This book makes heavy use of blackface and they used the N word a lot of the times.I can not recommend this.
>>23536288>I thank you Jeevesas in of "ask" fame?
>>23536288They used blackface on the show too. Great show to be honest
>>23536288Good.
>>23536310The OP post was in jest but blackface is actually a major theme in this book. Bertie’s friend owns a yacht and he has a party where some black musicians show up and Bertie just wantonly calls them the N word throughout the book. The really sensitive readers might have trouble getting through this novel even. Bertie has to put on blackface to evade the yacht’s owner who tried imprisoning him there.
>not liking Jeeves
>>23536972I can assure you sir, it was a most regretful usage of words by OP.
>>23536288What a shame. Thanks for the warning.
>>23536943It is almost as if by making it a theme, Wodehouse is exploring racism through the lens of orientalism.
>>23536943Blackface as part of a plot doesn't really bother me (though it isn't believable in the slightest), but just throwing around the N word is cheap, rude, and shallow. I don't understand how mocking the musicians who you've hired to play is supposed to be a gentleman's humor. Obviously the qualities of the dregs of the upper class, at best—the kind of people who are born to money, but are never suited to it.
>>23537025Gentlemen in the era were drones.
>>23537025From what I understand, they actually like it.
>>23537025I don't believe the term "nigger minstrel" had the same negative connotation to it in 1934.
>>23537064It had a different negative connotation in the Wodehouse readers' group. But Wodehouse uses this, and other uses of race, to lampoon Empire and Gentlemen, and show that true gentlemen are of every nation just so long as they are British.Also Jeeves is basically running a NHS mental health service for aristocrats.
>>23537073My reference book says his politics are "reactionary" and it says his works are outdated though it doesn't really make any specifics. Roderick Spode the character is a satire of Fascism but I don't recall anything else overtly political in his works.
>>23537082And Keep the Aspidistra Flying is in favour of the middle class.
>>23537096Are you having a brain meltdown or something? I fail to see the relevance of Orwell.
>>23537101Maybe try reading Wodehouse yourself.
>What if I paint my face with shoe polish and escape with the negro musicians?>Delightfully devilish, Bertie
>>23537103Watch this clip and try to envision this man as Jeeves. I think he would make the perfect Jeeves for a movie version. He has the right air to him and the right look.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQm311XSdGE
>>23537116The butler from The Nanny would have made the perfect Jeeves. Really, his character is Jeeves and I watch the show for a Jeeves fix.
>>23537126I could totally see that too but from memory he was less prestigious in his household than Jeeves was with CeeCee frequently mocking him and insulting him. Also he wasn't as into the literary as Jeeves was though all of this is from my memory of watching the show twenty years ago.
>>23537130No no you are absolutely right. He was the American sitcom Jeeves, so he had to play some comic relief and be less upper-class, but, in my opinion, the actor captured Jeeves' intelligence, and dignity while hiding a cunning and mischievous streak. I guess not the same, but still similar.
>>23537152Fun fact: That actor was born in ArkansasMost who watch the show assume he was British irl.
>>23537082Based Spode has some big ideas about potatoes.
>>23536288Oddly so does the show of it they made with House MD and his husband
>>23536288I'm not even racist and I don't think there's anything wrong with blackface at all. The reason its seen as not acceptable is extremely culturally specific, american minstrel shows. Its just a costume. No different than wearing a native american headdress or painting yourself blue and being a smurf
>>23537529Well there's blackface and then there's Blackface. In these books it's literally a minstrel show with the white/red and everything.
>>23537163I cant believe Arkansas is realI've met people from every state, but never arkansas
Real talk, Wodehouse? Tell me about him.
>>23536943That episode was in the show as well. Don’t think they used the n word though
>>23537956He's funny, he's a funny guy. Very funny writer. Funny characters and situations. You'd probably like him, most people do.
>>23537164He was a visionary
quite rummy behaviour, what?
>>23538780>“Negroid entertainers,” to use Jeeves’ term, is the least offensive description applied in the book to the musicians, which gives a sense of how much they’re dehumanized. One character assumes that a black man is likely to be a thief. There’s repeated and careless use of a racial slur.https://bookriot.com/jeeves-and-blackface/This article is really poorly written and is sensationalist but the original book uses the word so much it might be off putting to people trying to get into this writer.
>>23539213IT is only off putting if people cannot understand context and intent. Black people were called Negros. It wasn't a definite pejorative like it is now. Negro, along with Caucasian and Mongloid were just terms to describe the different races. Just like using White, black, asian etc.
>>23539228Obviously anyone who would be posting on this board would know the context of “nigger minstrels” in 1934. The point is a random reader with no background might not be super interested in picking up a book only to be bombarded with nigger nigger nigger nigger. That is the main point where I agree with the article.
>>23539213>dehumanizedThis really gets thrown around a lot, these days. As if the humans who are being treated "like humans" are being treated with particular respect and consideration by comparison. In my experience, they usually are not.
