Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic: Literature, Modernity, and Diaspora

CHAPTER 5 Embodied Fictions, Melancholy Migrations: Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Celebrity

CHAPTER 5 Embodied Fictions, Melancholy Migrations Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Celebrity Terri Francis One night not long after the arrival of Anne’s letter with its curious news, Helga went with Olsen and some other young folk to the great Circus, a vaudeville house, in search of amusement on a rare off night. After sitting through several numbers they reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that the whole entertainment was dull, unutterably dull, and apparently without alleviation, and not to be borne. They were reaching for their wraps when out upon the stage pranced two black men, American Negroes undoubtedly, for as they danced and cavorted, they sang in the English of America an old ragtime song that Helga remembered hearing as a child, “Everybody Gives Good Advice.” At its conclusion the audience applauded with delight. Only Helga Crane was silent, motionless. —Nella Larsen, Quicksand What is Helga Crane thinking as she sits silent and motionless amid the enthusiastic audience? What is the relationship between the transnational migrations that take her, a biracial black American Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Celebrity 125 woman, between New York and Copenhagen and the alienation she experiences when she hears music from home at the Circus? In Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), Copenhagen is initially a site that permits Helga’s imagination to run free. There she explores the city and meets new people in her family’s circle of artist friends. Dissatisfied with New York, Helga had set sail for Denmark’s capital . Larsen describes Helga’s feelings during the trip, “even the two rough days found her on deck, reveling like a released bird in her returned feelings of happiness and freedom, that blessed sense of belonging to herself alone and not to a race” (64). At first, Copenhagen seems to be a utopian space for “a new life” and “the realization of a dream that she had dreamed persistently ever since she was old enough to remember such vague things.” Larsen describes the European capital as “where she belonged” and as Helga’s “proper setting,” where she felt “consoled for the spiritual wounds of the past.” In Copenhagen, “she took to luxury as the proverbial duck to water. And she took to admiration and attention even more eagerly” (67). Helga’s transatlantic journey takes her across national and class lines and she enjoys both public admiration of her racial difference and a newfound ability to afford her rare tastes. But the European capital soon makes Helga restless, becoming yet another source of confinement. The scene at the Circus crystallizes Helga’s internal conflicts without entirely explaining why the performance was so disturbing. When the dancers prance on stage, Helga seems to feel exposed somehow. Is an aspect of her character suddenly public and visible? Why does the public performance elicit such a personal reaction? Helga seems to experience an identity crisis, experiencing a sense of invisibility and crushing vulnerability. Perhaps in that instant she sees a distillation of how she appears in the eyes of her uncle’s Danish family and her suitor Olsen. The fact that Helga recognizes the song is a crucial detail. Her recognition creates tension that makes Helga’s silence at the end of the performance more than a simple rejection of the performance; she feels implicated in its aesthetics. In many ways, the novel builds to this moment. Rather than experiencing freedom from racism or The Race—the promise of racelessness, individuality, cosmopolitanism, affluence, whiteness—Helga finds herself entangled in the conundrum of black female existence—the condition of continually competing with myths about oneself as they manifest in the stated and unstated perceptions of others and in one’s own mind. The fact that Olsen has been painting Helga’s portrait, and that this has been not entirely to her satisfaction, underscores the novel’s engagement with issues of black women’s representation and creativity. Is Helga 126 Terri Francis a work of art or entertainment? Are those dancers art—folk culture— or are they commodities of entertainment, stereotypes? The tension that transfixes Helga at the Circus emerges from her conflicted response to the cultural history represented by the ragtime song and the cavorting or clowning of the performance, which offends her. It appears that Helga believes, to some degree, the manufactured distortions of blackness and cannot see the performers on stage outside of negative connotations placed on their performance style. As Larsen writes: The...