• The Robert A. Schanke Honorable Mention Essay, MATC 2019Projections of Race at the Nouveau Cirque: The Clown Acts of Foottit and Chocolat
• Matthew McMahan (bio)

During the Belle Époque, a black Cuban clown by the name of Chocolat (ca. 1868–1917) was the star of one of the elite Parisian circuses of the time, the Nouveau Cirque. He paired alongside another migrant performer, the English clown George Foottit (1846–1921), forming one of the most popular and celebrated duos in history. The two developed a unique (and endlessly imitated) pairing of circus types: the white-faced clown and the auguste.¹ The dynamic between these types was built upon a basic, yet violent hierarchy: Foottit as the maniacal white-faced clown attacked the dim-witted black clown, Chocolat, tripping him, slapping him, spraying him with water, and shouting all manner of invective at him. Chocolat’s role as auguste was to serve as the cascadeur (stuntman), the one who falls, tumbles, and receives the slaps, kicks, and mighty blows. As Chocolat shook with fear, the Parisians roared with laughter. Their act was nationally, even internationally renowned. They performed for royalty, tourists, and famous socialites. Their faces adorned advertisements, toys, and posters. They were even memorialized in early films by Charles-Émile Reynaud and the Lumière brothers, making the pair among the first French performers to ever appear on-screen.²

Even though the clown/auguste pairing was built on circus archetypes, from a phenomenological point of view, the French could not help but watch the act with the performers’ race in mind. Made clear by the robust documentation of the act in the form of reviews, newspaper articles, biographies, posters, advertisements, [End Page 225] and paintings, race superseded convention in the Parisian imagination, who interpreted the act in a colonial context. In that sense, Chocolat’s time in Paris shares in the pattern Harvey Young documents in his book Embodying Black Experience (2010). In societies founded upon white supremacy, an idea of “blackness” gets projected onto the black performer, who then has to contend with an image correlated with his skin color rather than his personality, talents, intellect, and body of work. “The result is the creation of the black body,” writes Young. “This second body, an abstracted and imagined figure, shadows or doubles the real one. It is the black body and not a particular flesh-and-blood body that is the target of a racializing projection.”³ Amid the foolish antics of his unique auguste, Chocolat gave Parisians an encounter with and inspired an articulation of a metaphoric blackness in the Belle Époque, one that was constrained by negative stereotypes: primitive, naive, victimized, and in need of civilization. These projections elided the quality and nuanced comic mechanisms of Chocolat’s clowning. However, my aim in this essay is to reveal through Chocolat’s example how the performer may find moments of adaptation, innovation, and subversion within the confines of comic and racialized stereotypes. Amid the commodification of his race, through moments of irony, deceit, and insubordination, he also created opportunities that undermined the black/white dichotomy within the clown/auguste paradigm.

In the acts with Foottit, Chocolat ostensibly repeated a comic version of his own oppressive childhood, subjugated and humiliated by a white superior. Unfortunately, Chocolat’s life before the circus has little in the way of documented evidence. Gérard Noiriel has done excellent historiographical work to parse out fact from fiction in the clown’s biography, which, prior to Noiriel, had been mired in half-truths and undocumented suppositions.⁴ We know only his first name, Rafael, because, born a slave in Cuba, he did not know his parents. When he was about eight years old, he was purchased by an Antillean merchant who brought Rafael to Spain. Eventually Rafael ran away from his master and began working in iron mines until he was spotted at a local tavern by the accomplished circus clown Tony Grice. Offering to train Chocolat in exchange for his services as a domestic, Grice taught Chocolat the craft and brought him along as he toured Europe. At first, Chocolat looked to be a mere addendum to Grice. On October...

