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It wasn't until the {{wp|African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)|Civil Rights}} era that blackface minstrel shows began to fall from favor in the US. In the UK, which didn't have a sizable black population until the post-war era, blackface minstrel shows clung on even longer. It wasn't uncommon for comedians to black up as late as the seventies, and the BBC broadcast ''{{wp|The Black and White Minstrel Show}}'' for twenty years, finally ending it in 1978 (astonishingly, it continued as a touring stage show for nearly ten years after that). | It wasn't until the {{wp|African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)|Civil Rights}} era that blackface minstrel shows began to fall from favor in the US. In the UK, which didn't have a sizable black population until the post-war era, blackface minstrel shows clung on even longer. It wasn't uncommon for comedians to black up as late as the seventies, and the BBC broadcast ''{{wp|The Black and White Minstrel Show}}'' for twenty years, finally ending it in 1978 (astonishingly, it continued as a touring stage show for nearly ten years after that). | ||
[[File:Mrpopo.png|200px|left|thumb|Mr. Popo of ''Dragon Ball'']]And what of Japan? Well, post-war Japan took many cues from American media, and blackface was among them. And it's still there to this day. You can still sometimes see blackface on Japanese television, for example, to the astonishment of Western observers. As often happens when cultural concepts cross oceans, the original context has been lost. In most cases, it seems to be a way of portraying black people (albeit for comedic purposes) rather than invoking the mannerisms of Jim Crow. There is even a Japanese pop group, the Gosperats, who perform their whole act while blacked up. The band seemed perplexed that anybody would find their act offensive. Japanese blackface, | [[File:Mrpopo.png|200px|left|thumb|Mr. Popo of ''Dragon Ball'']]And what of Japan? Well, post-war Japan took many cues from American media, and blackface was among them. And it's still there to this day. You can still sometimes see blackface on Japanese television, for example, to the astonishment of Western observers. As often happens when cultural concepts cross oceans, the original context has been lost. In most cases, it seems to be a way of portraying black people (albeit for comedic purposes) rather than invoking the mannerisms of Jim Crow. There is even a Japanese pop group, the Gosperats, who perform their whole act while blacked up. The band seemed perplexed that anybody would find their act offensive. Japanese blackface, one could argue, doesn't carry the connotations that made the Western version so vile. And yet, at the same time, it ''does'', at least to us. It's likely to make the average Western onlooker rather uncomfortable because of the genre's history... a history that would be largely unknown to a Japanese onlooker. | ||
''Dragon Ball'''s Mr. Popo is undoubtedly a product of this: even though he isn't a human in the context of the series, his origins seem quite obvious. The original Jynx shared many of his features: the black skin and prominent lips bearing a startling resemblance to the "darky" iconography now largely abandoned in the US. Mr. Popo has since been edited in Western versions of the series to tone these elements down. With Jynx, {{bp|Game Freak}} went a step further and revised her design permanently, and in all regions. Whether or not the claims were accurate, they were enough to provoke the creators into taking action. So... was Jynx a blackface caricature? | ''Dragon Ball'''s Mr. Popo is undoubtedly a product of this: even though he isn't a human in the context of the series, his origins seem quite obvious. The original Jynx shared many of his features: the black skin and prominent lips bearing a startling resemblance to the "darky" iconography now largely abandoned in the US. Mr. Popo has since been edited in Western versions of the series to tone these elements down. With Jynx, {{bp|Game Freak}} went a step further and revised her design permanently, and in all regions. Whether or not the claims were accurate, they were enough to provoke the creators into taking action. So... was Jynx a blackface caricature? | ||