The origination of the Gollywog and the idea of misrepresention

The caricature of the golliwog was created by Florence Kate Upton in the 1890’s and first appeared when she published a child’s book titled, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwog. The Golliwog was first described as a horrid sight and the blackest gnome with in the story, this character was said to be produce of a minstrel tradition with jet black skin, bright red lips and wild woolly hair. He wore red trousers a shirt with a very stiff collar, red bow tie and a blue jacket with tails in relation to how minstrels dressed in the 1940’s.

Golliwog was a character created of the base of minstrels who white American entertainers that painted themselves dark black in representation of black people and portrayed them negatively as a hopeless race of people as entertainment amongst white people themselves.

The Golliwog also made its appearance as one of the main characters on Noddy a children’s TV series since the 1950’s, there was more than one and they were classed as villainous puppets called The Gollies who were made to commit various crimes throughout the Noddy series. The Gollies were later on replaced by two character called sly and Gobbo for the TV series in the early 1980’s.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog

Golliwog (2015) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog (Accessed: 24 January 2016).

This characterised form of representation could be linked to the classical style as mentioned my Chancellor Williams, which was said to be a way in which black people were painted in disregard of their true form because it was classed as improper to illustrate black people in their true form. The re-construction of black features was said to be realistic.

    

                                                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pso8rh6Fwag

RBGStreetScholar (2014) RBG| the destruction of black Civilization, Dr. Chancellor Williams. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pso8rh6Fwag (Accessed: 24 January 2016).