Black Face, White Mask: Unpacking the Implications of Masks in Jean Genet’s The Blacks
Black Face, White Mask: Unpacking the Implications of Masks in Jean Genet’s The Blacks

Summary/Abstract: In Jean Genet’s 1958 play "Les Nègres (The Blacks)", masking plays a significant role in the play’s satire on racial stereotypes and inequality of racial relations. The main themes of the play are packed in the implications of masking and unmasking, which include the pathology of the white society, the imagined and thus unstable power relation between the two races, and a constant tension in a black individual’s identity between his/her self and the mask/persona that he/she is compelled to perform in front of the whites. In order to unpack the complex repercussions of Genet’s "The Blacks" and the symbolism of masking, this paper will refer to Jung’s ideas on mask/persona to characterize the play’s use of masks as “performing objects,” and re-examine the play in the theoretical context of postcolonialism.Titled as “a clown show,” Jean Genet’s 1958 play "Les Nègres (The Blacks)" reverses black minstrel shows by putting the blacks behind white masks, thus exposing the whites to ridicule. The contrast between the masked and the naked generates power or an imagined power relation. In The Blacks, the white masks are contrasted with the naked black faces, suggesting an imagined authority of the former over the latter. On the other hand, the blacks perform the mask-persona that the whites prescribe to them in a caricatured and excessive manner, so as to free themselves from the stereotype and avenge themselves on the white society. From this perspective, Genet explores the psychological connotation of the mask to represent the tension between self and the other in racial identity. These two lines converge in the climactic unmasking, which reveals that the masked performance is intended to deceive and disarm the white audience from noticing the rebellion that is actually taking place off stage. The act of unmasking demystifies the authority of the whites, deprives them of their imagined power and leads to a reversal of the power relation between the whites and the blacks. To conclude, Genet's employment of the symbolic meaning of the mask serves to enhance the play’s exploration of the issue of racial relations and identity.

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