Editing Uncle Tom (section)

==Epithet==
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The term "Uncle Tom" is used as an epithet for an excessively subservient person, particularly when that person perceives his or her own lower-class status based on race. It is similarly used to negatively describe people who betray their own group by participating in its oppression, whether willingly or not.<ref name="merriam-webster.com" /><ref name="Uncle Tom">[http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&s=uncle+tom&i=0&h=00#c "Uncle Tom"]. Wordnet.princeton.edu. Retrieved April 24, 2009.</ref> The term has also, with more intended neutrality, been applied in psychology in the form of "[[Uncle Tom syndrome]]", a term for the use of subservience, appeasement, and passivity to cope with intimidation and threats.

The popular negative connotations of "Uncle Tom" have largely been attributed to the numerous derivative works inspired by ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' in the decade after its release, rather than to the original novel itself, whose title character is a more positive figure.<ref name="williams">{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Linda |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1595m04 |title=Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-691-10283-2 |pages=7, 30–31, 47–62 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv1595m04 |jstor=j.ctv1595m04 |access-date=2009-04-16}}</ref> These works, often called a "[[Tom show]]," lampooned and distorted the portrayal of Uncle Tom with politically loaded overtones.<ref name="meer" />

===History===
[[File:Legree.png|thumb|250px|Uncle Tom, from an 1885 [[magic lantern]] series]]
American copyright law before 1856 did not give novel authors any control over derivative stage adaptations, so Stowe neither approved the adaptations nor profited from them.<ref name="morgan">{{cite book |last=Morgan |first=Jo-Ann |year=2007 |title=Uncle Tom's cabin as visual culture |publisher=University of Missouri Press |isbn=978-0-8262-1715-8 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/uncletomscabinas00morg/page/1 1]–5, 11–12, 17–19 |url=https://archive.org/details/uncletomscabinas00morg |url-access=registration |quote=James Baldwin Uncle Tom. |access-date=2009-04-17}}</ref> [[Minstrel show]] retellings in particular, usually performed by white men in [[blackface]], tended to be derisive and [[pro-slavery]], transforming Uncle Tom from a Christian martyr to a [[fool (stock character)|fool]] or [[apologist]] for slavery.<ref name="meer" /> The performer and theatre manager [[George Kunkel (theatre manager)|George Kunkel]] was the first to adapt Stowe's novel into the minstrel show format; portraying the role of Uncle Tom in its first minstrel show adaptation in Charleston, South Carolina in 1861. Kunkel became the most prominent minstrel show performer in that part, performing it throughout the United States for decades and on a tour of England in 1883. His last performance of the part was in January 1885 less than a month before his death.<ref>{{cite news|title=An Old Time Minstrel Dead|work=[[Wheeling Daily Intelligencer]]|date=January 29, 1885|page= 7}}</ref>

Adapted theatrical performances of the novel, called [[Tom Shows]], remained in continual production in the United States for at least 80 years beyond the 1850s (1930s).<ref name="morgan" /> These representations had a lasting cultural impact and influenced the pejorative nature of the term ''Uncle Tom'' in later popular use.<ref name="meer" />

Although not every minstrel depiction of Uncle Tom was negative, the dominant version developed into a character very different from Stowe's hero.<ref name="meer" /><ref name="richardson">{{cite book |last=Richardson |first=Riché |year=2007 |title=Black masculinity and the U.S. South: from Uncle Tom to gangsta |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-2890-4 |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IlcS25xYsC4C&q=Uncle+Tom |access-date=2009-04-16}}</ref> Whereas Stowe's Uncle Tom was a young, muscular, and virile man who refused to obey his cruel master, Simon Legree, when Legree ordered him to beat other slaves, the stock character of the minstrel shows was degenerated into a shuffling, [[asexuality|asexual]] individual, with a receding hairline and graying hair.<ref name="richardson" /> For Jo-Ann Morgan, author of ''Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture,'' these shifting representations undermined the subversive layers of Stowe's original characterization by redefining Uncle Tom until he fitted within prevailing racist norms.<ref name="morgan" /> Particularly after the Civil War, as the political thrust of the novel which had arguably helped to precipitate that war became obsolete to actual political discourse, popular depictions of the title character recast him within the apologetics of the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy]].<ref name="morgan" /> The virile father of the abolitionist serial and first book edition degenerated into a decrepit old man, and with that transformation the character lost the capacity for resistance that had originally given meaning to his choices.<ref name="morgan" /><ref name="richardson" /> Stowe never meant Uncle Tom to be a derided name, but the term, as a pejorative, has developed based on how later versions of the character, stripped of his inherent strength, were depicted on stage.<ref name=NPR>{{cite news |last=Keyes |first=Allison |date=2002-11-29 |title=NPR: A New Look at 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' |work=[[The Tavis Smiley Show]] |publisher=[[National Public Radio|NPR]] |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=860450 |access-date=2008-01-09}}</ref>

