous female does not write but is written
about parallels the production of Baker's autobiographical
writings, composed in collaboration with Marcel Sauvage, André
Rivollet, and Jo Bouillon.[32]
It also reflects on the figure of the
illiterate primitive. Yet Baker did write letters, one of which, from
the preface to Paul Colin's Le Tumulte noir, is reproduced in
Sauvage's first memoirs (M, 29). She co-authored the novel My
Blood in Your Veins with Pepito Abatino in 1931 and is pictured as
writing a letter to her children in the feature film, the Josephine
Baker Story (2001).[33]
Other evidence of Baker's lifelong writing
habit is the posthumously published, co-authored autobiography,
Joséphine, where Jo Bouillon admits to using notes that
Baker had gathered over the years with the intention of writing her
autobiography: "The folders bulged with notes, reflections, documents,
old programs, press clippings, and three hundred pages of the rough
draft of an autobiography begun fifteen years earlier."[34]
Princess Tam Tam offers an intriguing writing triangle. The
idea of using Alwina as writing material comes to Max de Mirecourt when
he is at a loss for inspiration. Coton prompts him to do it. After
having complained of how washed out he is, Max regrets that Alwina
cannot be found. He thinks about scrubbing her down
(décrasser), then educating her. Coton quips: "You've got
your novel!" Max talks to Alwina—they are initially depicted standing
behind a screen—while Coton writes down their conversations. Alwina is
never alone with Max since the secretary must be able to overhear their
dialogues. In answer to one of her queries, Coton explains that he is "a
nigger" (a ghostwriter, un nègre). He does the work in the
place of the other. That equation between Coton's role and Baker's
"identity" reverberates for the viewer on the actual exchange between
the three protagonists as an answer to the questions: Who creates? Who
does the work? Who owns the work? In this interaction, the metaphoric
"nigger" (Coton) uses the real "nigger" (Josephine) to produce the work
of art of the white nobleman who stands in for colonial power. They
could/should do away with him since Alwina provides the material and
Coton does the writing, yet Max is the one who signs the autographs (the
author) and is the object of Alwina's desire. Coton's later comment, "We
could have asked Alwina to come and sign," is an acknowledgement of her
role as co-author of the text. Baker's personal situation was the
opposite, given that Abatino used Baker's name several times to promote
books he had written.[35]
Here, best-selling fiction turns out be the actual transcription of a
dialogue with the exotic other. Alwina is literalized into the source of
inspiration, and her words are modified to provide the stuff of Max's
new "race novel." Her "authenticity" suffices for the fiction to ring
true enough to sell. Max also pretends to fall in love with her,
seducing her doubly: he steals from her the genuineness of her
reactions, and he turns these emotions into profitable material, a
commerce that stands in for the exploitation of the colonies by the
Empire.
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