The Story of Plaything
Fig. 1 - Plaything.
The story of my animated film Plaything (still in production) and its themes of minstrelsy and racism is a long arduous journey that continues to surprise me even as I author this article. Once the film is completed, it will dive firmly and deeply into the darkest depths of American history and explore the disturbing roots of Blackface minstrelsy, slavery, and Jim Crow, which have nourished and supported multiple media form for nearly two centuries, from the macabre roots of the Southern Gothic sub-genre to cartoons and animated filmmaking.
The film will be uncompromising in its imagery as I intend to show the brutality of the period. I see Plaything (Fig. 1) as a fresh and new kind of supernatural, animated, horror film. It is, if nothing else, is a “Southern Gothic Folktale,” defined as an “artistic subgenre of fiction, music, film, theatre, and television that are heavily influenced by Gothic elements and the American South.” Plaything” takes place in Georgia around 1880 - I felt this year was the perfect setting for my film since it took place a few years after the Civil War officially ended in 1866 (the Reconstruction period also ended in 1877). Many ex-slaves that were emancipated in 1865 by President Abraham Lincoln walked the Southern landscape aimless and with no prospects. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, overturned Special Field Order 15. This order was put in place by General William T. Sherman to assure ex-slaves who volunteered to fight in the war would get their 40 acres and a mule.
Fig. 2 - Thomas Dartmouth Rice. Source: https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/origins.htm.
When the government reneged on its promise. Ex-slaves had to find some other way to support themselves. Many resorted to sharecropping, begging, and performing. In the story of Plaything, talented ex-slaves sign a kind of Faustian bargain by joining a Black minstrel group to support their families. The group is run by an emotionally complex P.T. Barnum-like character named Cornelius D. Fontaine. He is a combination of both the eccentric Carnies of the past and Thomas Dartmouth Rice (Fig. 2), an actor and playwright that popularised minstrelsy by creating the blackface character “Jim Crow” in 1828.
Cornelius is like Rice in that he exploits Black culture by exaggerating and lampooning it for monetary gain. However, Cornelius takes it a step further. He enlists ex-slaves to voluntarily exploit themselves by holding their soul hostage and using it as leverage against them and their families through magical means. Magic plays an important role in the Southern Gothic tradition and plays an important role in Plaything too. Voodoo and Hoodoo serve as both a source of liberation and oppression for the main protagonists “Upton Golliwogg”, “Sambo Jean,” and “Congo Coon.” They are betrayed by their own customs when slave masters and Cornelius use the rituals to turn them into the abominations of ridicule and the heroes are vindicated by magic when they turn the tables on their oppressors and free themselves.
I decided to make Plaything an animated film since historically, Blackface minstrelsy has been apart of the animation medium since its inception. The two art-forms go together like cookies and milk - you literally cannot talk about one without mentioning the other. As Pierre Cras argues in his review of Nicholas Sammond’s Birth of an industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of the American Animation, “American animation owes its existence to African Americans due to prevalence of their negative depictions and caricatures in early cartoons” (Cras 2017). Cras argues that “these visual incarnations of a humor relying on ethnic jokes dominated without a doubt the emerging motion picture industry, including the animated films” (2017). Sammond’s own analysis also talks about the visual character traits that famous animated characters like Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, and Bugs Bunny collectively shared with the Blackface Minstrels of old, such as the pair of gloves they wore on their hands. It was a tradition that I continued by having some of the minstrel characters in my story wear gloves as well. However, their gloves were not white as I wanted them to match the colours of the characters’ outfits.
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (Bob Clampett, 1943).
I also wanted the Minstrel characters of Plaything to have a ‘rubberhose’ quality to their design as well (see the representations of Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs [Bob Clampett, 1943]). Historically, the Blackface actors in minstrel shows seemed indestructible, almost elastic in nature. The animation medium adopted that sensibility as well. Characters like Daffy Duck were shot in the face but never died. However, I thought it was important to pay homage to both art forms in that way, but I did not want to lose the dramatic heft of the story. Plaything is therefore animated film with serious stakes involved. The characters can show a certain amount of durability when it comes to performing in the minstrel shows, but need to be vulnerable enough that, hopefully, the audience will have genuine concerns for their physical welfare. The threat of possible loss of life must feel real.
For example, there is a scene in the film where my protagonist Upton (a character cursed to roam the Earth in the form of Black Minstrel, Jack in the Box) discover he can be killed by the box that also serves as his prison if he remains too long inside without being summoned. Until that knowledge is revealed to him, Upton believes he canot be physically injured. As an animator and a storyteller. I must be able to sell the look of terror on his face upon learning about his Achilles heel. When audiences see the finished film, they will witness a character who is constantly beaten, hanged, burned and yet, he rises to see another day. He and his minstrel group were human beings that are literally turned into cartoon-like creatures to appease the spectator’s guilt as they watch them be subjected to the most extreme amount of violence known to mankind.
Raph Bakshi’s Coonskin (1974).
The violence displayed in the film is a visual gag associated with slapstick horror familiar from live-action cinema. Characters are killed in ridiculous, over the top ways but empathy for the character is still felt by the audience because they cared about them. One of the best examples of this was an animated/live action hybrid film called Coonskin (1974) directed by renegade animator/filmmaker Ralph Bakshi. There is an infamous scene where a half-naked Blonde that’s supposed to be a manifestation of America hangs a Blackface minstrel in a slapstick way. However, you feel the dramatic weight of the situation. Bakshi never lies to his audience when it comes to the themes he’s tackling in that film.
Plaything is an animated Horror film that wears the influences of Southern Goth, History and animation firmly on its sleeve. My intent in making it is not to harm but enlightened people to a mostly ignored or forgotten part of history. It is important that I keep the essence of that history intact no matter how brutal it is. “Wes Craven” once quoted an obscure French philosopher when he stated, “It’s okay to lie that’s what filmmaking is all about but its not okay to lie about the essence of the matter.”
**Article published: January 24, 2025**
References
Crass, Pierre. 2017. “Review: Nicholas Sammond, Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2015, 400 pages.” InMedia: The French Journal of Media Studies 6 (2017), available here.
Sammond, Nicholas. 2015. Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation. Durham: Duke University Press.
Biography
I was born and raised in Brooklyn N.Y., where I developed an insatiable appetite for all things animation. I embark on my journey to become an animator late in life after my wife and I relocated to Georgia. I’m now in the throes of directing my first animated film Plaything as I travel the Country as an over the road truck driver with my wife Marilyn serving as both my teacher and partner.