Mammy archetype
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The Mammy archetype is the portrayal within a narrative framework or other imagery of a domestic servant of African descent, generally good-natured, often overweight, and loud.
The word "mammy" is a variant of "mother," formerly common in North America but now rarely used and typically considered an ethnic slur. In Ireland and parts of England however, "Mammy" is widely used as a synonym for "mother" by young people, without any racial connotation.
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[edit] Mammy as wet-nurse
A "wet-mammy" or "wet-nurse" was a term used for a female domestic servant that acted as a nanny and was also assigned the duty to breast feed the child in lieu of the child's mother, perhaps due to the death of the mother in childbirth, social or cultural pressures, or the mother's concern of disfigurement of the breasts due to nursing.
[edit] In pop culture
A number of variations and usage of the mammy character became prominent in pop culture during the pre-civil rights period. One of the most notable examples is Aunt Jemima, a mascot for Quaker Oats's Aunt Jemima brand pancakes, pancake flour and mixes, and syrup. In recent years, the packaging has been redesigned to replace the mammy image with a more contemporary housewife image.
[edit] In music, film, radio, and television
Mammy characters were a staple of blackface minstrelsy, giving rise to many sentimental show tunes dedicated to or mentioning mammies, including Al Jolson's "My Mammy" from The Jazz Singer and Judy Garland's performance of "Swanee" from A Star is Born (a song originally made popular by Jolson). Various "Mammy" characters would appear in radio and TV shows. One prominent example was the radio and later short-lived TV show Beulah, which featured a black maid named Beulah who helped solve a white family's problems. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Mammy Two Shoes, the housekeeper in the Tom and Jerry shorts presented an animated example of the mammy, complete with dark skin and a Black accent. As a parody of this stereotype, 1984 Frank Zappa album Thing-Fish featured characters called "mammy nuns."
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Pilgrim, David. "The Mammy Caricature". Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Ferris State University, Michigan.
- Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, "Southern Memory, Southern Monuments, and the Subversive Black Mammy", Southern Spaces, 15 June 2009. http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2009/wallace-sanders/1a.htm
