Josephine Baker Research Paper

Josephine Baker used her leverage as a performer to transform culture and politics in Europe and America. Baker, an African American woman, was born St Louis in 1906, and later she challenged discrimination and broke the gender binary through performance and political activism. Baker inspired change and fought discrimination in a variety of forms. In her lifetime she was a singer, dancer, spy, public speaker, and mother to many. “Each role also involved a costume change to accompany the new political image” (Jules-Rosette 215). All her roles served as a medium through which she combatted discrimination and fought for what she believed in.
Baker gained leverage through her performance in France which allowed her to break the gender binary.

Later, she used her traction to fight racism. In 1924 Baker began to work at the Plantation Club, a segregated club in Manhattan where blacks would perform for white patrons. There she was “discovered” by Caroline Dudley Reagan, who hired Baker for $250 a week to perform in La Revue Négree, in Paris. 1920s Paris was saturated with Black culture-art music, boxing- the city was a stage for Baker to make a name for herself. Paris became Baker’s inspiration. It was a city she grew to love and it was the start of her career. On October 2, 1925 at 9:30 PM, La Revue Négree opened at the Thétre des Champs-Elyseés in Paris. The highlight of the night was a savage dance which the press called a “Dionysian spectacle” (Jules-Rosette 47). The dance, an interpretation of a popular novel, was about the affair of a native girl and a French explorer. The dance was performed by Baker, wearing nothing more than beads and a feather belt, and Joe Alex. This was a moment that would follow her forever, taking her from a lowly blackface performer to a dancer known for her raw and erotic performances. With this, she was launched into a world of of fame.
Baker recalled the moment, ‘Driven by dark forces I didn’t recognize, I improvised, crazed by the music, the overheated theater filled to the bursting point, the scorching eye of the spotlights. Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone. I felt...intoxicated.’
(Jules-Rosette 48)
In this moment Baker realized the power she would have in the world that was hers alone. Through her newly found dominance she could spark changes in the world she never might have otherwise.
As Baker ascended the Parisian social ladder, she began to use her performance as a medium for social change. She had a variety of techniques which she used to achieve this.
Baker employed 5 performative strategies of image and identity construction: (1) exoticizing race and gender; (2) reversing racial and cultural codes and meaning (3) displaying difference through nudity, cross-dressing, song, and dance; (4) exploiting the images of difference; and (5) universalizing the outcomes to allow the performative messaged to reach a larger audience. (Jules-Rosette 49).
Here Baker’s methods of social change are described. The first three strategies seem to center around a main theme: highlighting social differences which seem to be cemented into society. The fourth and fifth methods are about Baker creating statements about these differences and making them accessible to all. Baker used nudity to help construct her primal image, the nudity itself was her costume. One of her most famous outfits was the banana skirt-constructed of life-like replicas of the fruit. This skirt was generally worn with nothing but beads. But by the 30s she had begun shifting away from this image. In La Joie de Paris Baker was dressed in a tuxedo and top hat-the polar opposite of her savage feathers and beads, though both were shocking to the masses. In gender politics, Baker used nudity as an extreme- to be without clothing was to be essentially herself- and to show self-empowerment. She used cross-dressing to remark on stereotypes and show an alternate sense of self.
Baker’s performance broke barriers of race, class and gender in Western society.

Her dance incited people, gave them a will to bring justice and make change. On April 13 1929, Baker’s dances were prohibited in Yugoslavia. “In order to prevent any further demonstrations by the Croatian students the government today forbade any more performances at local theatres of Baker, Harlem negro dancer” (“Baker's Dances Forbidden”). It also stated that “Her semi-nude appearances aroused considerable public indignation” Baker’s presence ignited so much hope in people that she scared governments. She made political statements on stage and in the press. As she gained traction, Baker demanded that all her audiences be

integrated.
During World War Two, Baker worked as a counterintelligence spy for the French resistance. Towards the beginning of the war, Baker was approached by Commander Jacques Abtey. Abtey had been introduced to Baker through a secret agent for the Counterespionage services who was connected with the Casino de Paris where Baker worked. After some hesitance and worry as to Baker’s reliability, Abtey reached out to her and asked her to join the Resistance. Baker was more than willing. She felt she owed Paris, her adopted homeland, for the chances it gave her, and for making her a star. She loved France deeply and would have done anything for the country she believed in. During the day, Baker worked at the Casino de Paris and performed in the evening, all the while awaiting instructions on intelligence. When she had information, Baker would transport information written in invisible ink on her music sheets under the pretence of performances. When the war ended, Baker was a hero.
After her career as a dancer, singer, and spy, Baker began a project that was both a social and political experiment. Baker had a vision to create a racially utopian family for the public to see. Her wish was to give hope that the restrictions surrounding race and ethnicities could be broken down, to show it was possible for different people to live side by side. She wanted to show that people could maintain identity without being restricted. In 1953 Baker announced she would adopt 12 children from Southeast Asia, North and West Africa, Latin America, and France. By 1954 she began to place the children, with the help of her husband Jo Bouillon, in her Les Milandes estate. Often the adoptions were done illegally with little regard to common procedure. As a female, black ex-patriot, with a career as a war hero and a dancer, Baker was stepping into uncharted territories by adopting 12 children, many of whom were white. She adopted children in need, all of different racial and religious backgrounds. While she tried to educate each of these children according to their respective religion and culture once they were older, this backfired; her children ran away from their tutors. They refused to learn the Torah, or Quar’n respectively. The two boys from Japan hated their visit their. They were not cultured according to their origins, but according to their adoptive home. Les Milandes was a sort of a commune, a self sufficient, working farm, but it was also a palace for these children to grow up, sheltered. Baker’s husband described the children as being stereotypical of their races. Baker’s goal was to show that all races could live together in harmony.
Baker left a legacy to the world.

Her influence in dance and in culture is still alive today. The NAACP organized Baker day in her honor, in Harlem on May 20 1951. It was a day of tributes to Baker and all that she did, a day of music and culture. The effect she had on people was astounding. She changed the role of song and dance in culture, and of blacks in song and dance. Earlier in 1951, Baker was awarded the NAACP Outstanding Woman of the Year award. Even before her Rainbow Tribe- her vision of a racially utopian family come to life-, Baker was a war hero and fought for civil rights. Baker’s actions did not go unrecognized. She was a model for multiracial or multinational families. She set a precedent for people of different ethnicities and backgrounds to live together peacefully. She set a standard for

pluralism.
Baker broke boundaries set by race or gender. Her influence in dance and culture and her ideals of tolerance between races are relevant in our society. She questioned the social barriers we set for ourselves and others, broke the gender binary in dance and in the military and she fought for her country and the rights of herself and others. We are constantly striving to build a better society, a just society, a harmonious society. Baker showed us that a society like that is possible.