• 罗伯特·尚克（Robert A.Schanke）荣誉提名论文，2019年MATC新生代太阳马戏团的种族预测：Footit和Chocolat的小丑表演
• 马修·麦克马汉（生物）

美女时代期间，一位黑人黑人小丑以巧克力（Chocolat，约1868年至1917年）的名字担任当时巴黎精英马戏团之一，即新太阳剧团（Nuveau Cirque）的明星。他与另一位移民表演者英国小丑乔治·富蒂特（George Foottit，1846–1921）配对，构成了历史上最受欢迎和最受欢迎的二人组合之一。两人发展出独特的（无休止的模仿）马戏团类型配对：白小丑和奥古斯特。¹这两种类型之间的动态关系建立在一个基本而又暴力的等级之上：Foottit是狂躁的白脸小丑袭击了机智的黑小丑Chocolat，绊倒了他，拍打了他，给他洒了水，并大声喊叫。指责他。乔古拉（Chocolat）作为奥古斯特（Auguste）的角色是充当级联（特技演员），摔倒，摔倒并受到重击，踢打和猛烈打击的人。当巧克力因恐惧而颤抖时，巴黎人欢呼雀跃。他们的行为举世闻名，甚至享誉国际。他们为皇室成员，游客和著名社交名流表演。他们的脸装饰着广告，玩具和海报。他们甚至在查尔斯·埃米尔·雷诺（Charles-ÉmileReynaud）和卢米埃尔（Lumière）兄弟的早期电影中受到纪念，使这对夫妇成为首批出现在荧屏上的法国表演者之一。^2个

即使小丑/八月的配对是建立在马戏团原型上的，但从现象学的角度来看，法国人还是不得不考虑表演者的种族来观看表演。通过评论，报纸文章，传记，海报，广告，[End Page 225]和绘画等形式的有力记录对该行为进行了明确说明，种族取代了巴黎人想象中的惯例，后者在殖民地背景下对这一行为进行了解释。从这个意义上讲，巧克力在巴黎的时间与哈维·杨（Harvey Young）的著作《体现黑人经验》中的模式相同。（2010）。在以白人至上为基础的社会中，“黑人”的观念被投射到黑人表演者身上，然后黑人必须与与其肤色相关的形象而不是其性格，才能，才智和工作体质进行竞争。Young写道：“结果就是创造了黑体。” “第二个身体是抽象的和想象中的人物，遮蔽了真实的身体或使真实的身体加倍。种族化投射的目标是黑色的身体，而不是特定的血肉之体。” ³在他独特的奥古斯特愚蠢的滑稽动作中，乔科拉特给巴黎人带来了一次美好的回忆，并激发了百丽时代隐喻性黑色的表达，这种隐性黑色受到负面刻板印象的约束：原始，天真，受害和需要文明。这些预测消除了Chocolat小丑的品质和微妙的喜剧机制。但是，我在本文中的目的是通过Chocolat的例子来揭示表演者如何在漫画和种族刻板印象的范围内找到适应，创新和颠覆的时刻。在种族商品化的过程中，通过讽刺，欺骗和不服从的时刻，他还创造了机会，破坏了小丑/八月范式中的黑白两分法。

在与Foottit的表演中，乔科拉特表面上重复了自己压抑的童年时代的漫画版本，被一位白人上级征服和羞辱。不幸的是，巧克力在马戏团之前的生活几乎没有书面证据。杰拉德·诺里埃（GérardNoiriel）做过出色的史学工作，从小丑传记中的小说中分辨出事实。⁴我们只知道他的名字拉斐尔（Rafael），因为在古巴出生的一个奴隶，他不认识他的父母。当他大约八岁时，被安提尔（Antillean）商人收购，后者将拉斐尔带到西班牙。最终，拉斐尔（Rafael）逃离了主人，开始在铁矿工作，直到他被马戏团小丑托尼·格里斯（Tony Grice）发现在当地的一家小酒馆。格里斯（Greice）提供培训乔科拉特（Chocolat）来换取他在国内的服务，他向乔科拉特（Chocolat）传授了手工艺，并带他到欧洲旅行。起初，Chocolat似乎只是Grice的附录。在十月...