Racist Americana aside, that dancing Sambo doll seems really cool. Its only 25 cents and houses a mechanism that makes it dance and shake and all you have to do is pull its head! Where can I get one?
...ebay!
Wait. So the title says it's a "Mechanical Moving Toy," but in the image of the back of the envelope, it's branded an "Amazing Dancing Sambo Illusion." There's a picture of a setup with one string tied from the doll to a chair, and the other from the doll to a pencil on a table. This isn't amazing at all, it's a SCAM. Why would anyone pay $59.95 (plus shipping) for a piece of paper and a string? Hell, they probably don't even include the pencil! Baah, what a racist capitalist scumy ripoff. Surely there has to be a real dancing Sambo out there.
Here's the real dope. It's even 10% off, just $359.99! So you're saying I can spend $360 on a figurine that's missing it's left arm and attaches to a bouncy wooden platform? No thanks. For under $200, I could make an electronic, motorized, dancing figure that can shout obscenities at people as they walk past. All you need is an arduino, 4 servos, a gyroscope, a microphone, a speaker, and some 3D printed parts. Come on people, this is the 21st century, get this crap off of ebay.
I find it really ironic how this stuff is all listed as "Black Americana", as it sounds so much like they are pieces of African-American Culture. Since, these are really all a portrayal of the racist white culture of the time.
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite part of this might be that in your first link, the doll is labelled "Mechanical Moving Toy", but on the box it claims "It is not mechanical! It works by your magic!" This post is laden with irony, as Jack has pointed out, so it does not surprise me to find this one more example of apparently overlooked yet quite obvious irony. I would say that maybe the person who is selling that wrote mechanical on purpose to be ironic, but I doubt it. Mainly because my opinion of their intelligence has already been lowered perhaps unrealistically merely by the fact that they are selling that. No matter what, the juxtaposition of two such contradictory phrases is yet another piece of irony about this post.
ReplyDeleteIf you recall, when Mr. Mitchell first pulled up the listings for the Sambo dolls, all of us immediately gawked at the asking prices. It's safe to say we were all at least mildly surprised by the demand let alone existence of a market for such racist memorabilia. My question is, would it be less or more offensive if the asking prices were lower?
ReplyDeleteThe pricing--which indeed seems exorbitant to the outsider--leads us into the arcane realm of antiques trading, where (as any fan of Antiques Roadshow can attest) the price is determined by a complex assessment process that has to do with the relative rarity of the item, the condition it's in, and other esoteric factors. It's the object itself that is of value, like a rare stamp, coin, or action figure, not the sentiment it represents (an analogy might be a rare-book dealer hustling a first-edition, signed copy of _Mein Kampf_).
ReplyDeleteAnd people may have all kinds of reasons for collecting such items. It may seem strange to invest such an appalling image with high monetary value, and I do find it inherently offensive. I wouldn't pay a cent for one of these things, and I wouldn't want it in my house. But I also don't think they should all be destroyed in a bonfire, either. Isn't this a part of our cultural history that shouldn't be ignored, if only to illustrate how commonplace and mainstream and generally benign-seeming racism was at some points in our history? Because my sense is that people weren't collecting these items (at the time) as mean-spirited mini-hate-crimes or acts of aggression; it was more a seemingly harmless toy for kids to play with. Most white people probably didn't think of them as "racist" at all--and yeah, this reflects blindness and ignorance, but not necessarily outright hostility. But today? Why would anyone want to have this stuff around? Well, think of an institution like the Museum of Racist Memorabilia, and the lessons it has to teach about the everyday manifestations of racism that have pervaded our popular culture. I can imagine a teacher using such items in an object lesson--in a history of race in America course, for example, or something like Leff's seminar on race, class, and gender.