August 12, 2014
As we think about the legacy of actor and comedian Robin Williams, we should not allow ourselves to bypass a singular and significant aspect [of] his background. While it is risky to speculate on what role, if any, the peculiarities of an artist's family history might play in the construction of his or her art, it is equally risky to proceed as if such history plays no role whatsoever.
Robin McLaurin Williams is descended from one of the most important white supremacist politicians in the history of the country. His great-great-grandfather on his mother's side was Anselm J. McLaurin, a Democrat who served as the U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1894 to 1895 and from 1900 to 1909. Senator McLaurin was also the first governor of Mississippi elected under the notorious "Mississippi Plan" constitution of 1890, serving from 1896 to 1900. McLaurin was a delegate to the convention that wrote that constitution, which disfranchised the African American population of that state. This was the constitution that introduced the poll tax (later outlawed by the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) and the infamous "understanding clause," in which "literacy tests" were conduced under the supervision of local registrars. Prospective voters were "tested" on their knowledge of the state constitution. As Herbert Aptheker pointed out long ago in his famous essay America's Racist Laws (1951), these tests weren't conducted in public places, but in white people's homes, and the registrars had sole discretion as to what "understanding" meant. The "Mississippi Plan" became the model on which the entire white supremacist movement to disfranchise African American voters was based. Even today, this model serves as a template for the restriction of voting rights that is gaining traction in the South and elsewhere.
This genealogy might not be worth mentioning, indeed talking about it at all might be considered, by some, an act of bad taste. However, the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, a Gannett newspaper, writes of Williams's "blue-blooded Mississippi roots" with pride. It goes without saying that Clarion-Ledger reporter Therese Apel does not mention that those roots are also soaked in the bloody post-Reconstruction reestablishment of white supremacy in that state 130 years ago (she only mentions that McLaurin introduced a failed provision to disfranchise men who were convicted of spousal abuse); or in the establishment of a mode of restricting voting rights, whose legacy haunts us to this day.
It is perhaps worth mentioning, in this connection, that it was 50 years ago, on August 4, 1964, that the bodies of Mississippi Freedom Summer activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were found in that state, as Wikipedia says, "buried beneath an earthen dam," about 80 miles from Brandon, where McLaurin started his political career, in 1869, as a twenty-one year old district attorney.
Still, pointing to this genealogy might be of little significance, except that it might serve as a window into thinking about some aspects of Williams's art, both in terms of its emotional tenor and its style. Williams was a master of parody, masquerade, imposture, and of the grand, theatrical, faux self-denigrating gesture, honing these into effective tools of his comedic art. His style recalled, in many ways, the conventions of "blackface" minstrelsy, a theatrical and performative form that, in addition to its racist content, consisted of a complicated network of speech and gestures that acted as a sort of relay of signification. The old "blackface" minstrelsy was, in fact, an act in which white performers satirized enslaved black performers who were themselves satirizing the social graces of their masters.
Williams's genius was to strip this style of its racist frame of reference while leaving us with those essential features that made minstrelsy funny despite its sordid social connotations. He imbued his work with that pathos that is generic to the figure of the clown; yet his pathos had an edge to it that seemed to refer to a decadence that lived just beyond the horizon. Maybe a more detailed examination of his performance style would show us how his gestures carry within them an emotional tenor that echoes the loss and decay that one finds at the heart of the work of artists like Faulkner, Welty, Harper Lee, Tennessee Williams, and many other classic Southern white writers. The multiple masquerades Williams offers in his portrayal of the "Scottish nanny" in the film Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) constitute just one example from among an extraordinary range of characters, personae, and performances that give us - if we choose to be sensitive enough viewers - a glimpse into how this outstanding artist used a complicated and troubled personal legacy in the service of laughter.
https://portside.org/2014-08-14/thinking-about-robin-williams-american-humor-and-troubled-mind[Geoffrey Jacques is a poet, critic, and teacher who writes about literature, the visual arts, and culture. His research interests include modernist poetry and poetics, African American literature and culture, and the postmodern city. His books include A Change in the Weather: Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), and the poetry collection Just For a Thrill (Wayne State University Press, 2005). His writings have appeared in many periodicals, including Art Forum International, The Black Scholar, Freedomways, Radical Teacher, NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, Killens Review of Arts and Letters, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Cineaste, Cover Arts New York, New York Newsday, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies.]
Stephanie Doty
Simply Amazing
August 15, 2014
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