White Screens, Black Dance : Race and Masculinity in the United States at Midcentury

White Screens, Black Dance shows how several types of American masculinity were built through Black dance on mid-twentieth century film and television. It does so by analyzing case studies of major period stars, both Black and white: the Nicholas Brothers, Gene Kelly, Elvis Presley, and Sammy Davis, Jr. In the process, it also reveals the white stars'' appropriation of Black culture through dance, which the author terms blackbodying. Both this practice and the midcentury models of masculinity that it describes are ultimately shown to remain with us today--on film, TV, and TikTok.

White Screens, Black Dance analyzes the film and television dances of male screen stars in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. Unpacking the complex physical and visual codes performed by four case studies--the Nicholas Brothers, Gene Kelly, Elvis Presley, and Sammy Davis, Jr.--it argues that each employs Black (Africanist) dance and movement vocabularies in distinct ways, all using them to construct shifting models of masculinity over the course of their careers. In so doing, this book theorizes a practice of appropriation called blackbodying, whereby non-Black performers use Black dance and movement styles without using blackface makeup. Applying methodologies from both film and media studies and dance studies, it offers an interdisciplinary reading of these men''s star texts and their screen-dances throughout the midcentury period. To best understand the nuances of their performances, White Screens, Black Dance considers not only the ever-changing, often ambiguous and contradictory signifiers of racial and gender identity from the 1940s-1960s, but also the ways that class, and the differing industrial and visual environments of Hollywood film vs. broadcast television, further shape how all five men danced their masculinities for the camera(s). It ultimately reveals how these resultant midcentury masculinities have continued to influence danced masculinity ever since.