Seeking Grace: The Tempest , Race Relations, and American Popular Culture
Since the last half of the 20th Century, postcolonial readings of William Shakespeare’s
plays have dramatically changed the ways these plays are performed and taught. Perhaps the
most notable changes have occurred in interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Postcolonial interpretations generally consider the character Caliban a sympathetic figure, with
some theorists going so far as to designate him the hero of The Tempest whose homeland and
freedom are stolen by Prospero much the same as how Native Americans’ homeland and
Africans’ freedom were stolen by New World settlers. These new interpretations burst upon the
scene and generated a great deal of interest in reading and performing The Tempest. They
also generated controversy and a backlash against those readings that has even found its way
into the mainstream media. The backlash against postcolonial readings making Caliban a
sympathetic figure in The Tempest parallels the discourse that occurs in American popular
culture around issues of the slavery of Africans and African-Americans in this country, civil
rights, and race relations. Indeed, it is not an oversimplification to say, historically speaking, as
go readings of Caliban, so go American race relations and understandings of slavery.
Throughout much of American history, African-Americans were overlooked and their
experiences absent from mainstream popular culture. There were, of course, references to
African-Americans in popular culture, both during slavery and after the Civil War, and there
was also the occasional African-American who would himself or herself make an appearance
in American popular culture. Still, even when African Americans were present, they had no
choice but to conform to the expectations of white America if they wished for any measure of
economic success. One example is in minstrel shows of the late 19th Century. Typically, these
shows portrayed the African-American post-Civil War experience as one of longing wistfully for
the bygone days of slavery. African Americans, according to minstrel shows, were simple,
docile, and less intelligent, and they lamented the fact that freedom had taken them from the
South and the easy lifestyle they had there. African Americans were portrayed in these
minstrel shows as being ”[p]reoccupied with visions of a good master and good rum” and
preferring “an old-time possum hunt and barbecue to a fancy meal in a northern hotel” (Van
Deburg 112).
Most minstrel shows were what is referred to as “burnt cork minstrel shows,” which were
shows with white performers who portrayed African Americans by appearing in blackface, but
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