Blackface in the Woodpile

See my review of "A Natural Born Gambler" (1916) for a brief summary on the fame and historical significance of Bert Williams, a Bahamian black man who, in the minstrel tradition, performed in blackface. While the other short film is the more elaborate of the two that Williams made for the theatrical managers Klaw & Erlanger and the movie studio Biograph, "Fish" is interesting in a historical context, as well, and arguably does a better job at exploiting its stereotypes in a subtly transgressive way to further demonstrate the white supremacist gaze that Williams worked under to achieve crossover appeal (i.e. placate the racism of white audiences). At least, it gives me a better sense than the other film as to why Williams was such a beloved star even among African-American audiences, including both W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

Jacqueline Stewart begins her book "Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Modernity" by framing within a discussion and inversion a racist idiom adopted as the title of a 1904 film (also from the studio that would become Biograph, as it so happens), which I discuss further in my review for that title. Such an inversion of, let's say, "something wrong in the woodpile" (akin to other idioms such as "fly in the ointment" or "skeleton in the closet") works well in "Fish" as another visual pun. Unlike the blackface characters stealing wood in the 1904 film, Williams here only steals away from his woodpile duties to entrepreneurially venture into his own occupation of trying to sell a fish he caught.

It's hard to tell from the washed-out upload I saw of the film, but I'm told that the blackface parental figures to Williams's character here are, in fact, white actors. That makes sense, because they chase after Williams and force him to work as they sit about idly. Like the 1904 film, it's in the tradition of the prank-punitive early cinema genre, except now we know that Williams wasn't the one doing something wrong despite, nonetheless, being punished for it.

This enforcement of black work for white profit is extended to the white man enjoying leisure to whom Williams attempts to sell his fish. Instead of buying it, the white man, first, releases his dog on Williams and, second, after luring him back up the hill, informs him again that he doesn't want to buy his fish. When the paternalistic blackface whites finally catch up, the white man falls out of his chair laughing at Williams being chased--the sort of reaction the film was intended to provoke in its assumed white audience.

As with "A Natural Born Gambler," the black Williams is treated as an amusement contained within the control of the white gaze, reflexively both within the film via the white and blackfaced white characters and outside the film with the white audience. Similar to the poker mime coda in the other film, too, Williams only experiences something of a momentary escape--in this case, the fishing--but in neither film is he ultimately allowed to profit from his work. It's a slapstick comedy that, today, works better as a depressing, if cleverly self-aware, commentary on its times.