Dan Dinero's Dreamgirls

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Dan Dinero poses an interesting argument as to whether Effie White from Dreamgirls can be classed as the stereotypical big black lady, and by extension, whether ‘And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going’ is a big black lady song. He states that “...the performative power of the big black lady is rooted in a politics of refusal.” (Dinero, 2012) This is certainly true of the characters of both Motormouth Maybelle and Effie White, however it must be made clear that it is not simply saying ‘no’ for the sake of saying no - in both cases there are definitive reasons, many of which are the same for both characters. Both obviously make refusals on the grounds of race: for Motormouth one of the main points of her character is to fight for racial change and …show more content…

It could, in fact, be considered that this is one of the few instances in musical theatre where the big black lady or ‘mammy’ character has a higher musical status than a character who could be read as presenting the ‘mulatto’ trope, as she has a solo number where the ‘mulatto’ character originally did not. It could be argued that Deena Jones has been written based on the ‘mulatto’ character archetype - though her exact ethnicity is not stated in the show. An article written following the release of the 2007 film version of the musical

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