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ABSTRACT
Miguel Mihura's Tres sombreros de copa is often celebrated as an irresistibly funny critique of the values of the bourgeoisie in early twentieth-century Spain. Yet the enjoyment of some (myself included) is tempered by a discomfort at the handful of references to race and blackness in the play. Drawing on an approach to the ethics of humor that recognizes its performative aspect, this article considers several productions of Mihura's comedy from 1983 to 2011 and analyzes the various ways in which they do or do not engage with the potentially “racist” humor of the published text and with the issue of how to perform the character of Buby on stage.
Notes
2. In his defense of Tres sombreros de copa, the writer of this letter does himself no favors by mistakenly claiming that the playwright visited the United States around the time of writing his play, and that he was therefore critiquing the racism he had observed on the other side of the Atlantic: Mihura never traveled to the United States with his humorist friends such as Edgar Neville and José López Rubio on account of a leg ailment (see Moreiro 162, n. 3).
3. For more on these controversies, see the article by Sid Lowe and the websites http://www.somosmalasana.com/es-este-graffiti-racista/ (I have Helen Finnegan to thank for bringing the second matter to my attention) and http://black-face.com/blackface-world.htm. I do not include here what is undoubtedly the greatest controversy related to this issue in the UK press—footballer Luis Suárez's racist abuse of Patrice Evra on 15 October 2011, the fine and the eight-match ban he was handed by the English Football Association, and Liverpool FC's solidarity with him immediately after Evra made his accusations—because Suárez is Uruguayan. That does not mean, however, that there are numerous points of contact between this and those cases in Spain.
4. Here I take “race” to be an epistemological framework that premises its understanding of human diversity on the assumption that humans can be categorized into discrete groups according to skin color and its supposed correlates of bone structure and hair. The adjective associated with this framework is “racial”—“racist” referring to actual discriminatory behavior seemingly according to (but in reality giving rise to) such a framework and the hierarchies of classification consequent to it.
5. Despite this difference in nomenclature, there are a number of parallels between Carroll's analysis of the ethics of humor and the writings of Gaut. This is not acknowledged in Carroll's text itself—in which he chooses not to include any bibliographical references—although Gaut's publications are listed in his bibliography (Carroll 121).
6. This position Gaut terms “ethicism” (55).
7. Carroll labels this position “moderate comic moralism” (110). Carroll is rather unfair in his critique of ethicism, which he claims “requires as a criterion of appropriateness for an amused response that the humour not be morally defective” (104; emphasis added). Ethicism for Carroll appears to be what Gaut labels “strong” (55) moralism: Carroll's subsequent claim that “[a]s we have seen, it is possible to find something comically amusing while simultaneously acknowledging that it traffics in moral improprieties” (104) echoes Gaut's remark that “humor might still be present to some extent, perhaps because great ingenuity is displayed in the joke, involving clever puns and sophisticated subversion of normal expectations” (55).
8. I am aware of the problems inherent in interpreting laughter, as Carroll notes as regards what he labels “attitude endorsement theory” (92–102, especially 96). My interpretations below, therefore, can ever be only tentative.
9. For more on black actors in Spain, see my article (Green).
10. Mihura's stage directions indicate nothing more specific than “una canción americana” (Tres sombreros de copa 68) at this point of the play.
11. This and subsequent transcriptions are made directly from the recordings of productions.
12. Rodgers Jr. repeatedly sings the line “Way down, Moses.” This is slightly different from the lyrics of the spiritual (the refrain of which is “Go down, Moses / Way down in Egypt's land”), although it is sung to the same melody.
13. Despite Buby's demand, a little (although noticeably less) laughter continues after this point in the recording.
14. A photo on the company's Facebook page shows Hernánz as Buby in a curly wig, although this was not worn at the performance that was recorded.
15. See the photograph of the production in Peláez (139). Later examples include Pérez Puig's revivals of the play at the Teatro Español, Madrid in 1992 and at the Teatro Príncipe, Madrid in 2005, where Buby was played by Nicolás Romero and Carlos Urrutia, respectively, and the made-for-television version (Fernando Delgado, 1978) in which the character was performed by Antonio Iranzo.
16. I have not been able to locate any evidence that the teatro bufo (as the blackface genre came to be called in Cuba) reached the eastern shores of the Atlantic in the same way that the minstrel show did in the UK.
17. While the character of Othello has yet to be played by a black actor on the Spanish stage, photographic documentation of recent productions show that this character is now usually (though not always) performed without recourse to blackface, sometimes in order to comment on Spain's fractious relationship with North Africa.
18. While Pep Sellés wears white gloves, he also wears a short-sleeved top, thus exposing the unpainted skin of his lower arms.
19. The company's approach to the play as a whole includes the cast of five taking on a number of roles, the pruning of much of the dialogue, changes to the order of scenes, making the character of Don Sacramento (Dionisio's future father-in-law) a woman, and incorporating the character of Margarita (Dionisio's wife-to-be) in two scenes, including a new scene at the very end of the play in which the audience witness Dionisio's and Margarita's wedding and see photographs of their subsequent marriage (all to the soundtrack of “Suspiros de España,” a pasodoble closely associated with the cultural values of Francoism).
20. In the printed text (and in the other productions), the audience does not become aware of this pretense until much later on, shortly before Buby introduces Paula to El Odioso Señor.
21. The scene is bookmarked by Dionisio dozing in a rocking chair, the stage lit by no more than a spot on him in the chair. The difference in the sound made by the telephone in this scene and in the subsequent scene also indicates that the entire storyline involving Paula is a dream. Buby's costume of a black wig, gloves and bowtie, and white suit (with black buttons and trim) is an exact copy in negative of the costume Maroto wears as butler to Doña Sacramento and Margarita, and thus could be seen as a memory of Dionisio's visit to his future wife that resurfaces in his sleep.
22. Recordings held at the Centro de Documentación Teatral, Madrid.