Claire Parfait, author of ''The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852–2002,'' opined that "the many alterations in retellings of the Uncle Tom story demonstrate an impulse to correct the retellers's perceptions of its flaws" and of "the capacity of the novel to irritate and rankle, even a century and a half after its first publication."<ref name="parfait" />

=== 20th-century Black cultural critique ===
[[Spike Lee]]'s 2000 film ''[[Bamboozled]]'' was a dark modern [[satire]] or [[comedy drama]] that challenges this kind of negative stereotyping. The film featured popular Black actors such as [[Damon Wayans]] as Pierre "Peerless Dothan" Delacroix and [[Jada Pinkett Smith]] as Sloan Hopkins, comedians such as [[Tommy Davidson]] as Womack "Sleep 'n Eat" and [[Paul Mooney (comedian)|Paul Mooney]] as Junebug, and hip hop artists such as Yasiin Bey formerly known as [[Mos Def]] as Julius "Big Blak Afrika" Hopkins and [[The Roots]] as the Alabama [[List of ethnic slurs|Porchmonkeys]]. Lee's use of popular celebrities as satirical stock characters challenged long-held stereotypes of Black people in mainstream popular culture from novels to the screen. Casting hip-hop artists also allowed the filmmaker to allude to the role of [[Stereotypes of African Americans|negative stereotyping]] [[gangsta rap]] in the early aughts: "Spike Lee says in the DVD commentary [about ''Bamboozled''] that gangsta rap is a kind of stereotype that doesn't advance the interests of blacks. He reiterated this position at his talk at Northeastern."<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Slaner |first1=Stephen E. |last2=Clyne |first2=Sandra |date=2008 |title=The use of Spike Lee's Bamboozled to promote difficult dialogues on race |url=https://www.academia.edu/4850399 |journal=Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=13 |via=Google Scholar}}</ref>

''Bamboozled'' challenges notions of "Uncle Toming" or "acting white" as well as demonstrating the concept of [[Double consciousness|double-consciousness]] coined by the notable sociologist [[W. E. B. Du Bois]] in his book ''[[The Souls of Black Folk]]'' (1903).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bolt |first=Julie |date=2006 |title=Bamboozled |url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/f8f72b6acbbe8be3d1ce5095b459b5c1/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=46720 |journal=Radical Teacher |volume=75 |page=42 |id={{ProQuest| }}}}</ref> 

Also see the [[Emmy Awards|Emmy Award]]-winning 1987 documentary film [[Ethnic Notions]] by Black gay filmmaker [[Marlon Riggs]] narrated by actor [[Esther Rolle]]. The documentary narrates the history and legacy of the dehumanizing effects of African-American stereotypes and racializing caricatures<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Grant |first=Nancy |date=1987 |title=Review of Ethnic Notions |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1902247 |journal=The Journal of American History |volume=74 |issue=3 |pages=1107–1109 |doi=10.2307/1902247 |jstor=1902247 |issn=0021-8723}}</ref> from the "Loyal Uncle Tom" to grinning fools (see Stepin Fetchit) in cartoons, minstrel shows, advertisements, household artifacts, and even children's rhymes.<ref>Riggs, Marlon, and Esther Rolle. [https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/36203 "Ethnic notions"], Cornell University Library. eCommons: Open scholarship at Cornell (2012)</ref>