Journal of the History of Sexuality

Berliner, Brett A., 1960-
Mephistopheles and Monkeys: Rejuvenation, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture in Interwar France
Journal of the History of Sexuality - Volume 13, Number 3, July 2004, pp. 306-325

University of Texas Press

Brett A. Berliner - Mephistopheles and Monkeys: Rejuvenation, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture in Interwar France - Journal of the History of Sexuality 13:3 Journal of the History of Sexuality 13.3 (2004) 306-325 Mephistopheles and Monkeys: Rejuvenation, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture in Interwar France Brett A. Berliner Morgan State University, Baltimore Give back the passions unabated, That deepest joy, alive with pain, Love's power and the strength of hatred, Give back my youth to me again. --Goethe, Faust I've had enough, I swear it, of youth and of disheartening adventure. Yes, I want to see the winter. --Jean Rieux, Non, merci, Vorognonoff! In 1929 Félicien Champsaur, a Rabelaisian author of much pulp fiction, published Nora, la guenon devenue femme (Nora the She-Monkey Becomes a Woman). The cover illustration of Champsaur's book featured a svelte black woman wearing nothing but a banana skirt, looking not unlike the African American entertainer Josephine Baker, who, just a few years earlier, had taken Paris by storm. Champsaur opened his novel with the image of a half-naked Nora, dancing with unbridled energy at the Folies-Bergère. At the end of the performance a celebrated politician, baffled by Nora's antics and appearance, queried a scientist in attendance: "Is she a woman or an animal?" The scientist replied, "Call her a she-monkey who became a woman, and you will be correct." Indeed, Nora was a "she-monkey" who had become a...